Flawed

by Kitty Cox

  Unless he planned to frame someone? Unless he was trying to protect himself?

  "Chance?" she asked, turning to look at him. Her voice quavered.

  He was waiting, his back pressed against the counter. "Anything you need, Sugar. Anything."

  "Get the FBI here. Now."

  "Yeah." He reached for his phone, but she wasn't done.

  "I think one of our coders gave access to all the spammers. I think we have a leak."

  "Fuck." He dialed, gesturing for Braden to watch the food still cooking, and walked toward the bedroom with the phone pressed to his ear. At the end of the hall, she heard him say, "Bradley? Hey, it's Chance Hunter..."

  "What are we doing?" Braden asked, grabbing a spatula and flipping slices of fish over.

  "First, eating. Second, you're helping me with these accounts. Third?" Dez took a long pull on the beer. "I'm going to make that bastard wish he'd never picked a fight with me. I'm tired of running. I'm tired of waiting for someone to save me. I'm fucking tired of being scared all the time. If he wants to make this a fight, then I'll fight – and for the first time in my life, I've got everything I need to make it a god damned world war."

  "Yeah," Braden agreed, "but what are we doing, Dez? How do we fight back?"

  She sucked at her beer again, letting her mind go free. Options swirled. Possibilities collided. It sounded great to fight back, but how? Who was she even fighting against? They? Them? Some mysterious group that didn't have either a face or a name, just an IP address...

  "You're going to help me sort these beta testers into a new group and figure out how the fuck they got onto our forums." It was right there. She'd been an idiot. It was staring her in the face the whole time. "Then we're going to track the bastard that's trying to make this company into a laughingstock. And I have a funny feeling that the best way to find them is on my old blog."

  "Uh." Braden moved the pan off the heat. "Dez, is that legal? The FBI is about to be in the building. Not really a good time to start pulling that shady shit, ya know?"

  "It's legal," she assured him. "Well, this part. All we need is Google. Tracking people is public knowledge, for the most part. You just have to know what you're looking for."

  "Right." He glanced down the hall, checking for Chance. "And then what? So you get some IPs. You can't figure out who they belong to without – "

  "The FBI," she finished. "And if they won't help us, I can at least run them against the forum spammers. It might not do a damned thing, or it might prove that they're related. Maybe we have five people. Maybe five hundred. I won't know until I look."

  Chance's voice entered the room before him. "Start looking." He dropped his phone on the counter and headed straight for the oven. "Dad's friend Bradley Matthews and one of his agents named Jason Raige are coming the day after tomorrow. Raige is supposedly involved with cybersecurity as well as domestic terrorism." He reached into the cabinet for plates. "And he's honestly interested in tying this to what happened before, Dez. There may be some tough questions."

  "Yeah."

  "You gonna be able to handle it?" He cocked his head to the food, but the look in his eyes was sympathetic.

  Dez peeled herself away from the couch. "Yeah." She chuckled, realizing she meant it. "It's kinda easier when people understand that being attacked online isn't something you can just turn off."

  "They'll ask about your abduction."

  She took the plate from his hands and stretched up to kiss his cheek. "It's ok, Chance. I'll probably freak out, lose my shit, get drunk or something, but it's ok. I got a couple of heroes to save me now."

  He just shook his head. "I think you're doing a pretty good job of saving yourself."

  "Maybe." She moved beside Braden and started filling her plate. "No one said there has to be just one hero to the story, right? I figure the two of you – well, the whole damned team, really – putting up with my shit? That's right up there in the amazing category. Kinda feels nice to have a little backup."

  "Always," Braden said.

  Dez looked up at him, smiled, and then did something that would matter more than words could say. She rubbed his arm. "Thanks."

  He huffed out a small laugh, but his eyes were sparkling with moisture. "Just payback for not firing my ass. I always wanted to be a top developer for one of the biggest game companies." He ducked his head and swiped at an eye. "Fuck, Dez. You're turning me into a pussy."

