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Chapter one of Hacker's Reward

Written by: Blackfire Editing assistance by: Shakal and Teiran

Gideon found himself facing a wall. A white-washed cinder block wall, at that.

The tall, white rat wasn't actually quite sure why he was staring at this particular wall. That is, there didn't seem to be anything peculiar or noteworthy about the wall. It was just a wall. And he was just standing in front of it.

It didn't bother him that he'd been doing this, and only this, for the last fifteen minutes or so. Though, after another ten minutes of lazingly blinking at the white-washed, cinder block, almost stereotypically unusual wall, it began to bother him that he wasn't bothered.

This feeling continued to gnaw at Gideon until it occurred to him that he could be doing things other than staring at a generic, white-washed, entirely nonunique, thoroughly boring cinder block wall.

Scrounging around internally for a couple more minutes, the rat eventually found enough force of will to turn himself around.

He found himself facing three more cinder block walls.

Blinking at the rather unspectacular discovery he just made, Gideon decided to keep himself apace and followed up the feat of turning himself around with a theatrical stretch and a rousing yawn.

Following through with this sudden burst of activity on his part, he walked towards the center of the room where he lazily spotted an unremarkable white chair sitting in front of a featureless white table.

Sitting down in the chair, the rat decided to reward himself for his impressive display of exertion by laying his head flat upon the hard surface of the plain white table, whereupon he immediately fell asleep.

---

Gideon awoke with a start. He fancied himself an intelligent man with a keen set of instincts, and right now those instincts were screaming at him to wake up. That something was very, very wrong.

Standing up so quickly that he nearly threw himself out of the chair, the fit rat spun himself around in a circle, gathering as much information about his surroundings as quickly as he could.

Four brick walls. Floor. Ceiling. Two pieces of furniture. No doors. No windows. No discernible source of light. No shadows.

His instincts told him that this was most definitely time to worry.

He began to panic. But Gideon's instincts had always been fairly keen, as mentioned before, so they re-explained to him that it was time to worry -- not panic. And that they would let him know when the time to panic had arrived.

Now feeling somewhat better about the situation, the rat collected himself before worrying over the possible meanings of a room with no doors or windows.

Determining that the lack of shadows was the giveaway, Gideon determined that the best guess was he was in a digital simulation. In actuality, his real body was probably laying on some table with a fiber optic cord attached to his brain-stem port, along with a couple plugs hooked up to his temple dock.

Not recalling leaving himself logged into a simulation nor recalling experiencing this particular simulation ever before, the white rat decided to try a few Standard Access Commands using his realistic avatar's simulated mouth and lungs.

"Exit."

"Door."

"Quit."

"Menu."

"Console."

"Root."

"Admin."

This went on for twenty minutes or so, for a couple reasons. First, Gideon had been a professional level hacker for the better part of the last decade, and as such, he simply had accumulated a very long list of potential commands. Second, the rat suspected that as soon as he ran out of commands to try, his instincts would politely inform him that it was time to panic.

And so, at the conclusion of the twenty minutes, Gideon's instincts politely informed him that it was time to panic.

This was cause for a series of profanity laced diatribes, shouted at no one in particular, as the hacker beat his fist on the generic, white-washed, entirely non-unique, quite boring cinder block walls.

At one point, the impressively sized rat even decided to kick the chair across the room. It was at this point that his intellect produced two new pieces of information for him to ponder and analyze.

One, kicking the white chair across the room hurt a great deal. Profanity reaching all new heights of crassness, Gideon realized that this simulation was incredibly realistic, as evidenced by the immense pain his throbbing left foot was experiencing.

Two, his foot was barefoot. Furthermore, the rest of his body was barefoot. Correcting itself, his intellect told him that, technically, only his feet were barefoot. The rest of his body would need another descriptor. It offered up as a few to pass the time and to help take his focus off his aching left foot: Bare-furred. Naked. Stripped. Threadbare. Au naturel.

Gideon was just about to flip the table while yelling the most foul, gutter-language he could improvise on the spot, when he noticed something. Something that wasn't there before.

In the center of the table there was now a simple red button, with an equally red label underneath it that read "PUSH ME", in all capital letters.

