I leaned back in my chair, propping my Adidas covered feet on my desk. “You came in here to ask me that?”
“Well, I clearly wasn’t disrupting your workday.”
“There is no work to be done.”
She sighed. Low and deep, drawing air into her lungs at a slow speed and letting it out just as slow. I felt bad for bringing it up. Complaining about my job when she paid me so damn well. “Wren, I’ve said time and time again you can quit. My feelings won’t be hurt. I know your brain cells are shriveling due to boredom. I only offered you the job because-"
“Because I have Circuit.” I finished. I knew the reason why. As achingly normal as my nine to five day job was, once the sun went down and I took off my khakis, I sat down at a desk in an outdated building that appeared abandoned and used my skills to do some good. Not that having a hand in the success of my sister’s company wasn’t good, it was just… flat. Dull compared to the work I did at Circuit every night, working my fingers into arthritis until the sun found its way back into the sky.
I considered looking for another job almost every day the last six months. But truth was, I knew I’d compare every job to the work I did at Circuit.
“You can quit, Wren.” She reassured me, her brown eyes meeting my green ones. “I promise I won’t shave off an eyebrow in your sleep.”
A laughed popped out of me. “I would replace your shampoo with hair remover.”
“And then I would kill you.” She deadpanned, lips flattening and eyes narrowing. If I didn’t know her so well, I’d think she was serious.
“I’m not gonna quit, Gracie.” I said, using the version of her middle name only I used. “Every job is gonna be like watching paint dry compared to Circuit.” I nudged her waist with the tip of my foot. “Besides, I need to be here when this place comes crashing down. Craig is gonna fuck something up. I’m calling it right now.”
Before I could even think about extracting my leg from her personal bubble, she pushed up my pant leg and twisted the shit out of my leg hair. “Craig is not gonna fuck something up! Do not give us bad ju-ju.”
“God damn it!” I howled, spasming in my chair and yanking my leg back with so much force, I almost fell out of the damn thing. “Christ! I was joking.”
“I don’t do jokes.” She brushed her red curls behind her shoulder and dusted her hands as if she were proud of herself. Because I knew her so damn well, I was positive she was. “Back to Sunday. Are you going?”
“Probably.” I shrugged, still rubbing at my leg. Her long, fake nails had a bite to them. “I don’t see why not.”
Sunday family brunches were held bi-weekly in the Wilder family. Because Lilah and I lived together in an overpriced flat she mostly paid for in the center of the city, our parents rarely saw us. They were both retired and lived thirty minutes out of the city with a St. Bernard they named Paulanka. Lilah had the idea to start Sunday brunch as a way to keep our parents from packing Paulanka in the back of their Prius and ditching their little house for an apartment with a quarter the personality as their home all in an effort to stay close to their only children.
“Why do you ask? You aren’t going?”
She brought her bottom lip between her teeth and started chewing. It was her tell. And I knew right then she was feeling guilty about something. “I can’t go.”
“Why not?”
“Craig and I are going to Atlanta to help a client.”
“Okay?” I didn’t see the problem. But to my big sis, missing one family brunch to help her still developing company was practically a federal offense. We both took family seriously. But Lilah was attached to our parents in a way I often envied and didn’t understand.
Don’t get it twisted. I loved my parents with all I had to give. But Lilah would take down a third world country for them, and I didn’t know why. I strongly believed it had to do with the fact that she was a control freak and made herself sick trying to perfect all the pieces of her life. Making sure our parents felt loved even though they weren’t needed twenty-four seven was only one piece.
“Gracie, missing one brunch is not a huge deal. Don’t fret.”
“Just make sure you remind them I love them and I’ll for sure be at the next one.”
“I will.”
“Promise me, Wren.” She shot daggers at me, her upper lip curling into a snarl.
I promised her again, crossing my heart. I was certain she’d call them Saturday night and again Sunday morning. That’s just the way she was, and I loved her for it. Though Lilah was five years older than me, and I had no interest in playing with a single Barbie growing up, we were close. I’d even go as far to say she was my best friend.
But I’d never admit that to her. Or Ace, my actual best friend who’d put my nuts in a blender if he thought I was trying to replace him.
The sound of my phone buzzing against my desk forced a sheepish grin onto my freckled face. Lilah looked down at my phone and lifted it, showing me the screen though I already knew what it said.
It was an alarm. Set for 5 o-clock with the note “Purgatory is over. You are free.”
I flashed her a sweet smile and took the phone from her grasp, grabbing my messenger bag and plopping a kiss on her cheek in one swift motion.
“You can quit!” She called after me as I slipped from my office and headed towards the elevators.
“I’m good here!” I hollered back, not sure if she heard me or not.
The steel doors slammed shut and descended down into the lobby of the sky rise that held SevTeck. I pushed out into the warm summer air, inhaling car exhaust and pepperoni from the deli down the street. The apartment I shared with Lilah was a whole two blocks away. She chose the location because she knew she could walk to work without having to worry about traffic making her late to work. Me? I would’ve walked no matter how far the distance. I liked walking. I always have. I didn’t even get my license until I turned eighteen because I enjoyed shuffling around the streets, watching people and learning the town.
