Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.
This is a sequel to a previous story of mine called Turkey Day. It could probably stand alone, but it'll mean a lot more if you've read the first one. There are a lot of references (read: spoilers) to the first story in here.
General Content Warning: This story will be darker than its prequel, and contains graphic violence, and non-explicit torture and rape themes in later chapters. Each chapter header will contain warnings as appropriate.
EDIT: For some reason FF won't let me post the word B1tcoin (if you throw in an i instead of a 1 there.) No idea why. From now on I'll refer to it as cyber currency or cyber coin.
-M-
Jack carefully hid a grin as the man across from him casually ripped a sheet of paper free of the legal pad, deliberately wadded it up, and chucked it at his head.
He dodged it absently, still intent on his own pad.
"Jack, that's the plot from the third Mission Impossible movie."
He painstakingly added the quintessential evil mustache to the third stick figure he'd drawn. "Well, my name's Ethan, might as well be Hunt, I'm a spy-"
A second piece of paper was methodically torn from the legal pad across from him. "You're a photojournalist."
For fun, Jack added some nerd glasses to the fourth stick figure. ". . . pretty much the same thing, when you think about it –"
This time the sheet of paper was being folded. The blond was going for accuracy on the next shot. He'd have to pay attention.
Mac was able to fashion his latest weapon and lecture him at the same time, which was a good sign. "Jack, you are not going into the Hague and testifying that we were meeting the Chevaliers because we received a postcard with an embedded microdot asking for our help."
Jack chuckled, mostly to himself. "What, it makes sense. Ethan's got an eye for these things, he'd notice somethin' on the postcard –" He cut himself off voluntarily as the blond made quick work of separating the folded piece of paper into three equal pieces. So this was going to be a multi-pronged attack.
And then his partner paused. "You're not even . . . let me see your pad."
Jack shifted in the conference chair, so that the back of the pad was now facing across the table.
MacGyver watched him expectantly for a moment, then a frustrated smile started growing on his face. "It's covered in smiley faces, isn't it."
Jack surveyed his artwork. " . . . no." And that was the truth; not a single stick figure was smiling.
His partner sighed, then picked up one of his mini paper airplanes and twirled in his own conference room chair, staring out the floor to ceiling windows. They were essentially sequestered in one of the conference rooms on the sixth floor, one Jack hadn't visited in nearly a year. Coincidentally, the last time he'd been there he'd been being debriefed about the very thing they were discussing now.
Or not discussing. They'd been at it since about seven am, and the kid needed a break. Frankly so did he.
"Come on, Mac. Lemme have a little fun with this." He slapped the pad down on the table, dropping his pen on top of it. "Cause I'm pretty sure you're not gonna let me just shoot his ass."
At that angle, his back mostly to Jack, the early afternoon sun accentuated Mac's cheekbone rising in a grin. "Not unless you're going to do it with a camera, Ethan."
Jack made a disgusted sound. "Dude, I dunno what you think I'm into, but I ain't snappin' a photo of that bastard's derriere, I can tell ya that."
The blond let loose with a low chuckle. "Oh, but a bullet's a different story?"
"Damn straight it is." Jack couldn't keep the indignation out of his voice. "One's a message. The other's . . . just pervy."
He had to give it to the kid, he was good. Mac laughed, turning in his chair as if to look at him, and Jack didn't see his other hand moving until it was too late. He still tried to reflexively block, but the little yellow paper dart got past him and hit his left cheek.
Jack reached up and rubbed his face. "Ow. That shit's pointy."
His partner didn't look even remotely apologetic. "Jack, we have a perfectly good cover story, we were two journalists from Reuters, at the museum to go behind the scenes to get images of Coptic art for our article. Wrong place, wrong time."
"Well, yeah," Jack agreed, "but that's boring."
MacGyver stared at him for a long second. "You were attacked by an elite commando, kidnapped, almost killed, rescued by gypsies . . . what part of this cover story is boring?"
When he said it like that, it actually sounded pretty damn awesome. Not that he was going to admit that.
And having lived it, it wasn't as much awesome as it was impressive.
