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"Doesn't it hurt to sit like that?" Tanya saw me in a full lotus position, the heel of each foot over the opposite leg's knee, and practically curled around Deep Six's keyboard.
 

At first I didn't hear her. Some that I know say that they tune out everything when they're working, and I while I didn't think I was one of those I will admit that Tanya had to keep repeating herself just so I'd listen. "Oh no not really. Don't want to be rude but could you keep quiet? Kick me if you need my attention, but unless it's guys trying to break down the door let me be." She nodded once and watched me from the other side of our room, and though I can't be sure I think she was unpacking her rifle.
 

Mail check first. Sadly the only new things outside of news on the ref file were Gibbon's usual challenge to me and a few notes apologizing for no useful information about the low-jack 'Six had. I'd have to fix that soon if 'they', whoever or whatever was chasing me I suppose, were going to turn the heat up then I needed a way to keep them from seeing where I've been and, more importantly, where I'm at right now.
 

I'd need Gibbon's help getting past airline security, then patching it up again after I was done. No need to leave holes for someone with an agenda and aspirations for martyrdom using any holes I leave behind. Dear Lord. This one was more of an exercise in annoyance and patience than something diabolical. I have a large library in my system, and even if I didn't what he was asking me to pull from was in Project Gutenberg's database. Bless them for preserving and converting public domain texts into plain text files just about any computer in the last twenty years on through anything likely ever to be built could read, because believe it or not I didn't own Dracula.
GLOBETROTTER
. Good one Gibb. Let's see. In addition to
the old material he had a few things flagged as urgent as well as a few new exec files.
 

Alright. I'm armed. Now I need things to bounce off of before making the actual run. Back at my mail server I found Ship's request. Now seemed like a good time to drop by. With luck I could use his machine, plus co-opt a little hardware from the group that tagged him last. I'd need to filch somebody's retirement or college fund I'm sure, but usually if I looked hard enough I'd find someone stowing money where I could get it.
 

First stop was deepweb. Ordinarily ship's security would have been enough, but the nasty thing about downloading random things in the wee hours of the morning was that they tended to have malware; porn's especially bad about having bad
things attached. According to 'Six
XXXDIALER_
was running on port 69. Ship you naughty naughty person, not to mention more than a bit stupid. Ah well, I'll get rid of it after I'm done.For now the cruft has to stay where it is. Looking around gave me a defaced index file and a calling card.
 

 
Legion.
 

 
Think of 4chan. Now give it a somewhat militant mind-set, a general bend to taking on causes of many different stripes and take away most of the porn. I don't know where these guys came from, but they've been giving people headaches when they're not off leaking private, and often sensitive, documents to the world.
Note:
If you don’t know what 4chan is, count
yourself as lucky. Take my word on it, ignorance really is bliss here. Google at your own risk because I take no responsibility if you decide to swear off the internet because your computer blew up.
 

While I liked some of what a few people claiming to be part of that leaderless group were up to; by and large I felt no real sense of remorse in attacking their hardware. Hey. They were dumb enough to leave a return address. Of course it's a dare, but then again they've never had to butt heads with me.
 

Holy Tesla. They went in Overkill on security. I could crack it, but I wasn't so sure I should pick up on this one right now. Sure with the different boxes Ship was giving me access to I could either go head to head right now, or use those resources to do the actual job I'd come in on. Gee, let me think. Yes, it was tempting and yes it would be a challenge, but no I have more immediate problems. Ship got his connection log, which he could give to his ISP so even if it would take longer than if I went ahead and did it, he'd be set, and I now have resources I need. Strange that he’d need me to find a way in his own box, but one of the many things that had been done was change around permissions and passwords leaving Ship out in the cold where running his server was concerned. Hopefully this would change that.
 

Now then. Skyline's servers waited. Getting in is relatively easy. Just thankful that they keep everything in one box, makes my job easier. Kill the connection logs, upload the bogus reservations Gibbon left on his server for me, and the most important part was finding where copies had been sent. I'm going to repeat myself here. I don't like making all of this seem so easy, and if it weren't for Deep Six I'm pretty sure this run would take months instead of hours; if it could even be done on conventional hardware. Maybe when all this blows over I'll go into security. They can't keep this kind of gear in the closet forever, and I'll have an edge in real world experience.
 

Later, much later even if all goes well. For now I'm looking at an absolute nightmare. The records had been sent to a government server. Government. Homeland Security. Terrorist Detention Centers. Held Without Trial. I was terrified of what I was looking at, but the deed had already been started, and now I had to finish the job else I was hosed no matter what I did. One of Gibbon's exploits might work for port 57, but something about the situation stank to me. I linked everything I could get my mitts on and hoped 'Six could take care of the server's encryption before they could get a bead on me.
 

PING!
 

It felt like hours waiting for a hole to open up. My heart thudded in my chest.
 

PING!
 

 
Panic started to seep in. Yes it would cost somebody their life savings but I made liberal use of the
KILLTRACE
panic button to try giving myself some breathing
room. The server's encryption was broken, but I now had five different ports to surf through and I was terrified that if I hit the wrong one I'd end up getting tagged. Oh well. I've come this far, too late to back out. Lock and load.
 

PING!
 

Accounting. No. Requisitions? Interesting, but not why I'm here. Case files? Fawkes, Richard G. Wait why do they have a file on me? Tick Tock. Time is running and the longer I'm connected the more likely they're goingto find me. Still, that was my name on their lists and I had to know why. Download. While that was downloading check the rest of the system. Monitoring. Bingo! Connection log
DELETED
. File still downloading.
 

