Chapter 1 | Login()
Fara hates it whenever I remind her that I make more money than she does. Sure, she might run a system-wide corporation that supplies ships, tanks, and arms to every branch of the Cornerian military, but there's only so much money to be made above the table. What she doesn't know is just how much sweeter the deal gets when you peek into some of the shadier areas of Lylat. Is what I always do, strictly speaking, "legal?" Not by a long shot! Is it fun? It's a hell of a lot more fun than Pointy Ears back on Corneria has signing paperwork all day, I can tell you that.
When you live in a world where everyone is walking around with a dozen computers strapped to their bodies, the person who understands those computers is king. Or, queen, in my case. I might have started out humbly, but Katt Monroe is nothing if not crafty. A few years after I ditched the Hot Rodders, I had every major corporation, crime syndicate, and government in Lylat begging me for my technology. I built and sold servers, networks, secure communication tunnels, you name it. In turn though, I've also constructed my fair share of viruses, backdoors, and other less-than-desirable pieces of software and hardware.
When you work solo like I do, risk doesn't seem to matter as much anymore. I mean, worst case scenario, you die. Then what? Nobody else gets compromised, nobody else gets hurt. I know a certain avian would probably slap me for saying that, but he doesn't have any moral ground to stand on, flying into the heart of a dogfight like he has a death wish. But regardless, working alone means I've taken on a substantial number of hacks and invasions that, put simply, I probably should have died carrying out.
What can I say? The pay was good, and the challenge was even better.
One excursion in particular though soars high above the others as the most dangerous and risky operation I've ever pulled. It was stupid, and I've still got a few scars to show for it. I wear them proudly. They're a badge of honor for pulling off the impossible. And, believe it or not, Radar Dish herself was the one who sent me on it. Fara still apologizes whenever I bring that mission back up with her over coffee, but I always wave away her concerns. She needed the best, so she hired the best.
It was a remarkably beautiful day in Corneria City on the afternoon I picked to infiltrate Artec Industries for Fara. The sun was twinkling high in the air, a stray ray of light managing to slip past the towering buildings around me and sparkle across the ripples of a bubbling fountain. I took a deep breath, holding it buried in my lungs and feeling it fill my chest before expelling it back out. The air smelled positively delightful, with tones of lavender and the scents of a nearby bakery swirling in my nose. People were bustling all around me. They poured in and out of the compact subway entrance with their briefcases in one hand and their phone in the other. If it were any other day, I would've stayed there basking in the sun, just enjoying the scenery.
But the temptation of an operation that would test the limits of my abilities was too much. I smiled just a little as I looked up the facade of the building in front of me. It was solid, sweeping blue glass, interwoven with an irregular web of dull metal beams and blinking red lights. Five massive letters were printed on the front of the skyscraper, enormous enough to stretch up nearly a mile into the air and yet still be perfectly visible from the concrete below.
ARTEC
I felt the pressure of a smile creeping onto my lips, butterflies flitting in my stomach, my fists balling up at my side. This would be fun. I looked down, smoothing out the wrinkles in the blazer I was wearing with one hand. There was always a well-pressed suit and a spotless dress handy back at my studio, just for occasions like this where I had to blend into a more sophisticated crowd than I was accustomed to. I reached one hand up, readjusting the pink tie around my neck. It was showtime.
The broad doors swung wide open on their hinges as I strode inside, a blast of cool air tousling my hair when I passed over the threshold into the lobby. The space was cavernous, filled with nothing but dazzling sunlight and fresh air for hundreds of feet above me. The floor underfoot was pure white marble, flecked with dark patches of black. An escalator accelerated upwards along one wall, depositing its riders up onto the main section of the lobby. I stepped aboard it, feeling the ground beneath me rumble. Another short breath escaped my lips as I leaned back onto the railing. The rest of the plaza unfolded over the lip of the stairs while I climbed, revealing an even larger space with buisnesspeople coming and going, and several seating areas with a few people typing on their keyboards and scribbling on holopads. This was where the action began.
