Mind Trace

by McCaghren, Holly

  After she finished her sad excuse of a dinner, she found her way upstairs to the Jacuzzi. It would give her a chance to wind down and make sense out of what happened.

  After filling up the tub, Alice quickly undressed in the chilly air and sank gratefully into the warm water. She felt the built-up tension start to melt away, if only for a time.

  The past few days have been so unreal. It's as if I just walked out of some science fiction novel, like I'm going to wake up soon and realize all of this was just some twisted dream.

  She glanced down at her hand and saw the fresh burns.

  ...but I know this is definitely not a dream.

  Alice knew she should make some sort of solid plan. She could hide at the cabin for a while, but not indefinitely. Someone would find her, one way or the other. She was not sure if it would be the authorities or EngineerCorp who found her first. She doubted she would be arrested, given the nature of her "crimes." EngineerCorp would want to keep the situation under wraps. They would not want her sharing everything she knew with some law enforcement agency or the FBI.

  What a day.

  Any other time she would have been thrilled to meet Eric Martin, to talk to the man that almost single-handedly changed the world. Today, however, seeing him made her want to run as fast as she could in the opposite direction. Whatever happened, Alice had to convince him that she had nothing he wanted.

  No one would ever suspect that the information was now neatly stored in her brain, and she wouldn't give anyone a reason to. If anyone found out her secret, she would never be safe again.

  I have to find a way to prove to EngineerCorp that this was all just one big misunderstanding.

  This is going to take a while…

  Grateful for the warm cocoon of the bath, Alice sunk further into the water and began to formulate a plan.

  ***

  Eric sighed deeply.

  I should have questioned why she was acting so strangely.

  He never would have dreamed that girl could be responsible for the breach, but if he had taken the time to investigate further, perhaps they could have detained her long enough for him to find the truth.

  It's of no consequence. She won't be able to hide forever, and I could use a challenge.

  There's something simply refreshing about field work. It can get so boring, being surrounded by people that cower beneath me. Here is a seemingly insignificant young girl, daring to oppose my authority... I'm going to enjoy the opportunity to remind her exactly who she's dealing with.

  He picked up a picture frame from a nearby table. Alice stood with a man and a woman, presumably her parents. The resemblance was clear, although the picture was obviously several years old. They stood in front of a lake, taken sometime during the fall. The trees in the background were fiery reds and oranges.

  A voice broke his reverie. "Sir, we've searched the house. The girl is nowhere to be found, but we've found some things in her files that might interest you."

  The man handed him a stack of papers.

  "Good. Keep searching. I want everything electronic confiscated, and anything that might give us a clue to where she is."

  He turned to look through the papers in his hand, dismissing the man.

  The top paper was an old newspaper article dated from over a year ago. It was detailing a fatal car accident on a remote stretch of highway not far from Asheville. As he scanned over the article, he came across a picture of the couple that passed away. It was the same man and woman from the photograph. The last sentence of the article said, "Mary and John McArthur, survived by their daughter Alice."

  The next paper was a high school diploma, dated five years ago. That meant Alice was fourteen when she graduated high school. That document was followed by a bachelor’s and master’s degree, all within the expanse of four years.

  Smart girl. The more I learn about her, the more I am intrigued.

  There was a healthy stack of awards for various academic achievements. She graduated at the top of her class in both high school and college. A community service award described how she had designed a custom management system for the city to manage its public records electronically. At the bottom of the pile was the title for a Ducati.

  Eric found himself almost impressed, despite his prejudice. He glanced up as his men were loading the last of the equipment into the SUV. Grabbing the papers, he exited the cottage and went to join them. There was nothing left for them to do, and he had far better resources on the EngineerCorp campus.

  When they arrived, they would sort through the evidence and decide exactly what they were dealing with. In the meantime, he leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes.

  Yes, I am going to enjoy this.

  ***

  Several hours after they returned to the campus, the engineers presented Eric with a summary of their findings.

  There had been quite a few computers and servers found on the premises. After running diagnostics on all of the hard drives that were found, none of them contained any data from the EngineerCorp servers.

  Additionally, they verified the identity of the computer that matched the MAC address of the one responsible for the breach. On it, they found the most complex and advanced series of security scripts, designed to block any kind of tracking that might occur. It would take weeks just to sort out exactly what it was doing, much less understand the logic behind it. The engineers would get to work immediately on analyzing the code.

  In the inventory, they also found a burnt Ethernet cable. Analysis on the wire proved that it had recently been burned, probably within the last twenty-four hours. The engineers also found traces of human DNA, including burned skin, on the wires, indicating that someone had been in contact with them at the time they were burned. Further analysis allowed them to match the sample to DNA from Alice McArthur's medical records.

