Poser BBS was a cyberbar modeled after Shadowland for those deckers living on the edge. Those who were looking for some good data blocks to pillage or merely brag about past exploits. The board was thus a place for those who broke the law. Except Poser BBS wasn't run by a group of anarchists hackers like at Shadowland. Instead it was run by a major megacorporation as part of a high powered sting operation. It had the best designed sculptured reality around, but the ICE within it was hidden to all but the most skillful deckers.
          Posers, wanna bees, and minor corp decker turncoats all tended to congregate there and expound on their most recent successes. Generally low level thievery of data packets, selling of information, or pyramid scams being run from corp computers. Even worse the poor fools frequently discussed what they planned to do on their next run. That was the way of the shadowrunner--to brag of past exploits and get a rep--at least that's what they thought.
          Unbeknownst to them however, their conversations were recorded, their locations traced, and after sufficient evidence had been compiled, the corp running the BBS either wacked the decker responsible or would arrange to purchase the data collected from rival firms. The whole point of the board was to catch the big fish and occasionally blackmail the little fish into owing the corp favors.
          In short, it was no place for a shadowrunner to want to hang out. Having a corp as your buyer and not even knowing it got one body bagged. Many of the up and coming deckers got nailed there before they had enough street wisdom to match their skills. Only the top few knew it to be a blatant fraud, but they tended not to spread the word. No need for competitors, soy ka? In addition, the place's location tended to change on occasion, but it was always the same old scam.
          Anyhow, that was why the Drider had routed the prey--the Bangkok snoop looking into Scorpion Corp's on-line interests--into the web of the Poser BBS. He figured if the chummer went into the BBS and got nailed, then he deserved it, and if he didn't then he was a decker to be watched.
          That had been the plan anyway. Unfortunately the decker hadn't entered the BBS since Drider had set up his trap, and that had left a bitter taste in the monster's mouth. He had set up a mirroring program that would give him an image of whatever decker entered the BBS through his old line. If someone accessed that fake account, then saw that it was a window to a secret BBS, he was supposed to follow it and enter, and an image of his on-line icon would have been reflected to the Scorpion Corps computer mainframe.
          But the fragger never entered the BBS. As far as Drider could determine, the decker had spotted the camouflaged ICE and jacked out before anything could happen. All Drider got in his web was a feather.
          "A fragging feather!!" the beast screams as he hurtles through cyber space.
-----

          The great beast stops at the entrance to Poser BBS It appears to be a large big top circus. Growing poka dots and swirling lines combine and diverge on the material of the tent, and a laser light show overhead contributes to on of the best visu-sensory experiences in the matrix. The beast stares at the show and snarls. It knew if it closed the distance any further, the ICE lining the big top would automatically activate.
          The Drider then triggers the transformation, and this time the transition is smooth and quick. In a nanosec the dark elf is standing in the beast's place, his eyes on the great tent. Checking over his gear and pulling his cloak tight over his head he moves towards the node. Instantly he is carried in as part of a crowd to the ticket booth outside of the circus.
          He sees a man in a top hat and coat tails standing next to the booth waving him in. He triggers a credit to be sent to the booth and in a moment a neon sign over the door glows a green, "PASS" The ring leader looks him over and waves him in. "Enjoy the freak show!" is all he says. The dark elf then enters. He smiles, realizing he has already been scanned by the ring leader ICE, but his minor virus remained undetected.
          He dodges a minor distraction of a clown trying to gain his attention and bypasses a show on the flying trapeze, but instead heads directly to the freak show. Again he has to buy a ticket, but completing that he enters.
          Instead of finding a collection of oddly sculpted freaks he walks into a bar. Inside he finds a odd group of matrix personalities. He sees a cyclops, a gypsy, a blue hedgehog, a levitating yogi, a large sabertooth tiger, and also a wraith--a dark shrouded ghostlike figure. Many other less impressively rendered icon litter the bar.
          The dark elf sits down at a table and pulls his cloak hood down even tighter over his face. He then begins playing one of the cybernetic games at the table. He chooses Arena, and activates one of his favorite new creatures he just developed, the Ungoliant spider. Its many jointed legs end in sharp sword edged points, and its many knees project a bony thorn-like spear continuing past the joint. Its abdomen is a chitinous armored carapace covered with bumps shaped like human skulls.
          The creature enters the field of battle, and quickly chops down many of the obstacles that are currently all over the playing field. Each combat is set up in a random environment, this one is set up in a sparsely covered forest. The first combat begins with a skeleton engaging him with a sword and shield. He easily deflects it with a sword like leg and instantly pounds the bony creature to fragments with the other seven. After a brief pause, the forest echoes the sound of many screams. Drider knows that the speed at which he dispatched the first creature instantly advances him to a higher level.
