Systematic Seduction (9 page)

“How
did she know their real names?”

“They
likely traced the machine ID the letter came from. Or maybe classmates outed
them. Who knows? The letter and her response were eventually retracted, but
Liane found the original version.”

“Fuck.
This is fucking crazy. That’s three of us now with hackers on our fucking IT
teams.”

“I
know. And if we fire them, we lose all of them. They will alert anyone else
involved in this. We’ll lose all the ground we’ve gained and everyone will be
in the wind once again.”

“We
don’t have that kind of time.”

“I
know, Oliver. That’s why we haven’t fired the known hackers.”

Oliver
knew that, so he overlooked the sarcasm in Barclay’s voice. They were all
pissed off about this, but they were also on the same side. He needed to
remember that right now. “We’re paying these fuckers good money
and
giving them access to inside
information.”

“They
don’t have access to this database. They will never have access to it.”

“Our
IT team leads have access to it. What if we find out the last hacker is one of
them?”

“You
make a good point but consider this. If InkStain works for one of us and
currently has access, don’t you think he or she would have alerted the others
by now?”

InkStain
was the remaining hacker’s username whose real identity they hadn’t yet
uncovered. “Yeah. True. Sam doesn’t have access to this database. Mindy
Tesserone never had access to it. Neither did Dante. And Clyde never worked for
us.”

“Exactly.
There’s only one left to find, and we
will
track him or her down.”

“Yeah.
We will. I know we will.” Oliver slammed his fist on the desk, making Blair
jump. “But I fucking
hate
this, Barclay.
I hate it.”

Blair
touched his thigh, and he gave her a tight smile that probably looked more like
a grimace.

“What
do you want to do?” asked Oliver. “Have you told the others?”

“Not
yet. I wanted you to know first.”

“Let’s
wake everyone up. They need to know.”

Chapter
Twelve

Blair
listened to the Weathermen talk about the latest hacker, quickly realizing
there was information being shared that impacted not only each of their
companies, but pretty much everyone living underground. Coupled with Oliver’s
findings that they all had three years at best to survive, the picture was
grim.

She
thought about everything they’d gone through in the past seven years, beginning
with the shock of having to live in a city where everything was manufactured to
look like familiar things, but not to the point they felt real.

The
food they ate was real, but certain items were now so rare that she hadn’t
eaten them since moving here. The sun and stars were fake. There was no moon,
no rain or snow, and no wind. There were no pets, no flowers unless you could
afford them, and no insects. The cars were electric, but most people walked,
rode bikes, and traveled between cities by electric trains.

Everyone
knew The Madeline Project had been compromised, and what the end result had been,
but only the men on this call and the few people each of them had let into
their inner circle knew the whole truth.

The
rest of the people had surmised and guessed for years, and out of that came an
endless stream of urban legends and theories about what had
really
happened. The Internet was
littered with them to the point Blair wondered whether most people would
believe the actual truth when it finally came out.

Two
hours later, when they ended the call, Oliver pulled her close and held her. “I
imagine you have a lot of questions right now.”

She
snorted. “Only a few hundred.”

“Where
should I start?”

“Are
you sure it’s all right with them if you tell me this?”

“Yes.
If I trust you, they will, too.”

“How
about if you summarize it for me. But leave out anything you’re not allowed to
tell me.”

“There’s
no reason not to tell you everything at this point, Blair.”

Such
trust had her blinking back tears. “I won’t breathe a word to anyone at work.”

“I
know you won’t.”

Oliver
took her hand and led her to the sofa in the middle of the room. They sat down,
and he turned to face her. “It all started when Harper found certain usernames
on websites where hackers and weather geeks hang out that were also on the
public relations area of Ace’s website that Harper used to monitor in her
former role for him.”

“Her
former role? Why did she change roles?”

Oliver
grinned. “That’s a long story. I’ll let Ace and Harper tell you. Suffice it to
say she was an analyst for him whose job it was to monitor message boards on
various areas of his site, and make sure trolls were kept out, et cetera. When
she was moved to his hacker team, she noticed some of the same usernames were
on both sites.”

“The
hacker team hadn’t been monitoring the other areas?”

“No.
We all had them doing work on separate systems. It never occurred to us to have
them do crossover work. After that, we started building separate teams to do
the crossover work, then eventually combined them into one team doing both.”

