“Yeah, well, it’s been a tough couple of months.”
I chewed on my thumbnail, shredding the skin between my teeth.
If we were caught, we’d be expelled. That was the last thing my mother needed on top of everything else.
Maybe I should rethink this.
This was some serious crap.
What worried me most was that beneath the fear was an excitement that thrummed through my body. It made me light-headed. I wanted to chase the feeling to wherever it led me.
The mixture of terror and anticipation was an addictive cocktail.
Heady and overwhelming.
“How did you get in there? Won’t they know you’ve breached their security?” I asked nervously.
Rose scrolled through my grades and started changing things. Nothing too noticeable. She didn’t make my Fs turn into As. She was smarter than that.
A D here. A C– there.
Nothing to warrant suspicion.
“Are you kidding? Virginia College’s online security is a joke. I’ve been hacking into their system all year.” I watched as Rose turned the 45 percent I had gotten on my statistics midterm to a healthier 69 percent. Just above failing but still in trouble.
“Why are you hacking their system to begin with?” I had to sit down. This was all too much. I felt guilty. Really guilty. This was wrong. I shouldn’t be taking such a huge chance with my future like this.
But if I didn’t, my future would involve my packing up my shit in two months and never returning.
Rose looked at me blandly, her greasy hair hanging on either side of her face. I should really talk to her about the glorious magic of shampoo. “There’s a lot of money in doctored grades.”
Of course.
It was always about the money.
She exited the grading portal and closed the browser, swiveling in her chair to face me. I was trying not to hyperventilate. I wasn’t succeeding.
I was scared.
I was oh so excited.
“All done.” She frowned, peering at me. “What’s your problem?”
“We’ll get caught. We’ll get busted and get thrown out of school.” I sounded slightly hysterical. But hopeful.
What in the hell was wrong with me?
Rose appeared annoyed. “We will not get busted.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m a lot smarter at this than the slapstick cyber squad that built this system. So stop freaking out. Let me show you how this is done; then maybe you’ll see that there’s no need to have a meltdown.”
“I don’t know—”
I did know.
But there was a part of me that hung on to the shred of hesitation. That moral compass that had guided me my entire life.
Up until this point.
When I was willing to throw it all away for a means to an end.
But I had changed. Trauma alters a person. Makes her reevaluate what was important.
And what wasn’t.
And my conscience had gotten me nowhere thus far. Maybe it was time to do things differently.
Rose made a grunt of disgust. “Look, Hannah, I don’t know you that well, but I do know you’re smart as hell. You can pick this stuff up in no time. There’s more to cracking than changing grades and fucking around with someone’s email account. You can destroy someone if you want to.” Her eyes lit up as she leaned closer to me. I backed away slightly, weirded out. I had never seen my roommate passionate about anything.
But she was clearly very passionate about this.
The angel on my shoulder was officially silenced. I hated the preachy bitch anyway.
“You can tear down the world if you know how,” she whispered.
I shivered.
“When you say you can destroy someone, what exactly do you mean?”
Rose grinned and I realized that when she wasn’t hunched over a keyboard she was kind of pretty. Aside from the hair that needed styling and pasty skin that desperately needed some sun.
“There’s much for you to learn, little grasshopper,” she cackled, and I rolled my eyes.
The anger that had been rolling in my gut since Dad and Charlotte’s accident required an outlet. I needed to put it somewhere. It was killing me. Slowly.
I thought of the contractor that had poured shitty tarmac on the roads. Tarmac that should never have been used. Careless greed had taken lives.
It wasn’t right.
People needed to pay.
I stopped chewing on my thumbnail, feeling a resolve settle in my chest. “There’s some destroying I’d like to do.”
Hannah let out a whoop and turned back to her computer. “Okay, Hannah. Welcome to Hacking 101.”
Because I was ready to watch them all burn…
—
“I was messing around with a few scripts last night. Simple coding. I thought it would be fun to use it—”
“Not now, Kyle,” I barked.
My coworker looked crestfallen and I felt momentarily guilty. It wasn’t an emotion I liked to indulge in often. It irritated me.
“Sorry, I’ve just got a lot of stuff on my mind,” I said, trying for a smile.
Kyle brightened a little. “Yeah, that’s cool. But maybe at lunch?”
I nodded, blowing out a puff of air. “Yeah, lunch. I’ll help you program some stuff.”
I didn’t mind sharing knowledge. I just had to be careful what wisdom I imparted. He couldn’t know how deep down the rabbit hole I had fallen.
“Awesome. Thanks, Hannah!” he enthused, all but bouncing back to his cubicle.