          Then the Ungoliant sees them. Four large ogres wearing heavy hides and wielding either clubs or stone axes. The Ungoliant immediately responds by spitting a sticky fluid on all the creatures. Because of the creatures great strength they are only slowed, but that is enough for the Ungoliant to dispatch them quickly. Crawling over them like a war machine the Ungoliant stabs and slashes with its eight brutal pikes. Again, it is over in but a moment, and Drider is quickly advanced to a much higher level.
          This time the scenery changes and the great spider finds itself in the treetops. As this is an advantage for an eight legged creature, it quickly dispatches the Harpies, giant tree snake, and lastly the great pair of griffins nesting there.
          By this time the inhabitants of the bar become interested in the gaming of the dark cloaked and armored figure sitting alone at a table.
          "You play much eh, bra?" Says a witch doctor to the dark elf. The dark elf nods and continues with the game. He has now advanced into a dreary swamp-like area representing the first layer of Hades. Demons now begin to be the main opponents of the great spider. The many legs of the spider serve it quite well as it moves around the swamp. It shreds the manes that try to bury it by executing a slashing spinning motion neatly decapitating the many swarming creatures in a single motion.
          He plays the game intently, still advancing through the levels. Having known the creator of the game at MIT helped the young computer programmer to develop proper defenses and attack routines to destroy the numerous enemies. More on-line personalities have gathered around the table at this point to see the action. A hyena observing cackles wildly. The gypsy begins making bets on the outcome of each level. A pixie settles on the dark elf's shoulder.
          Drider chooses to ignore the weight of the fairy by quickly turning down the sensory input from that source on his deck during a break between levels. He realizes pushing the small prankster away would likely lead to even greater highjinks. Tricks that he could not afford interfering with his plan at the moment.
------

          "Now what am I supposed to do while that fragger is baggin a nurse?" the young boy Puk asks. "Can't he see that those are low budget cyberlegs on the ol bag? I don't see what he likes in those nurses anyway. Yuk!" The young boy then continues down the street, his deck in a backpack slung over one shoulder. A small sticker of an ancient cartoon character, a lion cub, can be seen pasted on one side.
          "Hoi younger, where's ya momma?" a grungy man in a shaded doorway states as he passes by. The young boy merely ignores him and picks up his pace. But the filthy man begins to follow.
          'Drek' Puk thinks to himself, 'when I had my gang of orphans we could stick together and wouldn't be bothered by these muk." He continues down the damp trash strewn road and spying a dark alley ahead quickly makes the turn. He makes a fearful look over his shoulder as he darts into the ally and sees the filth quickly approaching.
          "Come here, boy!" he hears coming from the street. Puk crouches down next to the edge of the building and swiftly draws his small razor sharp dagger.
          The spindly looking man turns the corner and sees only a dead end. "AAAGGHH!!" he screams as he feels excruciating pain in his calve. He looks down to see the young boy has just severed the Achilles' tendon in his right leg. He tries to take a step and collapses as the foot no longer bears the support it should. The boy then laughs and hops a few feet to the side of the man.
          "Scream in pain all you want fragger. You'll only draw other dogs like yourself to your slaughter." Puk sneers. The man only continues to grab at his leg and tries to hold in his screams of agony. Puk then just walks away.
          "Well, I better get off the street. This ain't workin." Puk walks quickly as possible to a relatively posh hotel twelve blocks away. Stepping inside he immediately moves to a telecom center and shuts himself in the privacy of the small cubicle. Only the posh places offered such privacy. On the street they were left wide open, so that they could be observed by the police for any wrong doing.
          Puk quickly connects his small deck. Most deckers laughed at it when they saw it, but were always amazed when he presented them with valuable data afterward for sale. He then quickly jacks into cyberspace. He finds the homepage of the hotel immediately upon entering, and is greeted by the Mater-Dee.
          "How may I help you Monsieur? Local business or long distance?"
          "Local," the satyr replies. He is then presented with another screen and quickly, Puk navigates through the maze of data hallways until he is presented with a view of the check-in desk of the hotel.
          "Do you have a reservation, sir?"
          Puk had pulled this scam many times before. It was easy enough to hack into the hotels and make a reservation that was paid for, however the hotels in the area had eventually gotten wise to the trick, and recognized the dirty group of orphans when they wandered in to get their rooms.
          But now was different. It was well known on the street that rice boys had been taken away by the police in recent months. Part of a brutal crackdown on the city by the new government. In addition, finding Ravage had its advantages as well. He had given the boy some spare nuyen and the boy was now well dressed in clean clothes.
          "I believe you will see I have a reservation," Puk says as he begins to play his pipes. A light captivating melody is heard and the simulacrum of the desk attendant merely stares at the satyr playing his musical instrument.
          "I see you have a reservation," he says.
