WannaRide: CyberDemon
It had been a year since I went to my buddy Dillon's funeral. As soon as I saw that bloody mess of what was once a close friend, everything in my stomach came pouring out to the floor. The police did there usual thing, asking how I knew him, if he had any signs of depression, people he disliked, anything like that. I knew he didn't. He was a nice guy, always smiling, a good worker. They said that before he died, he had put a lot of people in harms way. Work was slowed because a few of the employees had opened a message they got from him, and the attachment with it fried there pc's, while a few family members had left him nasty messages about the crypto-scam links he sent them. Even the FBI had gotten involved because of some of the shit he sent out. By the end, they ruled that he had gone insane that night, and did this shit before offing himself. They gave me their condolences, and left, saying they were going to do their best to look into it further. But I knew they wouldn't. So I told myself that I would. It was the least I felt I could do, for not getting there in time.
When I was finally let back to his place, I started doing my own looking around. They couldn't find anything themselves that made him the terrorist they were wanting to label him as, so they left the case cold, and had finally let friends and family inside. I decided to take my own look into things, see what I could find out on my own, that those idiots missed. When I got to the computer, I booted it up, and noticed that it was completely wiped, which striked me as odd immediately. A quick call to the police force, and a good bit of waiting for answers later, and they finally admitted to not having a thing to do with that. They all thought it was him, hiding his tracks, but I had my doubts. He kept everything on that pc, despite me telling him not to. And I knew it was possible to at least dig up something from it.
The next day, I brought my laptop and got to work. I installed a recovery software onto his pc, ran it and hoped for the best. After capturing everything I could, I brought up the drive and skimmed through it.. I wasn't able to get much. A few photos, some documents and passwords, even a few videos that we took on our vacation trip together. As I kept looking through, something out of the ordinary popped up. I tried getting as much as I could out of his pc, but I never expected to get one of his games. Out of all the files I could have dug out, this one struck me as the most odd. Even my own custom settings wouldn't have looked for something like this. I decided I'd take my time to look into everything I could when I got home, so I stashed the drive, and headed off. Felt good to get out of there. Could never shake off the cold that I felt staying there.
As soon as I got home, I popped open my pc, and got to work. Before even thinking of doing anything. I got to work writing something up. One of the reasons Dillon had kept on asking me for help whenever he was messing up with his pc, besides us being so close, was the fact that I was one of the few friends he knew who had any sort of useful computer knowledge. I had always had a little bit of a love for computers, even went to college to be a software engineer, while he went out to get his bachelors in finance. In a funny twist, even though I got the higher degree, Dillon was the first one to get an actual job he wanted, while I was stuck working from home doing IT for old folks all day. I almost caught myself daydreaming about the times that we we used to share, before I jumped back to reality. After a few minutes of coding it out (and shambling a bit of code from other softwares that I already had before) I had an antivirus ready to scan through everything I'd got from that drive. As I looked over at it, and thought what was on it, a silly idea popped into my head. After a few more bits of coding, and getting the graphics for it, I had it personalized. The first (and only) Sonic themed anti-virus, themed around Tails, since I thought it fit. Even had a little graphic of him that could pop out, colored completely white and with a little logo on his chest reading "MTPnet". I grinned at the sight of my work, before looking back to that drive again, and letting my face fall. Time to get to work.
I started the software, my own little MTPnet, popped in the drive onto my laptop, and got to work. I had it scrub through everything I could on it, seeing if I could find anything attached to them, and was left with pretty much nothing. After an our, I finally got to the oddball of the entire group, the Sonic Riders game that I had somehow managed to dig up. Instead of running it though, I thought of something better. Maybe I could play it and see if it opened with anything else. I ran the game, watching as Sonic Riders booted itself up on my screen, and went into a windowed mode with it. I clicked on over to the task manager to see in on it. The usual things met my eyes, including the game itself, but I still had my suspicions about it. So I let it run. I even played a few levels of the game before just letting it sit at the menu. As I walked to the my kitchen, I heard a screeching from the pc. A weird metallic screech was piercing from the speakers, and I rushed in to see what had happened.