Also, it was a necessary form of exercise. When I wasn’t asleep in my bed, I was behind the screen of a computer. All them pepperoni subs I ate had to go somewhere. And it wasn’t gonna be my gut.
My walk lasted all of four minutes before I was striding into my building and stepping back onto an elevator. I rode up to the ninth floor in silence, watching the numbers above the door light up and stepping swiftly off the car when it made a pinging sound on number nine.
I unlocked the door and pushed inside the two-bedroom apartment I shared with my sister. At some point, I'd be an actual grown up and move out. But my thought was, why waste extra money on rent when I could buy another monitor or a third laptop?
I spent next to no time in my apartment. I was there long enough to slap together a sandwich, shuffle to my room, and change into jeans and an old T-shirt from high school. I turned and headed right back out the door, down the elevator, and back onto the street. I shifted my body and took a bite of my sandwich, licking mustard off my top lip. I headed in the opposite direction of SevTeck, crossing the street.
In the time it took me to finish my sandwich, I was pushing through the front doors and stepping onto yet another elevator. As soon as the steel doors shut, a keyboard extracted from the wall. I typed in my password and began my descent into my own personal Wonderland.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Circuit.
2
Wren
The average pedestrian walking down the street or driving down the road looked at the old building that housed Circuit and thought that’s all it was.
An old building.
I doubted even one of them wondered why the building had seemingly been under construction for more than two years. There was thick brown paper covering the glass doors and windows, caution tape and do not enter signs every few feet. The ruse only heightened once the front doors opened. Behind them lay the shell of an old credit union, all the furniture pieces ripped out ages ago. The whole place wa
s gutted, covered in a thick layer of dust and dozens of footprints. The old scaffolding and empty paint cans were all part of the scheme to make the place appear as though it was being transformed into something bigger, better, newer, and brighter.
It was my belief that’s all people saw and thought about when they passed the old building that was sandwiched between two brand new ones. Soon, they’d get something shiny and new to gawk at and take part in. I knew for a fact they had no idea the run-down credit union was home to a ring of hackers. People just weren’t as observant as they thought they were.
The elevator inside wouldn’t even open without hitting the up and down arrows in the proper sequence. Even then, there was no ding or lights that signaled when it opened. It simply did. Slid open with an old creak and slammed shut, trapping its passengers inside until they entered their own personal password into a keyboard that extracted from the wall and took their descent.
Once the doors opened, it was like stepping into a very technological, very illegal Wonderland. The beautiful underworld spanned the length of the entire building. There were desks everywhere, strategically laid out to mimic the inside of a circuit board. Though each circuit board was initially different, ours was created specifically and purposefully.
The power cords connected to each of us were spread out across the cement floor like a maze. It looked like complete madness, but there was a reason for it. All thirteen members were connected to the same central processing unit, exactly like a circuit board should. Each member had a duty, sometimes we had separate agendas, but if one of us stopped working or came undone, the entire unit would go down.
And that just could not happen.
A megaprocessor spanned the back wall, built from a shit ton of transistors and bright blue LED lights. The thing stood at six and a half feet tall and stretched thirty-two feet across the building. The first time I stepped inside Circuit and got a good look at the beauty in the back of the room, my mouth dropped open and I drooled.
I swear to the computer Gods, saliva fell off my bottom lip, ran down my chin, and hit the floor.
Not my proudest moment, but I still earned myself a spot on the circuit board.
Not only me, but Ace did too. We stood next to each other, gawking like a couple of people who just witnessed the moon fall from the sky. Ace took off running around the place, waving his hands in the air and screaming in delight. I thought Cruz- our fearless leader- was going to kick us out right then and there.
But rather than kick us out, he did something I haven’t seen him do since.
He smiled and gave us a tour.
Aside from the maze of desks and cords, and the megaprocesser that got us all hard, there was a staircase that led to a loft positioned right above the megaprocesser. There were a couple of couches, a few bean bag chairs, a television, a refrigerator, a microwave, and some cupboards that held a good stash of snacks. More than half our members spent most of their days here. Not everybody had a day job, though Cruz encouraged it. We were volunteers. Circuit didn’t pay us an ounce of money. We were all here because we wanted to be, and some people had the means to be here all damn day.
I was jealous.
I’d been a member for two years and had yet to take a nap on one of the oversized bean bag chairs or raid the refrigerator for all of August’s food.
“Wren!”
I spun at the sound of my name, spotting a hand flying above a computer screen and waving frantically.
“Zelda!” I shouted back, chuckling as I made my way through the maze of desks and power cords. “What’s up?”
“Cruz will be M.I.A for a few hours. He didn’t say why, just told me to spread the word.” She didn’t even look up as she addressed me. Her small eyes stayed glued to her screen, fingers covered in silver rings flying across the keyboard. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the screen, a huge wrinkle across her forehead as if she were trying to make someone explode with her eyes.
“Hell yes!” She slammed both her fists on her desk, knocking over a small Zelda figurine my team and I gave her as a joke. She pushed on the edge of her desk and sent herself flying across the room in her chair. She spun around in glee, clapping her hands deviously. “Take that, bitches!”