  From the other side, Chance patted Braden's shoulder. "Yeah, guess that's why those asshats are so afraid of having some girl gamers."

  "Or they can't get laid," Dez grumbled.

  Chance groaned, but he didn't sound upset at all. "I think I finally understand those idiots. They're just scared the girls will think they have a little dick."

  Dez tapped Braden's shoulder and held up her hands. "Pretty sure that's not small."

  "Wait." Braden looked at her, then spun to look at Chance. "Seriously? You two are fucking and no one told me?" His head jerked back to Dez. "I need all the details."

  Chance tossed his hands into the air and headed to the sofa. "Talk about me behind my back or something!"

  Chapter 35

  After they ate, Dez went back to crunching numbers – well, account numbers for beta testers, at any rate. After about an hour, Braden joined her. When the kitchen was clean, Chance made it a trio. None of them said a word. For a moment, it was like old times, back when Silk was still more idea than game. Outside, the night was calm. The building creaked its complaints, and from the guest rooms, the sounds were interesting at best. Evidently, Sam and Tim were doing a little more than sleeping and hadn't figured out just how thin the walls were.

  Sometime near dawn, Braden fell asleep. He didn't go to bed, he just put his head on his arm and kept typing until his eyes closed. Chance sent him up to the loft and brewed another pot of coffee. When the first coder showed up at eight, even Dez's eyes were getting heavy, but she was on a roll. She made it, though. Just before lunch, she typed in the last spammer's account number and saved the new list. While she waited for everything to close and her machine to shut down, she propped her elbows on the edge of her desk and used her hands to hold up her head. She had the data. The last file was syncing. She just closed her eyes.

  And woke up snuggled against something warm and solid. For a moment nothing made sense. Her head was on a pillow. Noises were coming from the living room. Then she realized she was in bed, still dressed, curled up against Chance. He'd carried her up, and she hadn't even stirred. Dez closed her eyes and fell back into a peaceful oblivion.

  "Chance, Dez! Get up!" The voice came from a woman and wrenched Dez straight up in bed. Leaning through the doorway was Amy, looking frantic. "All hell just broke loose."

  "What?" Dez asked.

  Amy looked behind her, then back, as if ready to bolt. "Silk won't load. Beta server's down. Tried loading the backup and it's gone."

  Dez was moving before her brain could even engage. Beside her, Chance rolled out of bed, reaching for his phone to check the time. "Who accessed it?"

  "Everyone," Amy gasped. "Mark checked, and there's nothing that stands out, but the game's reverted back to April. It's like all of our work just vanished!"

  "Braden!"Dez didn't think, she pushed past Amy, heading into the living room.

  The man in question was still on the couch, trying to get his shirt on the right way. "I'm up."

  "Brew the damned coffee," she snarled, "and meet me at my desk. We've got a problem."

  "Didn't do it this time," he swore.

  She knew. She also didn't care. Whatever had happened was a bit too convenient. That someone was trying to fuck up her life was one thing, but Silk? That was going too damned far. She didn't even wait for her bodyguards, Dez just aimed right for the stairs, the look on her face terrifying enough that the entire first floor fell silent. They all looked up at her.

  "Call whoever you need to," she snapped. "No one leaves until it's up. No one! Someone catch me up
with the least amount of words possible."

  Jeff pointed to her desk, taking an intercepting path. "About half an hour ago, beta testers started dropping. Bug reports came in saying latency had made them lose connection. Ten minutes later, the whole thing went down, and the entire server bank rebooted."

  "Fuck," she muttered, pressing the power button on her own machine. "Jeff, unplug the ethernet on the back of that for me?"

  He didn't ask. He just pulled out the cable that connected her computer to the rest of the network. Dez flashed him a smile. It probably wasn't very friendly, but she'd at least tried. Then she dropped into her chair and waited for Windows to let her log in. As soon as her desktop loaded, she clicked on the pretty little folder in the upper left, right under the recycle bin, then breathed a sigh of relief.

