The Recluse

by D A Rice

  The Recluse

  D.A. Rice

  Arachnid: The Recluse

  COPYRIGHT © D.A. RICE

  Independently printed in U.S.A

  ISBN 9781728885230

  Cover by: coversbyjuan.com

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED BY ANY MECHANICAL, PHOTOGRAPHIC, OR ELECTRONIC PROCESS OTHER THAN FOR “FAIR USE” AS DEFINED BY LAW, WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR. THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. NAMES, CHARACTERS, BUSINESSES, PLACES, EVENTS, LOCALES, AND INCIDENTS ARE EITHER THE PRODUCTS OF AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR USED IN A FICTITIOUS MANNER. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, OR ACTUAL EVENTS, IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

  For those who need a little bit of faith.

  You will pull through.

  “In the last days,” God says, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

  Your sons and daughters will prophesy,

  Your young men will see visions,

  Your old men will dream dreams”

  -Acts 2:17 (NIV)

  1

  The Recluse cut out of the shadows clinging to a tall commerce building near 5th street. He was walking fast with his hands in his pockets, his hood up covering his face. He glanced back. Flashing lights surrounded the library he had just exited after posing as a student.

  He’d barely gotten out of there in time. Arachnid was picking up on his coding faster. It helped that he gave them hints. He smirked as he moved quickly, staying in the shadows. The crowd was beginning to gather just beyond the police tape perimeter near the Graduate Center. The library would be on lockdown. All the students who had been studying inside would accomplish nothing else tonight.

  He cringed, feeling regretful about that. He hadn’t meant to disrupt everyone’s study schedule. What he was doing, however, was necessary. Arachnid needed to think they could find him easily. He needed to see how quickly they sent the NYPD to collect him. The Recluse had done this multiple times already, testing Arachnid with each new area he entered. He had to know how vast their reach was now. It had been a long time since he was one of them.

  It was forward thinking that made him set up a lag time for the program he launched into the school server. It allowed him just enough room to make it out of the building before the police arrived. It was timed to perfection while still leaving visible, sloppy clues for Arachnid and letting them know someone was testing their firewalls. He knew how to make it all work with precision while still making it look as if he was an inexperienced black hat vying for their attention.

  Then again, he also had an instinct no one knew existed. This instinct had kept him alive through far more close calls then he cared to admit. It was part of what allowed him to mess with the cyber group so completely. He always knew how they would react before they did; he could sense the future.

  The Recluse rolled his shoulders and then his neck, careful not to let his hood fall back from his face. His hand flitted to caress the watch underneath the sleeve of his jacket. It was a nervous habit, as he gently checked to make sure it was still strapped to his tattooed wrist.

  Resisting the urge to take one more glance back, he ducked into an alley. If they were paying attention, they would have seen him walking away while everyone else surged forward. He hoped they had. He wanted to be seen in each location without being extremely recognizable.

  He leaned against the wall, listening. He knew his ability to hear with more than just his physical ears was an unfair advantage, but he needed what leverage he could get, especially if he wanted to stay one step ahead of Arachnid. He tuned into his surroundings, reaching out and focusing his mind. He wasn’t cocky enough to think he could escape if the police found him in the alley. He would have to act fast. He couldn’t afford the game he was playing with Arachnid ending yet. Neither could the NYPD.

  He was a ghost, and he was not ready to come back to life yet. He leaned his head back as his sixth sense kicked in. In the next moment, he opened his eyes. His mind cleared as his ability to predict brought revelation. He knew what he had to do next. They were coming this way. They would run from a few blocks to the south and try to box him in. So he decided to go up. His head shifted as his eyes drifted to the fire escape beside him.

  Soon enough, he heard someone talking a few blocks over. “I saw someone leaving, coming this way.”

  “Ok, let’s try to cut him off. You and you, follow me,” a gruff voice responded as the Recluse shifted his eyes towards where they were. He took a quiet, deep breath as he listened to the scuffle of feet approaching him, judging distance. They were still a little way off, but he needed to move fast if he wanted to escape in time. He glanced back down the alley, before running at the dumpster he’d been near. Placing a foot on the metal rim of the dumpster with a pang, he launched himself the opposite direction with incredible agility. His dark jacket swished as he moved his arms in anticipation.

  Twisting in midair, the Recluse grabbed the fire escape across from him, his hood shifting marginally over his face with the movement. There was a soft clang as he grabbed the ladder, causing it to shutter lightly with his force. He pulled himself up and with light feet made his way up the fire escape to the top of the building. He glanced down once to see flashlights zooming over the darkness of the alley below.

  With another smirk, he pulled himself up, then over the edge of the roof. In another moment, the echo of his footsteps was the only sign of his retreat, hidden by the noise below.

  …

  Detective Jackson rubbed a hand down his face as he studied the alley before him. His greying hair was ruffled with little sleep as he knelt, leaning his arms over his knees, fingers steepled before him. His hazel eyes focused on nothing, but were intense all the same. He scanned the area without really seeing the dirt and the grime.

