ONE

HACKTIVIST

Lara Grayson widened her eyes in horror as she peered over the computer screen in front of her. Her heart jumped into her throat when she heard the unmistakable click of a doorknob turning as she squinted at the entrance to the district attorney’s office and watched the door slowly open.

A bubble of panic expanded in her chest. The data she needed was still downloading.

The door swinging open galvanized her into action, and she ducked underneath the desk, grateful that she could hide in the shadows of the unlit office. She tried to control her rapid breathing as panic washed over her. There shouldn’t be anyone here. She’d chosen tonight to break in because she knew that Norman Alcott’s campaign staff were supposed to be at a fundraising event on the other side of the city. So far, her first attempt at breaking-and-entering wasn’t going very well.

She heard a low voice, a giggle and the sound of high heels on linoleum.

Her breath caught in her throat.

I’m so dead.

If they turn on the lights, will they see me?

Nobody turned on the lights, but her heart was thumping so loudly that it had to be echoing off the walls. As she hugged her knees and tried to disappear, she decided that this had been a very bad idea. Being caught by one of Alcott’s goons would be worse than being caught by the police. She was going to end up floating face down in San Francisco Bay if they caught her.

Why did I even come here?

But she knew why. She was a hacktivist, and Alcott had declared war on her tribe.

It’s for freedom. Don’t chicken out now. You’ve hacked into a terrorist website and survived. This is nothing .

“Ow! Shit!” Lara’s pulse started racing again when a female voice cried out.

A male voice cooed, “Sorry, baby. Let me put it back in. Is that better?”

Lara widened her eyes.

Oh, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.

“Oh, God, yes.” Both voices dissolved into groans.

In the shadows, Lara blushed.

Great, I’ve stepped into a porn movie.

Obviously, she wasn’t about to be busted by Alcott’s hired muscle. She was just trapped by two Alcott staffers who wanted to do it on a desk in the campaign office.

She let herself relax a bit, tried to ignore the sound of flesh slapping against flesh and hoped that it would all be over soon.

Mulling over her predicament, she wondered how she’d gotten herself into this situation. She wasn’t usually interested in local politics, but Alcott had made her angry enough to act. As a district attorney in one of California’s most conservative regions, he’d made a name for himself by going after hackers. Talk about Alcott was all over the deep web and the IRC channels. The elite hackers knew how to protect themselves, but innocent web surfers and newbies were vulnerable. Lara knew that Alcott had been pinning his own financial misdeeds on unwitting web users and inflating his tough-on-crime reputation by busting them. And now he was running for governor.

The proof she needed to expose him was almost within her reach…

She jumped at the sound of a grunt followed by a disappointed, soft sigh. Hearing a few murmured words and some shuffling, she expelled a shaky breath. She listened to the sound of steps moving away from her, and she tilted her head when she heard the click of the door closing.

The room fell silent.

She crawled out from beneath the desk and peered over it, relaxing her tensed shoulders when she realized that the room was empty. After quickly checking that the files had finished downloading, she grabbed her memory stick before making her way home.

Lara narrowed her eyes at the article on the district attorney’s website:

ALCOTT DECLARES WAR ON HACKERS.

Her hands balled into fists as she scowled at the photo of the smiling politician beside the headline.

Well, this hacker just declared war on Alcott.

After studying the website for a few seconds, she opened whois.com and typed ALCOTTFORGOV.COM into the search box before hitting ENTER. The registration details for the site appeared on the screen within seconds.

She smiled, sitting back in her chair and flexing her fingers. His site was hosted by Listhost, and cPanel was active on the site.

Easy pickings.

However, the fact that this would be easy didn’t mean that it was without risk. Her heart hammered as she opened her Shell control panel and used a Perl script to hack into the administration area for his website. She forced herself to calm down, breathing deeply to slow her racing pulse. If she was caught doing this, she could end up with a twenty-five-year jail sentence due to the archaic internet laws that were still in place.

It was bad enough that Alcott was demonizing hackers. They were Lara’s family—her only family. But what really made her blood boil were his attacks on web users, who didn’t have the knowledge or the resources to defend themselves against a DA’s accusations. Rumors about Alcott’s money laundering had been circulating on WikiLeaks for months, but Lara’s memory stick held the proof she needed to bring him down.

She worked as quickly as she could to diminish the risk of being caught. Even so, it took her almost an hour. Sweat beaded her brow as she logged out. With a sigh of relief, she leaned back in her chair to admire her improvements to alcottforgov.com.

The article trumpeting the DA’s prosecutions of hackers had been replaced with profiles of his innocent victims and evidence of his own campaign’s fraudulent fundraising. Where the grinning headshot had been, there was now an image of Alcott that had been altered in Photoshop to show him in an orange jumpsuit, behind bars. The footer contained just two words, Lara’s signature: SHADOW REAPER.

