Time had swiftly passed since then.
The neural implant had become so integrated with my brain that I rarely noticed it anymore.
It was surprisingly not as unpleasant as I had thought ut would be and felt more like a extra sense now.
The cybernetic processors quietly assisted my thoughts in the background, organizing information, accelerating calculations, and filtering enormous amounts of data without interrupting my concentration.
Though it did make me feel a bit hollow at times, yet again, I had been like that in the past as well so nothing really changed.
Despite my advanced education, I still attended the academy.
Well...
Calling it an academy was probably underselling it.
Aurix-9's educational institutions were closer to research campuses than ordinary schools.
Students weren't taught to memorize information, they were taught to solve problems and genuinely co tribute to society.
I guess this was similar to what Gaige herself had done when she created DeathTrap.
Most classrooms resembled laboratories more than lecture halls.
Interactive holographic displays floated above every workstation, programming environments could be manipulated with hand gestures, and artificial intelligences frequently assisted instructors in demonstrating complex concepts.
Today's lesson focused on distributed systems programming.
Nothing particularly difficult.
Professor Halden was explaining optimization methods for autonomous machine networks while the rest of the class followed along on their holographic terminals.
I had already finished the assignment, so I occupied myself by developing plans and blueprints in my head.
A niche little benefit to have Cybernetics, I had a private screen similar to video games or a system in front of me and I spend my time improving it or just storing planes in 'save files' as it were, in my head.
---
I didn't notice it at first, but after a while something happened that I most definitely noticed.
A sudden pulse ran through my implant.
It wasn't painful.
Just very unexpected, nothing like this had every happened after the first week since I implanted it.
It was like static passing across the back of my mind.
My fingers froze above the holographic keyboard that was before me as I sat towards the back of the room spot.
"...That's odd."
The signal vanished almost as quickly as it appeared.
Then it returned.
Weak.
Extremely weak.
Yet unmistakably digital.
I frowned.
There shouldn't have been any unknown neural transmissions inside the academy network.
Especially not one capable of interacting with my implant.
I quietly opened a diagnostic window only visible to me.
No malware.
No intrusion warnings.
No system errors.
Then what was it?
Using the cybernetic interface, I gently reached toward the signals last point of origin or trace.
The connection was unlike anything I'd encountered before.
It didn't behave like ordinary hacking.
There was no attempt to breach firewalls.
No malicious code.
No exploitation routines.
Instead...
It almost felt...
Instinctive.
As though whoever or whatever was connected, didn't even realize they were interacting with the network, or they were a novice at it still.
That alone caught my attention, so I did what any normal person would do.
I began tracing the transmission.
Ever heard the saying "curiosity killed the cat"?
Yeah that doesn't apply to me unless i'm dealing with Eridian Guardians or aliens.
I began tracing the faint wisp trail of signal that was still connected, since whoever did this is more fixed on not being discovered at their current place of infiltration, they had left the backdoor open with a string attached to their real location.
The academy.
Local infrastructure.
City communications.
Planetary relay.
The signal continued.
Leaving Aurix-9 entirely.
I narrowed the search even more and filtered out anything else that might tangle that string trail.
Interstellar communications.
Corporate relay satellites.
Encrypted routing pathways.
The signal weakened further with every hop.
Eventually...
A destination appeared, Pandora.
I stared at the result.
Pandora?
Of all places?
The signal quality was terrible after crossing such an immense distance, but the origin remained surprisingly consistent.
Somewhere on Pandora...
Something was reaching into a classroom on Aurix-9.
Not deliberately.
Almost...
Accidentally.
I leaned back slightly, pretending to continue working while my thoughts raced.
Pandora wasn't exactly known for its educational institutions or 'law bidding' inhabitants.
Who or what would be trying to access a programming class from all the way there?
Nothing I could think of could make sense.
The only explanation would be a Eridian Guardian knows of my Rebirth, I know that The Seer is able to manipulate the free will and minds of any except Sirens, and it is nigh-Omnipresent.
Yet it wont make sense that the signal came from Pandora.
The Seer is on the Eridian Homeworld Nekrotafeyo, residing within The Scryer's Crypt.
So that's and impossible option but I have no clue or lead other than that.
The signal itself felt...
Messy yet incredibly strong and powerful.
As if someone were experimenting without fully understanding what they were doing.
Then a possibility surfaced from the depths of my fragmented memories.
Pandora, inexperienced, technology, powerful.
My neural implant had filtered all this is information directly to my surface thoughts with a fraction of a second and that's when the memory surfaced when all the pieces clicked.
Angel, the PhaseShift Siren.
If my memories were correct regarding her age in the first and second games, as well as the current year and the year the original Vault Hunter comics for their backstories take place, then she would be around seven years old.
And around that age...
Her powers had begun manifesting for the first time along with her mother's accidental death.
Unlike most Sirens, Angel's abilities naturally interacted with technology itself.
If she was trying to learn from classrooms across the galaxy under a certain someone's supervision...
*cough* Asshole Jack *cough*
Hmm, must have been the wind.
Anyway, it would explain everything.
She wasn't hacking in the conventional sense.
She was simply using her powers.
And because she was still learning...
She hadn't expected that someone else especially another child could actually notice her presence.
A faint smile crossed my face.
Well...
That was certainly unexpected.