Secret War / Labyrinth
Once the team were of the opinion that the cyber-attack was over, for the moment at least, Banshee took a few minutes to explain to Celestus about Labyrinth who they thought were behind the assault, with a review of everything the Balance knew about them and their ‘leader’ Taurus.*
When she finished explaining, it was agreed that they definitely needed to talk to their allies including Marcus and the Challenger-Wildeman’s once communication with the surface was reestablished.
The situation around them still had to be stabilised and X-Ray’d had been forced to take the power generator offline using his powers to prevent it from overloading.
It also meant that while Container Town on the surface would be limited to its solar panels and windmill for electricity until they could restore the power, they had no such back up and were relying on the battery-powered emergency lighting.
The result was the blast security doors throughout the base were still locked down and sealed shut, and forcing them open risked damaging their mechanisms. Banshee tried phasing through but was too exhausted to repeat it or do it with others in tow and had to revert to being Mary for the time being.
Switching off the generator had been a lot easier than restarting it.
Mary tried her so-very-rarely used magical abilities again. She manifested her Scent of Iuchar to draw to her and control a small rodent and then used the Eyes of Iuchar to perceive through their senses as she sent it out into the world. She wanted to use her control over the mouse to seek out Annie, but their offices were in Dragon’s Gate, several miles away. The Challenger-Wildeman’s were even further so she settled for confirming that the inhabitants of Container Town were safe and well despite the generator being offline.
Akira tried to teleport out only to find himself back in the Reception Room nearly unconscious; trembling with excess adrenalin rushing through his entire body. He would have to wait until the crystal designed to redirect rogue teleporters to this room ‘calmed’ down sufficiently. Access to telecommunications was being blocked by the interference resulting from the electrical overloads.
It could take many hours before everything returned to normal.
Celestus responded by immediately cutting the BASEment’s link to the internet and other external networks, physically pulling plugs out of the wall where necessary. He also organised the maintenance droids that the others called ‘dwarves’ to assist with travelling down the darkened corridors and bypassing the blast doors by using the maintenance passages as their security mechanisms were temporarily inactive. Their task? To shut down all nonessential systems in the base before safely restarting the Challenger-Wildeman Arc Reactor.
He was able to contact his own ‘traitorous’ Oracle via his ship’s communications suite to watch out for hacking attempts on itself and pass on a warning to the Vilani embassy that the humans were capable of such an attack. Meanwhile, he began to sweep all online systems and data for malware.
He attempted to isolate some possible malware used in a sandbox, a sacrificial IT environment with no links to any live systems, for subsequent study. He knew that a surprising amount could be learned or inferred about hackers from their handiwork. He would need someone with a more intimate knowledge of Terran computer systems to ‘interrogate’ the programming and confirm that the BASEment’s systems had been fully purged.
He assisted Frankie in trying to track down any lurking malware but did not delete or reinstall anything. The sandbox experiment failed to isolate any malware, though he wasn’t convinced there wasn’t any and originally wanted to carry out a full reinstallation of Frankie’s operating system.
Mary vetoed the suggestion because, “You have to understand that Frankie’s sentience wasn’t intentional, it was a fortuitous event, serendipitous that out of Annie’s mix mash of programming that Frankie was able to come alive.
We don’t know what exactly was the genesis that allowed her to bypass her programming and become her own person. If we were to restore the software and data backup we risk losing our friend forever.”
Celestus suggested instead that Frankie did need to back up her basic software and data somewhere, so that if the worst happened there was the possibility that she could, possibly, be ‘resurrected’. He did insist that they all change their passwords to much longer ones, or replace them by biometric identification such as fingerprints.
As he spoke the lights came back on and the blast doors smoothly opened throughout the base. Annie arrived soon after and together with Celestus (and Oracle) began to undertake a full diagnostic of the base’s systems.
The battle was over, but the war had just begun.
They were left wondering what information had been compromised? The BASEment had been bought by cash as was Container Town next door and registered to a charity as had all the other Container Towns bought since then. There was nothing in the accessed data files connecting the junkyard with the Balance.
Mary was known by the surname Weirdigan up top and again there was nothing to link Banshee or Mary McCarty with her, not least because her face and body changed when she transformed. Cerberus was still just a name not linked to anything except that he was a Vilani. X-Ray however wasn’t so lucky. His identity was at risk as data on file revealed that he’d recently moved to Wessex from Stoke-on-Trent and that he was a surgeon working at Royal Wessex Hospital; enough information to unmask him.
Brian, Stacy, and now young Chris lived in a rented house close to the hospital. Brian and Stacy had planned to buy, but so much had happened since they’d left their old home that they hadn’t found the time to house hunt and of course they now had Chris’s needs to take into account.
A relocation of family under false identities or even visiting Stacy’s brother Glynn back in good old Stoke-on-Trent seemed the order of the day.
Once telecommunications was reestablished, Brian called her and explained that there was a strong possibility that his public identity had been compromised, and it was only a matter of time before his enemies tracked them down – he wanted her to go into hiding and take Chris with her. She absolutely refused and so did Chris, this was their home now and no, no-one was chasing them away.
Stacy reluctantly admitted that a card with a stylised L had been left on their dining room table.
A similar card was subsequently found by Akira a few days later on the hall floor at Ffrwd Dylluan, though this one was covered in blood. Seems the sprites and house fae hadn’t taken kindly to its delivery man’s unexpected presence inside the house.
Mary suggested they contact Jimmy the Fish and see if his team could organise a televised rebuttal of the false information. A reminder that hacking, deep fake videos, and generally nasty bastards still existed, and that The Balance were the victims of just such an attack – again?
They had a feeling that they needed to go on the offensive, and not sit back and wait for the next attack to happen!
* (See Index and The Enemy of My Enemy – An Intervention)
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 