Playing With Fire

by Adrienne Woods et al.

  I set the security system for my house and reluctantly left. Millburn was a pleasant and safe community, but still, outside it was that creepy kind of quiet only 3 in the morning can pull off. It felt unnatural to not only be awake but out there, as if that eerie stillness would devour me any second.

  A man exited the back of the limo and introduced himself as Brandon. He seemed older, maybe in his fifties, gauging by the gray peppering his black hair and subtle wrinkles. His pale complexion gave me the impression he was in IT.

  I shook his outstretched hand, only because I found people tended to treat me like a leper when I refused. Physical touch was something to be avoided, if possible. However, in business, if you didn't shake hands, it often led the client to the faulty conclusion that I couldn't be trusted. Really it was more the other way around, but I learned to suppress my discomfort and even managed a small smile. "I'm Cass."

  "I've heard so much about you, it's such an honor to meet you!" Brandon wore the biggest grin, and it seemed genuine enough. He assisted me into the limo and sat across from me by the divider partition.

  "So, what do you do at Dynatech, Brandon?"

  "I'm the lead information security officer."

  The bags under his eyes confirmed he was telling the truth. This poor guy was probably running on three hours of sleep since the whole thing started. And for all the effort he was putting in, the hours trying to thwart the hackers, coming out here to meet me...chances were good he'd be fired after it was over. I liked to believe some of them kept their jobs. But after so many offers of employment from the companies I contracted for, it seemed unlikely.

  I tried not to think about these things. Though it didn't sit well with me that people got fired after I fixed issues, my work was a necessary evil. Paying hackers was a losing game. And no matter what new security products popped up, there was always some douchebag to find a way to get around them.

  "When did you first notice the breach?" I asked.

  "Three days ago. We thought it was simple malware, but we couldn't remove it. And then it spread. Yesterday, we got the ransom request: 200 million." He let out a frustrated kind of laugh. "I don't get how they penetrated our firewall. We've got one of the most secure networks in the world. Every day I'm scanning for vulnerabilities, applying patches, keeping it all clean. I'm baffled."

  I nodded, letting him continue. He went into specifics, talking about the network, how many servers and workstations it had, what he thought was the probable point of entry, though how still eluded him. I tried my best to look interested, but it was hard enough to keep my eyes open. I felt them start to droop, when Brandon cleared his throat.

  "I apologize for having to bring you in so early, but we're working against a deadline."

  "Yes of course," I said, masking my yawn with my hand.

  A roguish grin appeared on his face. It made him seem younger somehow, more like in his twenties or thirties, around my age. "Perhaps there's a way I can keep you awake."

  He pressed a button on the console to his left, to raise the blackened divider window. Then he kneeled in front of me and started to unbutton my pants.

  I stared at his motions as my brain attempted to process what was happening. I wasn't sure how to react, how to even feel about it. Before I could object or question his actions, my pants and underwear were lying at my ankles. He slid his hands under my ass and pulled me forward. Then his tongue went to work on me.

  I'd never felt such intense pleasure. His technique was flawless, coaxing me closer and closer to orgasm. A random thought popped in my head: did I remember to shave? I tried to dismiss it, focusing on the pleasure of his tongue inside me.

  But then I paused. How can I do this? What if something happens, what if he...

  I was on the brink of orgasm, when he stopped and morphed into Pete. "I only want to be with you, Cass."

  I screamed. It was enough to startle me awake.

  "Are you okay?" Brandon asked.

  I found myself breathing rapidly, but I was fully dressed, and Brandon was seated across from me. It was a dream?

  "Did I fall asleep?"

  Brandon smiled. "You did. You seemed so peaceful, I didn't want to disturb you. But then you screamed, did you have a nightmare?"

  "I...yes. I'm sorry."

  "Don't apologize," he said, and smiled slyly. "I know a way to make it all better..."

  Before I knew it, his lips were on mine.

  Chapter 2

  I shuddered at the intensity of the kiss. In fact, I shuddered so hard, it woke me up.

  A dream within a dream? Damn, I need to get out more.

  Brandon was still droning on about security and their network, his eyes focused on his laptop. Holy shit, did he not even notice I was asleep? I wondered how long I'd dozed off.

  My dreams, what did they mean? And Pete. I hadn't expected to see him again. I guess he had holed up in the back of my mind, never really leaving. I wiped the tear from my eye as soon as it fell, hoping Brandon didn't notice.

  Gauging by his continued rambling, I guessed he didn't. Brandon wasn't that bad, as far as IT guys went. Oblivious, maybe, but at least he wasn't trying to talk down to me. And the information he gave would've been useful to most people, so I couldn't fault him for that. Over the years, however, I learned to trust people less and computers more. The computers would reveal what happened. Until I arrived at their headquarters, everything else was just filling the silence.

  Brandon finally stopped talking, right as we arrived at Newark. The private jet commissioned for the trip was a pleasant surprise. More often than not it was a helicopter, and even the nicest helicopters didn't compare to this. There was a big screen TV with the news on. Another missing person suspected to be enhanced. The newscaster warned, "If you have any information on this individual, authorities urge you to let the police handle it, for your own safety."