          "And the room is paid for, for a week." Puk adds.
          "And the room is paid for, for a week." the simulacrum replies.
          Puk then checks one of the names on the list in a first class room and says, "And Mr. Choi is picking up the tab."
          The desk attendant replies in like manner and then logs the information into the computer. Within moments after Puk jacks out, he is sitting in his room towards the top of the hotel, free of cost.
          "Time to do some follow-up on the Scorpion Corps," he says after he has taken a bath.

          After a nice long warm shower Puk wanders over to the vid and programs it to play 2 music video programs, 2 action adventure simvids and 1 instructional program on repairing roofs. He then installs his deck into the local vidphone and programs his trace/erase program to avoid the tracing of his call.
          "Well since that fraggers left me in the cold, I might as well go give my new city a ring. Might even be able to meet this Drider chum Ravage keeps talking about. Lets try out that poserBBS. Even though it's a wannabee hangout it might give me some info I can use."
          He quickly logs into his University account, still not wanting to show his normal persona in the Denver net and jets across the matrix to Denver. Not bothering to use his altered reality program, Puk soars through the myriad of colors and shapes that make up the Virtual Reality of Cyberspace. He suddenly finds himself standing before a circus tent with dozens of people milling around. He quickly walks up to the man in the top hat and ask for a ticket into the BBS. Using funds from a university account that he had earlier requisitioned, he immediately transfers the funds as payment.
          "That ought to get those Corps hounds to think I'm just a Grad student wasting my education away on the net." He thinks to himself as he passes through the tent and into the crowed circus. He quickly enters the Freak show after again paying the fee and looks around. He sees a crowd gathered around a game table and tries to stretch his neck to see if he can see what game they are playing. When his short stature can't penetrate the crowd he decides to go to the bar and order a drink.
          "Um... Sir might I have a drink of your best Milk please?" He asks the dingy looking barkeep.
          With a loud laugh the barkeep says, "Now don't this beat all. I have seen wannabees come and go, but you my friend have got to be the most pathetic thing I have seen." he looks over the icon of the spindly grad student. "Milk? Next you'll be saying it does the body good or some drek like this. Why don't you go home to mommy and get you some milk, boyo."
          Puk resists the urge to show the simulacrum what a real newbie he was and decides to sit back and watch the bar inhabitants to see if there were any real deckers on- line.

          Drider has drawn the attention of most of the personas in the bar. All are standing around his table that has been formed into a miniature version of one of the many layers of Hell. Fire can be seen vomiting forth from many geysers in the desolate landscape. Small winged demons can be seen flogging the mutated bodies of those tortured in this horrible place.
          But the Ungoliant continues. It climbs a mountain of tortured flesh and dispatches a many armed creature wielding swords. The battle was fierce and the cloaked one had to move quickly to deflect the furious assault of the angry unholy female. But in the end, the demon had only its six attacks to the eight of the spider and the construct spider had shredded the creature in two.
          During the break after slaying the foul devil, the dark elf put his plan into being. He draws forth his silk handkerchief and uses it to wipe the sweat from his shadowed face and hands. All cybernauts knew the sweat was not real but was done to increase the realism of the cyberspace experience. The greats in cyberspace always added detail to their tuxedos.
          Yet unbeknownst to those watching, a small red creature crawls out of the kerchief. It crawls down the dark elve's arm under the chain mail and down his leg and to the floor. It crawls to the closest icon, that of a sultry cartoon-like characterature of a women in a red dress. She does not seem to notice as it climbs up her leg.
          Under his hood the dark elf smiles a fanged smile as he sees the dress of the women hike up her leg slightly. In a moment several red crab-like creatures are seen crawling down the leg of the icon. The viral creatures having destroyed a portion of her persona multiplied and begin to spread to others in the bar.
          The dark elf puts up a great show this time, not wanting the inhabitants of the bar to notice as the tiniest portions of their personas are subverted to carrying the virus. He is battling one of the fiercest monsters yet, that of a Balrog. A great bat winged creature with the head of a lion and fierce body. It wields a great flamed sword in one hand and a brutal whip with many separate filaments that bite deeply into the Ungoliant's armor. The dark elf commands the spider to jump into the air above the Balrog and it sprays a net of cable like webbing down onto the Balrog. The demon responds by immediately letting a furious flame engulf its body. The webbing melts away by the time the great Ungoliant has landed.
          The great demon lets out a scream and the spider feels stunned for a moment. The batwinged creature steps in and swings its great sword, but the spider recovers quickly enough that only a glancing blow hits its heavily armored body. Yet the flame damage leaves a charred mark on the spider's back.
          The spider then rears back on its high legs and sprays webbing at the creature as if in response to the burn. The acidic strands burn into the demon's hide. But the demon sees its opportunity. The Balrog charges into the spider while its legs are up and stabs at the underbelly of Ungoliant.
