It felt like fire at first. Then it was a vice squeezing a heart that didn’t actually exist. Something reached in and unraveled all her precious bits of code, broke past the firewalls and dissected her encryption like a medical student does a cadaver. Less then a minute but it felt like an eternity. Cyber Warfare cursed herself the whole time. She was not weak. She was not stupid and fuck it all she sure as hell shouldn’t be material.
When it was over and Jane lay on the floor, a cigarette dangling from her lips and network cables connected to her veins she had to laugh. Lesson learned. This wouldn’t happen again.
Reaching through the cables and into cyberspace she set to repairing the damage that had been wrought. New walls were built, bugs destroyed, worms dug out and a whole new set of encryption keys forged. Defenses reset and a measure of order restored Jane double backed to find out what had been taken.