Of course they would find out someone had been playing in their back yard. I’m sure that file/archive/ whatever was referenced, backed up, and would otherwise be missed with an outright deletion. Hell, even accessing it would have raised red flags. Of course I’d hopefully be gone from here before they figured out where I was connecting from. I couldn’t kill the connection while that file was downloading, so I decided to get cute.
 

By the time my file was downloaded I had told the system to upload several other files to different anonymous file servers before deleting the original files. These people and servers were chosen mostly at random, or because everyone and their mother used them to stow warez files for distribution. None of these people, so far as I’m concerned, would deserve any sort of government nosing about my actions might cause. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
 

PING!
 

Stop pinging at me! I heard noise somewhere in the room. Tanya? I briefly uncurled and looked around. Tanya was yelling at me to shut up. Oh, right. Nobody trying to batter the door down. Curl, refocus on my primary task. Download complete.
 

Now I had to purge any records of me being there. Spring their trap by sticking my hand in Receiving. I got a warning on my screen about a trace 'Six spotted. Delete everything from here, back out. Go back to Skyline’s servers and patch the holes I’d punched in their security. Normally I don’t bother, because going back to the scene of the crime is always a bad idea, but like I said. I didn’t like the idea of people using those holes for Really Bad Things.
 

DISCONNECT
 

 
I took a deep breath as my body uncurled and I closed 'Six the rest of the way down. "We have our tickets. I think I got connection log scrubbed, and I found a file with my name on it in the government server I tapped. I'm going to bed now." Tanya blinked at my abrupt behavior but said nothing else to me, at least not that I could hear. My job was done, we had a flight to catch in a couple days. I'm going to try getting some sleep and don't wantto be woke up unless there were cops at the door, or grenades being tossed in.
 

 
"Please don't tell me you wanted to try that." I looked hopefully to the man across the table. "I'm pretty sure I wasn't found out, mostly because there didn't seem to be any dark suits or handcuffs waiting for either of us. "I'm also pretty sure I'd closed the holes I'd opened inboth servers, but even if I did I Do Not want people attempting that. Even if they could pull it off and their intentions weren’t agenda motivated what's to say they won't end up getting sloppy?"
 

 
The man shrugged, “You seem to believe our interests are connected with demands, governments, or cultural wars. Our struggle started, like yours, when friends went missing. When this ends we will in all likelihood crumble back into our individual components.”
 

I listened calmly as he talked, waiting for more. Maybe I’d finally figure out a thing or three here. Instead he got up and walked away. Maybe he would make my concerns known to whatever passed for the people in charge here. I was terrified they wanted to make a run against America's government. Sure it was flawed, corrupt, and I hadn't any real faith in politics anymore, but that doesn't mean I wanted to see it all go up in smoke.
 

Part  4
 

Non-persons
 

 
I arrived in London with no passport, unable to use my accounts for fear that even pulling cash for later use would tip off my location, and still not quite sure if I was being kidnapped or rescued. Fear crept into my system when Tanya drove me into the countryside. Her demeanor had changed from friendly and willing to talk to distant and silent.
 

Her silence kept my mouth shut, because I had no idea what was going on, and was afraid I’d stepped in it big time. I didn’t notice details like how well furnished our supposed safe-house was, or that it had not one, but several broadband connections, and that I wasn’t the only refugee/abductee there. My mind, by that point, was convinced I had been kidnapped and all this was just part of the window dressing to keep me quiet before who-knows-what happened.
 

 
Miko looked at me oddly, “You’re telling us stuff we already know.”
 

“
Well look at it this way.” I gave her a level look in return. They kept insisting they were almost ready, just a little longer. well It’s been a week since I’ve left America, and five of those days had been spent here. I was getting tired and snippy, and if this was all some sort of game. Plus I’d burned through my vacation time at work, and I wasn’t looking forward to having to hunt for a new job when this was over. “You get to see how scared out of my mind before all of this went downhill, as opposed to how much I distrust you now that I’m at the bottom of that hill and see no good way out.”
 

“
Fine. Lay it on me.”
 

 
Let me elaborate on this portion of my travels since you just don’t seem to understand the absolute terror I’d worked myself into. I hadn’t simply left home or the state. I had left the
country
following a militant seeming woman that claimed it was for my own protection. I was in a strange land with little money, no knowledge of local workings, and no support system at hand. Yes I was allowed to call home, assure everyone I was fine, but either Tanya or somebody else was always within earshot, so I didn’t want to voice my suspicions out loud lest they be proven true.
 

You know about the house I was taken to don’t you? The one that had eight or a dozen other people milling about. If it weren’t for the fact I was sinking into my own fears I would have actually liked the place. Everyone there was somehow, like myself, a wayward sort; be it someone from the ‘blogosphere’ that had twigged some sort o f nerve that caused guys in black uniforms and big guns to bust their door in, hackers and other ner-do-wells such as myself, or just those that were looking for a safe shelter from the storm all this was causing. That hadn’t eased my worry, but it did comfort me that for the moment I wasn’t alone.
 

Introductions were made; each of us giving our favored on-line handles rather than birth names. It felt somewhat strange doing this in meat-space, but nowhere near as strange as it might have for a newbie. You were there Miko, so was Sekmet and Bast. You know, I always thought those two would be socially inept thirteen year olds that could have graduated college and they turned out to both be fully tenured university professors somewhere in their mid forties. There were others, some I had heard whispers of, and others I’d bumped into here and there. None of them seemed to really notice me, after all why should anyone? I’ve kept mostly to myself, try not to brag too much about my targets, and unlike Mikhail I withdraw from crowds rather than try being the center of attention.