I glanced around me; everyone was already into their day. Carl was reading the latest email from his ex-wife over and over again. She really was a bitch. I almost felt bad for the guy.
Almost.
I opened up a browser and went to the local paper’s website and read the latest article about the Ryan Law hack.
I felt an incredible elation when I saw my name.
Well, not my real name.
The other name.
Freedom Overdrive.
Authorities knew it was me. Which was good. I liked the attention I could get only from these questionable deeds. It felt good to see my alter ego plastered all over the news.
It was one hell of a power trip.
I spent the next thirty minutes scrolling through newsfeeds. Reading endless articles that stated the same facts over and over again.
Because of my bot attack last night, Ryan Law was now being investigated for myriad crimes dating back at least a decade. Those assholes were going down.
They wouldn’t be able to screw anyone else over.
And the revelations also opened the door for some serious compensation for their victims.
Including Charlotte.
I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.
I opened the white to-go bag on my desk and pulled out my now very cold bagel.
Ryan Law was going down.
And I had a date tonight.
With Agent Mason Kohler.
I felt giddy even though I tried to tamp it down.
I thought about that morning and how for a brief moment I’d thought I had messed everything up. He had been late. Super late. Unusually late.
I had thought that perhaps he wasn’t going to meet me.
I had doubted.
I had anxiously checked the time on my phone.
Then he had showed up and I had impulsively asked him to dinner. And he had agreed.
He liked me.
I could tell.
A different sort of power flooded my body at the memory.
This was only the beginning for Mason and me.
He knew it. I knew it.
I took a bite of the hard bread and made a face. Dropping it back in the bag, I tossed it in the trash.
Today was good. Cold bagel or not.
My phone buzzed and I glanced at the screen.
My high evaporated instantly.
Looki
ng around, ensuring that I was still unnoticed, I opened up my VPN terminal and fired up a secure email account that I used for one purpose only.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Bike for sale
Date: March 3, 2016 09:35
To: [email protected]
I have further information about the bike. I’ll be available for fifteen minutes. Let me know if you have any questions.
I stared at the screen.
That stupid smiley face at the bottom was oh so deceiving. Why bother with it at all? It did nothing to cloak the malignant message.
Why was Toxicwrath contacting me now? We didn’t normally speak until after work hours. I didn’t know what he did in his normal life, but I figured he had a job, just like I did.
We never made contact until the day was done.
Something must be up for him to reach out now, first thing in the morning after a successful takedown.
It was too soon.
I needed a few days to enjoy my righteous victory before speaking again.
I didn’t like it.
It filled me with a strange sort of dread.
Fifteen minutes. That’s all I had. That wasn’t enough time to make an excuse about leaving the coffeepot on and rush home.
Another email came in, causing my phone to buzz on my desk. I grabbed it, scanning the message.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Other offers
Date: March 3, 2016 09:41
To: [email protected]
Ten minutes.
That damn smiley face again. I should insist that he stop using it. It was seriously annoying.
Ten minutes. That’s all I had. The reminder felt threatening.
Toxicwrath was being uncommonly pushy.
I glanced around the room again. It was subdued. Barely anyone spoke. Holt IT Solutions wasn’t the most invigorating place to work.
I made sure Kyle was firmly ensconced at his desk. The last thing I needed was for my nosy buddy to pop up behind my shoulder.
Then I did something that I never did.
I set up a VPN tunnel before firing up the IRC client on my work computer. Having a virtual private network was essential. Being untraceable was the only way to last.
Even with the VPN it was incredibly risky. I had never mixed my worlds like this. I knew it would be so easy to be caught. To be exposed.
But just like all those years ago as I had sat and watched Rose hack into our college’s grading portal, beneath the fear was something else.
Excitement.
It was thrilling to be so forward. So bold.
It took me another five minutes to find the right channel. By the time I logged in, I was annoyed and flustered and way too paranoid, which was not a good color on me.
09:55
Why did I feel like I was being scolded? Our partnership had never felt so demanding.
09:56
Clearly my mysterious cohort needed a reminder. I was the one who called the shots. I was the one who let whoever he was attach himself to my crusade. Not the other way around.
09:57
My ego preened under the compliment. Of course it had gone well. I didn’t fail.
Not ever.
But why couldn’t Toxicwrath wait until later to puff up my self-esteem?
09:57
The clock was ticking. I needed to terminate the session. I couldn’t risk raising any red flags on the network.
09:58
I frowned. Already?
I hadn’t had time to do any research. To choose someone deserving. I wasn’t sure how I felt about letting my partner do the picking this time.
But I was intrigued.
09:59
09:58
Virtuant?