          The thrust never makes it. The great front legs of the spider stab down in a viscous flurry of stabbing. The lifting of the legs was only a ruse to draw the attacker in. The great pikes of the spider stab deeply into the creature and instantly draw it in for a fatal bite of deadly poison. The Balrog fights for a moment, but its struggle only quickens the speed of the poison, and it is soon paralyzed. The Ungoliant feeds on it with pleasure.
          The crowd yells in excitement at the defeat of the creature. The gypsy pays off the winners, and hackles at the losers to recoup their losses by further betting.
          It was now the final level, before the machine restarted. There was a near infinite number of environments and creatures, but there was a specific number of creatures that could be defeated before the game, knowing it had losing money to the player, would restart and ask for more nuyen to continue. But the final creature was always a fragger. The machine would tap into every CPU at its disposal and process the fastest leanest foe it could generate.
          Lightning cracked through the sky over the desolate hell. The Ungoliant was standing atop a great mound of writhing bodies. The flesh squirmed when stood on, but the sharp points of the eight legged spider dug deeply into it and offered great stability.
          There was then a great quake in the terrain and the earth opened up in a great crevice. It was as if a molten mouth had hungered at the tortured mountain of flesh. The bodies began falling inward, and the Ungoliant had to jump to steady ground to keep from being swallowed as well. When the last body had been absorbed the pit shot a huge gout of flame into the sky. Out of the molten geyser, walked a solitary figure. It wielded a great sword and wore black armor with a crown.
          Drider smiled to himself as he knew it to be a complementary ode to his father, the death knight, who had been one of the pioneers who took back the matrix after the great crash of 2029. The creator of this game at MIT had known Drider's father, as did most anyone in the decking biz. But Drider's father had been imprisoned some ten years ago, and this was a form of protest in his name.
          But the dark elf had to concentrate now. Drider had never beaten this game. Few had due to its subverting more and more CPU time to process its defenses and attack routines against the players. The game was so complex it could only be played on large mainframes, due to the immense number of processes required to simulate the seemingly realistic actions of the environment and antagonist. The mass number of wriggling bodies, as well as the enemy were rendered in perfect detail inside an already perfectly detailed matrix bar. The detail was perfect. If one weren't tipped off by the presence of talking hyenas and the like, this sculpted system would be near indistinguishable from reality.
          The death knight closed the distance by riding a wave of animated bones. The skeletal army clambered forth from a number of pits covering the landscape. They formed a large circle around the death knight and Ungoliant. Grasping hands and climbing on top of each other the skeletons formed a large wall surrounding them.
          Drider smiles to himself before the inevitable combat, seeing that the tick virus has completed its multiplication to all within the bar. As long as at least one person stayed here that person could infect any new persona coming in. As the bar was in cyberspace, there was always a decker in some part of the world awake and interested in conversation.
          The death knight circled the Ungoliant. The spider sprays webbing at the knight, but the armor protects it from its acidic base, and his sword simply cuts through the cable like butter. He feints left and then quickly swings the sword to the right. Only leaping does the Ungoliant dodge the bite of the black sword. Once he lands the Knight advances quickly.
          Out of the corner of the dark elf's eye he sees a new persona enter the bar. It is a small white unicorn with a gold horn. Drider knows this to be a female elven decker named Ariel, in the real world. He had been friends with her for a number of years. For a moment he thinks she might now be working for the corp that runs the bar but then disregards it because she remains one of the best sources for new illegal charm programs. Drider himself had allowed her to sell some of his progs when he needed the extra nuyen. He always made it a point to later on check that the ones sold by the Unicorn were unaltered versions of his own. If she had worked for a corp she would have included a small routine rendering them ineffective against that corp's ICE. This had never occurred. He puts her entrance into the bar as slumming it, because she would know about this bar's true function.
          The dark elf's attention is then drawn back to the game by the gasps of the crowd. He looks down to see that the death knight has just chopped off two of the Ungoliant's legs below the joint in a quick blow. The spider responds by slashing upward with the horny projection on the knee. He gets in a good hit and sinks it deeply into the armor. The spider then turns quickly onto its damaged foe. The knight only narrowly escapes by pushing off against the spider's legs and landing a few virtual meters away. Ungoliant crouches down in a ready position and spits a gob at the knight. He lifts his sword to block, but the majority of it lands on the knight's helmet.
          Seizing his chance, the dark elf commands the Ungoliant to attack. The great beast leaps on the partially blinded foe and pins it on its back. The sharp legs begins tearing the armor free, exposing the skeletal figure underneath. The dark elf screams in delight. Drider wants to savor this moment. He crouches down on the knight and bites at it, drawing the marrow from the bones of the hellish undead creature. Its body completely pinned under the weight of the Arachnid.