  "Can you get me the biggest external drive in the building?"

  Jeff's face split into a grin. "You got it?"

  "As of eleven am. Yeah."

  "You are one paranoid, fucked-up freak, Dez, but I'm glad you're on our team."

  "Me, too." On impulse, she reached out and gently touched his arm. "But while you're getting that drive, can you ask the Flawed team to hang out?"

  He nodded and went to do just that. Another crisis diverted, but only barely. She'd been involved with enough games to know that this wasn't uncommon, but Deviant seemed to have a few too many questions left hanging around when something went wrong. It wasn't just bad code. It wasn't that they'd been trying to fix one bug and made another. No, the entire server and backup system had rebooted and auto restored to a very outdated save point? That was damned near impossible.

  Unless it had help.

  That meant she was right. She wasn't paranoid because they really were out to get her – well, them. Someone was trying to get all of Deviant Games, and Dez was just the most obvious reason why. She just couldn't believe that all the internet hype about some anti-woman gamer league was the real reason. There had to be something more to it. There had to be a reason why someone would hate women that much, because if she could prove this, someone had just committed what was basically corporate fraud.

  It took Jeff ten minutes to return with an external hard drive. Braden arrived with him, holding out a massive cup of coffee. It took them another hour to get everything copied like she wanted before she replaced the files. The last thing they needed was to lose the proof. A little feeling in her gut said she'd need it later. Something had to be hiding in all those corrupted files. But as soon as all that was done, she sent Braden downstairs to restart the servers and make sure they had properly restored to this morning's version. Yeah, the beta testers would lose a few hours, but if she could get the game back online?

  A few minutes later, the man in question burst into the room. "Try it!"

  Dozens of machines began to whir as all of the developers loaded up the game. The first one to whoop was Mark, throwing his hands in the air. "It's up!"

  "Let's see if it's stable." Dez gestured for someone to log in.

  They did. All of them did, and the game held. Within seconds, administrative spam was showing countless others loading into the game areas, which meant the beta testers had been randomly trying, trusting that the crash was no more than a temporary thing.

  "Amy?" Dez looked around, hoping for their PR person. "Let the players know it's back. Tell them to hit it hard. We need a stress test, and if they can get everyone they know online, that would be amazing. We had a little hiccup, but it looks like the problem has been resolved."

  "On it. We want to tell them what happened?"

  Dez met her eyes across the room. "Don't know yet. We just reverted to an earlier version and are watching for the problem to repeat itself. That's the best we can tell them."

  "Should be enough." She turned back to her screen and began typing away.

  Now, Dez needed to figure out why the entire system had just taken one massive crap on them. That meant she'd need help and a whole lot of it. The best part was that she didn't even need to ask. The Flawed team had jumped into action, and all of the logs had already been copied, backed up, and stored where they couldn't be tampered with. All of their futures counted on this being the best damned release the public had seen in a long time.

  She grabbed the external drive and stood, well aware that all eyes were lingering on her. "Team leaders, meet me in the server room. Coders, you can all go home, but keep your phones on. If I can't get everything restored, you will be called in. Silk releases in just four days, people. You all agreed to overtime to make sure this goes live without a hitch. I will hold you to that." She paused, looking around the room. "And if anyone knows why the game decided to take a vacation, let me know. If I find it on my own, the person responsible probably won't have a job come morning. Am I understood?"

  Heads bobbed. A few muttered something that sounded like assent. No one looked away like they were hiding something, but they all knew she was pissed. She could see it on their faces. No one wanted to be the person she decided to take it out on. As soon as Dez turned her feet to the server room stairs, the rest of the employees scattered like rats.

  Chance's voice stopped her. "Dez?"

  "Server room," she reminded him.

  "Stop being a bitch."

  Those words shocked her enough to make her stop. "What?"