"The first part, obviously," and Jack gave him his best 'duh' expression. "Ethan Darby's an adventurer, man. He dangles from catwalks to get the best shots. He challenges the locals to ghost pepper eating contests in bars when he needs the scratch. He wasn't just wanderin' around outside some lame museum and got knocked upside the head by anybody, elite commando or not." Then he thought better of it. "Two commandos, by the way. Two." He held up two fingers for emphasis.
Mac's eyebrows were raised, clearly unimpressed, and he picked up his second tiny paper airplane dart. ""Okay, fine. You're going to argue that Ethan's scrappy from all those ghost pepper eating contests gone wrong?"
Jack frowned across the table at him. "He ain't scrappy, dude. This ain't Scooby Doo. Ethan Darby's a badass, man. I got all those shots from hotspots 'round the world. He can handle himself in a fight."
Mac shook his head and inspected his ammunition, making a small adjustment to a rear flap.
"You're aware that you're going to be cross-examined, right?"
Yes. Yes he was. "Oh yeah. I got the perfect answer for anybody who asks about that supermodel exposé we did in India, too –"
MacGyver started to shake his head, then gunned the second dart his way. This time Jack was prepared, and managed to fend it off with a laugh.
"Simple, Jack. Think simple."
Jack glanced at the floor, trying to see where the dart went. Kid could use a taste of his own medicine. "Man, there ain't nothin' simple about this. I haven't studied this hard since I flunked my biology final in high school."
The table was strewn with papers – and very few of them were wadded up or folded into objects of aerial assault. It was all evidence, carefully crafted by Phoenix analysts, that was coming with them to the Netherlands for the trial of one Colonel Batuhan Aydin. He was being tried for war crimes and attempted genocide for his failed coup in Turkey last year, and thanks to the crankings of the political machine, he and Mac had front row seats.
Which, considering they weren't actually Ethan Darby and Luka Morrow, journalists from Reuters, was the dumbest fucking thing Jack could possibly imagine.
He'd tried to reason with Matty – repeatedly. Putting two secret agents literally on the world's stage was a colossally stupid idea. He knew it was all politically motivated. If he asked Mac, the kid would tell him in painful detail that there had simply been too much communication between the Turkish government, NATO, and the State Department related to the assassination of the Chevaliers. Their murders had been reported widely across Turkey and neighboring countries. Greece's involvement, funding the rogue colonel Aydin via the very highly respected General Doukas – and Jack still referred to him exclusively as Count Dooku - had come out about three months later in the Greek tabloids. The current president of Turkey, Erdogan, had been furious not only about the US's botched attempt to exfiltrate and prosecute the Chevaliers – whom Erdogan was using to illegally identify and imprison his political adversaries, including Aydin – but also Greece's implicit support of overthrowing his government.
Since every country involved had been breaking international law, they had all eventually agreed to the very public trial of Colonel Aydin for war crimes, which Erdogan wanted to use to show the barbarity of his opponents and the strength of his government. NATO wanted to tout the victory and effectiveness of their peacekeeping forces. Greece wanted to use Aydin as a cautionary tale of what could happen to unhappy Greeks being seduced by far-right ideology. The US State Department simply didn't want their dirty laundry aired.
As for the Phoenix, Matty wanted to maintain the good relationship she'd started with NATO Strategic Commander Ian Ives, and throwing Luka Morrow and Ethan Darby in as witnesses at the trial was a small price for the State Department to pay to show that the US was indeed an ally to Turkey.
The entire thing, top to bottom, pissed Jack right the hell off. First things first, NATO hadn't rescued Mac. The Phoenix had – and they'd paid dearly for it. Second, he had it on high authority the bottle of scotch Matty had sent Ives for letting them steal that Huey and bug out from Aydin's mansion easily paid for them to not have to put on a dog and pony show on an international stage.
Third, and most important, this trial was going to dredge up every terrible thing that had happened to Luka Morrow. Only it hadn't happened to Luka.
It had happened to Mac.
Luckily, they weren't the main event. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, he and Luka were simply two hostages that had been taken by Aydin to document his rise to power. Aydin had decided he only needed one journalist, ordering good ol' Ethan to be executed with the Chevaliers. A traveling group of gypsies had happened upon the execution site and saved Ethan's bullet-ridden ass, and then tried to ransom him back to the United States once they'd nursed him back to health.
