FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

This job was different than your usual. You and most other hackers got your tasks from a deepweb message board, where punks like you showed off the stuff they'd hijacked, plotted group work, and competed to see what the most prestigious domain you could plaster your name onto. Your personal best was changing the mayor of New San Francisco's name on the official page to "Cocke Hungry." It didn't last long, but the screenshots were forever.

This job was different. It came to you. An unmarked, encrypted message praising you for your previous work and offering 36,000 credits for an unusually difficult job. That by itself wasn't too crazy - sometimes you'd get some corporate dumbass who thinks he can throw money at hackers like you to sabotage a competitor. Those guys usually ended up with their servers wiped before their target's. Karma's a bitch!

This time, though, 18,000 was in advance. No questions asked. The message made it clear that you, and you alone had been contacted for this job, and they had the utmost confidence in your ability.

Suspicious as fuck.

The first thing you did was try to trace the message - big surprise, that didn't go anywhere. Dead ended at a private server where it seemed to have originated. Not much information there.

You checked the credits - they were good, they were real. Just in case, you stuck them into a dummy account with nothing else on it. You decided you wouldn't touch them, if you could avoid it, until you verified where this came from.

---

Fuck it. You couldn't find anything about this, barring straight up asking your hacker group if they had received anything like it, which you really didn't want to do. If they really had contacted you and you alone, you didn't want to throw away what might be a very fruitful potential employer.

You had to eat, after all.

After another few hours of research and frustration, you gave up and grabbed your interface visor and clicked it into place over your eyes. You made sure all of your tools were booted and ready, and then found yourself indecisive again.

You were just gonna give the target a peek. It was a remote address, probably a backend server with no actual interface. It would be tricky to get into, but nothing you hadn't done before. All you were going to do was peek in and see what was going on. You had all your trace protections in place, there was no harm of peeking in. Even if it was loaded with viruses designed to catch you, they wouldn't have nearly enough to track you down.

You connected. It was a database of some kind. Loaded with programs, research, all kinds of stuff. You disconnected and checked your task again. All it wanted was a copy of some program - "NV_119_158_201.z".

You connected again, and searched around. There it was, sitting right in the open. You bit your lip, looking up and down to scroll through the database again to look for any of the telltale signs of this being a trick. Didn't look like one. Didn't pay like one, either.

You took a deep breath and clicked to download it.

Your visor flickered. It was a virus. Shit.

You disconnected and went to shut down your hardware, only for your vision to be overwhelmed in a spiral of colors. Your muscles went limp and you slumped into your cozy hacking chair, your mouth hanging open as you lost control of your limbs. The virus was fucking with your implants or something. You couldn't do anything but stare into the center of the swirling colors. Your muscles weren't reacting.

Your visor was keeping you heavy and limp. You were so fucking relaxed you were drooling on yourself, and all you could do was keep staring. You had safeties in place - they wouldn't find you, they couldn't touch you. You just had to figure a way out of this.

You could get out of this. You just had to think. You just had to think.

Fuck, why was it so hard? You felt like you were chasing down your thoughts but never catching them. The feeling of forgetting something you knew you knew, and knowing you're forgetting it, but being unable to close that last tiny gap. It was infuriating.

Being completely limp and helpless was equally infuriating. If you could just reach up and pull the visor off your face you'd be fine, but instead you're like a puppet with cut strings.

As if on command, your body went rigid, and you stood up. Your anger was suddenly replaced with intense fear. You were standing at attention, staring straight ahead, eyes on the colors. They pulsed brighter, more intensely, and your fear was amplified.

You couldn't even figure out what was happpening anymore. You felt like you had been disconnected, pulled out of your body. Your only world was the colors in front of you, the only control you had was to focus on them or not focus on them.

You had no idea you'd been staring into the colors when the door opened behind you. You wanted to turn and see who it was, who was invading your room, but you couldn't turn, and the thought disappeared quickly. You kept staring straight ahead, into the colors. Into the only thing left in you.

The person behind you ran his finger down your spine. You didn't even flinch. You didn't even shiver. You stared straight ahead.

"Salute." He said.

Your body snapped into position, muscles tight and tensed, staring straight ahead, empty. Empty. Empty.

"Knees." He said.

The word echoed in your empty head. You never realized you were on your knees. It happened so fast, so automaticaly, it never reached your conscious mind. What was left of it, anyway.

You felt yourself tipping forward. A tongue hit your lips, then your tongue, then your whole mouth. Rubber. Boots. Authority.

"Thank you, Sir." You felt yourself say. You had no idea what you were replying to. Maybe you'd already forgotten. Maybe you never knew to begin with.

You were marching. You couldn't make out anything but the colors, but you never bumped into anything. You weren't the one steering. You were just a passenger.

The visor was in control.