Page 372 of Hell Hath No Fury

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And she called herself S1gn3t.

We’d had a playful flirtation for months, and she was the one who introduced me to the group of red hat hackers I did jobs with. She was illusive, but funny. If she lived in Vancouver, if I’d met her at a bar, I liked to think she could have been someone to take the edge off my loneliness.

I logged in to the dark web chatroom we communicated through sometimes using end-to-end encryption and fired off a question. My heart was hammering in my throat, making it hard to breathe.

R3d W4rr10r

Our group of red hat hackers had been in the process of stealing crypto-currency from a company that supplied munitions to the Taliban when someone had infiltrated our system. A second before my computer crashed, I’d seen a flash of an image on my screen.

A black swan.

No one else in our group had seen it, so I’d written it off as an illusion, but now…

S1gn3t

Attribution was the process of tracking who’d been behind a cyber-attack. Most of the time, depending on the caliber of theinfiltrator, it was impossible to determine, but it seemed like the Obs1d14n Sw4nwantedme to know it was them.

I wondered with sick dread how long they’d been stalking me and toward what end.

R3d W4rr10r

S1gn3t

R3d W4rr10r

S1gn3t

R3d W4rr10r

S1gn3t:

R3d W4rr10r

S1gn3t:

R3d W4rr10r

S1gn3t

I hesitated, my cold fingers stiff as they hovered over the keys.

She was right, of course.

But it occurred to me that she was the closest thing I had to a friend in the whole world and I felt a certain warmth bloom in my chest at our familiarity.

R3d W4rr10r

S1gn3t

A short, sharp bark of laughter echoed through the car. I rubbed the tips of my frozen ears and stared at the screen with a little smile. I liked that she could make me smile even when I was anxious and filled with uncertainty.

R3d W4rr10r

I care about you,I wanted to write, but didn’t.

I want to meet you, for real.

But the one and only time I’d suggested it, she hadn’t spoken to me for three weeks.

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