“What
were the hacker teams looking for originally?”

“Anything
that might give us a clue to who had done this. They looked at message boards,
websites, anything they could find. We had bits and pieces of information, but
nothing like the break we got once Harper made the connection.”

“Where
does Rob Marin fit in all this? Each of you mentioned his name several times on
the video call.”

“Ah,
yes. Rob. He has a convoluted part in this but ended up being the key that
broke it wide open. He was on Ace’s hacker team. He got fired when he tried to
frame Harper and make it look like she had accessed Ace’s personal files, only
Rob didn’t realize the log in the system he broke into couldn’t be erased or
altered. Not completely, anyway. It left a footprint he didn’t realize was
there, and he was caught.”

“Why
did he try to frame Harper?”

“That’s
part of the long story. But the real break for us came when Harper found one of
Rob’s former usernames on her lists.”

“So
he was working for Ace but also involved with the hackers?”

“Yes.
At one point we thought he might be one of the hackers, but it soon became
apparent he was only on the fringes. He surfaced again a few months later, this
time with two new usernames. Angela’s team discovered those names belonged to
Rob by matching machine IDs.”

“She’s
engaged to Dominic Greco, right?”

“Yes.
Then Barclay was lucky enough to be on the surface when he intercepted that
data transmission from an old weather satellite. It was a snippet of
conversation with one of Rob’s usernames in it, plus eighteen others. All
eighteen names were in our database by that time, but we didn’t know any of
their real names.”

“Why
were they using a satellite?”

“We
believe they were trying to hide their online conversation because, unbeknownst
to us at the time, at least three of us had hackers on our IT teams. I’m sure
they alerted the others about all the changes going on at our companies. The
new databases that suddenly no one had access to except a privileged few, the
way we pushed them to check for IP addresses and machine IDs, and the
concentration on finding identities behind specific usernames. We think they
were trying to use the satellite as a safe place to talk, but it didn’t work
very long for them.”

“It’s
non-operational now?”

“Yes.
Then we caught another huge break when one of the people involved in a
construction project Damien’s company was working on turned out to be an online
friend of Rob’s. We found conversation that led us to the conclusion Rob had
the names of the hackers, as well as information on how they had accessed The
Madeline Project.”

“That’s
why you stole his laptop.”

He
grinned. “How did you know we did that?”

She
pointed toward his closed laptop. “The way you all were talking about it. You
had obviously looked at the data on it. You wouldn’t have risked simply hacking
into it because he’d know you’d done it.”

“Well
done, grasshopper.”

She
laughed, much more at ease now than earlier when they’d all been talking about
finding these hackers and administering their own brand of justice before
turning them over to Homeland Cyber Security.

“Before
I forget to ask, how are you going to have your crack at these five before HCS
does?”

“I
wish I could tell you that, but I can’t. It’s kind of an inside deal that
Barclay and Grayson made with their contacts there.”

She
put up her hands. “In that case, forget I asked. Tell me instead what you found
on Rob’s laptop.”

“Let
me back up a bit first. Before we decided to steal it, we found out that Rob
and his wife, Olivia, tried to blackmail one of Kane’s former employees into
hacking into the database.”

“But
you said no one can hack into it.”

“She
didn’t know that, and neither did Rob or Olivia. A woman named Isabelle Sharpe
knew Olivia from college, and apparently there’s a video featuring Isabelle
that Olivia still has, and that Isabelle wouldn’t want shown around.”

“Ah,
okay. I take it Isabelle never got into the database?”

“Not
even close. HR at Bannerman Investments got the whole story from her before
they fired her.”

“So
what did you find on his laptop?”

“The
reason he knows so much, how he met the people who have told him so many
things, the real names of two hackers, plus real time test dates for The
Madeline Project. He got all that from a man named Rafael Torres, who also goes
by Ernest Hamilton and William Santiago. Ernest was the foreman on the project
Damien’s company financed.”

“And
Rafael knew Rob?”

“Yes.
Rafael’s cousin is Dante, one of the hackers and former researcher at NSSL.
Dante and Sam went to high school and college together, and also worked
together at NSSL.”

“Okay.
I see the connections. But I still don’t understand why anyone would do this.
Why would they hack in and send it on a course of destruction like this? They
had to know they’d be forced underground as well. Why did they do it?”

