You sat down in front of your computer, hesitating for only a moment. As much as you loved the sound of typing… the quiet, constant clicking… the peace it brought you no matter what you were up to… you always had to appreciate the silence beforehand.
You let out a big breath. Time to go.
You pulled up the official website of Hays Tech. A quick sweep through let you grab onto access points like contact information. Then you went to work.
You weren't entirely sure what you were looking for, but that wasn't uncommon for you. You were somewhat like a hitman of the tech world. People would ask you to do a job, send you the information you needed to exploit their websites, then you would send them back the files you could get to. Wasn't exactly… legal, but it paid well.
Whoever it was that needed your expertise wanted you to get into the database of Hays Tech and find a file titled "Styne Reapers". A strange request, but not a problem.
As you went deeper into the coding of the site, you started to notice some strange things. Little markings that wouldn't be put into a normal coding system. Things that can only be added by hacking the website.
You pushed the thought aside. Even if someone else had hacked the system, it didn't matter. You could still get what you wanted and leave.
Once you were in, finding the file was a piece of cake. You knew you should have just… copied the file and sent it to your buyer and been done with it, but something was itching at the back of your mind.
You squeezed your eyes shut, as if to block out the intrusive thoughts, but it didn't help. Sighing, you double clicked the file and there it was. A trojan horse. Not obvious, but you could see the signs of one when you came across them.
Trojan horses were like shortcuts. Hackers left them in files that they wanted to come back to at a later date, but not run the risk of hacking into the system again.
Someone's already hacked this. This file specifically.
Once again, you were struck by the idea of just walking away from the situation, but you wondered who out there was as smart of a hacker as you are and why they were interested in this…
You lost your train of thought when you noticed what the file contained. It was insane. Files and documents of people. Tons of them. They all seemed random and all were discerned dead except a lucky few.
"What the hell?" you mumbled to yourself.
It got weirder and weirder, the more you opened. News articles dating back decades, all listing this "Styne" family.
Suddenly, you stopped. You silently scolded yourself for falling so far into a hole like this. You closed out of everything you opened, stopping only to look once more at the trojan horse. If you sent this away right now, the buyer might also see it. The hacker could be in big trouble.
You checked the clock. It was 1 in the afternoon. That gave you 35 hours until you had to send in these files.
You smirked. Let's try something out, shall we?
After a quick adjustment to the coding, you inserted your own trojan horse, then dropped a message beside it: -Interesting. And who might this be, sweetheart?- you flirted.
You saved it, and cleared your computer. Then, you got up and made yourself a tea.
…You had a bit of time before seeing if the other hacker took the bait.
They did. Within a couple of hours, a new message was hidden within the code of the website.
-I could ask the same question. What's your business here?-
You smirked and typed out a response.
-Perhaps we should stop asking questions we know the other won't answer, hm?-
After that was saved, you decided to step away from your computer. No point in seeming desperate.
Your conversations went on from there.
-It takes someone pretty smart to get into a system like this… you been doing this for long?-
-Sure. I wanted to major in computer sciences when I was younger, but my parents didn't see that as a "fit" job for a young girl, so I taught myself computer languages and coding and now I use it for illegal purposes… and my parents are extremely proud.-
-My parents died when I was a little girl, but I doubt this was the life they wanted for me either. Nevertheless, I feel like I make good use of my skills. Try and be a morally right person and all that.-
-That makes one of us.-
-I'm sure you're fine. I mean, why would you be hacking this file anyway if you weren't trying to do some good?-
-I don't know what's in this file. I was hired to hack into this database and send this file to someone else…-
Charlie bit down on her lip, reading the last message from you.
"Uh, boys?"
Sam looked up from his research. "Hm?"
Charlie sighed. "Well, you know the file you guys had me tap into? That one about the Styne's?"
"Sure. What about it?" Dean shrugged.
"I've been shuffling through it," Charlie started. "And yesterday evening, I found a message."
"What kind of message?" Sam stood up and walked around to look over Charlie's shoulder.