  He was leaned over one of the computers, looking at her across the room. "We're all tired. We're all stressed. No one needs you to add to it."

  "Yeah? Well, if this game doesn't release as smoothly as its name promises, then we'll all be a little stressed when we're out of a job. Deviant Games is counting on Silk to pay the damned bills. It's time to stop playing around, Chance."

  He smiled, but it was a little too smug. "And they said I'm the asshole. You heard her. Go home, get some sleep, because who knows what tomorrow will bring, and we will expect you all to be here if there's a problem."

  While the coders slowly filed out of the back door, the original development team all made their way in the opposite direction. Dez led them right down and into the heart of this beast of a game. She waited until the heavy metal door at the top of the stairs clanked shut, then let out her stress in a huff.

  "Andy, is there any way to get another server up and running for a few days? I need it to back up Silk hourly, but keep every single copy." She waited for him to nod. "And I don't want it to be visible to anyone but us."

  "Think this was intentional?" Chance asked.

  "Yeah." She dropped her hardware on the counter. "I have a pretty funny feeling that the spammers got access to the forums from one of the devs."

  "Whoa now," Gavin said, holding up his hands, begging her to stop. "None of us would do that."

  "Coders," she corrected. "Guys, the usernames weren't auto-generated. They were gamer names. Some are players who had active forum accounts, and we haven't had any reports of hacked logins, have we?"

  "None," Amy assured her. "Got plenty of complaints, but that isn't one."

  Flynn reached up to scratch his hair. "I'm running on caffeine and determination so I might be missing something, but you think that's tied to this?"

  She nodded. "I think the people who wrote 'Frag the cunt' on the back door, spammed our forums with pretty much the same thing, and just crashed our game have a little inside knowledge. How else would they know so much about us if they didn't have ears in the shop?"

  "I'll fuckin' break their ass," Braden snarled. "Joining the team just to destroy everything? Do those fuckers – "

  Chance stopped him before he could get truly going. "Easy there, big boy. I think breaking their asses might get you thrown in jail." Then he sighed. "FBI is coming in tomorrow. Someone is trying to destroy this company, and I'm pretty sure we have enough proof."

  Tim chuckled and patted the closest server case. "We can find it, and these babies are going to help. What are we looking for, Dez?"

  "I don't know." From the silence, that wasn't what any of them had expected, so sh
e went on. "Something will stand out. Whoever is fucking up Silk is good. He's good enough that I didn't see it, and smart enough to wait until I was asleep, but everyone saw me pull the backup off my computer, right?"

  Sam groaned, understanding faster than the others. "And you think your machine is going to have a catastrophic failure soon?"

  "Exactly. Let's just see what stands out. I need you all to read every single line of code."

  Flynn sighed loudly. "I'll need to head home for a few hours or my girl's going to kick my ass."

  Dez just waved him down. "Do it from home. I'd rather our fan club doesn't know what we're doing, and if we're all hanging out here, then they'll start to get worried. Just let them think I'm down here chewing your asses."

  "Hence the bitch fest up there?" Chance asked.

  Dez lifted a brow and looked at him pointedly. "Nope. I was completely serious about that. I'm hoping it will be enough for someone to see something next time it happens. And guys?" She licked her lips. "I think we're going to have a next time. We just have to make sure we're a step ahead."

  "Fine," Amy said, "but you have to sleep. The rest of us can handle this. I'll take care of social media. Jeff can help if it gets bad – if you're cool with that?"

  He lifted a thumb in her direction. "Yeah, just call me."

  She nodded and kept going. "The rest of the devs can read code. You and Chance need to get some sleep. If some FBI guy is coming, then you need to have your brains on something other than caffeine before they arrive."

  Mark motioned for the group to start making their way out. "Then we have a plan. I'll take night shift tonight since I got enough sleep last night. Let's find the Oppression, guys. We got this."

  "Fuck yeah, we do," Sam agreed. "We can't let Dez get all the glory!"