Chapter One: Not-So-Humble Beginnings

"Welcome, future employees to the Seaddle Headquarters of Blume Corporation. My name is Twilight Sparkle, CEO of Blume and your tour guide." Twilight Sparkle took in front of ten people. Her purple hair was put into a ponytail. She was wearing a suit with the Blume Corporation Logo on the right shoulder. "Here at Blume, we are the world's foremost innovator of high-tech, high-performance communications and security technology. Now, without further ado, let's start the tour."

After three hours, the group had completed the tour. "Before you all leave, I have to talk about our crowning jewel: CTOS." As Twilight explained and showed the achievements of CTOS, one of the people who Twilight was talking to began writing. Every detail and every word were scribbled onto a notebook. The woman who was writing was wearing a semi-formal suit. She had a nametag, which stated her name was "Crimson Rose". Her was pink, yellow, and orange hair was tied into a bun. "While some people think that CTOS isn't anything good, I can guarantee that CTOS can and will make lives better." Everybody in the room, except for Crimson Rose, began to applaud Twilight Sparkle. "Now, everybody, go home. Get some rest, because you'll need it. Tomorrow you will begin work here." As everyone was leaving, Twilight Sparkle stopped Crimson Rose. "Hey, Crimson, I'm glad you're working with us. I have a feeling you'll be a great addition to our team... Just one thing, stay out of trouble."

"Yeah, sure" responded Crimson, avoiding eye contact with Twilight. As she left, Twilight patted her on the back. Crimson drove home, changed into a white tank top and blue jeans. She started up her laptop and went to a forum. I'm in.

Later that night at one of the CTOS server farms. Crimson climbed up onto a section of the roof. She was now wearing a gray hoodie, with the hood on, sunglasses, and a pink bandana covering her mouth and below. A distorted voice came in through a voice chat program. "Consider this a BlackOut initiation, Fl0wers. If you choose to accept, you will need to bypass security doors and get inside. Then, find and erase your personal CTOS profile."

"Gladly. What they have on me is probably bullshit, and I sick of getting harassed for it," responded Crimson.

"All the more reason for a purge. We'll be watching."

Crimson started running. She slid across a vent, then jumped onto a heater and climbed up to a higher part of the roof. She saw a guard, hid behind a vent and waited. While waiting, she took out her thunder-ball. It was a billiards ball tied to a small bungee cord.On the other on of the cord, there was a handle. When the guard turned around, she ran up behind him. She put the cord of the thunder-ball around the neck of the guard, causing him to pass out, then hit the guard in the head with the ball as he fell to the ground. Crimson jumped from the section of the roof to a lower section, then to the parking lot. As she landed on the ground of the parking lot, a guard noticed her. Taking out her stun gun, she took the guard. The guard fell to the ground, unconscious. Sneaking through the parking lot, she saw another guard. She hid behind a car. When the guard turned around, she ran up to him and hit him in the back of the head with her thunder-ball, knocking him out. She ran up a staircase and found a locked door. "Shit," Crimson said. She took out her phone and scanned the area to find console to unlock the door. Finding it on the roof of the stairwell, she climbed up to the roof and went to the control box for the lock. Using her phone, Crimson hacked into the console and unlocked the door, and went into the stairwell.

Meanwhile, three people were watching the cameras of the building Crimson was infiltrating. One of the three rapidly swapped between cameras. "You're wasting your time," said another. "She's not in."

The first swapped the camera one more time and saw Crimson run down a hallway. "Gotcha," he said.

"So that's him..." The first one typed 'Crimson Rose' into a CTOS search and found her profile.

"She's got a gun. Is that a problem?" asked the first voice while pointing at the screen.

"Problems are why you keep me around, right?" chimed in the third one. Her voice sounded robotic. Crimson began hacking into another lock.

"Time her," said the second person. "I'm curious."

"Too late. She's already in," responded the first person. Crimson opened the door and walked through.