“They
didn’t mean to send it on this course. It was a mistake.”

“Excuse
me?”

“They
fucked up. Once we found Clyde Medici, we also found the website with all the
initials.”

“YouDoNotNeedToSeeThis?”

“Yes.
It’s a forum run by Clyde AKA HeadHonchoYDNNTST. By poking around behind the
scenes on that site, we found out that they didn’t mean to send The Madeline
Project on a destructive course. It was a coding error. Someone wrote a string
of code and stuck it in the wrong place. It instructed the machine to be on
autopilot, if you will, instead of keeping it on manual control. Once that was
done, they could no longer alter the code. They weren’t able to simply
overwrite that string of code. They weren’t able to alter
any
of the code.”

“I’m
assuming people have tried to hack back in but can’t?”

“Exactly.
That’s the first thing we all tried to do, and others did as well. No one can
get in, and no one can alter the code.”

Blair
hugged herself. “Are you saying The Madeline Project is self-aware?”

“Not
exactly. More like it’s stuck in a loop that we can’t override. It keeps doing
what it was designed to do, but we no longer have control over when it does it,
or how much. Do you know how it was supposed to work?”

“Yes.
It harnesses the earth’s electromagnetic fields and sends controlled pulses to
clouds…” She sat up straighter. “Oh holy shit!” Her mind was racing now.
“Jesus. It all just clicked, Oliver. I get it now.”

“You
get what?”

“I
know how to stop it. Or at least, I think I know how.”

He
stared at her like she’d just told him she was going to live on the surface
from now on. “What are you talking about?”

“Oliver,
I’m serious. I think I know how to stop the program.”

Chapter
Thirteen

Oliver
didn’t want to burst Blair’s bubble, so he listened to her theory which
involved a surface discussion of paleomagnetism and accessing the plasmasphere
again. That was what the original programmer of The Madeline Project had done
to make the program work, and it was what his successors had done again to
tweak the program.

“Why
can’t we simply reverse the polarity? No one is up there anyway, so any
temporary effect doing so has on solar winds reaching the surface wouldn’t
affect us, and in time it would balance out again, just as it’s done on its own
each time the polarity reversed.”

“Each
time the polarity reversed, we aren’t even sure if humans inhabited the
planet.”

“Okay,
but no one is living on the surface now.”

“The
Storm Troopers and procurement teams do.”

“Bring
them underground. Just for the test.”

“Blair,
no one has ever attempted to do it before by hand. Do you understand what’s
needed to reverse polarity? Even on a small scale, it’s not a matter of simply
flipping a switch.”

“Yes,
I do understand. But just because no one has ever tried to do it doesn’t mean
it can’t be done. Before The Madeline Project, no one ever attempted to access
the magnetic fields and harness them either.”

“That’s
not entirely true. We have x-rays, magnets—”

“Okay.”
She cut him off, holding up a hand. “Point taken. Not accessed on such a grand
scale, then. But my point is that it
was
done. The Madeline Project had one real-time test that proved successful. It
did
work.”

“Accessing
the fields and reversing the polarity of them are two entirely different
animals.”

“I
realize that, but you asked us to come up with a plan. This is my plan.”

How
could any man not fall head over heels crazy in love with this woman?

“At
least run it past the other Weathermen. Who is the physics expert in the group?
Or would an electrical expert be a better choice? We need both, actually…”

He
raised a finger. “I’m afraid I’m the closest we have to either of those.”

“Okay
then. Find people who know more about this than all of you do. Run it past
them.”

“That’s
not as easy as it sounds. We can’t let this go public.”

She
slumped her shoulders, a look of defeat crossing her face. “No, I don’t suppose
you can risk that. But don’t at least one of you have contacts somewhere who
could talk about this in theory even?”

“Yes.
I’m sure we can find someone.” He opened his laptop and composed an email to
all of them, asking if they could each think about how this might work, and who
they could ask without tipping their hand or risking it getting out. Then he
set up another group meeting for Monday morning. He and Barclay had woken up
each of the others for the phone call, and if he needed sleep now, they all
likely did. Also, he didn’t imagine any of would come up with a list of
possible names before Monday, at the earliest.