  I shuddered. It's as if the world believes we're a bunch of feral animals, waiting to take out an eye or something. With stories like that, distrust seemed the perfect mechanism for dealing with people.

  The comfort of my seat finally made it to my brain, and I began to relax. It felt more like a familiar armchair worn from years of use than a typical restrictive airline seat. It wasn't long before I succumbed to that total comfort, and I only awoke at the feel of Brandon's hand on my shoulder.

  I recoiled from him, a natural reaction to his unexpected touch.

  "We've landed." He eyed me curiously, looking offended. "I didn't mean to..."

  "It's okay," I responded. "Just caught me off-guard."

  I was never so grateful to have forgotten my dreams, to be blissfully unaware that I'd even dreamed at all. The last thing I needed was Pete haunting me again, distracting me.

  Atlanta felt balmy, even in the early morning, like a kind of unrelenting summer spell. Visiting the South always put me on my guard. There was a disingenuousness running rampant here, disguised in hospitality. It put my nerves on edge every time and made my general unease around people upgrade to full-blown misanthropic distrust.

  Another limo ride, this time to Dynatech Headquarters. A slew of executives, IT personnel, and even a personal assistant assigned to me. Cordial smiles masking panic and despair, as they ushered me deeper into the complex. An NDA signed, and a 30-level ride in an elevator. I cringed, feeling a headache coming on. It wasn't unusual to get one in a place like this, surrounded by technology.

  "Before you start, is there anything I can get you?" the personal assistant whose name escaped me asked.

  "Maybe some ibuprofen? And some coffee, please?" I said, then added, "If you have anything good." I was burned by the standard coffee offered company-wide too many times to just drink what was shoved in front of me.

  "Absolutely, Tad has an espresso machine in his office I can use." Tad was one of the executives—a CIO, CTO, or some other random set of letters. There were too many to remember, but I did recall them mentioning he wasn't in yet.

 
"We think this was the first machine affected," Brandon said, as he led me to a starkly furnished desk in the bowels of their IT department. "We were using it to test out a new network we had brought up, outside of the DMZ, and..."

  The machine was unresponsive, locked onto a command prompt window with the hackers' demands.

  I think he mentioned something about multiple IP addresses and maybe a VPN, but it was all background noise when I touched the tower.

  "I tried a reboot, it didn't work." A different voice, more superior than Brandon's.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, and then it occurred to me that I wasn't alone, especially when the circus of IT folk around me suddenly grew quiet.

  "You doing some new age healing crap?" That same voice snickered at his own stupid joke. "Should I get some candles? Burn some sage?"

  "Can I just have a minute?" I said, as I pulled my laptop out of my backpack. I fired it up, and as it was booting, I noticed all the blank expressions. And one smirk, which I guessed belong to the assclown who was just speaking.

  "How long is this going to take?"

  While it wasn't the assclown who asked it, I was fairly sure it was an executive who didn't understand IT.

  I forced a smile. "I have to diagnose it first, and then confirm the scope of the damage."

  The assistant came back with an espresso that smelled downright delicious. She brought it on a tray with cream and sugar, and at that moment, I decided she was the most useful employee I'd met.

  "Thank you so much, was it..." I began.

  Stacey," she said, not missing a beat. "Is there anything else I can get you?"

  "Just a little time to look into this," I said, trying hard not to sound annoyed. A swarm of IT people surrounding me, watching over my shoulder, or second-guessing me wasn't conducive to finding answers.

  Brandon wore this scalded puppy dog expression, and it was obvious his feelings were hurt.

  I sighed. "Your input was very helpful, thank you." I looked around. "Everyone, thank you. I only need a few minutes to get set up and start my investigation."

  At that I saw some heads nodding, though the panicked expressions remained. It took a few seconds for them all to head out, and I was finally left alone. I had to protect the fact that I was enhanced—most people were afraid of us, and with all the recent news coverage, it was like a witch hunt out there. If people saw me gleaning information from a computer by simply touching it, my life would be over.

  I fixed my coffee how I liked it—with a moderate amount of cream and two sugars. And then I took a sip. It was like my whole body turned on, half because of the caffeine, half because of the sheer lavishness that made its way down my throat.

  "Stacey?" I said aloud.

  She appeared in seconds.

  "This coffee is amazing! Thank you."

  "It should be, coming from the CFO's office." Her smile put me at ease. She added in a whisper, "I think that machine costs half my salary."

  I laughed. It was so nice to talk to someone with a personality. Of course, I knew that was unfair, Brandon probably had one—he was just too stressed out and sleep deprived to show it.

  "Thanks again, just what I needed."

  She nodded and left me alone without another word. Definitely my favorite person here.

  I touched the tower again. My eyes involuntarily closed. And the machine spoke to me.

  In truth, I've always been good at languages. Fluent in 26 spoken languages and hundreds of computer languages. Communication is a natural talent. And it's also my talent that got "enhanced."

  "It's a blessing and a curse," Pete had said. "These powers make us special, and we should share our gift with the world."

  I wished it were that simple. Pete was always a bit naïve when it came to things like that. Grandiose statements about humanity and how we could help. But the world wasn't ready for enhanced. The creation of the OCEI, short for Organization to Contain Enhanced Individuals, made that obvious.