"Nothing. I mean… it wasn't like a threat. I think whoever found it was flirting with me? She called me sweetheart and asked who I was. I thought perhaps someone in the company had found the tr- the shortcut I left." She corrected herself knowing very well the boys wouldn't understand her lingo. "So I asked why she was in the coding of the file and she gave me a… shady response. No doubt another hacker. And she left a shortcut, too, so I figured she was doing what I was doing and shifting through the material."
"Another hunter," Dean concluded.
"It gets weirder. We were talking about… families and stuff-"
"Charlie, how long were you talking to this person without telling us?" Dean interrupted, but she ignored it.
"-and she said she was not a morally right person and, figuring she was a hunter, I argued, and finally she said that she had a buyer asking her to send them this file…"
She waited for the boys to react, but the both were stumped.
"That means, someone is looking to take the file, not just read it."
Sam tensed. "They're trying to get rid of the evidence."
"It's one of the Stynes," Dean grumbled.
"Wait. So, can you ask this hacker who there buyer is?"
Charlie shook her head. "There's no way they'd answer that."
"Try," Sam insisted.
You were a bit shocked by how long it took to get a response after that. You went back through the messages, searching for a slip up somewhere. Someway this chick you were talking to could have discovered who you were or how to access information on you, but you couldn't find anything too suspicious.
The next message was pretty straightforward.
-Can you tell me who hired you?-
You rolled your eyes and began typing once again.
-Sorry hun, I don't know the answer to that question myself.-
You waited a minute before typing again.
-Speaking of which I have to send this off. Soon. I'm going to delete these messages, but I highly suggest that you get rid of that trojan horse. I don't know if my buyer knows anything about coding, but if he does, that's a pretty damn obvious giveaway.-
-Don't! Delete! Anything! Yet! You can't send this off to the buyer, do you understand me?-
You raised an eyebrow. What was this girl playing at? You had a job to do, no doubt just like her.
-I'm sorry?-
-You're in some deep shit right now. Did you read anything in the file?-
You remembered back to what you had seen yesterday when you stupidly browsed through it.
-My life is deep shit. I get hired to do illegal task for insane amounts of money. I'm not exactly miss goody-two-shoes. And I only looked through it for a minute. There's some creepy stuff in there.-
-Yes. And you're about to be a part of it if you don't listen to me.-
-Is that a threat?-
It was strange, this turn of events. You didn't think for a second you would end up arguing with some other hacker girl over completing your job when you started it. Much less did you think you might actually consider listening to her.
-This person who hired you is dangerous. Really dangerous. My friends and I have been watching them for a while. If you give them this information, we'll be in serious trouble.-
You watched carefully as she explained to you who the Styne family was. It was horrible, and for the first time you were scared about what this line of work would get you into. You weren't afraid of going to jail, maybe having to give up your life and change your entire identity. But be killed by some psycho, superhuman family? Not something you thought you had in your hand of cards.
-So you want me to give up my life for you? Get on these people's bad side just because you said so?-
You were shocked once again at how trusting you were being of this girl. You knew basically nothing about her. In all honesty, she should have probably been one of your enemies. But, everything she said lined up. Why not believe her at this point?
-Tell me who you are. Me and my friends, we can protect you.-
That was a bit too big of a leap of faith for you.
-No way, sunshine.-
She didn't argue with you after that. No desperate pleas for you to redeem yourself.
-When's your deadline?- she asked.
-Midnight.-
By 10 o'clock that night, all of your messages were gone. She was gone.
You didn't blame her. If she was telling the truth, any trace of her in that file could be colossally bad for her… but you wished she had waited a minute longer.
At 11:58, you opened up the original email you got about the job. You hit reply and wrote a short, sweet message for the murderer on the other side.
No deal. Sorry about the wait.
Your computer made a cute noise, and the "Your message has been sent!" notification appeared at the bottom of your screen.