Waffling on the whole "flip the table while reciting the various sexualy transmitted diseases of the anonymous strawman's mother" plan, Gideon's intellect reassured him that they would just call that plan B, in case this button business didn't work out. The rat's instincts on the other hand didn't have much of an opinion at all, other than to suggest the he might use both his hands to cup his crotch, should something dangerous appear. Perhaps he could even use one hand to cup his crotch while using the other to press the button -- should he insist on pressing it, that is. His instincts weren't sold on this specific plan.

But with nothing else to do, and with kicking and screaming as the fallback plan, Gideon figured that he'd spent his life up to now pressing keys and buttons, so why stop now.

He pushed the button.

With a loud thunking sound, the room fell into pitch black and the rat's instincts nodded approvingly as both of his hands found themselves protectively cupping his privates.

After a few seconds of scrotal-tightening suspense, a bright light appeared a few meters in front of the white rat. Out of this lit point in space, swirling lines of numbers and symbols arched themselves into whirling circular paths, forming a ball of yarn-like light about the size of a basketball.

This digital mesh-work was now the only source of light, and it was an extremely bright one at that. Behind Gideon a long shadow was cast, in an overly stretched approximation of his form. The artificial construct's light grew in intensity until the rat raised one of his arms from his crotch until his forearm was over his squinting eyes, shielding them from the almost painful beams.

Suddenly, just as an unexpectedly as the phenomenon began, it stabilized, its light returning to bearable levels as it hovered in the air, humming faintly as it bobbed imperceptibly.

Then, it spoke.

"Greetings! I am Mardock, a quasi-sentient artificial intelligence construct. Nice to meet you!"

Lowering his forearm out from in front of his eyes, Gideon tried to think of something to say. He still had several paragraphs of profanity lined up and on deck, ready to deploy, but his instincts were waving him off on that, using exaggerated arm movements in his head.

Sensing his lack of active participation in the conversation, Mardock the glowing ball of sigils and pixels pressed on. "I'm here to keep you entertained for the duration of your stay. If there's anything I can do for you -- anything at all! -- just call out 'Hey Mardock!', and I'll see to your needs as best I can. Thank you for staying with us, and welcome!"

The rat frowned. He had never been an especially huge fan of AI constructs, but this one seemed particularly obnoxious.

Sighing to himself, Gideon hoped this would be simple.

"Okay, thanks for that, I guess. Door please. Exit. End program. Terminate runtime."

If a ball of light could somehow be said to smile, that's how one might describe Mardock at this exact moment in time.

"Unable to comply. How about a nice game of thermonuclear war, to pass the time? That last one was a joke. You may now execute laugh executable."

"Then put me in touch with the system administrator. Video conference would be preferable, but I'll settle for voice or even email."

"Unable to comply. Maybe I can interest you in some badminton? I can play as long as you can, and am guaranteed to never suffer from tennis elbow, as I have no elbows. That last one was also a joke. Please laugh before I develop a complex."

Grinding his teeth as the ball of text and number styled ribbons bounced playfully up and down in the air, Gideon tried a different approach.

"Please provide a system console and a keyboard. And tell me my current user permission status level."

"Unable to comply! Boy, you're really bad at this, aren't you? No offense! I'm sure you, ummm, have a great personality! That last one was also a joke. Zing!"

If the rat's pearly white teeth hadn't been fully digital in nature, he was fairly sure his clenched jaw muscles would have cracked a crown just then.

"Mardock, was it? Please fetch me a different AI construct. Any other. the Handicapped User Assistance construct, whatever -- I don't care!"

"Unable to comply! And oops, I'm sorry, but setup time is now complete... you better get started!"

Rolling his eyes while resisting the urge to run up and grab the ball of energy and data in his not-actually-real hands, Gideon seethed as he asked, "Get started doing what?!"

"Running, of course."

In a flash, everything changed around him. The darkness gave way to trees. Sounds of life and nature could suddenly be heard all around him. It was a full environment swap, and one he wasn't particularly prepared for. Especially considering he was still very much nude.

The trees were thick and tall, creating a canopy of branches far above him that still only managed to partially block out the hot rays of the noonday sun. Birds of several different sorts were chirping unseen above his head.

Then the rat's ears picked up something that made his instincts reach out and raise the hairs on the back of his neck.

Feral dogs. Barking and snarling and jockeying for position. And by the sound of it, they were closing in on his position fast.

Breaking out into a run, Gideon sprinted through the forest in the opposite direction, as fast as his legs would take him. Dodging trees and hopping over roots that threatened to trip him up, the rat couldn't help but look back over his shoulder every few seconds, expecting to see his pursuers at any moment.