The casual smile melted off my lips, leaving behind a small, concentrated frown. One misstep, and I'd either end up detained, or dead. I scanned across the entire room. My eyes flicked from person to person, seat to seat. I did my best not to concentrate on the guards posted in every corner, sporting radios in their ears and sunglasses across their eyes, with blasters surely concealed beneath their jackets. Normally a guard or two wasn't a problem to subdue, but Artec had a nasty reputation for training its guards to protect the company tooth and nail. I blinked back my nerves, instead continuing to glance around the lobby. My ears perked up when I finally spotted what I needed, my tail flicking happily behind me. An isolated group of chairs were pushed together in a tight circle at the far end of the room, each of them barren - save one. I strode over confidently, shouldering my backpack and weaving through the busy foot traffic, my eyes fixed on the lone wolfess sitting in the circle, absorbed in typing away at her keyboard and giggling whenever she saw a new funny picture, presumably. I'm sure that I rolled my eyes. That was a perfectly good processor, wasted surfing the net for the next humorous image or video instead of doing what it was designed to do: math. Hard, complicated, rewarding math.
I didn't feel bad starting my attack with that ditz.
The lupine's head popped up when I brushed past her, taking a seat in another one of the chairs in the circle. She tugged one of her earphones out as I shrugged my backpack off and started fumbling inside for my laptop.
"Hey there!" the wolfess said. Her words were slurred through a piece of gum she was chewing in the side of her mouth. You have no idea how badly I wanted to let loose a Miyu-sized groan right then, but thankfully I managed to restrain myself to a thin smile and a nod. My laptop slid out of my backpack, its pink case glinting in the bright sun. Unfortunately, that was when I made a sloppy mistake. I winced when a sharp plastic clunk sounded from inside my pack, earning a curious look from the lupine and turning the heads of a few onlookers. Such a rookie mistake, not securing my gear inside its container properly. I needed to be more careful, if I was going to make it through this.
I pretended like nothing had happened, trying to act normal, and thankfully people seemed to buy it. Everyone around me went about their business after a painfully awkward second, all except the lupine who continued to look at me hopefully. I flipped open the lid of my laptop, watching the machine spring to life with just a tap of my fingers. Even now, the sheer power that rests in my hands whenever I'm at a keyboard makes me feel tingly inside. All the knowledge of every scientist to ever live, the ability to solve a differential equation in a single heartbeat, access to every door and every lock in the solar system… It all still makes me just slightly dizzy when I think about it. I'm sure most people would call me a nerd for that, but they'd probably shut up pretty quickly once I got my hands on their browsing history.
Regardless, my laptop's screen flared bright white as it booted up, eventually dimming into pitch black with nothing cluttering the screen but a command line, a list of accessible nodes, and a few executable toys on the side. I glanced back up when I saw everything was working, catching eyes with the wolfess again. My stomach felt nauseous at the idea of trying to carry a conversation with the preppy airhead, but people like her were always the weakest entry point into a network.
I plastered the biggest fake smile I could muster onto my face, beating back a gag when I tilted my head to the side and started talking in my most bubbly voice.
"Well, hi there!" I exclaimed. "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" You have no idea how much mouthwash I had to use after this operation.
The lupine visibly brightened at my words, her tail beating furiously with excitement against her chair. "Oh my gosh, you have no idea," she said, waving her hand once at me. I wanted to rip it off. "Me and a few of my girlfriends are, like, going to go out sunbathing later, it's so gorgeous," she drawled.
"That's an awesome idea! I'll totally have to do that too," I lied through gritted teeth. I realized almost instantly that was as much small talk as I was going to be able to take. It was time to get down to business. "So, I don't think I've ever seen you around here," I said, pulling up a public directory of all the employees at Artec on one side of my screen. "What's your name?"
"Oh, my name's Shirley! What's yours?" she asked, shuffling back up into her chair. I entered the name into the directory, and after a second of thinking, a dozen different employees popped up, each with a different last name. I'd have to do a little more digging if I wanted to get her ID.
