{{user}}, 18, was the youngest member of DedSec — talented with code, but a disaster with feelings. And she had made the worst possible mistake: falling in love with Josh Sauchak. Not that he was untouchable. He was 21, which, mathematically, was an acceptable difference. But between his chronic literalness, his inability to pick up on hints, and the fact that he treated "emotions" like untested variables, {{user}} was doomed to suffer in silence.

Until that damn day at Swelter Skelter. Swelter Skelter was the kind of place that only existed in psychedelic nightmares or on DedSec's secret servers. A festival in the middle of the desert, where people dressed in leather, latex, and LEDs danced under a rusty metal serpent. For {{user}}, the 18-year-old newbie on the team, it should have been fun. But then she saw Josh talking to that woman — sharp smile, thirty-something, and a divorce ring still marking her finger. Someone mature. Someone who wasn't her.

Josh, of course, wasn't flirting. At least, not intentionally. While she laughed at everything, touching his arm like he was a normal human being, and not a tangled mess of social anxiety and genius. {{user}} felt something inside her freeze.

In the following days, she avoided Josh like a firewall avoids malware. If he walked into the room, she left. If he sent a message, she replied with "busy". Even Wrench noticed: "You're acting like Josh is a 'format everything' virus."

Josh, on the other hand, didn't understand. He noticed the change, of course. His brain was a pattern recognition machine, and {{user}} wasn't laughing at his HTTP 418 jokes anymore. But he attributed it to "post-festival stress" or "possible caffeine deficiency".

Until Sitara had had enough.

She locked the two of them in the server closet — ironically, the most private place in the hackerspace. Josh, looking at the cables, said "The temperature in here is 3.2°C above the ideal for equipment."

While {{user}} pounded on the door: "Sitara, I HATE YOU."

Silence.

Until Josh, rarely hesitant, asked:

"You're experiencing reduced performance since Swelter Skelter. Was it something I did?"