Scavenger Hunt

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Chong created the place, and it quickly became the Amazon of the dark web. He administered it, but he also dove into the fray, and soon had set himself up as a go-between for several immoral but highly enterprising groups. He brokered deals for three percent, which was a deep undercut on every other broker for illegal goods and services, and as a result he got more business than he could handle.

  The only other place that challenged Portobello Road’s dominance as the place to go for anything and everything was another dark web marketplace called Silk Road. But the FBI closed it down in 2013, and its founder, Ross Ulbright was taken into custody. Silk Road 2.0 came on almost immediately, but it lasted all of a year before suffering the same fate.

  Chong barely noticed. As soon as Silk Road came down he had two items of business that took all his attention. The first was to make sure he reached out to all his clients on both sides of his deals and assure them that they would all be satisfied; that Portobello Road would continue. That was critical, because he knew that the kind of people he was dealing with would not take kindly to their money disappearing or their goods not arriving as promised.

  The second was to make sure the FBI broom wouldn’t sweep him up along with Ulbright and other Silk Road admins. He felt like his balls crawled into his stomach and continued heading north until they were about to pop out through the top of his skull, because he was about to do something really dangerous: hacking into the FBI databases to see if his name appeared anywhere.

  He felt like puking the whole time.

  He also felt truly alive.

  He found his name nowhere. He was clean – at least so far as the FBI was concerned.

  He turned back to the deals he had made.

  Silk Road 2.0 fell. Agora fell, as did Amazon Dark, Blackbank, and Middle Earth. Alphabay was shit from the beginning, and by the time it appeared it was nothing but a mosquito compared to the dominance of Portobello Road.

  His happiest moments were always when he was making his own way. Making his own money, taking what he wanted, killing his own parents with his hands and his mind. And Portobello Road was the ultimate extension of that, because he had created a world there, and that made him a god.

  The name was still a lie – you couldn’t buy everything, not even in Chong’s wild playground of wish fulfillment. But you could buy a lot, and all of it was illegal. Nothing small, either. No orders less than fifty thousand ever went through Portobello Road. That was the rule. It wasn’t a place for dilettantes.

  The money streamed in - Chong still took three percent of any deal he personally brokered, and half of one percent of all deals routed through Portobello Road – but Chong barely noticed. That hadn’t been the point for years. Now it was just the rush that came with the knowledge of his superiority. He lived in a two-room apartment in West Hills. Not particularly nice, not particularly seedy. Right in the middle. He flew under the radar that way, and the only real signs of what he was doing on the multiple computers and servers he ran in the second bedroom were unusually high levels of power consumption and a lot of internet data. But he paid the LA Department of Water and Power on time every month, and made his payments to the telecom company that supplied his internet, and no one said anything.

  Good times.

  Not the best times, though. The best times were the ones where Chong went out “into the field.” He lived for Portobello Road, but recognized that even that thrill would pale after time, unless he kept things fresh. So whenever there was a big enough client, or an interesting enough transaction, he saw to it personally.

  He personally oversaw transit and delivery of two tons of meth from the Seo-bong Faction, a Korean organized crime group, to the Camorra, an American crime family that had been a power in New York City for over a century and had decided to extend its business across North America. Once, he logged a seven-million-dollar deal that consisted of him taking a helicopter to deliver three coolers full of body parts, a gurney, and an aquarium that held a variety of tropical fish to an uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He even oversaw the transfer of six young girls that were taken out of various bedrooms in various middle-America states and were now bound via chopper to a place far enough into international waters that the laws against various types of sexual conduct were nothing but vague rumor.

  It was all so fun.

  He’d known – vaguely – that it couldn’t last forever, but he told that part of his brain to shut up, and kept playing in the make-believe land of Portobello Road. He was king, dictator, secret agent, banker, economist, hacker… he was everything.

  Then came the white room. Then came Mr. Do-Good.

  Chong was sitting on his chair in the front room. One of his few nods to his ever-bloating offshore accounts was that chair. It cost ten thousand dollars, and it sat in kingly majesty across from his one other major purchase (not counting the computers that hummed merrily in the next room): an eighty-inch UHD TV.

  On the huge screen, the Broncos were getting killed. Chong had fifty bucks on the game, betting the guy in the apartment across the hall that his team would come out ahead. The fifty bucks was nothing, but Chong loved winning.

  Unfortunately, the Broncos apparently didn’t feel the same way. After the second fumble, Chong pulled out a cigarette and yanked the lighter from his jeans. He looked nothing like a stereotypical hacker, he knew. He didn’t wear Coke-bottle lenses in black-rimmed glasses, he wasn’t thin enough to shatter in a heavy breeze, and he despised both Hot Pockets and Monster energy drinks. Instead, Chong had thick muscles honed under the merciless gaze of a personal trainer who also tutored him in Krav Maga, and he stood at a few inches over six feet.

  Usually Chong liked those facts; liked that on the rare occasions when he felt like hitting up a bar, he turned more than a few heads with his size and bearing.