          Gloating, Drider looks up to see the reaction of the crowd in his triumphant moment. But to his horror, he sees the Unicorn has spotted the tick and is kneeling to examine it, even as its horse legs carry it away from the advancing miniature creature. The Unicorn looks up then at the crowd, trying to see who has spread the virus. The dark elf smiles, knowing his fanged grin will explain all to his comrade in cyberspace. Many were the times that the dark elf rode the back of that unicorn. She would understand and not interfere.
          The crowd was screaming at the turn of events. The majority of the bets were against the spider winning versus all the resources of the CPUs in the cyberbar. But the events had shown them otherwise. The spider had the knight in an indefensible position and was drawing the undead life out of the creature. Yet even now the computer generated combatant struggled to wriggle free.
          The dark elf's smile went unreturned from the unicorn. Did the she work for the runners of the board after all? Was she going to delete the virus? Was his location being traced right now?
          The crowd screamed as the knight got free and reached for it's sword. He still lay on his back under the Ungoliant, but the spider was now in a very dangerous position.
          Then in a moment of mental clarity, Drider remembered that the dark elf was wearing the cloak of the wraith! It no longer functioned as invisibility, but he had worn it to hide his well known fanged face and body. The Unicorn could not see who he was and even now was beginning to whinny and stomp in front of the viral tick to halt its advance.
          The Ungoliant had the sword of the creature held in two legs, the two hind legs had the knight's lower body pinned again, and the last two intact limbs had now torn the helmet off the death knight. They only needed to press into the skull of the evil creature. He tried to push the sword into the soft underbelly of the Spider, but the Ungoliant's strength was greater.
          The computer background image then froze as the computer tried to gain more processing power. The skeletons froze in place, the armies were no longer crawling forth from the foul earth. All was frozen, but again the knight struggled to push the sword threw the grasp of the great monster on top of it. This time the dark elf had to struggle to hold it in place.
          The Unicorn was now on its hind legs flaring its nostrils and its ears were laying flat. It was prancing away from the creature but was unwilling to merely leave the bar. Drider was running out of time.
          Just then the bar went black. All inhabitants were now floating in space, still watching the game. The computer had co-oped the CPU time of the bar to process the algorithm Drider's Ungoliant had thrown at it by holding the death knight in place. The CPU could always process a picture that it had won, but that would now be the same as actually winning, and the post game analysis would show the new algorithm had never been solved, proving cheating. It was just a game, but the game didn't like to lose. So the game merely took control of the maximum CPU power available and derezed the bar.
          Drider then knew he had accomplished his strategy. With the dropping of the bar, all the video systems would go with it. Looking down at the combat he sees the knight has thrust the sword into the belly of the Ungoliant, and there would be no way to survive.
          The dark elf looks up at the Unicorn and sees her look his way. He pulls back his elven cloak and smiles at the sacred animal. He sees recognition in those eyes. Eyes modeled after their user. She smiles, understanding that the dark elf had some trick or angle that he was working and she was interfering. She thus bends down and touches her horn to the tick, fizzing the offending tick from existence, she then leaves the bar to allow his plan to continue. He smiles at her and redraws his cloak.
          The Ungoliant stabs downward with the piercing legs of a killing machine and crushes the skull of the death knight. The two bleed out locked, in a deadly embrace. The image of the bar then immediately springs back into being. All watchers scream at the outcome of the game. A standoff. The betters all yell in anger, none of them having betted on a tie.
          No one except the Unicorn, who always seemed to show up right during the best games in this bar. Drider smiles, now knowing why the Unicorn was there. She likes to watch game wizards.
          The dark elf notices another persona enter the bar, that of a scholar in graduation clothes and a mortar hat and tassel. Watching a tick crawl over and up the scholar's leg, Drider smiles, comfortable that the tick routine is functioning well. Oddly enough he notices the scholar scratch at the leg a moment later. He believes it to be simple coincidence and prepares to jack out when he is approached by the wraith.
          "Yoouu threwww thaaat maaaatchhh" it says in a long hiss.
          The cloaked elf looks up at the ghostlike apparition. "Frag off" he returns.
          "IIII shoooould haaaave knooooown, with a thieffffff like yooooou"
          "Chummer, I'm not a patient being, and you are trying my patience."
          "I notice thaaaat yooou wearrrrrrr the cloooooooooak of the wraaaaaaaaaith" it stops as if staring at the elf, "and II creeeeeated iiiiiit."
