New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

With the raised volume, Alex sat back on the sofa, excited to see what Katherine would do. He knew she hadn't been wearing that broach for nothing.

And by the tone she had over the phone, he could tell she was pissed.

***

"Oracle! You are making unreasonable demands! How could we even amass fifty trillion dollars in twenty-four hours?! EG isn't even worth that much!" Constantine argued.

But the person on the screen seemed hell-bent on taking everything she owned.

Of course, this was all a script. There was no hacker on their servers; therefore, there couldn't be a ransom request.

This was an elaborate ploy her assistant had devised to try to make the public see that they were fighting back.

With her back to the cameras, Constantine was grinning from ear to ear. She could hear the reporters behind her chanting at the screen to be reasonable.

'They are all on our side already. This is great. I should give her a raise. '

But her attention was brought back to reality quickly as the screen buzzed out of focus.

It returned to a black screen, where only writing was showing up.

*You have dirtied the name of the Oracle. You must now pay the price of your insolence.*

The screen shut down.

But this wasn't over.

The news drones started glitching slightly before they rammed each other out of the sky, exploding mid-air and raining on the reporters. Panic took hold of the people present, and they ran, screaming in fear.

The smart cars around the venue suddenly locked themselves from inside, locking the reporters out, as pieces of metal and plastic fell on them.

Every screen present displayed a different message before shutting down or getting taken out by a rogue drone.

*Never mock the Oracle.*

*Never pass yourself for the Oracle.*

*The Oracle sees all.*

*The Oracle controls all*

*If they wanted your servers down, the Oracle would have burned them from inside.*

*The Oracle had nothing to do with your failure.*

*But you taunted fate, and the Oracle shall straighten it.*

Once all the screens in the area had been busted or fried out, the neuro-phones in everyone's ears were the next target. And every reporter heard the next message loud and clear.

*The Oracle urges you to ignore the fallacy of this liar's words. EG was never hacked by the Oracle, and shows no traces of hacking at all. Dig through her lies. Uncover the truth. Bring it to light. For the truth is what the Oracle seeks. Truth and justice.*

After that message, every electronic device in a mile-wide radius stopped functioning. This would cost millions in damages, and the bill would naturally fall on EG's lap, as they were responsible for this incident.

Constantine Levesque looked around her, seeing the damage caused by a single hacker, and her breath was cut short.

'This is insane. We just wanted to use a name that came up a lot in the hacking community… Why would they retaliate like this?'

"Liar!" a reporter shouted, holding her forehead, where a minor cut was bleeding onto her cheek.

"Liar!" another one screamed, a cut on his arm, most likely from a piece of shrapnel.

"You lied to us! You lied to everyone!" another one chanted.

"No… This is—" Constantine tried rebuking.

"Liar!" someone cut her.

In seconds, the crowd of reporters were back on their feet, pointing fingers and yelling, calling the woman a liar, a cheater, a fraud.

Constantine's personal security suddenly jumped up on the stage, grabbing her and taking her back inside the headquarters before locking the doors behind them.

The reporters banged on the reinforced glass, their muffled voices still audible through it, as they chanted almost in unison, "Liar! Liar! Fraud! Cheater!"

Constantine was in shock as her guards ushered her to an elevator and back to her office suite.

"Ma'am. Please stay here while we disperse the crowd. It isn't safe for you outside your office. Some employees might feel that the reporters are right, and you could be assaulted by them as well. We'll take care of it."

The woman nodded, her eyes still wide and empty.

'How could this happen? Why did it happen? Who the hell is this Oracle…'

As the guards left, a single person was allowed past their cordon, and it was Constantine's personal assistant.

"Ma'am! Are you alright?! I'm so sorry this happened. This is all my fault. I will accept any punishment you deem fitting of my failures!"

The woman bowed at ninety degrees, her face filled with shame. Novel Fire - novelfire.net

But Constantine was too far lost in her own mind even to hear the assistant's plight. She was lost in her nightmares.

This could mean the end of EG if the word spread too far that there was no hack—that she tried to pin the blame for her servers crashing on someone else.

Her credibility would tank, and her investors would pull out in droves. The company's stock would crash, and all her efforts would be in vain.

She couldn't take this lying down. She wouldn't.

She snapped out of her thoughts, finally noticing her assistant's presence, and cleared her throat.

"This isn't your fault. You couldn't have known this Oracle person was so good they could railroad our efforts so easily. Plus, there was no way to know they would find out so fast."

"No, Ma'am. This could have been avoided if I had done more research on them, or picked a less-known name. This is entirely on me. Please, punish me!"

Constantine sighed loudly.

"You want punishment, then go down in the server rooms and drive those idiots on maintenance forward until my servers are back online. Being with the sweats might make you uncomfortable enough to consider it a punishment."

"Yes, Ma'am!" the assistant said before rushing out of the office.

This was hardly a punishment in Constantine's eyes. But her assistant hated those nerds enough that she might consider it so.

On her end, she needed to get ahold of Gaius. He could fix this, she was sure.

So she kept sending messages to him through her special device. But they all remained unanswered.

'What the hell is he doing?'