Luka Morrow, on the other hand, hadn't been so lucky. After refusing to be Aydin's PR man, Luka had been tortured and kept as a hostage in case the United States decided to intervene. He was rescued by NATO forces when they took Aydin's compound.
He and Mac were just two more witnesses out of a hundred that would be telling their stories of surviving Aydin's Bordo Bereliler and the colonel's ruthless quest to overthrow the Turkish government and establish martial law.
Because Director Bitch at the State Department wanted to look good, they had to drag his boy through every horrific second he'd been in the hands of Aydin and his men. The thought irritated Jack enough that he considered calculating how many seconds were in three weeks.
It would probably just give him a headache.
Mac could prolly calculate that in, like, less time than it took to ask him.
"Uh . . . Jack?"
Jack gave up glowering at the papers on the conference table, and glanced back up at his partner inquiringly. Mac was giving him almost the same look.
"You okay over there?"
He wiped the frustration off his face, and gave a resigned shake of his head. "Yeah. Just . . ." He waved a hand over the table. "You don't have to do this, you know."
All the levity Jack had been working so hard to put there was instantly replaced with Mac's game face, the one he usually wore when the topic of Turkey came up, and Jack almost kicked himself.
"Pretty sure we do, if we don't want to get fired."
"I mean it, man. Matty'd make your apologies to the State Department. She's been lookin' for an excuse to knock that dumbass director down a peg." And if she hadn't, she sure as hell should have been.
He managed to coax a half smile out of the blond. "It's okay, Jack. Besides, it's not Director Bosch's fault her analyst was in Aydin's pocket." His expression tightened a little. "And the colonel's still got plenty of supporters. The sooner he's convicted, the better."
Damn. Mac was still wound up about the incident last week.
Jack tugged his chair closer to the table, folding his hands and looking Mac dead in the eye. "It wasn't your bomb."
In the run-up to Aydin's trial, there had been an increase in clashes between the current president, Erdogan, and the same young protestors that Aydin had been trying to leverage a year ago. Erdogan's government had cracked down even more after Aydin's defeat and capture, and the people were angry. According to the media, someone had rushed the Parliament building wearing a suicide vest and succeeded in detonating it outside the Parliament Hall, killing themselves and injuring three staff.
According to American intelligence, which Jack already knew Mac had checked, the bomb had not been a suicide vest, but had actually been successfully smuggled in beneath a food service cart, and it detonated while the bomb squad was evaluating it.
And Jack knew damn well exactly what Mac had made of that piece of information.
One of the few things he could remember being forced to do was disarm a bomb. All Mac had told him was that by disarming it he'd taught them how to improve the design, and he was afraid that several iterations of design improvement could have gone by without his remembering it at all.
Even though NATO had gotten the mansion, the known recruitment centers, the storage facilities, he knew Mac didn't really believe that all of Aydin's men had been rounded up. He was probably right. There was a chance that someone out there had that bomb design.
And all that meant was that there was one more bomb design out in the world. One that Mac could disarm, and could teach others to disarm – which was exactly what he'd done when he sent the design to Charlie Robinson, his old Army EOD buddy over at the FBI headquarters in Quantico.
His partner took his declaration like a champ, with that little half-smile that could mean just about anything. "We won't know that until the remnants are analyzed -"
"Fine, dude, I know you won't believe me until you see those pieces with your own pair a' peepers, but Jack Dalton's got an instinct for these things, and I'm tellin' ya, you don't got anything to worry about."
Mac eventually gave a judicious nod. "I hope you're right."
"When have I ever been wrong about these things?"
This time Mac recognized verbal bait when he heard it, because he just shook his head and glanced back down at the table. "You know, if you'd actually focus on this, we could get out of here."
"Oh, I'm focused. Two laser beams, right here." He indicated his eyes. "Ethan's gonna be right beside you every step of the way, bud. He won't let ya down."
He received a snort. "Only if he testifies after Luka. You need to take this seriously, Jack. There are real lawyers who are going to be picking apart every word trying to find some way to discredit the witnesses. You can't just make something up and hope Riley backstops you in time."
Well, there was that. "Look, if she could hack herself an invitation to the damn thing, I don't see why she couldn't just reschedule it."
Mac gave him an amused look. "Jack . . . everyone who's attending that grey hat conference hacked their own invitation. That's the only way to get one."