I opened up a new tab and did a cursory search. What I found was that Virtuant was an up-and-coming tech firm. Nothing untoward that I could tell. It didn’t fit my requirements by any means. Why would Toxicwrath choose this particular company?
10:00
10:01
The cause.
My manifesto.
My reason.
Toxicwrath knew its importance. I trusted that he would stay true to the vision.
10:02
The response was almost instant.
10:02
What?
This was all happening too fast.
I didn’t work this way. I needed to put out the feelers. Access the system. Find the information I needed.
I knew nothing about this company but the word of my anonymous friend that it would be good for the cause.
It wasn’t enough.
I needed to put my foot down.
This was my operation.
10:03
Someone walked behind me and I quickly minimized the screen. I checked the time. We had been chatting for four minutes. I needed to log off IRC. This was taking too long.
Toxicwrath hadn’t responded. But I knew he was still in the chat room.
What was going on?
Again I started to question what I was doing aligning myself with someone I didn’t know, wasn’t sure I could trust.
I was putting everything in jeopardy.
But then…
10:06
The tension that had been coiled in my belly released and let go.
10:06
***T0x1cwrath has quit IRC***
I quickly shut down the client and scrubbed my cache.
The thrill spiked, throbbing mercilessly.
A new target.
My earlier hesitation was still there, tickling the back of my mind. I needed to do recon. Which meant a lot of nights spent digging through Virtuant’s dirt.
I thought of Mason.
Agent Kohler.
It was all so perfect.
He had no idea how much.
Chapter 7
Mason
“Which one, Tig? Blue or green?”
I held up each shirt and turned to the perpetually pissed-off cat in the corner of the room.
He lifted his hind leg and started licking his ass.
Fucker.
“Yeah, the blue one. It’ll hide the pit sweat better anyway,” I muttered to myself.
I was running late. Per usual.
I was supposed to pick up Hannah in twenty minutes and I had only just gotten out of the shower.
With my job it was no wonder a social life had never been in the cards. Particularly when I was knee deep in a new assignment. One that I hadn’t wanted in the first place.
The rest of the day had passed like the morning. Full of dead ends and constant frustration.
Perry was by far the worst partner I had ever had. He was a nice enough guy, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be shackled to him.
There were rumblings that his career was built on nepotism. I couldn’t deny that had to be the case. I couldn’t imagine him making it through the academy a week, let alone graduating.
He knew next to nothing about reverse searching IP addresses, DDoS attacks, or megabreaches. If you asked him what a packet monkey was, he’d think it was some rare breed of chimp that lived in Africa. As long as Perry was my partner, I’d be carrying around dead weight. And
Derek knew this, which I suspected was why we were working together.
Because Perry did nothing to lessen the burden on my shoulders that grew heavier with every hour.
Freedom Overdrive had scrubbed his trail. Within hours of the attack on Ryan Law the files that had been uploaded to the website had been erased, crashing the site entirely. I tried to locate the IP address of the originating source and it bounced out to over two thousand separate computers throughout the United States and Mexico.
Nothing.
I had absolutely no more information than I had started with.
Except the string of numbers I had never seen before: 06050900.
That wasn’t Freedom Overdrive’s signature. What did it mean?
When I had brought up the idea that perhaps the cracker was no longer working alone, Agent Sanders had scoffed at the suggestion.
“I think you need to stop chasing half-cocked ideas and focus on what you do know. Which is that the source of origin is somewhere in those two thousand computers.”
Perry had glanced at me, looking confused. He clearly didn’t understand what the hell we were talking about. Meaning I’d have to play teacher on top of solving this unsolvable case.
“It would take a long time to go through each and every computer—” I had started to say, but Derek raised his hand, silencing me as if I were a naughty schoolboy calling out in the middle of class.
“Then I suggest you get started, Agent Kohler.” His lip had curled in derision. “I shouldn’t need to tell you that your best lead is in that bot army. You need to systematically eliminate each and every person as a potential suspect.”
There had been no sense in arguing that it was a useless waste of time. That I should be cracking the code left behind that deviated from Freedom Overdrive’s normal mode of attack. The pattern had been disrupted and I needed to know why.
Instead I was being sent on a fool’s errand. I had stared hard at the agent in charge. Derek had stared back, his face stony and unyielding. He wanted me to fail.
I would have to find out why.
Perry had sat throughout the exchange, chewing on his thumbnail, looking like he wanted to run away. He was clearly intimidated by everything and everyone.
“I guess you’d better get started, then,” Chaz had taunted, not bothering to cover his grin. I hadn’t been sure why he was present at all except to bear witness to my dressing-down.
Exploited (Zero Day #1) Page 7