Some Teacher: Second Semester!

(6.2) Danger time!

About six days after the attempt on Irina's life, Karasuma got a phone call. His eyebrows knit together when he read the caller ID, but he knew this person wouldn't call without good reason.

"Fumei, what's up?" he asked. "I thought you already finished fixing the security system, so why are you calling?"

"Hey Agent Karasuma, you're on speaker 'cause my hands are occupied," she told him, which was uncharacteristically polite for the girl, whom he knew to be crass and uncooperative. That and the lack of profanity raised his suspicions, and he signaled one of his coworkers to trace the call. "Anyway this isn't about your digital security, it's about Ritsu."

"Ritsu? What about Ritsu?" he demanded. "Is something wrong?"

"I would say so," Fumei scoffed.  "So I take it it's not your guys at the MOD that are trying to obliterate her code right now?"

"What? Fumei, what are you talking about? I need a much clearer explanation of the situation. Now."

"Some hacker is trying to take down Ritsu," Fumei said, and then there was an extended pause where the only thing he could hear was the sound of aggressive, rapid-fire typing.

"Fumei?"

"Sorry, I'm kinda distracted, and I don't wanna fuck up," she said. "Ritsu alerted me when they broke through the first firewall, and I've been coding new and upgraded security programs for her pretty much non-stop for two hours, and my brain is melting."

"What?"

"They're using, like—sorry, I'm trying to think of a way to explain this without all the jargon so you can understand—it's like the hacker equivalent of deadly force," she told him finally. "They're not tapping at the walls to find a door, they're hitting them with a wrecking ball, and you know I've told you before—FUCK! Shit fuck shit fuck!" another long pause, occupied by loud tapping and clicking. "Sorry, what was I saying?

"You were cursing profusely."

"No! Bastard! I was saying, uhhh, oh yeah! I've told you it's a lot easier to break in than it is to reinvent a security system, so I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep them at bay, and the way they're going, I don't think they're just trying to take Ritsu down for a little while. It seems to me like they plan on deleting her code completely, as in, gone gone, and I don't know about you, but I can't let that happen."

"It's odd to hear you caring about anything," Karasuma said, and the woman he'd signaled to a moment before handed him a paper with the coordinates the call was coming from. It was Fumei's house, which meant it was almost definitely her, but his suspicions had all but left him by that point already.

"Oh, stuff it, suit," she said. "Anyway, I thought you might be able to get some of the MOD digital security guys on this to help me, and also, I wanted to ask if I could apply the security program I made for you guys. Say yes, because I'm gonna do it regardless of your answer, I made a copy and saved it to my hard drive, so it's not like you can stop me."

"That's a breach of contract, Fumei, you're not supposed to still have access to that program."

"Eh, the contract only forbids exact copies, I removed a line of code and saved it separately, so technically, it's a completely different program, and I didn't breach anything. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I heard a yes?"

"Yes, do it. We can't let Ritsu go down."

"Damn, right! Ritsu isn't just an AI anymore. She has free will, and that means she's like a person," Fumei said, and it really was so strange to hear her care. She worked so hard to make people think she didn't care about anything. Even though he knew that wasn't true, he hadn't seen this side of her since he first met her, after responding to reports that a child had infiltrated the Tokyo headquarters. "Even if her creators were to put her back online using a copy of her original code, or even her most recent data backup, it wouldn't be her. She's evolved beyond coding and data. She's one of a kind. I'm not gonna let her be killed, even if it means tracking this bastard's IP address and killing them myself."