He shrugged, and dragged the next set of papers closer. "You remember when we walked into that room, and she pegged us as DXS in less than sixty seconds?"
His partner glanced at the color of the folder he'd picked up, and fished out its twin. "It was a pretty memorable first meeting."
"Yeah." He smiled fondly, and flipped open the folder without looking at it. "She told us we could reschedule Christmas if we wanted. And y'know, she wasn't wrong. She could move that conference to any damn week she pleased. Just like Phoenix could say no to this, Mac. You don't have to do this."
Mac glanced down at the folder a moment, as if he truly intended to let it go, ignore the opening, keep working. Then gave up, and leaned back in his chair instead, studying the mess of papers on the table for a moment. ". . . I'm good, Jack. Really," he added, as if he was afraid he was going to be interrupted. Jack was content to give him a second to frame his thoughts.
"I didn't actually see the colonel all that much. Honestly, you were there for most of it." He shrugged, like the two times Jack had seen Aydin and Mac interacting were no big deal. Then his lips quirked. "And you already shot everyone else."
All the major players, anyway. There was no way to know if they'd gotten all the d-bags who'd laid a finger on him those three endless weeks. "Just 'cause they won't be in the room physically don't mean they won't be there in spirit, Mac."
The blond thought about that a second, then focused back on the folder with a strange little smile. "Good thing I don't believe in ghosts."
Jack held up a finger. "Now, I clearly remember you tellin' me my ghost was all up in your face –"
"Hallucination," MacGyver corrected quietly. "You weren't actually dead. And Luka never saw you." Mac's eyes dropped to a stack on his right, and a white-bordered photograph was peeking out from the folder. Enough of the image was visible for Jack to make out a human arm.
Mac's arm. The photographic documentation that had been done of his injuries and sent ahead to Phoenix medical, so they could start designing his treatment plan even when he was still flying through the air, fifteen hours away.
Probably touched up to hide the worst of the damage. They were going to be blown up and displayed on the big screen for the whole court to see.
"You know they're gonna make ya talk about it," Jack said, as gently as he could. "That's the whole point of puttin' you on the stand."
Mac didn't open the folder, didn't so much as twitch in its direction. ". . . and Luka will. Aydin wanted to control the story, Luka refused. They beat him. Withheld food and water. Deprived him of sleep. Waterboarding, electric shock. Hung him by his wrists until they cracked. He almost escaped, once, but they shot him before he could clear the courtyard." Mac's voice was flat and calm. "Best day of his life was when NATO came through that door and cut him down."
If only it had been that simple. What Mac probably considered the worst parts – the drugs, the hallucinations, the interrogations and scenarios in which he gave up intelligence – the world was never going to hear about that. Not about the bomb, not about the transponder, not about the base codes.
They wouldn't hear about the panicking, half-starved, half-naked twenty something turning on his rescuers because he didn't know who they were. Or the days that followed, the hallucinations and fear of being recaptured that had driven that same man to hide from his family, loose in Los Angeles with a gun he was only willing to use on one person.
Mac didn't know it, but the bullet Jack had taken from the chamber of that gun was right there in the conference room with them.
Across from him, he saw Mac's Adam's apple bob, and then he raised his eyes. They were serious, but steady. "A civilian wouldn't be able to handle that as well as a trained agent. If Luka gets a little quiet on the stand, well . . . that'll just give his testimony authenticity." With that apparently firmly decided, Mac refocused on the folder in front of him. "And if that testimony helps build a case against the colonel, it's time well spent. I don't have to tell you what would happen if he were to somehow be acquitted."
No. No he didn't. "Dude, that ain't gonna happen. Besides straight up admitting he killed the ambassador and his family, they've got him and his men for another seventy-two murders. The only way he's getting outta this is if he buys the jury, which is kinda hard to do when it's made up of countries, not people, and besides, all his funding dried up when we took down Count Dooku. One man's testimony ain't gonna make or break this."
Mac held up a hand. "I'm not saying I'd make or break the case against him, Jack. But I am responsible for his organization getting their hands on a lot of firepower, which hasn't been fully recovered –"
"Whoa whoa whoa now hoss, slow it down there. You and I been through this –"
"Jack-"
"Unless you got a shiny job at the UN you ain't told me about, you didn't give them creds to land those birds."