          Up to this point, the dark elf has been ignoring the wraith, but he then looks up to see who this rabble is. For the first time he looks closely at the icon, the black shroud, the absence of anything inside the hood but two floating red eyes. It was the identical icon of his father's friend, the original Wraith that was part of Echo Mirage. The group that took back the matrix from the virus causing the crash of 29. If this person really was the Wraith he would know the dark elf; the Wraith had helped his father train the boy. At this point the dark elf pulls back his shroud and shows the fanged grin at the wraith. Seeing no response he says,
          "I knew the original Wraith. He was a friend of mine. Fragger you're no Wraith. Now frag off!! If I ever meet you in the matrix you'll wish you could disappear." He then draws his shield to his side and buffets the wraith across the room. "Stealing someone's matrix personality is poor form fragger. Next time I see you, you will be dead." The dark elf then slams the Wraith again and leaves through the front door.
          "So much for not drawing attention to myself." he grins. "Better take the long way home through the matrix so I can't be traced." The dark elf then flies through cyberspace cutting through every back road computer he knew about to prevent any Trace.
------

          "Nothing new on the BBS board," Puk thinks as he leaves the bar. "Least I got to see a brawl. I think I'd have to put my money on the cloaked one. If he really knew the Wraith, he's got something up his sleeve." Puk then ponders while watching the Wraith in the bar talk drek about the cloaked figure that has just left.
          The Wraith was a bit of a matrix legend. One of the original members of Echo Mirage, he flatlined while attacking the Dragon, a turncoat member of the same group. Except he passed on without so much as a seizure in his external body. No charred remains, no brain damage, nothing. It was as if he just decided to leave his body. Everyone on the net knew this.
          People were always saying they saw him flying around the web. There was a definite Elvis type phenomenon at work here. But nowadays there were so many forgeries of his persona it was impossible to know if he were really out there.
          Most of the time a decker might want to copy the basic idea of someone else's icon, but there was always some major difference. The shroud might be violet. The new design might cloak a skeletal figure instead of just an empty piece of cloth with two disembodied eyes. If what the shield bearer said was true, this guy was impersonating the true Wraith just to get noticed. That was a bad idea. Deckers made their money from their name, and took great risks to protect it. This guy was asking for trouble, except he knew the real Wraith wouldn't likely show up to call him on it.
          Puk scratched at his leg, unconsciously aware of an itch caused by the virus he was carrying.
------

          A day later the monster once again sits in the center of his web and waits. He continues work on a new attack program, the most ambitious yet. It would be the true Ungoliant, and would wreak havoc on the computers Drider commanded it to attack. But at this stage it is only a large cocoon in the center of the web.
          The drider's legs turn it over and over almost absent mindedly. Adding bits of programming here and there as necessary. The beast draws in a great breath of air and then exhales a great gout of flame into the hidden chamber, breathing life into the monstrous construct. There is movement within and the beast throws its head back in a gleeful roar. It will only be a matter of time now while the final pieces come into place. Under the silken sheets a demonic glow can be seen.
          Drider loved times like this. The complete wonder of creation. It was art, it was craft, it was the creation of life. His creation of masterpieces around this realm made him the puppet master, or a god. He smiled a fanged grin in triumph.
          But then the monster remembers a bad memory. An act of creation gone wrong. In this line of work you were also a Dr.Frankenstein; sometimes going where man was not meant to tread. Yes, in this virtual world the act of creation sometimes led to death and destruction as well...

[5 Years ago]
          The takeover was quite recent, the government still new enough to be a bit unstable. Scorpion Corp was the glue that held the fabric of Bangkok together. Elros was monitoring the matrix almost casually, resting after the weeks of campaigning and battling that they had all just been through.
          Scorpion Corps support of the rebels had been the deciding factor for control of new government. Shelob said that if history was any guide, these rebels would soon be as bad as the old government, possibly even worse. But then a job is a job, and mercs can't care much who pays the bills.
          Suddenly Drider appeared.
          "You owe me one Elros. The yaks are up to something again. You need to enter their keep and come back with everything. BTW, they supposedly have a small dragon guarding the main treasury."
          "Frag you too man! Wastin neurons on BTLs or what? You do it. I'm working on something new in my deck, and I haven't tested it enough yet."
          Drider just smirked and stared at him in challenge.
          "All acts of creation need a birth sometime." Drider said.
          "But it's not ready yet I'm tellin you! I'm trying to increase the power of the simsense card by routing more autonomic functions through it. Several adjustments to my datajack allows for more externalization of the parasympathetic system. Couple that to some changes in the simsense routines and my body gets adrenal surges during combat. It's a rush chummer! I call it the brainworm."
          Drider rolls his eyes at his young protégée. He had tried the same fine-tuning with his deck to no avail, and didn't personally believe further changes would work. He thus shakes his head at the other decker and says, "Well then chummer, let's see it!" Drider then begins to connect a cable to the hitcher jack on Elros' deck, allowing him to watch all that would occur in cyberspace.