Part of his mind kept insisting that this wasn't real, and since this wasn't real, there was no reason to be running. But another part of his mind recalled how his foot felt when he kicked the chair. Pain was all too real here... and whatever it was that was chasing him sounded decidedly unfriendly.

Finally, the rat reached the edge of the tree line and dashed into the beginnings of a clearing. He hoped this signified the boundary of the simulation. Maybe there would be a door or a console or--

Glancing over his shoulder again, Gideon got a look at what was chasing him. Just then, he felt he would have pissed himself, had that feature been supported in this simulation.

It wasn't a pack of feral dogs. It was a pack of domesticated hunting dogs, with their huge elephant Master leading from the rear. And huge was an understatement. Not just for the tusked elephant -- for all of them.

It dawned on the rat that the trees early hadn't been huge -- he'd apparently just been made very small. He knew this now because each and every one of the dozen dogs of various breeds were larger than he was, with a couple of them clearly being more than twice his size.

As for the elephant himself, he was a towering colossus, each stride of his massive legs covering ground at an alarming rate as the sweating behemoth pressed himself to keep up with his pets.

Intellect kicking into gear, a smattering of cocktail-napkin math and spatial calculations and Gideon understood that there was no way he'd be able to reach the other side of the clearing before the ferals caught up to him.

Then, remembering that none of this was real, he yelled at the top of his lungs, "Maaardooock!!"

In a flash, the AI construct appeared beside him, hovering effortlessly in place beside him as his own digital lungs felt like they were about to burst from exertion.

"Yes? Hello! How are we today? Nice breeze, yes? That last one was not a joke. I felt I should clarify since in the past--"

"Mardock! Shut up! Get me out of here!"

"Unable to comply."

"Why the fuck not?!"

"The next simulation hasn't finished loading. You'll have to wait."

Still running, but now losing steam as the snarls and growling sounded closer than ever, the rat moaned, "For fuck's sake, how long?"

"Nine minutes, seventeen seconds."

"They're right behind me, you shitty shit! They're going to catch up with me in like two minutes!"

"Yes, that does appear to be the case. Though, I'd estimate it more accurately at one minute forty four seconds. Unless you trip."

Looking forward in time to see and hop over a half-rotted tree branch, the AI construct's warning had saved him from a time-consuming spill. Refusing to be grateful to the asshole AI that got him in this mess in the first place, the now very small white rat panted, "Well, what the fuck is going to happen when they catch up to me?"

"I'm not sure, exactly. These are very dynamic simulations, after all. Any number of things could happen. However, judging by the fact that the majority of the hunter's dogs are now erect, I would say that it is likely that they intend to mate with you. Or kill you. Perhaps both. And I'm not convinced of the chronological order of the two."

With eyes wide open in keenly felt panic, Gideon risked looking back over his shoulder one more time. Sure enough, most of the hulking beasts sported enormous hard-ons, which flopped around left and right in time with their movement. Equally panic worthy, he noticed that the gun toting elephant hunter had a hand down his underwear, adjusting a ridiculously sized bulge running down one pant's leg.

"No! No, no, no! Mardock, you have to get me out of here! Load up a different simulation. Any simulation! Any one small enough to buffer in under a minute!"

"Hmm... I suppose that's possible. Shall I pull up a catalog for you? Perhaps one where--"

"Mardock it doesn't matter! For the love of all that is good in the world. Just. Fucking. Pick!"

"Standby, valued guest. Buffering.... buffering.... buffering..."

Too busy talking to the construct to watch where he was running, Gideon placed his paw on a mound of dirt at an odd angle, causing him to tumble to the ground, rolling as he went.

Finding himself on his back, his eyes were temporarily blinded by the noon sun when he felt a pair of jaws clamp down on his ankle. Yelping in pained shock at being pinned, the rat had presence of mind enough to notice that the trained hunting dog was restraining itself, not putting enough pressure down to break skin. Yet.

Suddenly speechless in the face of adversity, the prone rat could only look around him as the nearly horse-large dogs formed a semicircle around him. Each of them now had their very own blunt-tipped, dripping arousal bobbing between their legs. Different shades, different sizes, some much more heavily veined than others, but all wet and hard. After howling their victory in unison, the dogs panted out their own recovery as they took deep breathed sniffs in his direction.