“Well, that took her twelve minutes.” August tipped back in his chair, propping his feet on his desk and folding his hands behind his head. He was four desks away but there were only five out of thirteen of us present right now. Because of the absent bodies, he had a clear view of Zelda’s bizarre happy dance.
“What’d she do?” I shuffled through the room and plopped down into my own chair, firing up my computer.
“Someone was fucking with Josie!” Zelda announced, using Hayden’s desk as leverage to launch herself back across the room. “And I just took care of it.”
“Does Cruz know?” I asked, lifting the cup I left on my desk last night and taking a generous sip of lukewarm, watered-down Diet Coke.
“Does Cruz know I was helping my girlfriend?” She shot back.
“No. Does Cruz know you’re pulling a black hat?”
“I was not pulling a black hat!”
“August!” I shouted. “What’s the definition of a black hat?”
“A person who uses hacking for personal gain rather than activism!” August’s definition bounced off the concrete walls and registered in Zelda’s head.
She frowned. “These assholes were trying to take down Josie’s site. I took down theirs first. That’s all. I could’ve done it with my eyes closed.”
Zelda’s girlfriend Josie was a freelance photographer. One didn’t have to be in the business to know how competitive it is. Any schmuck could buy a fancy camera, take a few pictures of someone in a nice outfit, and call themselves a photographer. Josie’s demand for customers was growing rapidly. Especially since everybody took their own photos with their iPhones or other fancy gadgets.
I didn’t know the whole story, but from Zelda’s ramblings, I’d put together the pieces and figured out another photographer was attempting to put a bug in Josie’s site.
What those assholes didn’t know was, Josie had a girlfriend who hacks into the secret service database on a regular Tuesday night.
Hell, Josie didn’t even know.
“That’s all you did?” August asked, shoving his hand in a bag of chips. “Wiped out the corny site they probably made for free with Wix?”
“It was Wordpress.” She corrected. “And yes. That’s all I did. I was helping an independent business owner.”
There were two rules at Circuit.
1) Remain Anonymous.
2) Never use your talents for evil or personal gain.
Zelda helping Josie’s business would’ve broken the second rule if it weren’t for the bigoted assholes who started it. Zelda simply ended it in the way she knew how. She stopped a few low-grade hackers from destroying a small business. That was not evil. That was good. Because at Circuit, we all wanted to be good.
“I say you’re fine then.” I shook my mouse, brought my screen to life, and typed in the three different passwords it took to get inside. “It’s just different because it’s Josie.”
“Yeah!” August shouted. “Gotta be careful. Your judgment could get clouded when it comes to your lady friend. Fizzle your brain and all that.”
“She fizzles my brain every night, my friend.” Zelda winked, turning back to her screen.
“TMI, dude!” August gagged dramatically.
I chuckled and took another sip of my warm pop. It wasn’t that bad, and my obsession ensured I could drink Diet Coke anyway I could get it. This old drink tasted more like water than actual Coke but I was not mad.
Why?
Because I didn’t watch a single ice cube melt in the six hours I was here last night. I had no time to give them names or watch them take their last little frozen breath. When I was at Circuit, ice cubes were not my friends. And I was not Wren Wilder.
I was Specter. I existed on the Dark Web a
s nothing else. The people I hacked into, the organizations I took down, the businesses I overrode all cursed the name Specter at night.
IP addresses could not be traced back to me. Hell, they really couldn’t be traced at all. Circuit was more secure than NASA or the CIA. The world knew we existed, but they didn’t know how and they sure as shit didn’t know where.
We were hacktivists, and the average Joe-Schmo would tell you hacktivism was a big hell no. There were headlines all over the internet, warning business owners and internet users of hackers. Our logo was stamped across articles, red Xs slashed through it. The half black, half white circular logo represented the good versus evil in our mission.
We liked to wreak havoc by breaking into a computer system that was supposedly secure. Usually, our efforts were aimed at big corporate suits or government targets. That also included, but was not limited to: terrorists, drug dealers, and pedophiles. We took down scumbags for fun. And oh boy was it fun. We exposed groups who sold illegal weapons and wiped out child pornography and sex trafficking sites on the daily. The biggest head trip of all was our relationship with the FBI. Their headquarters resided just across the river in Washington DC. A whopping fourteen miles away. We were right under their noses, risking a breach and sharing intel. Whether they wanted to admit it or not, we got shit done a lot faster. We had no protocol. No higher-ups to go through or permission to be granted. If we required permission for something, we shouted across the room to Cruz and waited for his grunt in response.
Our relationship with the FBI was typically one-sided. We gave them information and they used it. Just eight months ago, we’d found the home base of a drug ring the FBI had been investigating for nearly six years. Taking down those motherfuckers had been our biggest win yet.
“What’s up, Circuit?” Ace came bouncing out of the elevator, dressed in sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a pair of slippers. His thick blond locks brushed his shoulders when he walked. He had a bag of Slim Jims in his hand and held it out as he crossed the room. “Who wants a meat stick? Zelda? Nah, you probably don’t.”
Specter: Circuit Series Book One Page 2