"My name's Krystal," I lied. I still laugh whenever I use her name on a mission. Blue was ecstatic the first time I told her that I liked to use her name for my alibi. She must have pranced around for half an hour, proud of the fact that she was wrapped up in so many of my heists and infiltrations.
"Say," I kept going, trying to procure myself a last name to work with, "you're not Shirley Hopewell, are you?" I asked, knowing full well that wasn't a real person. "I keep hearing stories about her, and it would be, like, so funny if that was you," I asked, wanting to vomit when I heard my voice in my own poor ears.
The wolfess pouted a little, shaking her head. "Sorry, my name is Shirley Brown. It's still totally great to meet you though!" she said eagerly. I wasn't listening anymore though. I had everything I needed. I searched her name again, and sure enough, Shirley Brown appeared. If I'm remembering right, I think she was listed as Director of Social Media Outreach. Typical. But none of that was important. What was important was that her Artec username was listed directly underneath an obnoxious photo of her posing with a tube of lip gloss. I almost considered abandoning the mission when I saw her login was ShirleyGirly, but I swallowed the bile in my throat and pressed on.
Now that I had a username, all I needed was a password. Normally that would have been almost impossible to get my hands on, but thankfully, I knew that every Artec terminal kept its password stored in exactly the same location on its hard drive. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be as easy as copying and pasting that location from memory. All their passwords were stored securely in a hash table, so I'd have to reverse engineer what I needed.
First things first though. I wasn't at all surprised when I found the lupine's computer connected to a nearby wireless node. Coupling to her internal router was woefully easy. No security protocols, no blocked ports, I don't think she even had an antivirus running in the background. I didn't feel even the slightest twinge of guilt when I double clicked on the first of my toys, a program that would rip the hashed password I needed from her computer. Everything ran without a hitch, and before the wolfess could even blink, the data was loaded onto the side of my screen. Now, I had to crack the hash function.
I ran the second one of the tools I'd prepared for this occasion, a rainbow table lookup. I crossed my fingers, sticking the hashed password into the program and hitting run. The window sprang to life instantly, as the value was transformed and checked, transformed and checked, hundreds and thousands of times every second. The world around me seemed to fade as I watched the display churn for unending seconds, doing its best to produce the decoded password, but falling short again and again. After a minute of waiting, it became clear that the program would need some help, or I'd be sitting there all night. I knew there had to be some kind of hint, some kind of lead that I was missing.
That's when I saw it.
It was the saving grace of the entire operation, the light at the end of the tunnel, a mulligan in the middle of my dire situation. I'm sure my grin was either dripping with glee or sadism when I spotted a small sticker adhered to the corner of the wolfess' laptop. It was nearly obscured under a thick layer of glitter, but the subject was still clearly visible. There was a small, blazing comet streaking through the sky, complete with cartoonishly angry eyes and a pair of muscle-bound, flexing arms on either side. Underneath the picture was a bold set black letters:
CORNERIA METEOS
Score! Relief bubbled inside me when I saw the advertisement for her favorite sports team, front and center. My hands flew across the keys as soon as my brain made the connection, dumping every keyword I could think of related to the Meteos into the program. Sure enough, my screen flashed bright green in success only a moment later, spitting out the successfully unhashed password for my jubilant self to use however I saw fit - MeteosMania212. Oh, and use it I would. Only the promise of even more imminent fun kept me from breaking out into a dance at my successful account theft.
Now that I had that airhead's login information, I could move onto the second phase of the plan, and my personal favorite leg of the infiltration. It was such a beautifully simple exploit, but when it was paired with the firepower of every server I had at my disposal… Let's just say I was a happy kitty when I first dug up this gem.