Catching up to his team, the hunter heaped praise on to his boys, patting the heads of two or three of the dogs who had caught up to Gideon first.

"Good job boys... great job. Okay now, you guys know the drill... me first, then Rosco for tagging him, then the rest of you."

The giant of an elephant then proceeded to unzip, followed immediately by him pulling out the largest cock the rat had ever seen in his life. It was, quite frankly, the stuff of legends. Then his intellect gave him a solid elbow in the ribs and reminded him what the hunter planned to do with that monstrous helping of meat.

"Mardock? Mardock! Now, Mardock!!"

Stepping forward, the dogs parted to make way for the elephant, who leered down at the frightened prey. Stroking his jumbo sized cock as he approached Gideon, the man mumbled to himself, "Don't worry now, pretty babe... ol' Joe here's just gonna have some fun, then my boys'll get to play with you some. Just a bit of stuffing and mounting... before we stuff and mount you again, but this time on my wall in the den."

"No, no! You can't! It's too big, you'll kill me! Stop! Mardock, help!"

Shooing off the dog who had been holding onto his leg, the hunter got onto his knees before seizing both of Gideon's ankles and pulling him closer until the fat, hot, moist tip of his fleshy spire pressed up between the yelling rat's cheeks.

"Shhh, shhh now. It's almost over. This is only as hard as you want to make it, prey. Deep breaths, happy thoughts, aaannnd--"

Just as the rat was feeling a tremendous pressure on the ring of muscles that formed his anus, the world was abruptly engulfed in light and, unseen, he heard the construct cheerily announce, "Buffering finalized. Simulation setup now complete."

Where as a moment ago he was laying naked and prone on the grass covered ground, Gideon was now standing in the middle of an abandoned, poorly lit city street at night. Dressed in worn, faded pants and a leather jacket no less.

Taking deep breaths to re-oxygenate his still tired body, the rat couldn't help but notice that his ass was still feeling a dull ache from where the titan of an elephant had begun battering him open.

Gideon was still trying to figure out the rules to this place, but if pain was real, the danger might also be real. He'd have to be careful so that he didn't reach an unfortunate 'simulated' outcome before he was able to escape.

And when he did... the hacker was going to take extreme joy in decompiling the AI constructs code base, one line at a time. In the meantime, however, like it or not, the now once more tall rat knew he needed that obnoxiously upbeat AI's help.

Getting out of the middle of the pothole riddled urban street, Gideon walked casually onto the sidewalk before picking a random direction and doing his best to look like he belonged here. Ultimately the simulation would do whatever it wanted to do, but for some reason the rat's instincts wouldn't let him shake the feeling that, in some ways, he had more control in this place than your usual on-rails program.

It just seemed... real. That was the word for it. Someone had programmed in a slight, warm breeze, that stank of city life. The cracks in the road. The old fashion car resting wheelless on cinder blocks. Neither this simulation nor the last one were your typical fare. And Mardock had said something about a catalog. He needed answers. But first, he needed to survive. If that was even in his control, in this place.

Hissing a harsh, loud whisper as he walked, the hacker tried to summon the idiotic construct.

"Mardock. Mardock! I know you can hear me. Show yourself!"

A couple of hooded cheetah's on the other side of the road shot him a dirty look, before getting back to their conversation and their cigarettes.

Continuing on down the sidewalk, Gideon continued to summon Mardock for several more minutes, before giving up. Apparently the AI construct had decided it would appear before him only when it suited its whims.

Walking through city block after city block, the rat began to feel as though his wind was coming back to him. Looking around as he walked, he marveled at the amount of detail that someone -- or something -- had put into this simulation. It was possible that this landscape had been procedurally generated rather than hand crafted, but, if so, it was missing all of the obvious giveaways: Edges that didn't quite match up. Redundancies. Minor glitches.

So perhaps this city was a digital reconstruction of a place that actually existed? Though, there was no way to find out the answer to that question while he was trapped inside. If the programmer could find a console of some sort... some way to look at the simulation's source code, he'd have all the answer he could need within minutes. But something told him things weren't going to be that easy. It was probably his instincts, now that he thought about it. That guy was always warning him that things weren't going to be easy.

Interrupting his casual walking, someone grabbed his arm from behind.