On the screen in front of me stood a graphic not unlike my antivirus'. A graphic of the character Wave, but altered. She had her glasses down, and a weird beak with a glowing inside, and a black ensemble. The graphic itself, weirdly enough, seemed to be the one doing the screaming, as it was being held in place near the folder where I had my antivirus gathered. After searching through with my software, it turned out what it was seemed to be some kind of super high-tech ransomware. Luckily, it seemed to have stumbled onto my MTPnet folder as it was probably searching around for data to gather and steal. I studied the weird Wave graphic, looking like it was almost alive, before I decided enough was enough. I finally found it. What had done those things they blamed Dillon for. And I was going to make sure it wasn't going to fuck with me as well. I got to work, and quarantined the ransomware, before wiping it clean with a click of a button. As I looked over at the Wave graphic, I saw it there. Frozen against the desktop, stuck and slowly deleting itself. It looked almost like it was smiling as it's body faded away. After the last pixel left the screen, I deleted the game's now-blank icon from the screen, and the graphic of my little Tails antivirus popped on screen, giving a thumbs up, as a little text by it read "All done! You're clean! Would you like to restart?" It only made sense to. Clear everything up and get it all done. I clicked yes, and soon it went to a blue restart screen, and I sat patiently waiting for it to reload.
After what felt like an eternity and a minute, the screen of my laptop. showed the login screen, and I sighed in relief. I typed in my password, and clicked enter, only to have my heart sink as soon as I saw the screen. Everything was gone, except for the antivirus folder, and the game itself, back to new. The graphic of my tails sat in the corner, greyed out, as my screen flashed. Thousand's of HA HA HA's appeared along with the face of that wave model, laughing at me. Mocking me. I saw the screen again for a few seconds, my MPTnet trying to move towards it's folder, before the screen flashed again, this time with the models flashing in front of it. My computer strobed as I saw the Wave model appear on screen, now more terrifying. It came from the background, a whole in it's chest oozing code while it's eyes, now with sharper glasses raised onto the forehead, showed code where the eyes should be. It looked at me, waving it's finger in a diminishing tone as a dialogue box appeared covering the screen. A timer with broken numbers appeared along with broken text, before letters amongst them began to glow red.
"You thought you were smart? Your friend wasn't. Now your playing my game, but I'm gonna make it SO much harder for you. And you won't have your toy to help."
The dialogue box became a single timer counting down at a rapid pace, as I saw the Wave model standing there, grinning as it held up a fried, torn graphic of my little buddy. I swept my cursor across the keyboard, intent on trying to open up my antivirus' main directory, but I was only met with icons of the model's face. The window immediately closed as the Wave did it's usual "uh uh uh" motion at me. I went to click the timer to maximize the dialogue box again, but it flashed to a different part of the screen every time I got close. Before I could on top of it, the timer was up, and the screen flashed again, this time with the eyes of the model showing to give me a clearer view of it's code-filled eyes. I started freaking out like mad as I saw it flashing my information on the screen, before downloading it and sending it off. It even pulled up my bank account and drained it within a second. It never even wanted me to try, whatever this thing was.
It started sending the same links Dillon's friends and family got around on my twitter and other pages. Before I knew it, it was sending out zip bombs, and disturbing imagery to everyone imaginable, including the police, as the model flashed onto the screen, laughing more at my hellish last moments. I started screaming and bashing at the screen, but all I was doing was cracking the front of it, before I threw the pc at the wall. As it slammed against it, it nearly blew apart, as I looked to see the now blue screen. I started laughing like mad as I raced over to see if it was finally over, before I jerked my head up to the sound of sirens. My door burst open as men in armored suits came in, pointing guns at me, as I started to cry and scream once more.
"I DID IT DILLON! I FOUND OUT WHAT IT WAS! IT WASN'T YOU! I KNEW IT WASN'T YOU!! IT WAS THAT MONSTER!" the young man said as he was shoved into a police van. The swat members brought out the broken pc, as others went inside searching for more evidence. "Just like that other case, except we've actually got a body. What're we gonna do now? Question the loon?" said one of cops as he started chatting with his friend. "'bout all we can do. Don't know what we're gonna get, but we might at least get something. Don't want another cold case on our hands."