Malfunctioning Utopia

Chapter 39: The Hacker

Sun Jack stared at the deranged pregnant woman, her frenzied swings with her modified scythe-arms dangerously unpredictable.

He tried reasoning with her, but his words only seemed to aggravate her further. Instead of calming down, she locked her gaze on him.

"You... your body looks good. Maybe I was a man in the past. Yes! No, wait! This body IS mine! I was a man!"

"Why are you using MY body? Give it back to me!" she snarled, her face twisting in fury as she lunged at Sun Jack.

Reacting instantly, Sun Jack jabbed a combat stimulant into his neck and rolled to the side.

Reaching for his belt, he pulled out a grenade, yanked the pin, and hurled it at her.

With a deafening explosion, Sun Jack was thrown back, hitting the ground hard. When he got up, the woman emerged from the smoke, her clothes shredded, exposing her silver cybernetic skin.

Combined with her four scythe-like limbs, she looked less like a person and more like a monster.

As her mouth opened impossibly wide and she charged at him with a guttural roar, a loud screeching of tires rang out.

An SUV barreled toward them, slamming into her at full speed and sending her flying.

The vehicle’s door swung open, and Song 6 stepped out, cigarette dangling from his mouth, a pair of sunglasses he’d apparently found perched on his nose. He struck a deliberately cool pose, only for Tapai to shove him forward roughly.

"Quit posing. Move it."

With Tapai, Father, and Four Ai now on the scene, Sun Jack finally breathed a sigh of relief. "What took you so long? I sent my location ages ago."

"Yeah, well, your system got hacked. How were we supposed to track you?" Four Ai replied, holding a sniper rifle and eyeing the woman as she struggled to rise.

"Careful," Sun Jack warned. "Her hacking skills are top-notch. Anything electronic near her is vulnerable."

"Not worried. My system’s firewall cost a fortune." Four Ai tapped the side of her cybernetic eye, which flipped inward to reveal a triangular port.

From her rifle, she pulled a thick cable and plugged it directly into her eye socket. "A cyber psychotic with enough brainpower to hack systems? Fascinating."

She fired a shot at the woman, causing her to stagger. The silver skin split open, leaving a visible wound.

Father approached the woman silently, holding his shotgun steady.

"Don’t worry, everyone. Anything in cyberspace is my domain!" King Kong’s voice echoed in their neural channels.

Sun Jack turned to Song 6, who was leaning lazily against the SUV, still smoking. "Aren’t you going to do something?"

Song 6 glanced at him, exhaling a puff of smoke. "Go team. Go team. Go team," he deadpanned, half-heartedly waving his cigarette in mock encouragement. 𝔯𝒶ℕǑᛒĚŝ

"Useless coward," Sun Jack muttered, charging forward with Tapai.

Under the combined firepower, even the woman’s resilient defenses couldn’t hold up. Chunks of her silver skin peeled off, exposing dense wiring and electronic components underneath.

Just as Sun Jack thought it was over, static-like interference flooded his vision. Sharp bursts of noise screeched in his ears, and his cybernetic eye glitched erratically. The discomfort was nearly unbearable.

It wasn’t just him; everyone’s systems crashed simultaneously. Even Four Ai, with her "expensive firewall," was affected, though she managed better than the others.

"King Kong! Do something!" Sun Jack shouted.

"Almost there! Loading anti-hack countermeasures! Buddha bless, no bugs, no crashes!" King Kong frantically chanted.

While everyone was temporarily incapacitated, Tapai, unaffected due to his ancient robotic design, walked up to the cyber psychotic.

"Think you’re clever, huh? Viruses, hacks, trojans?" he said mockingly before delivering a thunderous punch to her face.

Her advanced hacking was utterly ineffective against the millennium-old protocols of his archaic system. The woman collapsed under the relentless physical assault, finally unable to move.

As everyone regained their systems, they surrounded the defeated woman, rain pouring over her motionless body.

"Haha! Nice! Another successful mission thanks to teamwork!" Song 6 crowed, puffing on his e-cigarette as he swaggered over.

"Yeah, because you did so much," Tapai scoffed.

Unbothered, Song 6 grinned. "I told you I’d be useless. You’re the one who insisted I come."

Ignoring him, Sun Jack turned to Four Ai. "What about AA? Is she okay?"

"She’s fine," Four Ai replied. "Her abdomen was opened, but no organs were damaged. I patched her up."

Relieved, Sun Jack exhaled deeply. He had recommended this job to AA, and if she’d died, he’d never have forgiven himself.

"Rough night, but the mission’s done. Buddha bless," Father said.

Kneeling beside the unconscious woman, Sun Jack examined the fetus floating in the artificial womb. He prepared to extract the child when he noticed Song 6 inserting a chip into a port behind the woman’s ear.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sun Jack demanded.

"Preserving her neural data while her body’s still biologically active. We need evidence for the payout, bro," Song 6 replied casually, more upbeat than anyone else.

But before their relief could settle, King Kong’s stunned voice came through the team channel.

"Sun Jack, are you sure your prosthetics were hacked earlier?"

"Of course I’m sure. Why would I lie about that? Everyone’s systems were hacked, not just mine. Why?"

"Because," King Kong replied, "I found no hacking chips or equipment in this woman’s system."

"Are you certain? Could she have used some other method? Maybe through a network?"

"Amitabha, that’s impossible. She doesn’t even have cooling installed, and your system isn’t bare-bones. With temporary ICE protections, a brute-force hack would’ve fried her brain into mush. Unless..."

"Unless what?" Sun Jack pressed.

"Unless the one who hacked your systems... wasn’t her."