  My enhanced talent is to communicate with machines and understand them. I'd like to say they spoke to me in English and that the whole process was as effortless as simply having a conversation. But nothing in my life has ever been that easy.

  The computer revealed itself to me as soon as my hand rested on the tower, a glorious outpouring of code. In its native operating system language, it explained everything that happened. It was my job to make sense of everything it gave me, to discover exactly what was going on.

  No matter how complex the ransomware, be it encrypting, leakware or mobile, I could always still communicate with the infected computer with my "gift," as Pete called it. But that took time; programs are like people sometimes, giving you a lot of extra information that didn't matter.

  "Any progress?" I guessed it was an hour or two later, and Brandon was suddenly behind me.

  I let out a frustrated sigh. Communicating with humans? Not quite as straightforward. Comparing a thousand lines of code was easier by far.

  "Yes, but I need more time." I managed a small, awkward smile. It was enough to get him to leave.

  The comparison software made it through the first chunk of code. From what it found so far, removing the malicious code wouldn't be too difficult. How long it would take, with a network this size, was another question. But I'd written programs before to push out mass changes, it was only a matter of adapting the code to their environment, changing a few variables, and then deploying it.

  As I traversed the changes list, I realized Brandon was wrong. This wasn't the first machine to be infected. And from what I saw in the code, it appeared as if the malware were intentionally uploaded. I wouldn't know for sure until I looked at the computer where it all started. Gauging by the computer name—ATLCFO1, I was pretty sure where it was located.

  In the office with the most amazing espresso machine ever.

  Chapter 3

  I stretched my arms overhead, still trying to become a fully functional human being. I was closer to an answer, which was good, but how receptive the executives would be to the idea that Tad was behind it all, was another matter entirely. I figured I'd feel out Brandon first, while my computer continued to isolate the anomalies.

  I peeked my head out into the adjacent hallway, where I found Brandon pacing.

  "Tell me you've got something..." he said, his voice a mixture of dread and hope.

  "This wasn't the first machine," I said.

  "It wasn't?" His brow wrinkled. "But my forensics traced it back to this machine."

  "The malware was distributed from this machine, yes. But I believe it was uploaded from Tad's computer. Can I take a look at it?"

  Brandon's lips parted. "Tad? No, that can't be. Are you sure?"

  Sometimes I wondered what the hell the point of talking was, when no one really listened. "Well, I won't be until I can get on that machine..."

  "Of course," he said mechanically, but his mind seemed somewhere else entirely. He walked me over to Tad's office. The espresso machine was as glorious as I pictured it in my mind, and I was tempted to ask for another cup. But Brad wasn't all there, and as much as I wanted the coffee, the frustration of trying to communicate that wasn't worth the trouble.

  "I don't have his password or anything, I'm not sure what you'll be able to do." He folded his arms against his chest. I wasn't sure if he was being protective of Tad, or if it was just another typical male in IT underestimating what I could do. "So, are you saying Tad is responsible for this attack, or someone just got to his computer first?"

  "To determine that, I need some more time," I said, as politely as I could, but I think some of my frustration filtered through.

  "What is it you do, anyway?" Brandon asked, his tone sounding suspicious. "I mean, I don't understand how it is that you determined—"

  "I don't have to explain myself or my methods to you. You contracted me to do the work, which is what I'm trying to do." I stood and met his gaze. "Shall I continue, or are we ending this contract?"

&nbs
p; His eyes grew large. "No, no, that's not what I... This is a serious accusation. I could lose my job if..." He cleared his throat. "Please, continue."

  I opened my laptop and logged in. Still he was there, staring at me.

  This friggin guy... Then I had an idea to keep him occupied. "I could use another coffee."

  He seemed painfully confused, so I motioned to that glorious espresso machine.

  "Oh, okay." He looked dejected, but he complied.

  The computer box was on Tad's desktop, so I was easily able to touch it without Brandon seeing.

  I verified the computer name and found the timestamp on the file that started it all. It was dated three days ago, like Brandon had said, with a timestamp of 8:36PM.

  Brandon muttered, "I have a master's degree. I should be able to figure out a fucking coffee machine!"

  And then Stacey appeared in the office, as if summoned. "Let me get that," she said, and without waiting for a response, she took over.

  "Brandon, is there video surveillance here, in these offices?" I asked.

  "Yes. I can have the security guys send up footage, for what time frame?"

  I relayed the timestamp, and gratefully accepted the coffee Stacey gave me. Brandon made a call to get the footage.

  "Can you explain what the hell the two of you are doing at my desk?"

  In the doorway stood who I presumed to be Tad. Brandon confirmed it by rushing to his side.

  "We're in the middle of the investigation," Brandon explained. "This is Cass, the consultant we hired to help."

  "Cass...Lexington?" His complexion seemed to drain of its color, but he approached me nonetheless. He extended a hand to shake. "You should know, I had nothing to do with this."

  As I shook his hand, I could feel the electricity of his accelerated heart rate. Tiny beads of sweat formed on his brow. And a feeling something akin to a tingle swept through my head.