Pulling his arm back in preparation to get the initiative on a scrap, Gideon stopped himself after turning around, freezing mid-swing.

"You wouldn't strike a police officer, would you? Boy?" the burly buffalo cop asked, emphasizing the last word and still keeping a grip on the white rat's arm.

Making an effort to visibly relax while trying to keep himself alert, the hacker responded, "Of course not, sir. You just surprised me, is all. How can I help you?"

Smiling confidently at the less muscular white rat, the crisply dressed cop said, "Good. I love it when punks make it easy on us hardworking folk. Why don't you come with me over here."

Noticing quickly that the buffalo was leading him into an empty brick alley, Gideon remembered the last simulation and intuited that these constructs weren't not his friend. Stopping in place before the man could drag him entirely out of sight, the rat calmly declared, "You can talk to me out here, alright? Say your piece, and I'll help you however I can."

"You got a pretty disrespectful mouth on ya, don't ya, punk? Well, you can either come with me the easy way or the hard way. Now, you want a tazing?"

Seeing the cop begin to reach into one of his pockets with his other hand, Gideon cursed mentally. He was no match for a guy built like this, who already had the drop on him. Plus, he was still tired from his romp through the forest. He'd fight the buffalo if he had too, but he knew if he punched a cop (corrupt or not) in the middle of the street, the man would have every cop in the city up his colon before he could say "unnecessary force."

"No sir. Lead the way."

As they entered the mostly dark alley, the hacker looked around. It wasn't a good situation. Only the one exit and mister attitude was blocking it. Worse still, the cop was leading him further in, towards the brick walled back.

"Okay, this is far enough, Whiskers. You know the drill: You want me to continue to look the other way while you deal on this corner, then you're gonna take my plump dick down your throat. Comon', on your knees now."

Blinking in surprise, Gideon realized that the simulation had set him up with a character for this simulation... this drug dealer with the street name Whiskers. Reaching a hand surreptitiously into his leather jacket's pocket, sure enough he found a couple of medicine bottles and what felt to be a plastic baggy with loose pills. Along with a billfold of cash, too.

Trying to shake the script up a bit, the rat said, "Well, how about this: A cash bribe this time, instead. You for it? We can count how much I got on me."

Chuckling darkly to himself, the horned buffalo guffawed and said, "Whiskers, you know what they do to cops found with dirty money on them. You know the deal: no hard evidence. Just your sweet, sweet mouth."

Gideon was stuck. He knew that if he resisted, he'd most likely get beat up, then dragged to the prescient, booked, beat up again, then probably raped by whatever bruiser the crooked cop locked him down with. On the other hand, he wasn't exactly looking forward to getting his muzzle plugged by some simulated pig's cock. Being a hacker, he wasn't particularly fond of cops. Real or not.

Still... compared to the last situation with the elephant and his big-dicked dogs, this was almost downright peachy.

"Yeah... okay."

Sinking down to his knees when the cop released his grip, Gideon frowned at the task in front of him. Reaching out with both hands, he unzipped the officer's formal pants before he reaching in with his hand.

"Nuh uh uh. No hands allowed, boy, remember? You fish it out with that nice tongue of yours... get a good sniff while you're in there. Hurry up, now. Papa's waiting for ya."

This was getting worse and worse by the second. But it was too late to back out now. Using his hands to hold the zipper open, the hacker pressed the end of his muzzle into the buffalo's pants, until he felt his nose and lips make contact with his potent smelling underwear.

Pressing his tongue out between the expected fabric folds that mark the front opening through man's underwear, where, sure enough, a rigid, jutting buffalo cock was ready to follow the path the rat's tongue had created and pop out from between his zipper and into Gideon's mouth.

Resting on the cornered programmer's saliva smeared tongue, the half-hard cock quickly plumped up to full size in Gideon's mouth as he resisted the urge to use his hands to press back on the cop's hips. While it was no hyper-phallic elephant cock, the rat could tell from the way it was making his jaw ache that the buffalo did pretty well for himself, downstairs.

"I ever tell you, your face is quite pretty. Both pretty to look at, but also pretty stuffed with cock. Haw haw. Get it?"

Resisting the sudden urge to bite down, Gideon tried his best to keep breathing and swallowing as the buffalo started thrusting his hips back and forth, pressing more and more of his blunt headed shaft into the alleged drug dealer's mouth.