  From there, it became more or less a summary of basic personal information for Alice. They knew what stores she shopped at, what places she frequented, her employment history, her credit history, who she socialized with, and more. From the most basic facts to the most trivial information, it was completely analyzed and reported to Eric.

  As for clues to her current whereabouts, there was little information. She had no living relatives to speak of. Either they had all passed away, or were too far removed to matter. Since her parents had died, Alice kept mainly to herself. Her cell phone was also a dead end. It had gone "off grid," but in all likelihood, it was untraceable in the same way as her computer had been.

  The lead engineer also mentioned that based on the volume of data supposedly downloaded from their servers, the target device had to have an impressive storage capacity, one beyond any normal computer. A server could have held the information, but no common computer or laptop would have that kind of storage capabilities. There had been no indication that she ever owned any type of device like that. The servers that Alice did possess had all been accounted for.

  The most likely scenario, if she had actually downloaded any of the information, was that she was only storing a fraction of the database on something small enough to take with her. Although this directly contradicted the report from the EngineerCorp mainframe, which showed that all of the data had been dumped, the engineer conjectured that the data must have filled the target device and the rest of it had been lost during the transfer.

  Eric leaned back in his chair, pensive.

  If she only downloaded a fraction of the server, then the situation may not be as bad as it seems. What would she want with a partial download? What information was she after?

  All that remained now was to find this device, if it existed, ascertain if any of the data had been further compromised, and get rid of any remaining loose ends.

  In any case, young Alice will definitely be a guest of EngineerCorp very soon…

  ***

  Alice had been sitting on the sofa, staring at the fireplace for quite some time. The inside was charred from the many
fires burned within its walls. Her memories were the only thing keeping it lit now. Sighing, her thoughts returned to the present.

  I can't risk everything on the hope that I will convince EngineerCorp that I'm not a threat. I need a backup plan, just in case they don't believe me.

  She needed to find someone that could be enlisted to protect her, or could at least pose enough of a threat to EngineerCorp to keep her safe… Only, no one posed any kind of threat to them, especially since the incident with Cyberconn.

  Cyberconn?

  Suddenly, unbidden images flashed through her mind. She saw a confidential report detailing how EngineerCorp infiltrated the Cyberconn network, and began siphoning information about all of their projects back to their servers. There were blackmail letters to key people, preventing them from ever revealing the truth and the story that was leaked to the press with the false information. Cyberconn had been set up, and subsequently ruined by the plot.

  Cyberconn sent that email. If I find the person responsible, I can offer him this information in exchange for helping me. That has to be what he was hoping to find in the first place!

  He could never know the nature of how she came across the information, but it would hardly matter to him. All that would matter is that someone could produce proof that Cyberconn was not responsible for the incident that ruined them. With her ability to hack into the EngineerCorp mainframe, she was more than qualified to do so.

  A new, more disturbing thought occurred to her.

  If EngineerCorp is capable of this level of trickery, then what else are they capable of? All these years, they've produced one ingenious product after another. What if none of them were original?

  Eric Martin is a brilliant man, beyond doubt, but the way his company has single-handedly dominated the market is suspiciously convenient.

  If their renown was due, in any part, to a history of theft and sabotage, then they deserve to be exposed for what they really are.

  She pulled out her laptop, set up her phone as a modem, and began to work.

  ***

  Garrett Wiggins was staring absently through the window in his office. The trees were softly swaying in the wind, making everything seem calm and serene. His reality was anything but that.

  Garrett was not the issue; he was merely a victim of circumstance. His appearance would never indicate his inner turmoil. In his late twenties, and taller than average, he had warm, honey-colored eyes that always seemed to be laughing, even if they were clouded with worry.

  Garrett was considered attractive by most women, with his broad shoulders and slightly tousled, curly, dark hair. The small set of business cards on the corner of his desk read, "Garrett Wiggins, President of Cyberconn."

  Cyberconn had at one time been situated in an industrial part of New York City, a testimony to their success. However, at present, they were located in a washed-up commercial section of a small town in New Hampshire.

  Garrett had been there when Cyberconn emerged as the leader in the industry, offering technology that their competition only dreamed of. It pained him to see how far they had fallen, now reduced to a second-rate tech company, years behind the rest of the market.

  The moment we engineer something, EngineerCorp flies to market with something bigger, better, and more successful. Nobody even knows who we are anymore. We're not even a blip on the edge of their radar.

  Cyberconn was reduced to barely getting by. Any dream of expansion or improvement was only that. A dream. Garrett sighed in frustration. This month had been particularly exasperating, trying to keep numbers up in sales. They had definitely had better months.

  Out of desperation, he compiled a list of the best and brightest hackers, appealing to them to hack the EngineerCorp mainframe.

  Of course, they had no idea it was "hacking."