She was so pleased with what she’d accomplished that she hadn’t even noticed that her laptop was more exhausted than she was. The hard drive was making ominous whirs, and the plastic case felt as if it were on the verge of melting. What she needed was a high-end gaming PC—something that could handle some serious hacking, but she had no idea when she might be able to buy a new computer. She couldn’t even pay her rent.

She gave her trusty old machine an affectionate pat as she closed her programs, and then smiled at the image on her desktop. The code for the first hack she’d written at age fourteen was emblazoned across a photo of Jack Kinder, the grandfather of hacktivists. He was raising a fist in the air as he was released from a grim prison, which towered hauntingly behind him.

She blew Jack a kiss before she stood up from her chair and stretched. She walked a few steps to her tiny kitchen, which consisted of a mini fridge and a tiny sink. The short counter was crowded with a microwave, toaster and electric kettle.

Grabbing a soda out of the fridge, she popped open the can and peered out through her cracked window into the street below. Broken-down cars and unkempt yards lined the street. A gang of teenagers was hovering outside the 7-Eleven, smashing beer bottles on the sidewalk. For a hacktivist superhero, she lived in a shitty neighborhood.

She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the Tenderloin. After being here for nearly a year, the place still creeped her out. Mind you, she’d been shunted all around San Francisco in foster care before that. She wasn’t sure anywhere would ever feel like home to her.

She sighed as she took a seat on her tatty old couch. Sinking into the worn upholstery, she eyed the job application forms piled on her secondhand, scratched coffee table. The application on the top of the stack was for a job stocking shelves at the mini-mart down the street. She didn’t know how, at eighteen, her life had turned into such a mess. Okay, that wasn’t true. She knew how it had happened, but she really hadn’t meant it to.

She had only been twelve when both her parents died in a car accident. With no family to take her in, she’d spent the next six years as a ward of the state. Just thinking about her first couple of years in foster care made her shudder.

When she was fourteen, she had discovered a completely new world online, and it had saved her. Online, she found peace and purpose. She’d learned so much from strangers with names like ‘The Master of Doom’, and she found a virtual family to replace her missing one.

By the end of her junior year, she was doing some serious coding and working with hackers who were fighting for freedom and justice. She’d even played a small part in the Egyptian Revolution in 2011. While other kids her age had been fighting over who would be prom queen, she’d been saving people’s lives in another country. She didn’t even bother with her senior year. Instead, she’d become a full-time hacktivist.

The day she turned eighteen, she left foster care for good. She’d managed to find this crappy apartment on her own, and she’d had enough money to get by on for a while. However, once she started looking for a job, she realized that dropping out of high school had been a serious mistake. She planned to get her GED, but in the meantime, she needed whatever work she could manage to get.

She brushed a wisp of fiery red hair out of her eyes before depositing her soda on the table. None of this was what she wanted for herself. Somewhere during her time of mourning, she’d lost herself in the online world and fooled herself that she had a future. Unfortunately, it seemed that reality didn’t allow fools to enjoy their fantasies for very long. While she’d been busy enjoying the online world, her real life had fallen apart.

She had some mad skills, but hacking didn’t pay the rent. Sure, online she was saving lives, but offline she was a loser.

This can’t be the life I’m meant to lead.

As she reached for the mini-mart application, her gaze drifted to the latest edition of Game Informer, which was also sitting on the coffee table. The cover photo was another shot of Jack Kinder. A couple of decades had passed since his triumphant release from prison, but he was still sexy as hell with his dark hair and steel-gray eyes. Shrugging away the guilt over putting off her job search for yet another day, she picked up the magazine and flipped to page three.

Jack Kinder had started out just like her. At age sixteen, he’d hacked into a government fund for warheads and distributed it to starving families around the world. That was how he had ended up in prison. Kinder Corp was the business he’d started as soon as he got out. It was the largest data security company in existence, but it was so much more. Kinder Corp’s research arm was working to save the environment, help the poor and generally make the world a better place.

She closed the magazine and looked at the cover photo again.

Why can’t I meet someone like him?

Okay, he was twenty years older than she was, but that didn’t matter. Jack was her hero. Like her, he’d fought against criminals by using his abilities as a hacker. He’d changed the internet. He’d changed the world. Maybe he was her destiny, her soul mate.

She yelped as she was jolted out of her fantasy when three loud thumps slammed against her apartment door.

“I know you’re in there!” A rough male voice bellowed from the hallway.

Crap.

Lara sank into her seat, hiding on the couch and remaining silent. She recognized the voice. It was her landlord, Joe.

“You’re late! Rent isn’t free.” He shouted through the door, giving it one more bang to drive home his point.

She knew she didn’t have enough money to pay him.

“Don’t mess with me, girl. You’re out of time. Pay me by the end of the week, or you’re on the street.”

She listened to his heavy footsteps pounding down the hall as he walked away.

I’m so screwed.

Once she was certain he’d gone, she straightened up on the couch. She didn’t have a choice. If she didn’t get a job soon, she was going to be kicked out.