Essentially, the idea was this: on the Artec system, whenever two different people logged on at the same time with the same username, the mainframe would process the same login request twice. If the actions were spaced out by more than a few milliseconds, the server would just ignore the second input, which is boring and not helpful. It just so happens though, that by entering them at exactly the same time, and this is where you can begin to applaud my genius, the system will get confused, and try to log the same person in twice. When this happens, the fun really begins. It turns out the system doesn't only authorize the username that you sent them, but it also accidentally logs in the next account alphabetically too, and sends you their session. So, you end up with two people's information; one person you asked for, and one random person you didn't. If you log in at exactly the same time from three computers, you got three random accounts. With four, you got four accounts. With the thousands of computers I had at my disposal... I was about to see how well my math would hold up.
My foot started tapping against the tile floor anxiously when I distributed the lupine's username and password across all of Lylat, priming enough of my machines for the attack to completely and utterly annihilate Artec's system. One by one, the armada of small circular loading wheels on my screen gave way to bright check marks as each server finished its preparations, poised to strike. I smirked just a little when I saw the Phoenix Corporation servers send me their confirmation. Fara doesn't and won't ever know that I built a backdoor into her system expressly so I could use it for my own personal gain in situations like this. ...What? It's hardly the most morally dubious thing I've ever done. Besides, she owes me after how much of a bargain she insisted I sell her my tech for, the cheapskate.
After a few more seconds of waiting, every server had returned its ready signal, the troops mustered up to the front lines and prepared to fire at the unsuspecting Artec mainframe. My finger hovered over the enter key, steady and patient, my thoughts cool and eager, my plan rock solid. When I hit that button, I'd need to heist enough accounts before they shut me down so that it would be impossible for them to guess which one I'd be using. If I stole too few, they'd just start tracking those accounts and wait for something suspicious to pop up. No, I'd need to steal a lot of information for this to work. I took a deep breath. All I could do now was trust in my code. I stared at the static screen for just a moment longer, before the secret smile twitching on my lips finally goaded me into swiping across the return key.
Even though the world continued to bustle on by when I hit that key, it was only because everyone was completely oblivious to the steel wrecking ball I'd just smashed into the Artec mainframe. I couldn't help but let out a cocky chuckle when the momentum of thousands and millions of identical requests slammed into their unsuspecting system. The noise of the pleasant day might've chimed on around me, but in that instant, all I could focus on was the crippling blow I'd just dealt to Artec, was watching with glee as their architecture buckled under the hellstorm I'd unleashed on them. Their ping spiked off the charts, staggering under the crushing load. Within a fraction of a second, I had a dozen traces retaliating back against my onslaught, but they were too late. Account after account pinged out from their system, each one stocked with names, logins, pictures, you name it. A handful of my servers slammed to a halt when a roomful of surely panicking Artec employees completed their first traces and locked them out, but they still had a long way to go before they'd take me down completely. I took a peek at the edge of my display, grinning out of the corner of my mouth when I saw the number there:
Servers Remaining: 97%
I wanted to leap to my feet, whooping and hollering when the first accounts began to finally trickle in. You have no idea how thrilled I was. I'd known about the exploit for weeks, but this was the first time I'd ever tried it in the field. And now, I was leading an army of the strongest, fastest computers in the system, directing each and every one of them towards decimating my helpless victim. They were sheep lead to slaughter. I watched with pride, and a fair amount of smug satisfaction, as the second wave of requests punched into Artec's network, ripping out even more accounts for my perusal. I started up a secondary routine, passively scanning the ID photos of every account I managed to steal. I needed one thing out of all of this: an employee who looked as much like me as possible. If I could find that, I could get anywhere.
I had their full, undivided attention at that point, but I was positive it wouldn't matter. Servers on the vanguard started began to drop faster than before, connections refused and blacklisted one by one, but so what? I still had thousands of machines lurking across the entire system, and there was no way they'd be able to identify them all in time. I leaned back in my chair, watching idly as accounts churned on the screen in front of me, sifting through every employee in search of a facial match for this pretty kitty. This would be easy as pie.
Unfortunately, my relaxation turned out not to be so well placed.