  But sometimes – like now, trying to work his cigarette lighter out of the pocket of his shorts while cradled in a chair whose soft body had form-fitted to his own bulky form – he hated his size and his muscles.

  In the time it took him to get out the lighter and put the flame to a cigarette, the Broncos threw a pass that was intercepted and run to the fifty-yard line by the other team.

  “No, no, no!” Chong shouted. “Eyes on the prize, guys! Eyes on –”

  His cell phone buzzed. Chong cursed and worked it out of his pocket, albeit with a bit more speed and urgency than he had pulled the lighter out. He looked at the screen of the phone. Not many people had this number, and no one who was not rich or powerful.

  He read the message, then stood and, with one last muttered curse at the team that was going to cost him fifty bucks, headed out of the room. He went down the short hall, past his bedroom, and into the back room – the “office” where he kept the hardware that let him operate Portobello Road.

  He had consciously designed it to look like a junkheap to anyone who didn’t know better. Anyone who did know better would see a collection of the top computers money could buy. And those were the cheap ones. The better stuff was all hardware that Chong had custom-built himself, and he figured he had enough computing power in this small space to not only topple more than a few countries, but to then step in and keep them running smoothly afterward.

  A few – a very, very few – might also note that he had designed the layout to look like the super-hacker Neo’s operating area in The Matrix. No green lines of alien-like code appeared on these screens, however. Instead, each one held a matching image of David Tomlinson, crooning soundlessly as he danced through Disney’s idealized version of WWII Portobello Road.

  As soon as Chong entered the room, sensors located in the walls and on the computers themselves picked him up. Nothing changed visibly, but Chong knew that inside the computers a series of very fast calculations were occurring. Measuring his facial features, body temperature, and a host of other variables. They matched themselves to Chong’s profile, and then David Tomlinson stopped dancing and instead turned to say, �
�A spoonful of sugar….” The phrase repeated three times, and midway through the fourth Chong cut in to say, “Isn’t quite as fun as killing a baby seal.”

  It was a rotating passcode, that shifted based on the day of the week, month of the year, and several other variables that only someone with Chong’s mind could keep straight. Maybe fifty people in the United States. If either the passcode or Chong’s face and body measurements didn’t match up to what the computer required, a lockdown sequence would initiate, followed swiftly by the computer wiping itself clean of everything but a shell that would refuse to do anything but feed lines of David Tomlinson trivia to every wireless printer in a five-block radius.

  But Chong answered the password, and his face still belonged to him, so instead of becoming that idiot shell, David Tomlinson grinned out of all the screens, said, “Deee-lighted” in that accent of his, and the screens switched to the many businesses and deals going down on Chong’s definitely less idealized version of Portobello Road.

  Military-grade amaments, drugs, human flesh… it all made its way here, brought by enterprising souls who would hook up with buyers in need of just such “particular” merchandise. There was even a community bulletin board – Chong’s version of a Craigslist ad – where people could request anything from an illegal pet to a dead spouse… and where other people could post their willingness to provide just such things.

  Six screens were devoted to deals Chong himself was handling. All showed what looked like eBay screens, though eBay generally did not accept postings of or bids for Stinger missiles, high-quality opium, or dead children.

  Chong loved seeing the entire office, but those six screens were his favorite. They were his jobs. Portobello Road produced an insane amount of cash for him on a daily basis, just as passive income that came in as a result of the tiny commission it siphoned off after every sale. So much so, in fact, that no deal Chong oversaw himself would ever be more than a drop in the bucket.

  But those deals – and the computer screens that showed them – were what he lived for. He had been surprised by a lot of things in his life. By how easy it had been to kill Erin Westmoreland, then his parents. How easy it had been to teach himself to dance between the electrons of the internet, and then among the frantic, circuslike stylings of the dark web. How easy it had been to set himself up as first a broker of deals, then a participant, then an overseer of countless of them.

  But more than anything, he was constantly surprised that he didn’t really need most of it. Not the money, not the memories of murder –though those did have better replay value and more action than any Marvel movie – but the rush.

  So those screens – they existed as the moments where he rolled the dice. Where he played whatever cards found their way into his hands. And though he could have cheated often, he never did. He always played fair. Always scored the bid himself, never tried to lock out a competitor.

  Where was the fun in cheating? Where was the fun if you always knew you’d win?

  Now, though, as always, the temptation to do just that rose as he saw that one of the jobs he was bidding was going against him.

  But that was part of the fun, too, wasn’t it? The temptation to cheat, to lock everyone but himself out of the deal. The overcoming of temptation, and winning with nothing but his wits and his willingness to do whatever it took.

  One more murder came to mind, as always. There had actually been a lot of them, but the one he warmed himself with most often was that of Jerrod Hall, owner of, among other things, a bank account, a Ford truck, and a gun. When Chong was bored one day – bored bored boooored – after Silk Road closed, he had seen Jerrod Hall on the street.

  The man might be armed – even in gun-shy California, there were people who carried concealed weapons permits. The man might even be a gun nut; might carry enough deadly hardware to make Rambo think twice.

