Page 3 of Ignite: Tony's Story
She doesn’t seem angry or irritated. If anything, she seems amused as she gives me a quick once over before turning her back and continuing down the boardwalk. She doesn’t wait to see if I’m following, leaving me standing open-mouthed in her wake.
Who is this woman?
Shaking myself out of it, I lengthen my stride to catch up to her. “Okay, so are you going to tell me how you tracked me down?”
“I caught an unusual signature logging into The Adley Corp. systems, followed it back to a pretty recognizable handle from the HackWeb forum.
“And you were in the Adley systems because…”
“I work there. I’m one of Mr. Adley’s personal assistants.”
Fuck. My hand reaches for my phone. I need to tell Bennet we’ve been caught.
She reaches out, resting a hand on my arm. “Relax, Bugs. We’re on the same side.”
I pause but give her an incredulous look. “Bugs?”
“That’s how you do things, right? You exploit bugs to get access into the code that gives you a backdoor into the systems you hack.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I published the bug you used to get in.” She rolls her eyes. “I’ve been on HackWeb a lot longer than you have. The way you used that bug exploit was clever, though. You’re good.”
My mind sifts through the memories of various things I’ve tried to get into The Adley Corporation systems. My boss, someone I very much admire, has trusted me with his interest in finding concrete evidence against the owner of the company. He is positive that Jackson Adley is involved in some kind of extortion or corruption, and he’s putting together a file strong enough to take him down.
“I’ve never seen your handle before.”
“You’re telling me you only use one handle? Aren’t you a security specialist? You think I walk around in real life sharing my information?”
Well, that’s why I wasn’t able to dig up any information about the username. It’s irritating me that I can’t decide if the way she’s ribbing me is annoying or enamoring. I’m not used to strangers having the upper hand, nor am I very used to not being the smartest person in a conversation. Instead of uncomfortable, it’s weirdly refreshing… and arousing.
“So what is it you want from me?” I also want to ask where we’re going. We left the boardwalk a while ago, and have just been walking along a weed-strewn, sandy path to a remote beach access point.
It’s probably stupid of me to be here at all, to be having this conversation. No matter how good of a hacker this woman is, she never would have found me in real life if I hadn’t answered and agreed to meet. I was in no danger until I set foot on that boardwalk. But I couldn’t resist the lure of knowing who it was that tracked my signature and how they found my profile.
I’m notreallya hacker. I’m just a cyber security specialist with too much time on his hands. I do this for fun− to see what I can do, how far I can go. It’s the thrill that gets me. Using defects, or “bugs”, to get into various systems is my go-to method and something I’ve become a bit known for online. Typically, I just break in and leave a little calling card for whoever might come across it, just to show I’d been there. Completely untraceable, of course.
I never left a calling card in The Adley Corporation systems, but she still traced me. I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been there, not yet. She’s good. And that intrigued me enough to step outside my comfort zone and follow my curiosity.
“I want to know why you were trying to break into TAC. It didn’t seem like you were after money.”
I bristle. “I’m not a thief. I was looking for… information.”
“About Jackson Adley?”
My eyes narrow. I can’t confirm or deny what I’m after without putting my employer in danger. But she is sharp, observant. And she’s looking at me like she sees right through me.
Without waiting for me to answer, she gets to the point. “I’d like to work together on a little project I’ve been working on.”
“And that is?”
She stops walking, turning to me with a fierce gleam in her eye.
“Taking Jackson Adley down and burning BioCere, Inc. to the ground.”
Mara
“Bio-what?” His eyebrows furrow. I can almost see the gears working, putting little chains together and building connections in his brain.
