THREE

I SEE YOU

Lara jerked awake, lifting her head off her keyboard and rubbing her eyes. Loud thumps and screaming echoed through the ceiling from the apartment above hers. She glanced at the time. It was 5:00 a.m.

I guess the couple upstairs are killing each other again.

She groaned and rubbed her back. Falling asleep bent over her desk hadn’t done her muscles any favors.

She stood up and stretched. She’d been writing code all night, creating new scripts that would assist her in hacking even the hardest targets. Her plan was to have an artillery of scripts to fall back on. She knew that she’d need to adapt to suit the specific challenge awaiting her, but the more scripts she had in advance, the stronger her chances of winning were.

With no idea what to expect in the final round, she aimed to cover every possibility. Dark Dayz wasn’t going to win by default this time.

She wandered over to her kitchen and flicked the switch on the kettle. There was only one way she was going to be ready in time: copious amounts of caffeine to help her work her ass off.

After throwing two scoops of instant coffee into a mug, she added sweetener and waited for the water to boil.

All she could focus on was the competition. The only thing she knew about it was who she was competing against. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the spoon she was using to stir her coffee.

If I’m going to beat Dark Dayz, I need to find his weaknesses.

She bit the inside of her cheek while trying to decide whether to work on the scripts for the competition or to hunt down her adversary instead.

There should be time for both, right? As long as I don’t sleep…

She went back to her laptop and booted up IRC. She needed some help, and Fire Wire—her best friend online—had some great scripts. Lara often wrote a script from scratch, but hacking was a permanent learning curve. Sometimes she’d take a script and rewrite it to do things that hadn’t been done before.

The focus of hacking, whether it was white-hat or black-hat, was to create something new. That was the motivation behind every code: knowledge, invention and innovation. Hacking was about pushing boundaries and exploring the unknown. Both types of hacker could expose a fault in an online banking system, but one would help the bank fix it while the other would take all the money. Although they had different agendas, the codes and methods were the same. White-hat hackers were the Jedi, and black-hat hackers were the Sith. Both used ‘the Force’, but their faction depended on what they used their power for—good or evil.

Sure, there were millions of script kiddies out there—those who used someone else’s script to hack—but she didn’t have a very high opinion of a hacker who only had the ability to click execute. Anyone could call themselves a hacker these days because they broke into something, but a true hacker was someone with the ability to create something new. Script kiddies caused a lot of the media-driven hate against hackers because they spammed out hacks without a target, hitting everyone with someone else’s code.

She logged in as Shadow Reaper and sent a message to her friend.

“Fire, what up, girl? You there?”

Fire Wire replied almost instantaneously. “Bitch, who pwned your ass on FB?”

Lara tapped out a quick reply. “Que?”

“Your profile’s been one-shotted. Haven’t you seen it?”

“Man, dat ass!” A hacker called Captain 1337 commented in the IRC channel.

“Pr0n! What I would give to spank dat,” another hacker called Night Burn wrote. “Who knew you had dimples, baby.”

What the fuck is going on?

She switched to her TOR browser to avoid any cookies or tracking JavaScript and logged into Facebook. She rarely used Facebook because of the privacy issues, but she also knew how to keep her identity well-hidden when she wanted to blast something out as Shadow Reaper.

She nearly swallowed her tongue when the page loaded. A new image had replaced the cover photo on her profile. What was once an image of a purple, cloaked figure called Shadow Reaper spanning across the top of her screen was now a photograph of Lara posing in a bikini with the words Dark Dayz Nailed Dat Ass! emblazoned beside it.

Nooooooooooo!

She recognized the photo. She’d taken it on her cell a few weeks ago. She’d just wanted to see how her new bikini looked. She didn’t have a full-length mirror, so she’d taken the picture instead.

Son of bitch, he hacked my phone!

Her face burned with humiliation, and she froze in horror as she considered how she looked in the photo. It was a side view, and she was bending forward to fit into the shot while looking over her shoulder at her phone. There was an embarrassing look of determination in her green eyes as she stood there, wearing nothing but a red bikini with her ass sticking out.

The swimsuit had been a rare indulgence, and now it was a source of humiliation.

She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths before she opened them again. The photo had seven hundred and fifty-three likes. It had been shared forty-five times and… Oh, god!

She scanned the comments, trying to force herself to breathe.

“Bitch, you fugly!”

“Take off the rest!”

“h4x0r pr0n.”

“lolz I wish I’d nailed it.”

“Hax!”

“lol Screenshot, or it didn’t happen.”

