When the adrenaline is high and the events unfold fast, you tend to make harsh decisions. Like follow a man through a broken window when he is actually hiding inside the chimney of the crematorium. Now he had to wait. At first he was holding himself up, until his arms and legs got tired and he was sure they wouldn't be looking there anytime soon. Night falls, and he slowly steps from outside his hiding place. The place wasn't empty, not by a long shot. He could hear people talking softly, sometimes laughing, and the sound of keys in a laptop's keyboard.
The air is freezing cold, there is a slight smell of marijuana in the air. He moves in silence but swiftly through the corridors. He should be running away, but that place had clues about who he was and why he lost his memory. And the Alchemist. He had to find out who the man was.
This place gets stranger by the second. The corridors have no doors and there are rooms where people work while smoking drugs, men in suits alongside a ciber punk tribe, server and network rooms, fibre optics and state of the art tech.
In another room, a man is alone working in a terminal. His hoodie and jacket remind him of the hobo. He calls out "hey buddy, we need your help here." A person drops his guard when there is a call for help, and when stepping walking, will focus on what's ahead, instead of the man who is crunched behind a door to overpower him. Crypto jumps up, grabbing his mouth and throat. They struggle, but the other man eventually succumbs to the lack of oxygen.
"Sorry buddy, but at least you're still breathing."
Sitting at the terminal he checks his android and tries to figure out where he is.
38.7345606,-9.1341829
"At least I'm still in Lisbon. What system is this? It's not debian, but feels familiar. Slackware? This shit was custom made. And the network ..."
$ hostname -I 100::ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
"You have to be kidding me… what is a place like this doing in a reserved IP range? Fuck it, I can't stay long. I need a backdoor."
Oddly enough the amnesia is gone and Crypto navigates the system like it's second nature. Still scared, his heart feels like it's about to break the ribcage and he can hear each and every beat faster and faster. Giving root access to a new user would be too much, luckily the admin did not bother to disable some default users.
— Perfect, it's all fun and games now! Time to get out.
Crypto finds his way out of the building and texts meeting coordinates to his friend. Tired, exhausted, and afraid, he has nothing else he can do. The sun is breaking the horizon as he reaches the coordinates, just in time to see his friend arrive by car. No questions, the door opens and he gets in. "I'm so sorry I got you into this. And I'm afraid it can only get worse. I need a laptop."