Mac stared at him a moment, just a few degrees from an outright glare, and Jack backed off a little. "Now, you know I respect that, cleaning up your own mess. God knows I've insisted on it enough times myself, even when it was stupid and I shouldn't'a. I really ain't sure this is one of those times-"
"I am." His partner's tone was final. "It's my mess, and it's my call."
Jack leaned away from the table, holding up his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay . . . fair enough. You just tell me this, then. If we go and we testify and they put him away, is that clean enough for you?"
The stare turned up another degree, but this time Jack met him head on, and after a few seconds Mac's eyes shifted to the right as he thought. ". . . well, barring some all-out assault his remaining men might launch against the Turkish government, I don't see how I can ever actually track down all the weapons taken from Camp Bondsteel-"
"Yes or no, dude."
Mac mirrored his position, leaning back in his chair, and the glare petered off into something else. Maybe frustration. ". . . well, it'll have to be. I don't know what else I can do."
Jack was quiet, letting the words sink in. Hoping that now that Mac had said them, he might actually hear them. There was nothing else he could do. Once Aydin was convicted, sentenced, and locked away safe and sound by the court, it was over. Turkey was stable enough to put down any revolution led by a lesser figurehead. They might never find the hacker that had been working for the colonel, maybe never know if all Aydin's moles in the Turkish intelligence department were truly rooted out, but that was usually the way these things worked.
And at some point, it had to be good enough. Not good enough for him, or for Matty, or the State Department. Good enough for Mac. The kid's willingness to put himself through such a painful but essentially unnecessary process seemed like nothing more than self-punishment to him. And he hoped like hell that wasn't what it was.
Mac had nothing to be sorry for. Not one fuckin' thing.
"Okay," he finally said into the silence. "You know I'm with you one hundred percent, Mac. If this is what it takes, let's do it."
Mac's pensive look faded into confusion for a second. "So . . . if we'd just started with this conversation, instead of having it . . ." He glanced at his cellphone screen a moment. " . . . five hours into this, we could have been done by now?"
Jack shot him a grin. "Listen, brother, if you'd'a just agreed with me that the microdot idea was gold we could be noshin' on burgers and shakes right now."
Mac took a deep breath, then groaned and scrubbed his face. "We stick with the original cover story."
Jack dropped his hands back to the table. "You know what, fine. I'm hungry, you're hungry, let's break for lunch." He glanced around, but there didn't seem to be a little wooden hammer handy, so he picked up his phone and tapped it on the table, twice.
Two blue eyes peered between Mac's fingers. "It's called a recess when it's a break during court, Jack."
"Awesome. That was my favorite class in school." He bounced to his feet, pocketing his smartphone gavel, and Mac gave up and stood as well, stretching with a little yawn. Jack watched him while pretending to turn his nose up at the remaining documents they still needed to review.
If he didn't know Mac like he did, it would seem like it had never happened. The lost weight was long since back on, those gangly-ass arms and legs fit right in his clothes. The wrists even looked good; he'd had plastic surgery on them about three months back, to pare off what Bozer's magical cream couldn't heal. His father's watch hid his left wrist, but his right one looked pretty damn good. There was a light little band around it, like he'd been wearing something on that wrist the last time he'd gotten sun, and it hadn't tanned as much as the rest of his skin. But all the red scar tissue was basically gone.
He saw the kid rub them occasionally, so he figured they were still a little numb. Maybe always would be, nerves never really did heal right and Mac had taken some damage there. Far as Jack could tell, he was getting sleep – when their mission schedule permitted – and he hadn't flinched once, not since they'd both recertified back into the field.
His own left leg, on the other hand, had decided it wanted to be a damn comedian and was far better than KTLA's weatherman at predicting when fronts were coming through. Other than aching every time it rained – whether he was in LA or not – he was still pressing the same weight and running the same distances he had before the gunshot. And he'd been considering getting the same surgeon that had worked on Mac to take a stab – no pun intended – at the scars on his belly. What he'd thought would be manly kinda looked like he'd had a C-section.
Though being the first man on earth to have a baby would be pretty bad-ass . . . and would have to be a C-section, otherwise that li'l rugrat'd be slidin' outta his –
Jack winced, then turned for the door, and his partner gave him a strange look.
