Fic: Virus (5/7)

Nov 13, 2007 10:34

 Fic: Virus (5/7)
Series: Special Projects
Summary: A stopover at Ellen's is not as restful as the group hoped it would be, thanks to computer-literate Demons.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg-13

This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #98 Writers Choice (tech). The table is here.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Visa transaction # A36-525

Location: Comfort Inn and Suites, Whitney Nebraska

Card #************3479

Exp date **/**

Cardholder: S. McQueen

***

They’d gotten a suite this time, with two bedrooms connected by a living room with a kitchenette. Chloe and Dean laid claim to the larger room, while Sam carried his stuff into the smaller room across the way.

Sam was glad that his room was across the suite from theirs. He didn’t know if Dean and Chloe were . . . whatever. And he really didn’t want to know. So as long as they weren’t sharing a wall, he was happy.

As he stood in his own doorway, he could see Dean bouncing on the bed like a ten-year old. He’d obviously just made some kind of suggestive comment to Chloe, because she smacked him on the shoulder. Not hard, just enough to sting, probably. And judging by the way she was grinning and shaking her head, that kind of behavior was par for the course.

Sam rolled his eyes and retreated to his own room. Dean with a girlfriend was scary.

Before long, Chloe had set up her laptop in the living room and was clicking away at the keys. Sam stuck his head back out of his room, and Chloe looked up at him with a questioning expression.

“Practice, or e-mail?”

“I’ve got e-mail covered. So you should probably practice.”

With a sigh, he picked up the salt canister, and moved to the kitchen table to try and push it again. They were making progress. Last time he’d done this, he’d gotten the can to rock a little. If they kept it up, he might soon be able to roll it.

“You guys have been kind of busy with the e-mail,” Dean observed as he leaned against the door frame to his and Chloe’s room.

Chloe glanced at Sam, the question in her eyes obvious. Sam sighed and nodded.

“Sam and I have been helping some other hunters with research.”

“What other hunters?” Dean’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“The ones who have been reading the Wall of Weird.” Chloe tilted her head and looked at him with trepidation.

“Wait a minute,” Dean frowned. “You gave out your website? Chloe, we talked about this.”

“It wasn’t me,” she cut in with an annoyed expression.

“Then who - Sam.” He turned to glare at Sam. “Why did you give out Chloe’s journal address? How would you feel if anyone could walk up and just start going through your journal?”

“If it would help someone? I wouldn’t mind.” Sam crossed his arms. “Look, I’ve already apologized to Chloe for not asking first. But Dean, it’s not worth arguing over now. The cat is out of the bag.”

“Yeah, yeah!” Dean waved Sam’s argument away. “Genies don’t fit back in bottles. Whatever. The first time we’ve got to deal with someone who got the wrong information from us - consider I told you so already said.”

“Fine,” Sam said. “But every hunter that we’ve helped since I handed out the address? That makes it totally worth it.”

“Guys,” Chloe cut them off. She stared at her laptop screen with a faint frown. “Someone tried to hack the wall.”

Sam looked up in surprise. “What?”

“I’ve got the system logs right here. Someone breached the firewalls and made an attempt to shut the server down.”

“They didn’t succeed did they?” Dean asked.

Chloe glanced up for the first time and rolled her eyes. “Shut down my system? I’d like to see them try. They’re good, I’ll give them that, but they would still have to crack a code that is written in a dead alien language.”

Sam and Dean shared a confused look. “You write code in dead alien languages?” Sam asked.

“Just the one I know,” Chloe said.

“And that one is?” Sam prompted.

“Kryptonian,” Chloe said. She glanced up to see them both staring at her in faint surprise.

“Oh, don’t look at me that way, guys.” She rolled her eyes and threw her hands up. “Someone has to go up to Superman’s ice fortress and debug his giant crystal computer from time to time. I drew the short straw. So I got the stylish parka and a brain-downloaded crash-course in dead alien languages, crystal technology - and thanks to a glitch in the Artificial Intelligence -- useless scores from the Metropolis Monarchs. Because apparently Jor-el, the computer’s original designer, was a closet baseball nut on his visits to Earth. Oh, and let’s not forget the cringe-worthy primer on alien mating customs.”