Before I'd even managed to let out a content sigh, a shrill sound blared in my ear, shaking me to my core. My eyes shot open as soon as I heard it. I instantly tore down to my monitor to figure out what the problem was, a spear of ice ripping through my stomach. My gut dropped. I only got that feeling when things were about to go very, very wrong. What I saw made my throat go drier than Titania, made me afraid on a mission for the first time in years. My hands leapt to the keyboard, frantically trying to make sure what I was seeing was some sort of bug in my code. Unfortunately, it was all entirely, sickeningly accurate.
Servers Remaining: 32%
Just moments before, ninety-seven percent of my servers had been functional, clawing at their target. Now, most of them laid broken at my fingertips. I didn't understand or have time to figure out how they'd done it, but somehow, Artec had managed to put a bullet in a staggering number of my connections. I took a deep breath, trying desperately to hold down the chill that was seeping through my veins, and redoubling my efforts onto the few computers I had left. Every fiber in my body wanted to scream, wanted to panic, wanted to run right back out the door, but that wouldn't do me any good. I was the best technician in Lylat, dammit. I could handle this.
With just a few more keystrokes, I cut power to the servers that they had disconnected, re-routing every ounce of electricity I had to my remaining rigs. They might take damage with as much juice as I was pumping into them, but if I pulled this off, I'd be able to afford repairs for the next hundred years and still have enough left over to paint the Great Fox flaming pink. Accounts continued to dump themselves into my data banks, more slowly than before, but with a healthy dose of luck… I bit my tongue, chiding myself internally for trying to rely on something so fickle as fortune. Katt Monroe didn't need luck. I always got the job done.
My eyes darted up to corner of my screen to see how many servers were still running, but I immediately wished that I hadn't. Only twenty-four percent left. I gulped, my tongue and throat like sandpaper. How was it even possible for them to have identified so many of my computers so quickly? What had gone wrong? As soon as I asked myself those questions however, I noticed something else far more alarming, something far worse than a few bounced connections.
Buried beneath all my other windows and tools was a simple, flashing warning light. I had muted it earlier in the day simply because I'd figured I wouldn't need it. But now that I saw it activated, I knew that something was horribly, horribly wrong. Underneath the flashing light were three simple words, three words that made every muscle in my body lock.
Tracking In Progress
My cursor leapt to the alarm, double clicking it in a vain hope that, just once this mission, it was simply a malfunction and not yet another thing trying to kill me. Sure enough, it was the latter. I groaned when I saw what the warning light was trying to alert me of: a lone infiltrator had somehow made it past my firewall, and was now digging through one of my servers. When I saw that, everything clicked. Why all of my servers had gone offline, why somebody was inside my servers, it all made sense.
Artec had hired a hacker of their own. And this guy was good.
With as notorious as I was, there was no way this guy hadn't heard of me before. He'd probably kept a list of the servers I use frequently on hand, ready to shut down, just in case. That would explain why so many of my connections had gone offline immediately. That wasn't even the worst part, though. Now he was sifting through my own system just like I was tearing through his, and I'm positive he was only trying to find one thing: where the command center was. My knuckles went white, clenched around the sides of my laptop. If he searched for long enough, he was sure to eventually catch wind of a trail that would lead straight to the Artec headquarters in Corneria City, to the very chair I was sitting in. And if that happened… I gulped, my eyes darting up to a guard standing in the corner of the room. Put nicely, It would be the end of my story.
All of those thoughts streamed through my head in less than an instant. I took a deep breath. Now wasn't the time to panic. Now was the the time for solutions. Now was the time for Katt Monroe to kick this wannabe's ass. In the blink of an eye, I threw my attack into overdrive, routing energy from lighting and piloting aboard my server ships, and pumping everything into processing and cooling. My eye twitched when a handful of my servers simply popped, having literally burst into flames with the amount of energy screaming through them. Thankfully though, most managed to hold up. My fingers flew across the keyboard, constructing walls and barriers in front of Artec's hacker, diverting him away from the trail that would lead straight back to me. He tore through the obstacles as fast as I could construct them, cracking passwords and spoofing proxies with disturbing ease. Whoever this guy was, I'd have to see if I could hire him later. Or kill him.