She sighed, picked up the mini-mart application and grabbed a pen. She couldn’t put it off any longer, but it felt like a death sentence. She shuddered as an image of herself at sixty, still stocking shelves at a convenience store, filled her mind.

She paused when she came to the section about her employment history.

“Tell us about your previous work experience.”

I’ve hacked into a multinational cosmetics company and changed their logo to read: “Thumper died for this shit, and the parabens in it will give you cancer.”

She shook her head. She was probably going to be stacking those cosmetics on a shelf if she got this job.

I’ve hacked into a big – brand food company and changed their public profile to read: “Low fat and loaded with sugar after careful removal of everything that’s good for you. Guaranteed to give you diabetes and a potbelly.”

She sighed, picturing herself ringing up customers buying these snacks.

This sucks. There has to be a better way to earn money.

While staring at the form, she contemplated hacking into a bank. She was certain she could do it, but that went against everything she believed in.

It’d be easy money.

She shook her head. There was nothing easy about stealing. Someone, somewhere would get hurt by it. She clenched her fists, crumpling up the application in the process. No matter what happened to her, she refused to go against her own ethics.

Hackers are supposed to right the wrongs in the world, not serve themselves.

Coding was an art, a gift. Her purpose as a hacker was to expose those who used their power to prey on the powerless. If she used her coding skills to rob a bank, she would be just as bad as that bastard Alcott was.

She turned to look at her computer. The real world sucked, and the online world of endless possibility called to her. Maybe she should try her luck at internet gambling…

She blinked with surprise as her laptop screen flickered before displaying a black rectangle surrounded by a pulsing red light. She stood up and walked toward her desk. As she drew closer, she could see that the black shape was an envelope.

What the hell?

She sank into her chair, tapping her fingers on the mouse mat. It was a Flash site that had automatically opened on her screen. She instinctively knew that if she clicked it, it would open. The question was what would she find inside it, a virus?

She had just hacked Alcott’s website. Her pulse raced with fear, but she couldn’t imagine that someone would bust her by sending her something that looked like a party invitation. While she was trying to decide what to do, a pen appeared on the screen. It was writing something on the envelope in sparkly gold letters.

It’s probably just a spam pop – up, right?

LARA.

A chill ran down her spine. No one should know her name. It wasn’t in her laptop because she was Shadow Reaper online.

She frowned, considering her options. Her laptop had multiple backups, so her data was safe. She didn’t fear someone hacking her shitty life. It wasn’t as if they could make it any worse. With reckless abandon—not to mention irresistible curiosity—she clicked on the envelope to open it.

It opened to reveal a dark red letter with golden words printed on it.

DEAR LARA,

YOU HAVE BEEN INVITED TO ENTER INTO THE KINDER AWARDS, OUR NEW, ELITE COMPETITION FOR THE VERY BEST HACKERS IN THE WORLD. THE WINNER WILL RECEIVE A CASH PRIZE AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE AN INTERN AT KINDER CORP’S CALIFORNIA HEADQUARTERS.

TO ACCEPT THIS INVITATION AND ENTER THE FIRST ROUND OF THE COMPETITION, CLICK ENTER.

I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU COMPETE.

JACK KINDER

KINDER CORP

Lara stared at the message, wide-eyed. Getting a job at Kinder Corp was like winning the lottery, especially if you didn’t have a degree from MIT to wave around. This could mean a new life for her, a stable one with a bright future.

Her face flushed as she reread Jack’s name.

This has to be a joke. Why would they choose me? None of my hacks have been major, except maybe Alcott’s website, and they couldn’t possibly know—

She opened a browser window and pulled up alcottforgov.com. It looked exactly like it had before she’d hacked it.

She narrowed her eyes as she scrolled down. All the elements of her hack were gone. Her eyes widened when she glanced at the bottom of the page. The footer no longer said Shadow Reaper. Instead, it read:

THIS SITE IS PROTECTED BY KINDER CORP.

She gulped.

That’s how they found me.

Although tempted to hack in and change the DA’s site again, even she wasn’t that stupid. Kinder security would trace her in a second.

She closed the browser window and stared at the invitation. It seemed like an opportunity, but on the net that usually meant a scam.

How would they know I worship Jack Kinder? Even a hacker can’t get into your head.

What about your desktop? A cynical voice in her mind asked.

Her heart pounded as she stared at the golden words. What if it was legit? A smile hovered on her lips. Why not take a chance? She had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

She glanced around her crappy apartment, scowling at the pile of applications on the coffee table. The life she had wasn’t the life she wanted. What she wanted was to save the world and marry Jack Kinder. Maybe, if she won this contest, she could accomplish both.

What about Alcott?

Maybe I can do more good with Jack Kinder’s help.

One thing was certain. There was nothing to gain by going against Kinder Corp.

The cursor hovered over the word ENTER. She grinned as she clicked it.