          Seeing this as a competitive challenge between two deckers, Elros decides against his better judgment to go for it. Drider had suped his deck and Elros' as well, but then he had never taken the risk of fiddling with his datajack and added new circuitry, and that was what Elros felt it would take.
          "All right, I'm gone!" With that Elros jacked into his warrior tuxedo. He flexed his great Nordic arms and felt the weight of his great sword slung over his shoulder. He had kept the same basic shape over the years, but the strength of the attack and defense potential had increased dramatically. Appearing as a massively built man in plate mail and a black animal fur cape he sat down on his mighty throne and felt the fabric of the matrix itself. From here he sent a young warrior out of his realm to gather information on the Yak enemy. Almost instantly the warrior returned and a gave his report. The access node remained in the same location. Soon after, the warrior King was off, gliding through the matrix, following a trail through the vast world of interwoven information.
          The Yak database appeared as a large oriental keep. There were a couple of samurai at the gate guarding the entrance. Elros then touched his hand to a dark gem in a silver and gold circlet on his forehead. In response, the lighting around the keep dimmed as if nearing sundown. Using the cover of shadows the warrior king crept in towards the castle. Slowly he advanced upon the keep, his form barely visible to an observing eye.
          Moving ever so slowly and patiently the shadows in this sculptured reality provided great cover to the man. He reached the keep wall and instead of the obvious decision to enter through the front, decided to climb the wall itself. His massive hands found handholds easily and he climbed effortlessly. On the roof was the expected back door to the yak computer. A small exit node spewing low security email messages to other nodes throughout the matrix. Drawing his large bastard sword he hacked the large padlock off in one clean swoop. Double checking that all was still clear, in he went.
          Climbing down the chimney shaft he ran into the first serious ice. Scything blades erupted from the wall, colliding with his armor. 'Drek,' escaped from his mouth as the wind was knocked from him. His strong armor was dented but remained intact. Elros then pulled his great sword, still in its sheath from his back. Using his great strength he held the sheath up against the recess from which the next scything blade would erupt. He then braced his back against the chimney wall and slowly lowered himself down to the next level. As he past by the ICE, the scythe was activated, as expected. The warrior grunted and held the bladed barrier in check. This caused the Yak CPU react by dedicating more power to the ICE. The bladed machine whined as it strained against the dark warrior's strength.
          Beads of sweat were pouring down the face of Elros' meat body back in the real world as his adrenal glands urged flight from this sensory danger. However, he found that with the changes he had made to his datajack, rerouting more autonomic brain functions though it, allowed for fine-tuning of his attack programs on the fly. He was actually actively repairing the damage to his sheath that the blades were inflicting rather than merely activating a program and watching the results.
          The blades were screaming now under the pressure. CPU backed ICE being held in place by the fine-tuning of Elros' slow program. Eventually the virtual machinery began losing strength. Simulated mechanisms could be heard bursting behind the chimney wall as the ICE froze in place. Unable to process the complex algorithms, the program then crashed in a splintering of cyberspace steel. This was followed by it quickly derezing into nothingness.
          "Wow, this new datajack works wiz, eh Drider?" he exclaimed to the hitcher he knows is watching intently in silence. "I wish I could stay here forever!" The great warrior then continued down the chute.
          Below him was a deceptively tranquil lake filled with enormous koi fish swimming peacefully in its waters. Their scintillating colors reflected light throughout the area and their mouths searching endlessly for food in the form of attacking deckers. Elros could feel his heart pounding at the thought of impending combat, but reason prevailed. Best to avoid them altogether. Searching the walls he found a fracture in the design and pushed himself through the crack and into a new area. He was now into the central computer.
          The halls here were sleek and lined with plush carpeting. Children scurried about, delivering information and never deviating from their assigned path. There were random samurai patrolling the hallways. But he remained well hidden at all times. At one point he had to cut down a samurai, but fearing an extended combat, moved in slowly behind, and then deftly slit the man's throat, immediately derezing the sentinel program.
          Hurrying down a long hallway, eventually Elros came to the great hall. 'Drek! Drider hadn't been joking, the yaks had a dragon...that would make it tougher.' he exclaimed. However, the beast appeared to be slumbering. But Elros was sure that it would awaken immediately upon his entry.
          Sure enough, as soon as he stepped into the room the dragon cocked one eye at him. Elros screamed,
          "I AM THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN, FOUL WORM!" He then pointed his fingers at the beast and viral based programs shot out of his fingertips, spraying along the great beast's sides and marking it with hundreds of deadly holes. Bleeding from numerous cuts and holes in his scales, the dragon reared back and let out a blast of fire in retaliation. "FOOM!" the flame blasted at him. Elros simultaneously signaled and a shield appeared from nowhere to interpose itself and absorb most of the hellfire. The warrior was still knocked from his feet in the backlash of colliding programming. The shield program began disintegrating under the severity of the attack. Elros saved it's basics for study and evaluation and let it de-res. He was thankful Drider had lent him a copy of the program.