"Do I want to know?"
Jack shook his head. "Nope."
Mac made a little sound of discomfort as they stepped out. "These chairs always put my butt to sleep."
They walked into the hall side by side, and Mac pulled the doors closed behind them. He appreciated Mac giving him the out, but it was a little too much like pandering to an old man, and Jack raised a playful eyebrow.
"You sure you got enough meat on that bony ass to put to sleep?"
Oddly, his partner merely smiled as they walked down the hall. "I don't kiss and tell, but I will say that a certain someone thought it was perfectly fine last week . . ."
"Oh? Oh, is that what she said? This is 'perfectly fine'?" Jack chuckled and punched the button for the elevator. "Who are you seein', a nerd? Why yes, this is perfectly fine. Your backside is completely acceptable." He did his best stuffy British voice.
Mac laughed, a free and easy one that was music to Jack's ears. ". . . Not exactly. Hey, I thought you'd be happy, you've been after me to start dating again."
"Well, yeah, of course I am!" He clapped his partner on the back as the elevator dinged and Mac turned towards it. "I was hopin' you'd date a girl instead of a computer, but . . ." Then his mind caught back up to what part of Mac they were discussing, and Jack grinned at his unintended pun. "But . . . since she apparently got you outta your drawers, she can't be all bad. You like the hot librarian look?"
Mac's eyebrows flew upwards. "Hello, Matty."
Jack blinked, completely thrown, and made a face. "Not sure I'd call her look 'hot librarian' . . ."
"Well that's a relief, Dalton. I wasn't really trying for it."
He glanced back into what had initially appeared to be an empty elevator cabin to find Matty was standing in one of the front corners, and he flinched a little, because he was already on a roll and why not just go for it full tilt. "Well, damn, aren't you sneaky today."
His partner simply pressed his lips together and stepped briskly onto the elevator, and after evaluating Matty's glower to determine if he'd just volunteered himself to take the stairs, Jack also sidled in – on the opposite side.
"I was just coming upstairs to see how 'Luka' and 'Ethan' were doing on finalizing their cover stories."
She looked between the two of them meaningfully, and Mac actually chuckled a little. His ears were also turning slightly red.
"Well, we've finished up the backstory synch and the time with Aydin, we're working on the rest now. Ethan's return to work, Luka's rehab –"
"Which apparently includes hot librarians getting you out of your 'drawers'?" Matty asked innocently.
Mac cleared his throat and shifted a little. "Well, now that you mention it, Luka does have an on again off again-"
"How about off until the two of you get your act together," Matty snapped, ending Mac's attempt at rescuing himself. "You are seasoned agents and this isn't your first undercover op. You should have had this knocked out three hours ago! And I hope I don't need to remind you that it needs to be airtight. It's bad enough we've been dragged into this farce, I don't need two of my best agents getting caught with their pants down during cross examination."
Jack laughed out loud. "Good one, that was a good one, boss. See, you know you like the puns-" He closed his mouth as the glare transferred to him. "Good one," he said, in a more professional tone.
She cocked her head to the side. "Don't think I don't know the delay is all you, Jack. How many movie plots has he tried to insert into the story so far?"
Jack put on an affronted look. His partner smirked. "Three. But, since his name's Ethan –"
Matty just rolled her eyes as the elevator came to a smooth stop on the first floor. "Let me guess. Mission Impossible." She sighed and started out the doors almost before they opened. "You're no Ethan Hunt, Jack. Too tall, and I can't believe I'm saying this, not crazy enough."
Jack watched her go, still trying for the injured look, and Mac left his smirk firmly in place as he followed her, with a little bounce to his step.
"And better lookin'!" he called out after them, then frowned and followed his partner. Matty was headed to the War Room, and didn't bother to snap back a reply, and Mac took a sharp right and took them across the lobby towards the break room.
-M-
"Oh. That's hot."
The voice rose above the general din of the dealer's room, clearly meant for them, and Riley Davis didn't respond. Instead, she turned the board over in her hands and traced the water cooling lines – built into the board, rather than added after manufacturing – back to the processor. Dedicated lines for GPUs and CPUs, wound through the heatsink and rigid. She pressed a thumbnail into the material, and it gave a little, but didn't shatter or indent.