  He still had contacts in certain places, and while they might not be able to infiltrate EngineerCorp, they could put him in contact with other, more likely, candidates. Garrett did not believe any of them would be remotely successful, but he dared to hope that one, just one of them, might be able to breach the network.

  The whole thing was beneath him...stooping to subterfuge, irrationally hoping that they could somehow find what he was looking for. If he could only prove that they had been set-up, that the whole "scandal" was just an attempt to sabotage their success, they might finally stand a chance again. It would be an added bonus if EngineerCorp suffered for being the conniving, conspiring monstrosity that it was.

  Snap out of it, Garrett. There's not much point in living in the past.

  His eyes had come back into focus on a budding tree limb outside his window as he heard a soft ding from his computer, signaling a new email.

  Garrett rolled his chair back to see what it was. His eyebrows furrowed as he saw that the sender was unknown and the subject line was blank. It was not flagged as spam by any of his highly efficient scanners, so he decided to read it.

  You don't know me, but I know who you are. I know you sent the email about hacking SteelSafe. Don't worry. I'm not interested in exposing you. I am contacting you to let you know that I have the information you want. But I won't hand it over until you give me something in return: immunity.

  You know how sensitive this information is, and to what lengths certain people would go to have it safely returned. You must ensure that this data gets in the right hands to expose EngineerCorp before they have a chance to retaliate and make me disappear.

  Don't bother trying to trace this email, or figure out who I am. You'd only be wasting your time. I will let you know these things when the time is right.

  I know you have the ability to make this happen. Make the necessary plans. I will be in touch.

  Garrett did not realize how anxiously he had been reading the email, until he looked down and saw how tightly he was clutching the mouse, his knuckles white.

  That was not something I ever expected to see!

  Yet, it was exactly what he had wanted. If any part of that correspondence was true, it was worth pursuing.

  The person seemed confident enough in his ability to make the link untraceable, but Garrett tried to trace it anyway. He found out absolutely nothing through his wasted efforts.

  How did they find me? How do they know what I want?

  Whatever this person had claimed, he doubted that the "information" referred to what he was looking for. Still, he was not one to pass an opportunity just because it sounded impossible.

  Stranger things have happened.

  He opened up a new email window and sent a short reply:

  I need a little more proof than some random stranger telling me that he "has what I need." Give me something to work with and I will make it worth your time.

  No sooner than he had pushed back his chair, he heard another soft "ding" from the speaker. In disbelief, he pulled up his email program again and saw a new response sitting in his inbox.

  As shocked as he had been earlier seeing the initial email, nothing could have prepared him for the reply. It was as if he had been transported back a decade to a time he tried to forget.

  The sender included a short newspaper article detailing how Cyberconn had stolen files and information from EngineerCorp and attempted to publish them as their own. An excerpt from the article said:

  The public is outraged following the events of the Cyberconn scandal. EngineerCorp President, Eric Martin, made a statement to the press earlier today, stating, "We are terribly saddened to discover the treachery of our colleagues. They have taken what should be a healthy competition and turned it into a sickening betrayal. Being the generous and understanding people that we are, EngineerCorp will not dredge this matter through the courts. We feel that it is enough that the public know the nature of this company and do their best to withdraw support from any company or person who acts in this way.

  The article nauseated him and he quickly scrolled past the rest, already knowing the details.

  Below the article, under the t
itle of "Blackmail Evidence," there was a short list of names, dates, and corresponding file names. There was also a short passage from one of the files, a transcript for a phone conversation between an employee at Cyberconn and a board member at EngineerCorp. Apparently the employee had been having an illicit affair that he did not want publicized, so in exchange for EngineerCorp's silence, he agreed to give the board member dates of when Cyberconn's servers would be down for maintenance and therefore vulnerable.

  Garrett's eyes widened.

  If I could get my hands on those files, it would change everything!

  That file alone was enough to warrant a full investigation…but having all of them would eliminate any doubt concerning what really happened.

  The email served to confirm another suspicion that Garrett had entertained. From the extensive array of filenames listed in the email, he could see that it had, in fact, been an intricate web of lies and deceit that led to Cyberconn's fall from grace.

  This was planned...organized. Someone clearly put a lot of thought into ruining this company...and that person will pay for what they've done.

  He quickly wrote back:

  I think we can come to a favorable agreement. I will get in touch with my contacts to ensure that there are people we can trust in the right places. Once we have everything set up, I will arrange for the files to be transferred directly to the FBI and media outlets. After the data has been transmitted, EngineerCorp would not dare touch you.

  He sent the email and waited for another response. As before, it was only moments before he received it.

  Excellent. I will be in touch.

  He smiled confidently at the screen. Whoever this person was, Garrett would make sure that he did everything in his power to keep him safe.

  An opportunity for redemption...practically handed to me. It's a rare and extraordinary gift. It's foolish to imagine that another chance like this would ever come along if I let this one slip through my fingers.