Two guards were walking down a hallway, coming up to a lounge area. The two were talking about a game that was about an alien. Randomly, both of their phones went off. “Are you having problems with your phone too?” asked the first guard. As the first guard checked their phone, Crimson jumped from the ceiling onto him, knocking him to the ground, "Oh God! Oh God!" yelled the other before he was hit in the head by Crimson's thunder-ball, knocking him out. The first guard started to get up, but Crimson turned around, swinging the thunder-ball to hit the guard in the face, knocking him out as well. Crimson took out her phone and hacked into one of the cameras. She began swapping between the cameras trying to find an access key. Eventually, she found the computer with the key in it. Through the camera, she hacked into the computer and got access to the key. Using the access key, she opened a locked door to the hallway which led to the server farm.

"So, what's her deal?" asked the robotic voice, leaning back into her chair.

"She was born in Detrot, but was raised in-" began the first person before being cut off by the laughter of the second person.

"Her deal is: she's been hanging around the BlackOut IRC, and she's got cred. Figured we'd give her a test drive," said the second voice.

"On the hardest difficulty. Nobody has been able to delete their CTOS profile before."

"I want to see if she is smart, stubborn, or both." Crimson was making her way up the multiple stairwells of the server farm, making sure not to be seen by any guards. When she made it to the floor with the server tower, she shot both guards on the floor with her stun gun, making both of them unconscious. She went to the server tower and hacked it, shutting down most things.

"She's done this before," claimed the robotic voice.

"CTOS tagged her as a prime suspect of a suspect in a high-tech burglary, so..." responded the second voice.

"She's done time?"

"Community service. Not enough evidence, just the word of CTOS's 'predictive algorithms,'" said the second voice, trying to sound idiotic.

"Once in the system, always in the system," said the first voice. Crimson completed the shutdown, turning off all the light.

"Holy shit, she went for it," said the second voice in a surprised manor.

"She won't have much time before the back-ups kick in." Crimson used this time to quickly get to the entrance of the service tower. "She's going in the hot aisle," said the second voice as Crimson threw a glow-stick down the chamber to light it up.

"It's at least 120 degrees in there," said the first voice. Crimson went into the chamber and press her feet and back against the wall to keep her from falling it. She stuck a device into the wall, took out her laptop and began hacking. When she finished, she put her laptop back into the bag it was kept in, took the device off of the wall, and climbed out. She jumped off the ledge, landed on a pathway to CTOS database. Inside the room, she found that the database was locked. She took out her phone and began rerouting the data to unlock the database. When she unlocked the database, she searching for her file.

When she opened her file, she saw that her threat level was 87 percent. "What the fuck? Why is my threat so high?" She launched the CTOS live tracking, and it began showing her records. She then opened her criminal records. "This is bullshit." She deleted all her criminal records, reducing her threat level to 36 percent. Then, she deleted her entire profile and replaced it with another. Finally, she placed a backdoor into the system.

"She's heading out," said the second voice, "bag her."

"Yup," responded the robotic voice, as she got up from her chair and walked out onto the street. Inside the building, the alarm went off.

"Droplets is out cold. We got an intruder," called out the intercom, "lock down the exits, and send somebody to check him out." Crimson enter the next room over, which had a guard walking towards her. She hacked a fuse box to shock a person when they get close to it, then attracted the guards to get into the range of the shock. The guard walked up to the fuse box and got knocked out by the shock. Crimson ran past the guard and went back to the server farm. She ran down multiple flights of stairs until she got to the ground floor. She opened a sliding door and made her way to a large vent shaft. Trying to open the door, two guards ran up to her and pointed their guns.

"Stop there!" yelled one guard.

"There is nowhere to go," mockingly said Crimson.

"Arrowhead, help her," said the second voice.

"Got it," complyed Arrowhead. The door Crimson was standing in front of suddenly swung up. Crimson then jumped backward into the vent, giving both of the guards the middle finger.

Crimson found her way out of the building and began walking backward while flipping off the building. "Fuck you Blume!" yelled Crimson. Suddenly, a bag was put over Crimson's head and she was knocked out.