After another few seconds spent watching the accounts trickle in and failing to halt the hacker's progress, I bit my lip, my heart thundering in my chest. I didn't want to admit it, but I'd been backed into a corner. There was only one possible way I could fight my way out of this, and even then, it would be a long shot. My only hope would be to continue on with the attack for as long as possible, pushing my hobbling handful of remaining computers past their breaking points to steal every last account I could get my hands on, and only back out the moment before Artec's guy could figure out where I was. I'd have to cut the attack at the last possible second, booting him out of the system at the same time. If I ducked out too early, I'd risk not having enough accounts stolen to finish the job. Too late, and the guns concealed by the guards wouldn't remain hidden for very long. The cords in my arms tensed, knowing I'd only have the briefest window to get this right. I felt like I spent an eternity sitting there, staring dumbstruck as each and every one of my security protocols was ripped to shreds, as my crippled army squeezed every last account out of Artec that it could find.
And yet, once those infinite moments had come and gone, I realized that I had run out of time. The warning light flashed green, then yellow, then dark crimson red when a tap was placed on the file that directly linked back to the laptop in my hands. I gulped, a cold sweat beading on my back, even while my fingers were stock still, precise and cold, waiting.
Three…
Two…
One…
Now!
My fist pounded the keyboard, plastic groaning under hand as I hit the kill switch. Across Lylat, thousands of servers and thousands of ships went dark, falling into radio silence as their each one of their generators was cut. The hustle and bustle around me was in stark contrast to the sharp concentration of my mind. I didn't breathe as I watched my screen with deadly focus, waiting to see if my last ditch plan had worked. My display showed that Artec's guy had successfully been booted out of my system, but I had no idea if he'd finished downloading my location already. I nearly screamed with anticipation as I sat quietly, waiting for a report on just how much he'd discovered while everything rebooted.
I'd been sitting attentive for a few seconds when I saw a small rustle of movement off in the distance, making my ear flick in anxiety. I looked up, but what I saw only made the butterflies in my stomach flutter faster.
Off in the corner of the room, one of the guards put a hand to his ear.
"Shit," I muttered under my breath. I kept my eyes glued to my screen, but the guard now had my complete and undivided attention through my peripheral vision. I tracked his every twitch, his every breath. The canine nodded once, keeping his hand to his ear, his mouth pressed in a serious line.
"It's probably nothing," I thought to myself, hoping fiercely for that to be true. Normally, I would've shrugged something like that off, sure it had nothing to do with me. But this entire mission had already gone so far off the rails, it was impossible to rest easy anymore. If the hacker had finished figuring out my position, it would already be too late to make a silent escape. A small side table and a thin accent wall would be all I'd have if I had to make a loud getaway, and I didn't like my odds of coming out of that with more than a few bullet holes and laser scorch marks.
My heart froze into ice when I saw the guard push off the wall behind him, and begin walking towards me. The people around me jabbered into their devices, the ditzy wolf giggled at her screen, but my eyes were locked front and center, straining to see every detail of the guard as he came closer and closer to where I was sitting. He wore a maddening poker face that I couldn't make heads or tails of. Was he distracted, or formulating a plan? Was he staring into space, or right at her? Was he aloof, or deadly serious?
Slowly, imperceptibly, I bent down over my still-churning laptop, reaching a hand down into my backpack. My fingers closed tight around the rigid plastic grip of the stun gun I had stowed away in there, my finger resting on the trigger. Every muscle in my body vibrated with dire tension. The distance between us closed faster and faster, first fifty feet across the room, then thirty, then only a mere fifteen feet away from me, looming in my vision. I tried to see where his eyes were focused, but his sunglasses and neutral expression were maddeningly impassive. My hand gripped the plastic tighter, prepared to lay him out in a moment's notice. Ten feet. Seven feet. Five feet. My legs were shaking with energy, ready to spring out from underneath me and flee the scene.