“Thank
you,” she said, leaning against him and stifling a yawn. “I can’t believe I’m
sleepy after this.”

“You’re
sleepy because of all the hot sex we had earlier.”

Her
beautiful smile almost made him change his mind about sleeping. “Yes, it was
hot.” She kissed him. “And sexy, and incredible, and I can’t wait to do it
again.”

“Well,
fuck. I’m not sleepy now.”

He
picked her up, and her excited squealing made his dick hard. Sleep was
overrated.

Oliver
carried her back to bed and laid her face down, then covered her body with his
and kissed her neck. He sat up long enough to peel his shirt from her torso,
then moved down to her thighs and straddled them so he could spank her luscious
ass.

“Ow.
That hurts.”

“Really?
Because it doesn’t sound like you mind very much.”

She
giggled again, and he was certain he’d lose it. This woman was intoxicating,
and it wasn’t only her sexy body and her response to his lovemaking that had
him punch drunk. It was her passion, and that
mind
. In seven years of trying to figure out how to stop the
fucking program, not one of them had thought to approach this from the
standpoint of reversing the polarity of the magnetic fields.

“Not
too much.”

“I
knew it.” He lazily spanked her again, wondering exactly how far she’d let him
go, but then his mind wandered back to the magnetic fields.

They
had discussed attempts to manipulate them during the first year underground,
but concluded that because the program was stuck in an automatic loop, they’d
never be able to stop it by messing with the fields. It fed off them, so they
believed that trying to do anything with them would be like cutting off one’s
own oxygen supply on purpose.

Blair’s
theory might work,
if
they could do
what she suggested. And it was a big
if
.
Too many other variables were unknowns because no one had ever tried it before.

“Where
did you go just now?”

She
was watching him, having glanced over her shoulder.

“I’m
sorry. I was thinking about your plan.”

The
hurt in her eyes sent guilt coursing through him. “Oh.” She wiggled out from
under him and curled up on her side. “I’m really tired anyway. Let’s get some
sleep.”

He
kissed her neck. “Blair, I’m sorry. I really am.”

“Please
don’t be. I really am tired and I’m sure you must be, too.”

Her
voice was tight and hard. It didn’t take an engineering degree to realize he’d
hurt her, and badly. He turned her over and crawled on top of her, pulling her
arms over her head and grasping both wrists with one hand. “Please don’t do
this.”

She
looked like she was going to cry. “I’m not doing anything except trying to
sleep.”

“Please
don’t pull away like this. I was distracted, thinking about your brilliant mind.
In seven years not one of us came up with that possibility.”

She
bit her lip, and some of the hurt had left her eyes, but she still looked like
she was holding back tears. “Really?”

“Yes,
really. But I should have pushed the thoughts away and concentrated only on
making love to you again. Please forgive me.”

“There’s
nothing to forgive.”

Her
response was automatic, like she was used to saying it. “Talk to me. What
memory did this trigger?”

Bingo
. She sucked in a sharp breath and
her eyes were suddenly wet. Oliver moved off her and sat up, pulling her with
him. He put his arms around her and held her tightly. “I’m listening, Blair.
Talk to me.”

At
first, he wasn’t sure she’d tell him, but then finally he felt her muscles
relax and she moved slightly so she could look him in the eyes.

“Donny
used to talk during sex, but not about, you know, sexy things. He’d tell me
about the latest harebrained scheme he and his idiot friends had come up with,
or he’d talk about the last sporting event he’d watched on TV. He was just
going through the motions. There was no intimacy or tenderness during it. When
he finished, whether I’d come or not, he’d crawl off me, roll over, and flip on
the video monitor.”

Shit
.
Fuck
. And he’d just inadvertently done the exact same thing to her,
minus the finishing quickly and checking to see if there was a movie or a game
to watch.

“Blair,
I’m so sorry.”

“I
know you didn’t mean to mimic him.”

“I
didn’t, but I shouldn’t have been thinking about magnetic fields.” He cupped
her face gently. “I should have been completely focused on you.”

“You
usually are.”

“I
will be from now on.” Oliver kissed her, slowly, tenderly, savoring the feel
and taste of her mouth. He didn’t stop until she pulled away, breathless. The
softness was back in her eyes, and he made a mental note never to do anything
so fucking stupid again.