          Then practically out of nowhere the dragon's tail came, knocking the warrior down again. He lifted his hand and made a crushing motion and a garrote appeared around the dragon's throat, tightening immediately. The dragon reared, trying the breath attack again, but the garrote held it in. Struggling, the dragon repeatedly tried to alternately breath and tail attack. Elros rushed into the fray with his sword. Striking and leaving gaping holes behind, Elros appeared to have the upper hand.
          As the dragon began to flicker and derez, suddenly the garrote broke, releasing the angry beast. It let out another blast of fire. The warrior was singed, his armor hanging in ruins and suddenly Elros was in trouble. He thus decided to try a new experimental program that he had been working on. He called it blink, and hadn't tested it fully, but there was no better time for it then the present.
          Suddenly he was blinking from place to place, randomly jumping to a different location a few feet at a time. Each blink allowed him another swing at the worm which was unable to compensate for the quick change in location. At one point it felt as if his legs had teleported into the ground under his feet making him immobile. But in the next nanosec he blinked to another location, free to continue the battle. His sword began weaving a deadly rain of destruction as it danced about the dragon seemingly of it's own volition. He was in control of this combat! It was only a matter of time. His body felt on fire, the strength flowing through his veins induced by the alterations he had made to his datajack. Adrenaline surges only accentuated this combat. He lets out a loud laugh that Drider would surely hear. But then the unthinkable happened...
          One moment he was swinging his sword in triumph, and the next only blackness. His program blinked him right out of the combat. It felt as if he were passing through the wall of the yak computer and into the fabric of the matrix itself! He felt himself drawn into a tight space. His thoughts began fading. In the end, only darkness...

          "Holy drek!" Drider says as his view of the combat goes black. His hitcher jack no longer receiving the sensory information from his friend. "What's going on? Did you get hit by some killer ICE?" Still no response or sound. Drider jacks out and yells.
          As always, a med team was standing by the deckers while they made their runs. Hearing Drider's shouts of warning they immediately disconnected the limp body from his deck to prevent further feedback inducing seizures common for black ICE. If he hadn't been ICEd, the worse this should do is give the decker a bad headache from bailing out.
          "Drider, his pulse is extremely erratic, he musta got slagged!" the tech shouts. They then immediately begin trying to resuscitate the limp body. They apply an external pacemaker and insert an O2 demand valve tube down his throat for respiration.
          "No, he was winning, that couldn't have happened!" Drider then gets on the com. "Get a mage down here! Quick, you imbeciles!"
          In a moment, Shelob appears in a monitor, "What's up?"
          "I don't know, I was enjoying the show when Elros just vanished. Get Sidewinder and get down here fast."
          Drider then checks over the components of Elros' deck. To his amazement, he finds none of the normal damage associated with being flatlined by Black ICE. He also notices the jury-rigged component connected to the simsense hardware that Elros had described. Again, nothing too unusual. However, he removes the outer plate of Elros' datajack and sees a heavily altered set of components. In addition, a few circuits appear to have been burned out.
          "Report." Sidewinder had arrived.
          "We can't seem to stabilize the body, and we have no brain wave activity controlling the bodily functions. He's been slagged Captain, but I'm not sure how. It's as if he's not in it any more." the medic says.
          "Then where the drek is he? Would someone please fill me in. Don't let the body die or you'll be paving his road all the way to hell."
          Suddenly Drider remembers that Elros had rerouted some parasympathetic functions of the brain through his datajack, functions such as heart rate and respiration to name a few. Something Drider would never dream of altering.
          "Frag man, jack him back in!" Drider screams at the tech. The tech looks up at him incredulously. "DO IT! THAT'S AN ORDER!" he barks. The tech shakes his head but reconnects the cable to the deck. Within moments, the heart rate begins to return to normal and the brain waves resume spontaneously.
          "We can't jack him out Sidewinder. He's locked himself in. He wired his parasympathetic system into his deck for a better ride. But then he encountered an I/O error conflict with his new program. I don't know what happened, but he's still jacked in. And I don't know how to get him out..."
          Sidewinder shook his head at the changes the comatose decker had made, but knew the risks the entire team took when operating on the edge. Without walking the edge, his group would've been iced long ago. Keeping up with tech was a Scorp Corp survival rule. He couldn't blame these guys, he had taken the same types of risks with his magic in the past, nearly killing apprentices during a difficult ritual.
          "We take care of our own," was finally all that he said. They got a suspended animation unit, and put the body in still connected to his deck with a node into the SSI mainframe, letting the machine take care of the rest.