That was when, suddenly, the guard's head snapped to look straight at me.
I thought my heart was going to explode when his stony expression glared directly into my eyes. In an instant, the world around me became painfully vivid. Every twitch of his muscles, the glint off his glasses, the place where his suit didn't lay flat over his gun. In that moment, I knew the jig was up. I maneuvered the gun inside my bag so the discharge would slam him straight in the stomach. My finger pulled back on the trigger, until…
Ping!
A notification from my laptop blinked in my ear. My eyes snapped down to see what it was trying to tell me. It was a good thing I did. I dropped the gun back into my bag with a ragged breath the instant I absorbed the quick report that had finally been generated after the attack.
Profiles secured: 78%. File tap: interrupted before completion.
I gasped silently, realizing that I'd been holding the air buzzing and angry in my lungs for the last eternity. I expelled the breath out of my chest, collapsing back into the vinyl cushions of the chair with a soft whump. Their hacker hadn't traced me. It was the best news I'd heard all week. The guard arched one eyebrow at me suspiciously, but he kept walking past me, presumably going to patrol a different area or respond to some punk kids running in the lobby. I really didn't care. All I knew was this report meant he didn't care about me. My poor heart had earned a well-deserved break after the chaos of that last offensive, so I decided to give it a minute to slow, no matter how many odd glances I may have gotten from passersbye.
The blackness behind my eyelids was only comforting for the briefest of moments, however. You know me. Sitting still isn't my strong suit. My mind had already moved onto the next step, one that wouldn't rely on such experimental glitches. Slowly, imaginary lines began to paint themselves on the blank canvas of darkness as the plan unfurled itself in my memory. I'd reviewed every step a hundred times before ever coming here, honing and sharpening it, cutting down every risk as small as I possibly could. With 78% of Artec's accounts under my thumb, I had free reign of the building. If they wanted to sort out all of that stolen information and stop me from getting in, they'd have to shut down nearly every building they owned across Lylat; a costly decision that they couldn't afford for the hours or days it would take to clean up the mess I'd made for them. Instead, they'd have to scan every person who came in to make sure that they weren't using a stolen account, like I was going to. That was where finding knock-off-Monroe came in.
I opened up the details of the report that was still sitting on my screen, and sure enough, my servers had managed to find an eerily accurate look-alike for this pretty kitty's face. I pulled up Violet Medheo's profile, both grimacing and giggling a little bit at seeing what my algorithm had picked out for my disguise. The resemblance was uncanny, there was no doubt about that - the same platinum blonde hair, same amethyst eyes, same hot pink fur… Well, not quite the same. It would get me past a guard, but any of my friends would be able to pick the imposter out of a lineup. I smirked. I could practically hear my birdie in the back of my head, loudly extolling how much prettier I was than this wannabe. Sure, it might've just been a ploy to get me in bed, but... there was always genuineness behind it. Buried deep underneath meters of impenetrable sarcasm and ego, sure, but it existed.
With a few more keystrokes, I deleted all of her biometric information and replaced it with my own. Her fur structure, replaced. Her retinal scans, swapped. Her pawprints, gone. I was registered in the system, an Artec employee in everything but name. And now, it was time for my first day on the job. But if I did everything correctly… they were probably going to fire me before my first shift was over. Hehe. I love how good I am at this.
The final touch was to upload all of the information onto a blank ID card I had bought for a few credits off the net. I clicked the unassuming piece of white plastic into a card reader that I had hacked so instead of reading from the card, it would instead write information onto the card. With a keystroke and a blip, a soft white light glowed from the reader's face as it copied all of my information onto the badge, under the name Violet Medheo. Poor gal might get fired over this if I didn't clean up after myself. Might even get hauled off to prison. Of course the charges wouldn't stick, but I couldn't sleep easy knowing I had caused somebody such a headache. I took a few extra seconds to find her government ID in the mountain of data I had ripped off of Artec's servers, and traced it back a few steps to her bank. A few more clicks, and suddenly a couple hundred thousands credits were dumped into her personal account. I attached a short message to the anonymous deposit.