“You
deserve to be worshipped, like a goddess.” He kissed her neck, letting his
tongue linger. “You are the prettiest, sexiest, most incredible woman I have
ever met.”

“Oliver…”

She
said his name like a prayer, and his dick was now rock hard again, but he was
determined to take his time. He slowly laid her down, on her back this time,
then licked up and down her chest, circling closer and closer to her breasts.
Her moans and the way she writhed under his touch only made him move slower. He
wanted to torture her with this. He wouldn’t take her until she begged him to.

“Please…”

“Please
what, gorgeous?” He moved his tongue lower, teasing her abdomen and then her
inner thighs, but leaving her pussy lips alone.

She
grasped his hair. “Please!”

“Tell
me what you want, Blair.”

“Oh,
God. Fuck me. Please. Fuck me.”

“I
will.” He moved back up to her breasts, licking only the tops of them now.
“When I’m ready.”

She
cried out in frustration as he moved closer and closer to her nipples. Instead
of moving his tongue over them, he slid between her legs again and teased her
thighs just to the point of reaching her labia, but never actually tasting the
silky folds.

“Oh,
please! Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it, only fuck me. Please.”

“I
want you to lie there and enjoy it, Blair.”

“I
am enjoying it. I’m so damn wet for you.”

“I
see that.” He touched her nipples lightly, using only two fingertips. She
moaned loudly and arched her hips toward him. Then he brushed his fingers over
her pussy, and sucked in a long breath. “I can smell how wet you are, Blair.”

“Then
do something about it.”

He
parted her labia and blew on her clit. “What will you give me if I do?”

“Oh,
fuck! Anything. What do you want? Name it.”

He
blew on it a few more times, then licked each nipple, fluttering his tongue
over them, while placing his hand over her pussy and simply resting it there,
not moving it. She arched against him once more and rubbed against his hand,
moaning loudly now.

“What
will you give me, baby?”

“Anything.”

He
kissed her again, letting his mouth linger once more. She tasted so damn
incredible. When he released her, he cupped her face. “I have everything I want
right here.”

“Oliver,
I…” Her face filled with indecision, and sharp fear pricked at the edges of his
consciousness. What was wrong? Had he triggered another bad memory?

“What
is it, sweetheart? You can tell me anything. Whatever it is, we’ll work through
it together.”

“Oh…
You’re almost too good to be true. I could … I could so easily fall in love
with you.”

The
unspoken end to that sentence hung in the air. Oliver swore he could see it
there, dark and purple, like a nasty bruise. “If you let yourself. Right? Is
that what you were about to say?”

She
nodded, her eyes huge and almost wet again. Maybe one day she’d allow herself
another chance at falling in love. He could hope.

Oliver
took a deep breath, and jumped off the cliff. “Pretty sure I’m already falling
in love with you, Blair Adams.” Then he kissed her, deeply this time, so she
had no chance to respond. When he dared to release the kiss, he went straight
to her dusky nipples and sucked on them, hard.

She
moaned and clutched at his hair, her lush body moving underneath him.
Thank God
. To put it out there was hard
enough, especially since he’d never told any woman he loved her. He couldn’t
deal with seeing that look in her eyes right now. That doubt and fear. It would
have to wait, because he needed to be inside her.
Now
.

Oliver
moved between her legs again and took her pussy into his mouth, sucking hard on
her clit. He slid two fingers into her waiting wetness, and moaned softly as
she cried out. Her climax was strong. He would never tire of making her come,
and seeing that look of pure bliss on her beautiful face when it happened.

Before
the contractions finished, he sank his cock into her, fucking her rough and
hard. She clutched his arms, her eyes filled with so much love his heart nearly
burst. He had to make her his own. He had to find a way to help her trust
enough again to fall in love once more. He
had
to. Because to not have this woman in his life was no longer acceptable.

Rational
thought was gone as he reached the point of no return. He tried to hold it off
a while longer, but he was lost in Blair. Her scent, her body, those eyes, and
the feel of his dick moving in and out of that hot pussy. When he came, he let
it all go and his cries joined hers.

He
held onto her as long as possible, then withdrew and gathered her into his
arms. He kissed her neck, not surprised that she was bathed in a fine sheen of
sweat, just like him. “Blair. Thank you.”