You nodded in defeat. Closing up your computer for the last time, you picked it up under one arm and walked into your kitchen. The house was silent, like it usually was. You approached the counter, holding your computer in both hands, but you hesitated.
This was a huge risk. Extreme.
You squeezed your eyes shut. No point in worrying about it now.
You swung the laptop against the side of the counter and it shattered into pieces. You hit the base against the corner once again for good measure, but you knew it was gone. No one was going to access anything suspicious on that computer again.
You dropped it into the mess of glass shards already piling on the floor. Then, taking a deep breath, you left it there.
You made yourself another tea.
It had been three days, and you were itching at the back of Charlie's mind. Stupid as it seemed, she wanted to know what happened to you. Had you gotten your money and spent it all on strippers and drugs or something like that? She tried to think better of you. Maybe, you gave it away to charity, or an ill friend, or some good cause, but she doubted that. In all honesty, she wanted desperately to believe that you had done the right thing and not sent the file away, but she didn't want you to do that at the same time. The Stynes would have killed you.
The nagging feeling got too great. She jumped up, running to her laptop. Sam gave her a funny look, but left her to her work.
She had deleted the trojan horse, meaning if the file was still there, she had to hack through the entire Hays Tech system again.
She had done it once before, what could be so hard this time?
Everything. The amount of time it took was a frustrating process that made Charlie want to rub her forehead against a cheese grater for all eternity. But she finally made it there.
And there it was. "Styne Reapers". In all its glory and completely untouched.
She wasn't sure whether she should laugh or cry, but it came out as a strangled, "Sam!"
He looked up at her. "What is it, Charlie?"
"The file!" she shrieked. "The one on Hays Tech. The one we thought the Stynes had. It's still here! She didn't send it away, because it's right here!"
Sam swung around to see for himself. "Are you serious?"
"Yes," Charlie breathed out. "She… She just put everything out on the line."
"Well, this is great!" Sam grabbed the computer. "We need to continue searching through this file. See if it had any mention of-"
"What about the girl?" Charlie asked.
He hesitated a minute. "What do you mean?"
"The girl," she replied. "The hacker. You know how much trouble she's in. We need to find her!"
Sam looked down at his shoes. "Charlie… there's no way to find her. If she was smart, she went into hiding. If not, they've probably already killed her by now. And we don't know anything about her."
Charlie wasn't going to give up that easily. "You and Dean search for hireable hackers. If the Stynes can find her, so can we. I'm going to pull up missing people reports and recent murders and see if anyone fits the bill."
Sam shook his head. "Charlie, you can't-"
"Get to work," she insisted. "We need to find this girl… and help her."
Sam huffed, leaving Charlie behind to get started on her search.
"Charlie," Dean grumbled as he walked into the war room.
"What is it?" she asked, not looking up from her computer screen.
Dean didn't say anything, just stood at the other end of the table and waited for Charlie to give him her attention.
She rolled her eyes and lifted her head. "What do you-?"
He put his tablet down on the table and slid it to her.
She glanced at the title:
"Twenty-Eight-Year-Old Tech Genius Goes Missing"
Her eyes widened as she read on.
College dropout Y/N L/N goes missing under mysterious circumstances. Y/N's friends say she was extremely gifted in computer sciences and sometimes was roped into doing odd jobs for money, by using this talent. Y/N's apartment was found broken into two nights ago, and her computer was found smashed on the kitchen floor.
It went on, and in the center of the page was a picture of you. There was a tug at the corner of Charlie's mouth. You were pretty cute.
"I think we've found her," Dean admitted. "I'm sorry, Charlie, but they got her."
Charlie just shook her head. "And I'm going to go save her."
Dean looked at her, incredulously. "You can't save her, Charlie. The article says there were signs of a break in, she didn't just run away. This means the Stynes must have gotten to her."
"Yes. They got her. But if they wanted to, they would have just killed her there. They are keeping her alive for some reason and I'm going to save her." She stood up and began to leave.
"But-"
"No 'buts'!" she argued. "I'm going to go be this girl's knight in shining armor!"