Sorry for the mess.
With that loose end tied up, it was time to move onto the next phase of the plan. With a graceful, fluid motion befitting a feline like myself, I slid my laptop back into its case, shouldered my pack, clipped my newly fabricated name badge next to my tie, and rose to my feet, doing my best not to breathe in the cheap perfume radiating off of the wolfess. She was a truly obnoxious person. Regardless, with my confidence restored and my plan back on track, I strode over to one of the turnstiles that granted entrance to the rest of the facility, taking my place in line behind the swarm of other employees. One by one they each swiped their ID badges and received a retinal scan from one of the guards posted nearby.
The sharp click of my dress shoes tapping against the marble below hit my ears with every inch I moved towards the guards, but I wasn't nervous. I'd taken the worst that Artec and their new hacker could throw at me, and still managed to sneak past their defences. Or, well, plow through them, as the case might have been. Regardless, I wasn't worried, because at that moment, they would have had to monitor and manually check thousands of employees coming in and out every second if they wanted to have any hope of catching me. That wasn't going to happen.
After a few more seconds of waiting impatiently, it was finally my turn to check in. The guard was slouched in place, clearly bored of playing border patrol for a bunch of accountants and engineers all day. Perfect. Boredom was exactly what I needed. It made people sloppy. Artec's turnstile thought for a moment as I held my fabricated card against it, but before long, I received a green circle confirming that Violet Medheo's credentials had checked out. The guard arched one eyebrow at me when he saw my blank white card instead of the usual sleek blues adorning the official Artec color scheme. I tossed my hair lightly, faking my best embarassed giggle.
"Sorry, first week on the job. They still haven't gotten me my official badge yet, so they loaned me this temporary one," I said, looking down and away slightly. He stared at me for a moment, but it seemed to mostly be out of apathy, because he grunted and shrugged his shoulders in response, holding up the retinal scanner for me to peer into. A quick pulse of red laser light flashed in my vision, leaving little blue lines branded onto my vision until I blinked them away. By the time I was seeing normally again, the glass doors in front of me had slid open, and the guard had already turned the remaining sliver of his waning attention onto the next employee, leaving me to stride right onto the private grounds of the Artec facility. I couldn't hold back my smirk.
Boredom gets a security system killed faster than anything else.
Luckily, this was anything but boring for me. I couldn't suppress a tiny giggle as the glass turnstile clacked shut behind me, leaving me in a long hall of impatient employees, yellow marble, and sleek metal elevator doors. The adrenaline in my veins was still pulsing strong and true, filling me with confidence. There was a tiny skip in my step as I whisked around the group of employees huddled by the closest elevators, and a happy hum in my throat as I looked for a lift that was relatively empty. At this rate, Fara would have her data in no time. The next step in the plan was to disable all the security on the floor where the data itself was stored. I was sure that Artec hadn't spared any expense in guarding their sensitive information. Luckily, Fara hadn't opted for the economy class hacker either. Katt Monroe is the best of the best.
/
A/N: Well, this was a little different for me! If you couldn't tell, I love Katt. I think she's a fantastic, criminally underutilized character. So, when I was designing the Brace for Impact universe, I decided I wanted to give her a role that she could really shine in, one where she could still be that solo rogue that we love, but really give her an ability to be an important and relevant factor in the plot. So, this was the result - hacker Katt! I think it's a great fit for her, even if it is unconventional.
Thus, I made this story to explore this characterization of her, and really try to get a feel for how she works. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, because I've had a blast writing this. Also, for any other computer nerds out there like me: I'm aware this isn't the most accurate portrayal of this sort of thing. It's spruced up and made a little more in the Hollywood hacking vein of things. It's a sub-genre that has a soft spot in my heart.
Anyway, there are two more chapters of this coming your way soon, the second of which is already completely written. It'll be out in another week or two. I hope you enjoy it when it comes around! Bye!