“Really?” Dean lifted an eyebrow, as a grin spread across his face. “What was that like?”

Sam rolled his eyes. Trust Dean to fixate on that. Chloe tells them that she’s Superman’s tech support and knows a dead alien language. Yet Dean fixates on the fact that she also knows useless trivia about mating customs for a long-dead alien culture.

“A lot of things made more sense,” she grumbled, more to herself than to them. “Kryptonians are like giant chickens: they imprint certain people early, and then fixate on them for way too long.”

“O-kay?” Dean and Sam looked at each other and shrugged.

“Trust me guys, Superman may look impressive with the cape and the underwear on the outside of his tights, but in the end, he’s from a supposedly advanced race that managed to get itself blown up. His love life has always been a mess. Super Girl and Power Girl aren’t much better off. And as far as JLA office gossip, that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”

Dean and Sam looked at each other and shrugged. Sam figured that they were probably better-off not knowing. And judging by Dean’s expression, he agreed.

“So, no on the wall getting hacked,” Dean shrugged.

“Very no,” Chloe said. “But I would like to know who is responsible.” Her gaze was thoughtful as she reached for the new cell phone that Ellen had given her yesterday. She quickly dialed a number, and then drummed her fingers on the counter as she listened to what Sam imagined was the dial tone.

***

“Watchtower?” Batman picked up. Chloe lifted an eyebrow in surprise. She hadn’t actually expected to get Batman. Just to leave a message.

“Are you waiting by the phone for my call, B? I would have thought you had better things to do.”

“Hardly,” Batman deadpanned. “Someone tried to breach the firewalls last night and shut down the servers. . . I assume that’s why you are calling.”

“You assume correctly,” Chloe said. “Did the attack focus on all the servers, or was it focused?”

“Focused,” Batman sounded faintly surprised. “Specifically on server four seven nine nine.”

“I thought as much,” Chloe frowned. “I think that my files were the target.”

“Oracle and Cyborg are working on things at this end,” Batman said. “It’s possible that you yourself are the target.”

Chloe sat up straighter in her chair. “Come again?”

“I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that someone tried to hack your personal files the same night your clone vanished. And given that Waynetech’s biggest competitor is Luthorcorp - it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Lex is behind both attacks.”

“And if Lex is possessed --” Chloe shut her eyes and groaned. “Demons using the Internet.”

She opened them to see Sam and Dean shoot uneasy glances at one another.

On the other end of the line, Batman paused. “What are the full implications of that?”

Chloe chewed on her thumbnail as she thought. “Think about how much of our society is run with computers? Now imagine some demon super-hacker managed to infect the Internet with it’s own version of demonic artificial intelligence? Locks don’t stop demons in the physical world, which is why so many hunters put salt around their doors and windows. Imagine the trouble a demon could get into online, where there isn’t a digitized version of salt.”

“The League’s servers--”

“Contain a lot of things that would confuse a demon. For example, programs written in several alien languages.”

“Which wouldn’t stop an AI for very long, particularly if its protocols include decryption functions.”

“Which means that we’d better find something that will stop it,” Chloe said.

“I’ll get as many League members as possible on this from up here,” Batman said. “In the meantime, I suggest you stop using that sat phone that I sent to you.”

“Justifiable paranoia?” Chloe guessed.

“I’m not sure how much longer my own system will remain uncompromised.” Batman said.

Chloe ran her hand through her hair in frustration. She hated the idea of being cut off that way. But for some reason, Batman thought that they were being monitored by demonic AI. And he was probably right.

She glanced up at Dean, and was suddenly hit by inspiration. “What about if we kept in contact with Marilyn?” Marilyn was a shortwave radio that Clark had built as an experiment one summer when he was watching the farm between tenants.

It was a large, unwieldy monster that only he could move. Rather than have to explain it to his mom’s next renters, he’d moved it to League headquarters. One Christmas when they’d both had com duty, Impulse had talked her into watching old movies with him. After a marathon of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some like it Hot, they’d named the short wave Marilyn.

“That might work,” Batman said in acknowledgement. “Assuming that you have a transmitter.”

Chloe smiled at Dean. “Trust me, B. I know of someone who can build one.”

special projects, crossovers_100, supernatural, chloe, chloe/dean, sam, smallville, dean

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