  Chong had grown surprisingly large, true. His muscles were hard and strong. He was a black belt in Krav Maga. But still, the odds were against him.

  He pretended to need help, calling out in faux pain as Hall walked past an alley that Chong hid in. The guy walked into the alley. And Chong killed him.

  He didn’t use a brick or the long-distance method of cutting brake lines and programming failures into a car’s electronics. He used his hands.

  Jerrod was armed. He tried to draw a gun, and Chong knocked it out of his hands and then squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until Hall wasn’t moving anymore. Then Chong cut off the man’s fingers – no good for the police to find bits of Chong’s skin under the man’s fingernails, which had raked his face a time or two during the fight. He buried them in different parks, shoved them into the knotholes of half a dozen trees. No one would ever find them – not without a helluva lot of time, a very concentrated and specific hunt, and a metric crap-ton of luck.

  He was terrified. He was in it. He was… alive.

  He went home and logged onto Portobello Road. Knowing he would make money hand over fist, and knowing he wouldn’t care about that at all. Just about the rush.

  4

  The possibility of losing, he knew, was the main part of the rush. But that didn’t mean he actually wanted to lose. No, he wanted – needed – to win in the end. That was why he went not to the computer that represented the call he had received while watching the Broncos, and what the caller wanted. He went to one of his smaller screens. The thumbnail on the Portobello Road sales page showed a series of small cannisters. Chong didn’t know what they held, and didn’t care. He only knew that he had a buyer interested in it, and one of the assholes bidding on it had just outbid him.

  Maybe the bidder was a private purchaser. Maybe a broker like Chong. Didn’t matter. The guy was going down.

  Chong entered a number a full ten percent higher than the highest bid. His client had been very explicit about the amount of money he would pay for the mystery product, and Chong had just exceeded it. But not by much, and he knew he would make up the difference out of his own account if it came to that.

  His client might be angry. That was okay. Chong would either be able to deal with it, or would have to take measures to ensure his safety – which would mean his client’s lack of safety; his death. But that was okay, too. That was all part of the rush.

  Another bid came in. “Stop outbidding me, you shit,” said Chong. He frowned, then entered another amount. So high no one could possibly meet it.

  This is definitely getting fun.

  He watched the screen. Mr. Moneypants on the other side of the bidding was quiet. Chong watched the bid timer countdown. It hit zero.

  “I win,” he said aloud.

  And inside, he said, Again.

  Only then did he turn to the other screen. Not much time had passed since his call, but he knew it was a high-value client on the other end of the phone. That was the only kind who had Chong’s number. And the dude was connected enough and rich enough that he might actually be able to do something about Chong screwing him over, if he felt like that was happening.

  So Chong got to it. He withdrew his phone again, then tapped a link. Several faces appeared on the phone. Kids’ faces. He grinned again.

  Good selection today.

  He turned to a third screen. This one had a list of payments, each assigned a code name that belonged to one of Chong’s personal clients. They were buyers or suppliers, each one either supplying goods or supplying to Chong the funds to purchase them. The funds were in bitcoin, which would be paid upon or before delivery. Each of the orders had a payment, and each was marked either, “Order pending,” “Order in transit,” or “Order fulfilled.”

  As he watched, the screen flickered. Chong frowned. That did happen from time to time, because even though he had battery backups, if the power went out in the world around him, those backups could not possibly maintain the same high levels of power as the good ol’ electric company.

  Still, the flickers made him nervous. He was a hacker. He knew what could happen if the co
mputers failed – or seemed to. He’d run a diagnostic as soon as he could. He should probably do it now, but his client was waiting. His important client. His dangerous client.

  And not checking his computer now would just add that much more excitement.

  The computer did it again. Now Chong’s danger radar, only pinging once at the first glitch, went into a long, sustained beeeeeeeep that sounded like an internal flatline in his head.

  Then the sound in his mind disappeared as a new sound appeared. Louder than the imaginary tone in his mind, and much lower. Not a beeeeeeeep but a buzzzzz.

  Pain arced through him. Pain, then a strange, disjointed sensation. He felt his forehead hit the side of the desk he had been sitting on – how had that happened? – and then he felt himself laying on the floor.

  Then… nothing. And the final thought:

  What… a… ru…

  5

  The thought that had sent him to dreamland was the same one sounding in his mind when he came out of it.

  … uuuush…

  What a…

  What…

  What a… rush…

  The feeling lasted as he sat up. As he saw that he was on a hospital bed. His first thought was that he’d had a heart attack. People who sat at desks did that, right? They had heart attacks. That was even kind of an exciting moment.

  Then he saw where he was. The bed, the other beds, the other people. The white room.

  The rush grew and grew and grew as he looked around, and suddenly it was a rush no more. It transitioned, as painful and shocking as anything Chong had ever experienced, to a new feeling. Panic.

  He was stuck in a white room with a buncha losers, and the only person with whom he’d come into contact since then was Mr. Do-Good. Which was bad, considering that Do-Good was definitely on the other side of whatever game Chong had suddenly discovered himself in.