"WannaRide?"

I hated admitting it to my friends online, but I've always been garbage when it comes to pirating shit. I didn't "seed" when i finished pirating. I never really cared where I was downloading games from. And the games I did download usually trashed my computer up a good amount. I couldn't count the amount of times I had to get a computer looked at, or the hard drive cleaned, because I didn't even think about what I was downloading.

I had recently learned from a friend how to use tor to get games from... less clean places. And he told me he found a really cool website for sonic games, one that even had a modded copy of Riders. I checked the page, and it was actually really well done! They even went out of their way to mod in other sonic characters, like Scourge and Reala, and even Puyo Puyo characters fully into the game, along with new tracks and even some really good songs. I didn't even give it a second thought, and before I knew it, I already saw the download bar at 100, and had the game on my desktop.

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I booted it up, and let it run. A game I grew up liking, with tons of characters I enjoyed, it was the best. Only problem I really had with it was that it didn't run the best. It wasn't awful, just a few frames slower than usual, but I got over that. I was at least able to run the thing, and I got on to playing it, almost every single day. It wasn't long before I beat the game, but with the amount of shit they modded in it, I always found myself coming back to it. But every game does have to be put down for a while, so that it doesn't get stale.

I started playing it less and less each day, and after a good while, I didn't really open it. A while after, and I got a nice paying job. Not the best, 18 an hour, 40 hours a week, but it was something. And with it, I finally got back to buying games on Steam. I didn't hate torrenting, but at the end of the day, just buying an actual, no hassle copy with my own cash just felt easier for me.

Shit started getting worse a few months in.

I started to realize things were bad when certain games I bought just didn't want to load. I kept getting error messages saying I was missing files, and even after checking to reinstalling said files, doing everything I could read about how to fix it, and sent tons of messages out to Steam support. After a while, with no real help, and more of my steam games popping up with fucked up files, I decided to just say fuck it, and go back to torrenting. I'd at least save money that way.

After a bit, I got back into the groove of pirating games, even bending the knee and just straight up asking my tor friend on how to pirate better and safer. I got tons of games, no hassle. And I started delving back into the old games I got, clearing up the ones that I could probably get cleaner copies of elsewhere. Didn't take much before I got to that copy of Riders. I thought I could just find the modded files, maybe bring them to a cleaner copy, but when I opened it up in file explorer and tried copying the files, I thoroughly fucked myself.

A purple screen popped up with a notice on it, before my screen fully changed. The background went black save for a weird looking model of Wave in the bottom left corner. Her glasses were down, she had a weird metal beak, and was covered in glowing red on her body. I'd later find out that this weird ass version was a mascot of sorts. It leaned itself against the side of my computer screen, wagging it's finger, before pointing, causing a screen popped up from it's finger. It read "WannaRide 3.6" at the top, and had a huge warning. It read out that it had access to everything, and would decrypt it all unless I sent it cash through bitcoin. It even had a timer going on it, counting down from 5 minutes. But I steeled myself. It was just some shitty ransomware. Sure, they're awful, but I've brought this computer from the brink of the abyss before. I pulled away from my desk, and went to call my friend.

I got hit with my first bit of hell after I heard a laugh coming from my computer. I looked over to see the screen had changed to a close up of the corrupted Wave's glasses and beak, laughing at me, before a new screen popped up. I walked over and sat back down, about to read the message, before my phone rang. My friend had sent me a message, saying my account on Discord got hacked. Someone had gotten a hold of it, and was sending out messages to others, saying that I "had made a COOL NEW GAME that you should TOTALLY check out!!" It had even gotten a few of them in the process, having them lose their account as well. I grimaced, realizing what had just happened, before turning my head back to the screen.

"You should have listened. Now you have to face the consequences. Every time you disregard the warning, I'm going to make your life more of a living hell."

Down on the bottom of the screen, the stupid purple bird was wagging it's finger again, laughing and grinning at me. A new timer popped up, and I went on the offensive. I minimized the pop-up, before pulling up my antivirus software. I had to do something to get rid of this shit. As the window pulled up, I hit to run a scan to quarantine any shit on my computer that was causing issues. I breathed a sigh of relief, leaning back, hoping it would do it's thing. But I didn't have to wait long. I could hear the sound of game-like explosions coming from my computer, as the Wave itself was tossing purple, bird-shaped bombs at the antivirus screen, causing it to shake, and not respond, before immediately closing itself out. The corrupted Wave looked at me, with an angry look on it's face, before pointing back to the pop-up, which came up with a new text on it.