The woman across from her grinned. "It's a new material. Extremely conductive, puts up with the same temperatures as the silicone and graphene. Won't carry a charge, just takes away the heat."
"And you're running . .. distilled water?"
The hardware rep shook her head, and her various rings, studs, bars, and earrings made a melodious chiming sound. "I mean you can, but you can swap in any coolant you like. The tubes are corrosion resistant, and have enough play they can take the same abuse as the rest of the rig. Best part is, the material's like glue when it melts. You can fix any leak in seconds with a soldering iron."
Riley raised her eyebrows and turned the board over again, eyeing it critically. "Where's the reservoir placed? Pump and fan, all told, what's the weight on a system like this?"
"Oh, keep talkin' dirty to me, ladies."
Riley glanced at the other woman. She was about the same age, though she was pale-skinned with hair so light blonde it might as well have been white. She had more piercings than Riley could easily count, as well as gorgeous tattoo sleeves, all done in delicate blues, violets, and greens. Her lips were a very pale pink, with the kind of gloss that looked like hard candy, and her dark blue eyes were accentuated by blacks, blues, and topaz in her eyeliner and lid cover.
She was clearly going for the android look, which Riley appreciated, and the spark in her eyes told Riley that she was more than willing to play along.
"The pump is external, along with the fan and reservoir. There's a quick connect port here –" and the woman gently brushed her fingertips across Riley's wrist as she manipulated the board to present it – ". . . and the system has a pressure sensor so it knows when to switch to air cooling. It's a very . . . discreet solution."
Riley let her lips curve up invitingly. "I like that."
The other woman tilted her head just so, and kept playing with Riley's wrist. "You do?"
"Mmm-hmm." She glanced down at the board again, then leaned closer to the other woman. "And you know what else?"
"What?" It was a flirtatious breath.
"I see something else that looks just as yummy." Riley held the woman's eyes a long moment, then turned with one of Samantha Cage's slow blinks to stare at the guy who was only a few feet away, watching them intently.
"Oh yeah," the other woman purred. "Definitely."
The guy's eyebrows slowly rose, and his leering smirk grew wider. Riley bit her lower lip, then left the board with the rep, heading towards him with a suggestive sway of her hips. When she was right in front of him, close enough to smell the Axe body spray, she deliberately looked him up and down.
The guy's hands came up, and she caught him around the wrists, then stared right into his eyes.
"You're in my way," she told him, not changing her tone in the slightest – and then she put him in a wrist lock and propelled him out of the booth.
His smirk morphed into a yelp of pain, which Riley completely ignored, and then she took one more step forward – to the table that he'd been standing in front of – and picked up a tiny little power supply that could only be described as 'fucking adorable.'
"What's the output on this little guy?"
"Hey, bitch –"
Riley turned on him instantly, taking the three steps between them, and it was gratifying to watch him actually backpedal. "Dude, I'm here for hardware, which you clearly don't have. Back off or I put you on the floor – and trust me, you won't enjoy it."
He opened his mouth and she let her eyes flash. By this point they'd attracted a little bit of attention – and a little bit was all she wanted. It was enough that he noticed too, and Riley turned her back on him and stalked back into the booth. He muttered something, but she didn't bother to listen, and the woman manning the booth shot her an admiring smile.
"Nice. This is clearly not your first con."
Riley scoffed, then shook her head. "Not yours either."
"Nope." The blonde took the power supply from Riley, turning it so she could see the bottom, and then slid what had looked like a solid chassis apart with her thumb, revealing two rails to allow it to be mounted on any board. "And this little fella puts out nineteen volts, eight amps. Not enough for real gear, but absolutely does the job if you need processing power in a small package."
"Nice." It was offered back and Riley took it, checking the rails and noticing not only did it leave a lot of room for adjusting, but it had three different diameter of screw holes, to accommodate tablets, laptops, or whatever else you needed to attach it to. "I haven't seen this stuff anywhere."
"You won't." The blonde glanced up at the wall behind them, which proclaimed her booth to be Mythrill Ltd. A nice play on Lord of the Rings' legendary mithril and the Myth games, the sixth installment of which was running in demo on Mythrill hardware, flawlessly. "I designed most of it, have it manufactured in Hong Kong. I've got suppliers I trust in Africa producing the silicone and graphene, and it all gets assembled in – well, in my boyfriend's flat. By him and three of his closest pals."
