[h2][center]Digital Gangsters[/center][/h2]

At the flip of a switch what was once a dark room illuminated only by digital interfaces became slightly less hostile in the ambient illumination of Christmas lights. ℝoot wasn't the holiday cheer type but the ice-lights packed into fiber-optic diffusion tubes created a general ambient light with no source orbs to burn the eyes or casting glare on her electronics. The bus ride home had been an exhausting one, but also a cathartic one, as her long project had finally come to a close.  

She too her thick black-framed glasses off and set them on the desk while dropping into an expensive office chair with lumbar support. With a flick of her mouse several monitors lit up to reveal what they always did: many many programs running in the background, and one in the foreground. ℝoot checked her VPN status, and augmented her bypasses, as well as checking in with a laundry list of hacks she had been running while out. It had become something of a ritual for her and she took this moment to check in with her friends.

[quote]
10:46 ℝoot: I win.
10:47 Riemann: How the fuck did you do that?
10:47 ℝoot: You may as well ask the sun how it rises every morning, Rie-Rie, I'm just that good.
10:49 Riemann: No, I mean, I paired his phone and cloned is laptop. I monitored him on security cams and hacked his CCTV with a worm. You had literally no access point. 
10:50 ℝoot: ...
10:51 ℝoot: How many calls did he answer?
10:52 Riemann: 136.
10:52 ℝoot: Not how many calls he picked up. How many calls did he [i]answer?[/i]
11:00 Riemann: Just... the first one.
[/quote]

ℝoot leaned back in her chair and wondered if she had cheated her friend on their wager. There had been a rather large pool of people in her online community whom all had taken the challenge. While no one in her anon collective considered themselves heroes, they had all each agreed to take down a truly despicable target. The wager was on figuring out just how each person did theirs. Who ever succeeded in taking down their target without being caught by the other members of the community, or having their methods unraveled, was declared the winner. With only personal pride on the line, in a world of anonymity, there was little incentive but also no reason not to try. 

[quote]
11:28 Riemann: I concede. 
[i]11:28 Riemann tips his hat to the superior player.[/i]
11:30 Riemann: So... did you ever get your glasses fixed?
[/quote]
It was an uncomfortable subject. The glasses ℝoot had been wearing all day were placeholders. She still hadn't worked up the courage to mend her electro-electroencephalographic augmented reality display. Not after it tore her a new brain. She let the cursor blink on her screen as she tried to find some excuse.

[quote]
11:37 ℝoot: I... I can't.
11:37 Riemann: You?
11:37 ℝoot: I'm scared okay?
11:38 Riemann: 
[img]http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/1a/1af33bbe837b9b1d65c9ac632afc856f90796618695ce6561dfb09387fefac18.jpg[/img]
11:40 ℝoot: I just haven't been myself since the last time I used them.
11:38 Riemann: I feel ya, sister, but you're not one to be beaten by this. We both know going to put them back on eventually. Might as well be sooner rather than later.
[/quote]
She was frustrated, and borderline angry and lashed out at the source of her pain. Grabbing the cheap plastic glasses off her desk she crumpled them in her hands and threw them at the wall. The scratch resistant lenses cut her hand as she did so and a few droplets of blood went with the frames as they smashed into the wall. She screamed in existential agony as the pain in her hand was a mere fraction of the pain in her heart. 

"Shut the fuck up!" A mans voice yelled through the thin apartment walls while banging his fist on it.

She pinched the wound in her hand to stem the flow of blood, but let it bleed rather than bandage it. The body was designed, for the most part, to clean itself. Once the blood stopped she rinsed the wound and applied some antibiotic and a bandage. It took her a minute or two to get back to the computer because she really didn't want to admit the truth of the situation.

[quote]
11:50 ℝoot: God dammit you're right. You're always right.
11:51 Riemann: I know. You wouldn't put up with me if I wasn't.
11:55 ℝoot: I think I'm ready, but... I'll need a bigger fish this time.
11:56 Riemann: At-a-girl.
[/quote]

With an alt tab, and couple lines of code, several news sites began streaming video in the apartment. The volume on her computer was low, as she didn't wish to disturb her irritable neighbor, and the stories were playing in the background as she got to work redesigning her digital glasses. She hadn't before paid much attention to super-freaks before she became one, but story after story featured on the news made her realize something. 

[quote]
12:17 ℝoot is attempting to share a file.
12:17 Riemann accepted the file.
12:17 Download complete.
12:18 Riemann: You have got to be kidding me.
12:19 ℝoot: I know it's no run-of-the-mill child sex-trafficking ring, but I think I'm up to the challenge.
12:20 Riemann: Are you sure that EEGARD didn't fry your brain? You're about to meddle in the affairs of supers.
12:20 ℝoot: Yes. I am.
12:21 Riemann: Awesome. How can I help?
[/quote]

The two went to work initiating a hack on ever news channel broadcast, on ever channel, and sent to every city. It was a blatant thing. But rather than hijack the feeds to play a video, which would be child's play, they did something a little more sophisticated: they hacked the subscripts. While news played without interruption the scrolling feed at the bottom of every screen read the same thing:

[quote]What do we do!?
You can sit tight and wait here.
[b][i][url=http://www.oldradioworld.com/shows/The_Shadow.php]The Shadow[/url][/i][/b] is going to pay a visit.[/quote]

[color=#00FF00]"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"[/color] ℝoot quoted at the screen while observing her handywork. [color=#00FF00]"The Shadow knows!"[/color]