  They had been so close to apprehending this hacker the previous night. Jackson could feel it in his gut. What was the Recluse’s game? This kid, whoever he was, was obviously brilliant. He didn’t have a handle, a hacker’s identity in the cyber world, but he left his virtual fingerprints all over the place. Jackson had a hunch that it was an intentional thing, for no hacker could be that sloppy and remain free. With this many anonymous tips filling the detective’s call line about a man in a hoodie bypassing any security a public computer had to offer, Jackson’s hunches were justified.

  Our own code name for the hacker is right on the money, Jackson thought. Without a handle, they’d had to call him something. The Recluse seemed to fit him best.

  The detective had figured out some things about the hacker between his stunts. Whoever he was, the Recluse had been everywhere, playing the same games wherever he went. Once Jackson had started, he couldn’t seem to stop finding obscure information on this guy. Clues kept pouring in at an unnatural rate, yet no one had been able to catch him in real life. Every time anyone had gotten close, the hacker had just disappeared, but Jackson was sure it was the same guy. The MOs had been far too similar to what the Recluse was doing in New York.

  When Jackson realized how extensive this kid’s history was, he had contacted every police department where the Recluse was mentioned by his code name. It had taken Jackson a year and massive amounts of cooperation from all over to get the information and proof he needed. The proof let him get the warrant allowing his team to trace and dissect every computer with his signature. Every one where the hacker had left a viable footprint for them to find. The information he had, however, did not form a complete picture. It led him in a circle, as if the hacker was always planning to come to New York. It meant that the Recluse had a goal, even if Jackson didn’t yet know what it was. His hacking was seemingly too random for the detective to figure out.

  It was odd. Law enforcement could never get to where the hack
er was supposed to have been in time, but there were plenty of witnesses putting the same strange character at each site. The calls after the initial tip weren’t all anonymous; some were legitimate businesses worried that the hacker would do something he shouldn’t. He never did. It made Jackson wonder why the Recluse even bothered.

  Why go into a public area, make sure you had been seen, then hack into what appeared to be random secured sites? If it were any other hacker, the detective suspected they would have him behind bars already. The Recluse had to have known that. Jackson was beginning to wonder if there was another side to this hacker. He suspected the Recluse wasn’t just some sloppy amateur who got called in on the tip line; there was a careful, calculating mastermind underneath — one who never got caught.

  Jackson doubted that the FBI was unaware of his existence. They may have even started a file on him somewhere. They tended to get involved in unique situations like this, but they also had their hands full. As far as anyone knew, The Recluse had never hurt anyone or stolen anything. This made his threat level too low for the FBI. His visibly clumsy attempts at hacking made him even less likely to be labelled a threat by them. However, Jackson was convinced that this hit-and-run attitude barely scratched the surface of the Recluse’s skill. There was more depth to this hacker, and the detective was determined to figure him out.

  Once the Recluse had shown up in New York all but announcing himself, the commissioner had assigned Jackson the case himself. As an experienced grade one detective- investigator within the NYPD, Jackson was one of the best. He had investigated his fair share and variety of criminals. He’d also even had the privilege of running into Arachnid before it became the most well-known cyber-terrorist group in the world.

  Jackson had only known one other hacker that had made a name for himself with such force. A member of the group who was now dead. If the hacking style of the Recluse had been any different, Jackson might have thought it was him, risen from the grave. But Jackson had seen the destruction Arachnid had caused to get rid of their star member. A separate group had taken credit for the attacks themselves, but it was widely accepted that Arachnid was involved. There was no way the hacker had survived.

  That happened seven years ago. The Recluse had been around for five as far as Jackson knew. He also knew, however, that the hacker could have planted plenty of programs and cyber-attacks that Jackson didn’t even know about. The fact that they had anything on the Recluse, Jackson figured, was of the hacker’s own making. A form of deceit Jackson couldn’t yet prove.

  Every time the local police in any given area tracked his coding back to him, they had found the hacker gone. His hideouts held nothing in them; nothing that hinted at his identity in the real world, no technology to guess his real intentions. As far as anyone Jackson had ever talked to could tell, the Recluse was a specter haunting the cyber world.

  His reclusiveness was the very thing that law enforcement had latched onto when he’d first shown up all those years ago. With nothing else to call him, the name had stuck. Jackson could hear the frustration in each detective and captain who told him they were rooting for him to find this guy. Finding the Recluse was a team effort, and they would help out as much as they could. Jackson held the proper warrants, and they were all too eager to comply.

  When his file showed up on Jackson’s desk, he knew he was in for a storm. There was no way the media wouldn’t catch on that the Recluse was here, just as they had everywhere else. It was shocking to Jackson that they could write about him but not know they all wrote about the same person. The Recluse was the hacker they couldn’t catch, and Jackson was just as hooked as everyone else.

  Everyone else, however, couldn’t see the patterns like Jackson could. They thought the Recluse was just another teen, trying to prove his worth and running in a messy line to stay ahead of law enforcement. Jackson was more convinced by the minute that it was more than that. There was something very intentional about his messiness, Jackson just needed to figure out what it was.