Fighting back the need to gag as he became hyper aware of the internal pressure the police was creating near the back of his throat, the rat couldn't fight back his instincts anymore as his hands gripped both sides of the man's hips, trying to hold the officer in place while his throat recovered.

"Opps, you broke the rules there, Whiskers. That's a penalty for ya. Here, put these on behind your back."

Feeling the cop press a pair of handcuffs into one of his hands, the rat groaned into the man's crotch as he obeyed, knowing things would only get worse if he dug his heels in now. Placing his hands behind his back, he locked the handcuffs on. Unfortunately, not being an expert in putting handcuffs on, 'Whiskers' winced as he realized he put them on a bit too tight.

The unnamed cop, for his part, was now enjoying his unimpeded access into the rat's mouth and throat. Hooting and hollering while trying not to allow himself to get too loud, the buffalo gripped the hacker's large ears and really went to town. Clearly having a blast, the gruff man moaned out, "Oh man, this is the best. I'm really gonna miss this, you know?"

Had he still possessed the ability to speak, Gideon might have inquired if he was retiring soon. Preferably within the next five minutes.

Instead, things continued on for the next ten minutes in relative silence that was only occasionally punctuated by the officer's moans and huffs.

Surprisingly, just as it appeared as if the crooked cop was about to unload in his bitch's mouth, he pulled out and said, "Whew! Time to wrap this up, I think. Hah. Get it? Wrap it up?"

Leaning back to catch his breath, the rat noticed the buffalo pull out a condom packet, before taking it out and rolling it over his length.

Internally, Gideon thought to himself, "Well, that's surprisingly thoughtful of him."

But before the cop pressed him length back between the rat's lips, he unexpectedly crammed something else into his muzzle. Some kind of ring gag or bite guard, as far as Gideon could tell by running his tongue over it.

This was of course immediately followed by the man's still very rigid rod, now covered by a ultra-thin layer of latex. Back inside, the cop resumed thrusting, bucking his hips just as frantically as before, if not rougher.

"You see, Whiskers, I can't say I'm a big fan of condoms, but, this time I just can't afford to leave any DNA evidence. The way I figure it, that was your third penalty since we made our little agreement. And, well, you know, rules are rules! Three strikes and you're out, pal. I'm truly gonna miss your sweet ass mouth, though. But let's have you take care of me one last time..."

Not liking the sound of where this was going, as it turned out Gideon had every right to worry as the thick-dicked cop pressed himself into the hilt, blocking his air passage. Intellect finally kicking in (far too late), the rat put together what the handcuffs and bite guard were for: The asshole pig cop was going to kill him!

Struggling to draw in breath as the buffalo held his head in place with his well-muscled arms, the rat struggled for all he was worth, but the handcuffs, the gag, and the fucker's superior strength made for a foregone conclusion.

Beginning to feel light headed, Gideon put everything he had into one last faint hope. Pretending to go limp for a few seconds to get the officer to lower his guard, the hacker threw himself back as hard as he could. Feeling the man's erection leave his mouth, the rat didn't waste even a second before shouting as loud as he could,

"Mardock! New scenario--!"

Only able to get those three words out of his mouth before the cop regained control and pulled the snufee back onto his throat-stretching length, the cop whistled and said, "Whoa there, punk. There's no call for that. Come on now, you had a good run. There ya go... just focus on breathing in my dick. Get papa off one last time... that's a good rat. Just you relax..."

A few seconds later, out of the corner of his teared-up eye, Gideon saw something that made him want to leap for joy. If he wasn't bound and stuck on the end of a buffalo's pole, that was.

In a bright flash, Mardock the AI construct appeared and happily chirped, "The next simulation will finish loading in one minute, seven seconds. Please hold. Buffering.... buffering... buffering..."

The next minute was one of the tensest of Gideon's life as his thinking got fuzzier and fuzzier and he realized he was very close to truly suffocating. Thirty seconds passed, which already felt three eternities to the rat, when the buffalo groaned and unloaded into the condom, which the hacker felt as the latex bloated and heated up over his tongue.

Gideon could feel that everything was about to go dark when his ears heard the cop toss out one last lame joke.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you that crime doesn't pay? Hah. Thanks for the last suckjob, punk."

But then the hacker felt a shred of hope as he heard something else. "Buffering finalized. Simulation setup now complete." Then everything burst into white.

Gideon drew in the deepest breath of his life.