by Ryan Schow
Lately, it seemed like the only person wanting to talk to him was his dad, so it was refreshing talking to someone who wouldn’t hang up on him.
“You ask where we’re living like you’re coming out here,” Titan said.
“I’m in Bakersfield now, heading your way,” Brayden replied with a grin.
“Oh hell yeah, brotatochip!” he said, thrilled.
He’d taken so many steps backwards lately, he needed his friends again. He needed the confidence they inspired. Romeo, in his syrupy English accent, he once said, “Confidence comes from within, and true confidence comes when the world has its pants around its ankles and is proceeding to take a continent-sized dump on you twenty-four seven and you don’t break. You refuse to break because you’re not that guy. You’re no beta male.”
You’re the alpha, he told himself.
I’m the alpha.
He didn’t believe it as much as he wanted to, so he had to say it again and again until he found that channel, until he almost believed it.
Titan called this changing your state.
“We’ll set aside a room for you,” Titan said. “You’re teaching this time, right? I mean, you’re ready, bro. It’s time.”
Brayden couldn’t believe his ears. To have a PUA of Titan’s caliber offer him a spot as a teacher, it was a sign of their confidence. I’m the alpha, he told himself, this time believing it.
“For sure,” Brayden said, calm despite the thrill surging through him.
“So how long do we get you for this time?” Titan asked.
“Six weeks,” he said. “Maybe more, depending on how things go. I’ve got something cooking out there. At least, I’m in the exploratory stages of it.”
“So you might be out here longer?”
“I might be, yeah.”
He laughs his excited laugh, then says, “That would be awesome! To bring you into the fold with us, if you wanted that?—man, that’d be the shit.”
“Oh, for sure,” he said, smiling unconsciously. “I should be there later on tonight, so just text me the address to your new pad and I’ll head straight there.”
“What about Abby?” Titan asked just as they were winding things down.
“Got her out of my system,” Brayden admitted. He said this casual, but it was a lie. She wasn’t out of his system as much as he was out of hers.
“You’re going to be up to your ears in it, brother. Seriously. We’re going to kill it man, you, me, Romeo and Aniela.”
Aniela…so she didn’t tell them about him, about them.
Hmmm.
“Well I’ll let you get back on the road. And I’ll text you the address in a sec. Drive safe, compadre.”
“Will do.”
He got back on the road and a couple hours later, his dad called.
“Hey, Dad,” he said, his good mood getting better.
“Brayden,” the old man replied, “how are you?”
“Amazing.”
“Where are you?”
“Heading to Vegas.”
“Oh,” he said, the joy slipping out of his voice just enough for Brayden to notice.
He hated disappointing his dad. It was becoming a regular occurrence. At some point in time, his dad was going to tell him to get his dumb ass home. He only hoped that day wasn’t going to be today. After his chat with Titan, he was really looking forward to a winter full of meaningless relationships. Not that he could say any of this without hurting his dad’s feelings.
“So are you going to come home for Christmas? Your mothers would like to see you. So would I.”
“I’m going to try,” he said. He did sort of miss his family, especially his real mother. His step-mother? He always felt guilty for the crush he had on her, so he never got really excited about seeing her because guilt was a total buzz-kill.
The issue, though, wasn’t that Brayden didn’t want to go home, it’s that if he did, his dad would see his new chin and nose and freak out on a seismic scale. Brayden was told specifically to refuse Gerhard’s DNA makeover. The one Abby blackmailed for him. Instead, he went behind his dad’s back and did a mini-makeover, caveman-style. One that had him getting rid of the family chin and the family nose, disappointing as they were.
The point was, his dad told him he was keeping the face and body his parents gave him, but out of desperation—even though he agreed to the old man’s ardent wishes—Brayden broke his word. His dad had been so good to him and now Brayden not only disobeyed him, he was going to devastate him with the proof of it. So he didn’t want to go home. Not yet.
“Well call me when you get there,” he said.
“Dad?” Brayden said.
“Yes?”
“I want us to talk more. Even though I’m not coming home, I miss you. You’re so good to me and I just feel like…I don’t know…I really want us to talk more. Not about money and cars and my school, but about you. About how you’re doing.”
He could feel his dad’s emotions welling. For such a strong man, who would’ve known? It made Brayden relax inside.
“I’d like that. In fact, I’m between job sites now. We’re scouting new locations, and there’s still a lot to do, but maybe if you wanted to fly in one weekend, or even for Christmas, we could have some father/son time together.”
“I’d like that,” Brayden said, knowing he’d make excuses when the time came.
It was better for his dad to love him the way he was than see Brayden’s face and carry such resentment. As much as his dad was doing for him, the man was obstinate enough, and block-headed enough to make him suffer the changes he made to his face.
He had other things working, though. Ways to survive if his father’s generosity became a means of getting him back home. He already made up his mind. He wasn’t going home.
Not like this.
Later that night, when he rolled into Vegas to the new PUA pad, he received a hero’s welcome. He didn’t know why, but in the end it didn’t matter. In addition to Titan and Romeo, there were a couple of other guys there, too. AFC’s by the look of it. Titan announced Brayden to these two green peas as a legend, one of the most successful students they’ve ever had.