  All of the puzzle pieces he found only intrigued him more. The Recluse was a genius. This much was blatantly obvious to the detective. He could only go on hunches and tips, but he knew The Recluse was playing with somebody. If Jackson could figure out who the hacker was targeting, then maybe he could find the Recluse, himself. The detective could only guess, but he had a feeling this had something to do with Arachnid. He also knew he was missing too much information to validate anything.

  What would the Recluse do next? What was his endgame? Jackson had an almost dread in his gut that they were going to find out soon. Whatever it was, it was going to be big. His cyber stunts in New York were becoming more and more spaced out. His sightings were becoming less frequent. Jackson had a feeling that the Recluse was close to finding what he’d been looking for, if he hadn’t found it already.

  …

  Most people stayed away from her, but she didn’t blame them. It was human nature to shy away from things they misunderstood. People thought her presence was disconcerting because she often preferred to be alone. She preferred to be alone for a reason. She didn’t want her classmates to see her mental meltdowns any more than was necessary. It wasn’t as if she was completely crazy. Most of the time, in fact, she held her own against the voices that sometimes shouted in her head. But she couldn’t always fight them, and that was a problem.

  “Rei!” She smiled as someone called her name, glancing up briefly from the book in her hands. Then there was Damion, her five-foot-eleven, 22-year-old best friend. It was almost a fact that his emerald eyes made every girl on the College of the City of New York campus swoon.

  He stopped before her, with his dark blue shirt and jeans that hugged his hips. With his lean build, he was completely comfortable in his skin and his resilient friendship with her. Damion was unafraid and unashamed. She leaned back against the tree behind her, brushing a strand of dirty blonde hair out of her eyes. She raised an amused brow as Damion panted dramatically, hands on his knees.

  CCNY had a few trees on the campus green. Entrapped on three sides by the building itself, which reminded her of a large castle. The main building had a domed roof with white walls, worn with time. She thought it was beautiful, even on days where all she could manage out of school was to stay home and in bed. Luckily for her, her bad days were few. Between her psychiatrist and her best friend, she had managed to survive with little backlash in the real world. Even with her mental handicaps, she learned to be capable as well as functional. Would her ability to survive be enough to get her through school though? She wouldn’t know until she tried.

  “Rei, did you see? That hacker guy struck again!” Damion said, laughing wildly before plopping into the grass beside her. He shook black bangs out of his eyes. Oh yes, she thought, he was handsome, but to her, he was nothing more than a little brother three years her junior. She folded her book closed as she waited for him to continue. “They say they chased him into an alley and then he just,” he wiggled his fingers dramatically in front of his face as he said, “disappeared… I heard the NYPD is calling him the Recluse!”

  Rei cocked a grin at his theatrics before stretching her legs out from underneath her and rolling her head as she stretched the muscles in her neck. How long had she been in the middle of the campus green reading? “I don’t understand your fascination with this hacker. He’s been leading the police in circles for forever. Whatever he is trying to accomplish, he’s not getting very far. It’s actually surprising he’s not in jail yet, considering how often he’s been spotted.”

  Damion rolled his eyes before leaning back on his hands, eyes studying her. “Naw, I think he’s way too smart for them. You know geniuses, they have a hard time dumbing things down for us common folk.” He wiggled his eyebrows here, and she laughed.

  “If you’re saying I’m a genius, I’m not.” She said before rising slowly off the ground, brushing off her jeans and the boots that covered them. “The only thing I am good at is reading and sometimes
relating to people. Mostly children with issues like me.”

  Damion sighed. “That’s bull. You’re one of the top students here,” he gestured around as students travelled from one side of the school to the other. “People only talk because of how incredibly antisocial you are. If you actually considered making friends, people would love you.”

  Rei glanced at him, her eyes twinkling, “until they see me talking to myself again. Damion, I don’t need people judging me more than they already do. You are just too foolhardy to stay away.”

  He smiled, unashamed, “oh yeah. That’s me in a nutshell.”

  But she was starting not to hear him as the buzzing in her head began. She fell back against the tree, squinting her eyes. Not this again, she thought as her hand slowly came up to massage her temple. It was aching slowly, starting behind her eyes, where it usually did. She briefly registered Damion’s hand on her shoulder, and she realized he was asking if she was ok.

  “I’m fine Damion,” she said softly, “I just have another migraine coming on….” She felt his hand steady her elbow as he started to guide her away from the tree. Knowing not to speak too much, he maneuvered her to his car. Time passed in a distorted way. Sooner than she knew, Damion had not only gotten her to his car but was opening the door for her. “Let’s get you home,” he said, his voice barely a whisper above the humming in her head.

  Before he could get her safely inside, the voices erupted.

  Her eyes began to burn as if they were on fire. She could feel Damion pull her into his arms and lay her across his passenger seat before she could collapse. His body was shielding her from any curious passersby. “It hurts Damion,” her voice was so soft he had to lean in to hear her.

  He strapped her in. “It’ll pass Rei, it always does,” his voice was calm, and she was grateful to him for how normal he treated her despite the circumstances. She dared not open her eyes. They still burned, and she knew what she would see if she did. Demons, so many of them crawling all over the school, leeching off the students who studied there. She covered her eyes with her hands as the door shut gently beside her. She wanted to hide from her reality.