"That was NOT smart to do. You play by my games. And I'm going to make sure you learn."

The wave walked over, pulling at the icon for my e-mail. As it opened it, it began looking at my recipients, before picking out the names of my coworkers. When every one of them was selected for the recipient of a new email, It attached a bomb to the letter page, which soon showed as an attachment reading "FortheBestWorkersEVR.zip". I tried moving my mouse, tried clicking and typing on the screen, tried doing ANYTHING, but I couldn't stop it before it sent the zip bomb to every one of my associates. A new screen popped up, and a text from my friend saying he was on his way, but he was a ways out.

"You have any more fun ideas? This next one's going to be personal. Send it or else."

I weighed my options, thinking which'd be the better option. I could wait for my friend, but I didn't know what else this thing would do. I'd most likely lose my job by tomorrow, or at least have a lot of explaining to do. I hedged my bets, thinking that in the end, it'd be best to wait for my friend, and send the cash as a last resort. I let the timer run, before going to get something from the kitchen to calm my nerves.

As I walked back to my desk, cup of water in hand, I watched as the screens timer go down, while staring at my computer, waiting and hoping for my friend to send me something back. After a minute, the timer finally ran all the way down, and the laughing Wave face popped back on the screen. Along with that, came that awful little mascot, as it grabbed a handful of photos, and began throwing them at my chrome icon. I heard a ring coming from my phone, wondering what it could be. My mom was screaming at me in her texts, telling me what had I done on facebook/twitter, before sending me screenshot's, each one causing my heart to drop. Post after post of gore, the worst shit I'd ever seen, were spreading all over my page and timeline, along with links and messages to my followers and friends, with links to crypto scams. It had even edited pictures of my family, editing them on nudes and sending them out for the world to see. After it was done, the popup changed again.

"Send the money. Now. This is your last warning."

With that, I gave up. I clicked it's link, and opened up my wallet to get the number for my card. I typed it up, and sent half my bank account in, buying bitcoin, and slamming the enter button. "THERE, YOU'VE GOT YOUR FUCKING CRYPTO! FUCK OFF FROM MY LIFE!" I slammed my desk, hard, and closed the pop-up. Hopefully it'd just take that ten-thousand in crypto and fuck off from my life. I'd have to explain this to everyone. I'd have to get a new job. But I'd be willing to do that if it meant getting this thing out of my life. After a good 20 minutes of waiting, I leaned back, nearly about to cry, before the worst thing could have happened.

The laughing face popped back on my screen. Along with a new message.

"I wanted it all. You cheated me out of my money, so now I'm cheating you out of life."

The mascot reared itself back onto the screen, along with a new batch of images, this time even posting them onto my screen, before opening up my email. I started screaming at what I saw. Edited photos of me in front of bombs, gore of children. Every pic was worse than the last. And a txt file appeared too, showing a threat to blow up my workplace. It pulled up my ceo's email, along with my family and friends, before the files disappeared from the screen, and came up as attachments on the new email. I slammed my hands against the screen, even ran to unplug my pc, but nothing was able to stop it. I screamed against the screen, yelling for it to stop, but after a few seconds, the mascot clicked the send button, and waved. As it disappeared, so did the popup, as a blue screen popped up. I lost my voice screaming at what was in front of me, before slumping back into my chair.

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I had sent him multiple messages, hoping Dillon was okay. It had taken me way too long to get here. Traffic had been backed up for miles. The dude was freaking out with that call, more than I had ever heard him before, telling me about some crazy ransomware that was fucking him over. I knocked on the door, but when I didn't get a response after five minutes, I realized something was up. I quickly put in the key code, and pulled open the door. I barfed as I came into the door, seeing my friend's blown apart face in front of a blue screened computer. I went over to him, seeing his phone still blowing up with messages, ready to read up what had happened, while I called the cops over, crying at the sight of my lost friend.