“This guy didn’t even know what a pussy looked like, or tasted like, until he took the same classes you two are taking,” Romeo announced. “And now? Now this guy’s got a problem with too much of it. You wouldn’t know it, but this is the guy you should hope to become.”
If Brayden was surprised, he didn’t show it. He just grinned that grin, nodded his head slightly and said, “It’s true.”
Man it felt good to be appreciated.
When he got to his room, he hit the bed and fell into dreamland in no time flat. That’s what eight hours of driving and the drain of depression will do to a person.
3
He slept through the night like the dead. The ghosts he’d been carrying around, the ghosts of everything he lost, were gone. No longer haunting him. He was back in Vegas. Back in the thick of it again. He got up, but everyone was still asleep. Some topless blonde was passed out on the couch downstairs, her makeup smeared, the polish on her fingernails chipped. She was an HB7 (hot bitch, on a 1 – 10 scale, a 7) who might be an HB8 if she cleaned up alright.
He carefully, quietly put a blanket over her, bringing to her a modicum of modesty. She snorted for a second, licked lips dried out from too much drinking and too much kissing, then rolled over and snuggled into the blanket.
If given the opportunity to manhandle a woman or gain access to a computer, sadly, he’d take the computer. That’s just the way his brain was wired these days.
“I only have eyes for you,” he said, sitting down behind the desk, firing up the Alienware gaming computer. Rolling through the system, he studied the computer’s parameters, its limitations, the software it had on board. He started taking out all the preloaded spyware. Removed several pieces of malicious malware—the kind you get on porn sites and pirated music and movie download sites—then, when it
was clean, he rebooted.
And waited.
Like a kid on Christmas morning.
When the computer booted up, he ran an IP address search, wrote it down. Then he went to the Tor website, downloaded the files necessary to dip into the dark net, and waited. One thing was for sure: the computer lacked power. It was like looking under the hood of a car you needed to go fast only to find a naturally aspirated four-banger in there.
Some young guy with bedhead, he walked out in his underwear with half a morning boner, rubbing his eyes, looking for coffee he assumed. And the girl? On the couch, she was starting to stir. The boner kid took a bottled Starbuck’s drink back to his bedroom, or wherever, and the girl fell back to sleep, snoring lightly. The blanket was pulled over her tits, but she had on lacy underwear that looked unchanged for a day or two. Eesh.
Her gentle snoring though, honestly, there was something soothing about that sound. It was a peacefulness that resonated within him. Like he wasn’t all alone.
Most normal people didn’t know what Tor was, or what the dark net was. Tor (The Onion Router) was a search engine that allowed you access to the dark net. The dark net was created by the government as a place to move and receive information unseen and unindexed by the search engines. On the regular internet, called the Clearnet, everything and everyone was hackable, including criminals and terrorists. The dark net was virtual anonymity. It was an overlay network that used non-standard communications protocols and ports for the sole purpose of protecting one’s anonymity.
There the NSA couldn’t find you; the FBI wouldn’t see you.
You can’t get found there because you didn’t leave behind a trail of breadcrumbs like you do up top. You had no IP address. There were no such things as cookies. All the routing and rerouting being done, basically in the dark net you were the invisible man moving whisper-silent through corridors that would never be monitored. You only existed at your destination.
Not anywhere in the in-between.
Think of the dark net as a place to buy drugs, weapons and girls. Does Silk Road ring a bell? Think of the dark net as a safe space that—if you know the right people and you get the invite—you can watch someone get killed in real time. You can even pledge money to have them killed the way you want.
Those are the red rooms.
If beheading is your thing, you might be able to find it here. If you like a shotgun blast to the face, well…really, you’ve got issues. But you can find it. And if you need someone killed offline, the dark net is where you go to find a hitman. But beware: most of the hitmen for hire are just undercover cops and feds. Meaning it’s best to maybe solve your problems without someone needing to get killed.
But whatever. You get the point.
For Brayden, the dark net was a hacker’s paradise. This was the free-for-all, the way to swap hard code for the need to breach those more difficult firewalls. It’s where you found malicious software programs not every freshman hacker was using. Here you learned new ways to use brute force attacks and denial of service attacks on different types of networks, personal computers and marks.
Before entering Tor, Brayden checked his IP address again—the way you can be tracked—and found it was different than before. For the most part, unless you have a VPN on a huge network, anonymity is only possible on the dark net.
His fingers began to fly.
The way he was pouring through different sites and various code, how he found his old markers right where he left them, it was better than the best sex he’d ever had. What he was doing rivaled physical ecstasy in every way. Hacking was better than life. It was more powerful than God.
The girl on the couch, he didn’t even hear her get up, but she was like, “Hey, guy.”
His fingers were roaring over the keyboard at this point, kicking up dust and smoke. His eyes weren’t seeing anything but code; he was seeing all that code and anticipating problems, opportunities, backdoors he could ghost his way through. His head was all about black hat strategy until the once topless girl was like, “Hey, on the computer, guy,” like there was something urgent going on there.