By the looks of it, the entire hacker community had dropped by to comment on her ass. If she wasn’t mistaken, a few trolls had dropped by to share their views as well.

Aside from the fact that her ass was now a public monument on Facebook, Dark Dayz had exposed her real identity.

What goes on the internet stays on the internet. I’m gonna kill him!

She decided against checking the B room on 4Chan—an anonymous chat room with no rules that was well known to most hackers. Because it had no rules, it was often spammed with vile images. She knew that what was happening to her photograph on there would be far worse. She narrowed her eyes, trying to think of the best way to fix this. Bullshit appeared to be her only option.

First, she took down the image. Then she composed a status update.

“Sorry to disappoint, guys. That was just a photo of Dick Dayz’s sister. Look at the size of her ass!” She hit post.

“Aw, baby, you wish you had an ass like that, though, don’tcha?” A hacker called Razor Blade replied instantaneously.

Lara rolled her eyes, ignoring him while she changed her Facebook password, for what it was worth.

She logged out, shaking with anger as she switched back to the IRC channel. Apparently, her photograph was the most exciting thing happening in the hacker world right now. The screen zoomed by, containing an array of tasteless comments, most of which involved her backside in some way or another.

Thankfully, she didn’t have any pictures of herself on the web. She kept her real life and her imaginary life completely separate. In the online world, Lara Grayson didn’t exist. She was hopeful that no one would connect the image to her. If that happened, her invisible existence was over.

She scowled. Dark Dayz had just thrown down the gauntlet, and she was going to respond in a manner he wouldn’t forget for a long time.

She logged into the zombie computer she’d set up on his server yesterday, but he’d already found it and revoked her access. She was irritated, but unsurprised.

Narrowing her eyes, she pulled up a password algorithm she’d been working on. It would find most passwords using a brute force attack, and brute force was exactly what she wanted to use on Dark Dayz. She ran the script, tapping her nails on the desk as she waited for it to find the password to his server.

It worked like a dream, cracking his password within minutes. She quickly hacked into his server and set up a new zombie computer that gave her total access to his machine.

Once inside, she could see all of his files, read his email and control anything networked to his online server. She grinned when she found access to his IP CCTV cameras, the webcam surveillance cameras for his house.

“Let’s see who you really are,” she muttered as she scrolled through stored video footage. She opened a file from last night, just after the last round of the competition had ended.

The soundless, black-and-white video was soundless as she viewed footage of a plush apartment with modern furniture. Near the glass patio doors that looked out onto a moonlit pool was a spacious computer desk.

Despite the colorless video, she could tell that she was looking at an amazing set-up.

Her breath hitched at the sight of such a badass PC. It had probably cost more than six thousand dollars. She felt a moment of pride that she’d managed to compete against such a monster of a machine with her little laptop.

She could see a man sitting at the desk, typing feverishly.

That must be him.

She studied the back of his head. His hair was a short, rumpled mess. She couldn’t tell from the black-and-white footage, but he might be a blond. He had broad shoulders and muscular arms, but he seemed to be ripped, not bulky.

Was he naked when he was hacking last night?

She widened her eyes as he stood up, and she breathed a sigh when she noticed knee-length surfer shorts hanging off his slim hips. Only his chest was bare.

When he stretched, the muscles in his arms and shoulders flexed, causing her stomach the clench in response. She shook her head.

You’re supposed to be finding his weakness, not checking him out.

As if he heard her, he turned toward the camera, and she got an excellent view of his perfect abs, along with a nice view of a well-muscled chest.

He picked a trilby hat off the desk and rolled it up his arm, dipping his head until he ended up wearing it, Frank Sinatra-style.

What a poser.

She studied his face. He looked young, around her age. He was attractive, she grudgingly admitted, with bright eyes and a strong jawline.

He tugged down the front of the hat before walking out of the camera’s view.

She had tried not to gape at his half-naked form, but there was something appealing about him. He walked with long, graceful strides and seemed confident in his surroundings.

He’s just some idiot rich guy.

She recalled his crack about nailing her ass and scowled.

That’ll happen when hell freezes over.

After he’d gone, she studied the room. It was open-plan with a large kitchen near the far wall and a sleek leather sofa in the center of the room.

She squinted as she moved closer to the screen, studying the refrigerator.

Is that a Mr. Fridge?

She opened a web browser and did a quick search. She was right. It was one of the most advanced smart fridges in the world. She could hack it.

Scanning the rest of the room, she realized that most of his house ran on smart technology. She’d been looking forward to hacking his computer. Now it looked as if she could hack his life.

“Dude, I’m gonna mess with you so bad.” She grinned as she began typing.

Continue Reading…