He turned and absolutely razed her with his eyes.
To him, while he was combing through code, interrupting him was like interrupting masturbation at that almost critical time of release. But worse. He pulled himself back from that edge. Forced a smile.
“When I’m on this computer,” he said, nicely but with that bit of gritty edge he couldn’t completely disguise, “the best thing you can do is just sit there and look pretty until I’m done.”
“Where’s my top?”
Now he took a deep breath, smiled even more, then said, “How the fuck do I know?”
Her jaw dropped and she just stared at him.
“I gave you that blanket so you wouldn’t have to lay there with your tits out. I think I’ve already been helpful enough.”
“You saw my tits?”
“Of course. I like the right one better,” he said. “No offense to the left.” They were both even, but it got her thinking about them, and thinking about him looking at them.
She didn’t know what to say. She just started hunting for her top, holding the blanket to her bare chest like all the sudden modesty was a top priority. Maybe he saw her eyes glistening with tears, but maybe she just felt sick from drinking and getting railed all night.
He went back to work, trying to slide back into his zone, his fingers building up speed again. Then it came again: that annoying sound.
“Hey computer guy,” she said.
He turned around and stared at her. She’d found her top and put it on. And her crazy hair was now…a little less crazy. She was pretty, but her makeup was a wreck, making her look a little insane.
“For the record, my tits are even.”
“Okay. Fine. Your tits are identical twins. But instead of standing there looking like a sexy train wreck trying to defend your gorgeous body, try to understand that I covered you up to preserve your modesty and maybe you should just say thank you.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome. Now if you interrupt me again, I’ll have you thrown out of the house.”
“Who are you?” she asked, defensive, her messy face reddening.
He turned around fully and said, “My name is Enigma. I live here. I teach here.”
“What do you teach?”
He turned around, went back to work and said, “It was nice to meet you.”
“But I didn’t even tell you my name.”
Just then, he realized the front door had opened and Aniela was standing there, hands on her hips, that look on her face. The one that could melt cold steel.
Looking at Brayden but talking to the blonde in her shirt and panties, Aniela said, “He doesn’t want to know your name, sweetheart.” She then shifted her attention off Brayden and zeroed in on the girl. To her, Aniela said, “Go fix your face, it’s a goddamn catastrophe right now. Bathroom is down the hall and to the left.”
She waited for a second, then turned and made for the bathroom.
“What are you doing here?” Aniela asked.
Honestly, Brayden wasn’t prepared for this. Not now. God she looked incredible. So beautiful it knocked him for a loop. He thought about her all the way there, how he’d be if he ran into her, but he wasn’t thinking about her at nine in the morning while his head was ninety percent in hacking mode, nine percent in trying to wake up and one percent in getting someone else’s leftovers to get the hell out of not only his headspace but the living room in general.
“I’m here for the winter,” he said.
He opened his mouth to tell her he was sorry and that he missed her, that his heart was breaking open right now seeing her, but before he could even get that full breath, she turned and left. He hopped up and ran outside to catch her.
She was already in her car.
He tapped the flat of his hand on her passenger window and all she did was shake her head like she
was irritated, or still hurt, and then she backed up and tore out of there leaving him standing at the driveway’s end in shorts and no shirt.
4
Across the street from Titan’s and Romeo’s house, there was an ordinary looking mom with her two ordinary kids looking at Brayden and trying to cover her daughter’s eyes. Admittedly he was wearing only his shorts. Nothing else. But it wasn’t like his bare chest and two nipples were somehow going to force this woman’s kids into therapy early.
Whatever.
A second later, Brayden’s phone beeped. Standing rooted to the driveway, facing the ordinary, unmolested mother and her two kids—with his faded tan, his nipples and his white and blue checkered Stussy shorts—Brayden checked his phone. It was a text from Aniela.
It said: YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE COME BACK.
He wrote: I AM SO SORRY FOR EVERYTHING, ANIELA. I MISS YOU LIKE CRAZY.
The family of three across the street were finally packed into their big Lexus SUV, ready for school or winter camp or whatever. They backed out of their driveway, and the woman, the mother—her eyes were laser-locked on Brayden and not looking too happy about him standing out there half naked. Naturally, Brayden smiled and waved, and after a second, the storm on the woman’s face broke and she waved back.
Brayden stepped out into the street and held up his hand for her to stop. She crept the SUV up to him and pulled to a stop, reluctantly rolling down her window.
“Hi, I know you’re heading off for the day and all, but I wanted to meet you.”
“Did you just move in or something?” she asked, her eyes nervous, her demeanor restless and putting off an I’m-too-married-for-this type of vibe.
“I’m Titan’s cousin. I’ll just be here for the winter.”
She didn’t say anything, but her eyes, they dipped down to his chest, which was now two clean pectoral plates. His clavicle was prominent and defined, his shoulders like carved rock. If there was one thing about him that screamed alpha-male, it was his chiseled body.