Riley appreciated the candor. "So you're not lookin' for a big slice of the market."
"Nope. This hardware isn't exactly meant for common consumption."
Almost in unison, they turned and glanced back into the hall, where the loser script kiddie had withdrawn to another aisle to lick his wounds.
Honestly, there wasn't much difference between the dealer room here and the dealer room at any other convention. In fact, after Jack had expressed his usual amount of confusion at a hacker convention – including suggesting it was going to be held in the organizer's mom's basement – she'd finally made him understand by telling him it was just like a gun show, but with military-grade weaponry.
He'd been a lot more interested once that concept had sunk in.
And frankly, the comparison was way closer than most people would think. The hardware and software for sale here, by well-known vendors like Cisco and Alienware, as well as more boutique outfits like Mythrill, was just as deadly when weaponized. This was the kind of hardware you needed if you wanted to actually make money mining cyber currency. Or building a tiny drone capable of launching a chemical strike. She had no doubt there were people here from the NSA, the military, DHS – anyone who had the skills to get an invitation was welcome.
Wasn't like anyone was wearing ID. Not even access badges. If you actually knew where the hell this was going down, you belonged here. And if you didn't, the people around you would figure it out – fast.
Riley glanced down the aisle again, scanning the other booths in line of sight, but everyone else was either gaming rigs, or software. Her gaze returned to the tiny power supply, holding it up to the light a moment. "I got a squad who'd be all over these. What would an order of, say, thirty set me back?"
The blonde's eyebrows rose. "That's a hell of a squad."
Riley grinned. "Nah. We all just like our toys." A power supply this small could allow them to get the processing capacity of a laptop into something smaller than a normal USB stick. And sure, they could backwards engineer it, but why go to all that trouble when they could purchase them from a reputable source.
At least, a source Riley considered reputable.
The woman just inclined her head with a smile. "Batch like that'd take me a week to get ready."
"Not a problem." Riley glanced around her, at the system board cooling system combo. "And I think I really want one of those."
"Not sharing that, huh?"
They laughed as Riley followed her further into the booth, where she had a tablet set up taking orders. "Nope, that's all for me."
"And you are?"
Gone were the days Riley would admit to being Artemis37. If she'd been giving a talk she might have – but she wasn't. Matty had made that quite clear. For the privilege of taking three days off, almost completely dark, with no location data at an undisclosed hotel, Matty had insisted that Riley bring back anything she thought looked interesting, and drew zero attention to herself.
So Riley fished out an ID that everyone in the hotel knew was fake, and the other woman scanned it into the tablet. "Sarah Conner?"
Riley smirked. "Inside joke. Besides, Beyoncé was taken." Jack had adored that fake license.
"Nah, chica, that's badass." She tied the scanned identity to a randomly generated one, then handed back the ID. "You a woman only crew?"
No. Though she had a feeling this chick would get along well with Matty. "We're . . . more interested in the skills, no matter how unlikely the package." Bozer came immediately to mind. And honestly, just looking at Mac, you'd think he was a preppy post-grad more interested in chasing girls than terrorists. "But I'm glad to see you and I aren't the only ladies here this year."
One glance at the world of IT showed the enormous imbalance of male to female contributors. It wasn't that there were so many fewer women – it was that they were punished for being good at their jobs. Hackers were a more representative spread, because no one gave you shit for your boobs if they thought you were a dude. Or your skin, your country, your fashion . . . it was all about avatars and message threads. But coming out into the open like this – even for a grey hat event, so this one wasn't even illegal – was still a risk. And still very much the boy's club.
Her little display would make the rounds in a hurry. It'd keep the boys on better behavior with Mythrill's owner, and it would keep the heat off her.
Still, there were other chicks out in that aisle, more than she usually saw at events like this. Short, tall, fat, thin, brown and white – they were all sisters, and even if they wouldn't stand up for one another physically, she knew damn well that asshole script kiddie that had hassled them was going to get no end of hell rained down on him, by men and women alike, for his behavior.
She'd already cloned his phone. As soon as she got back to her room, his rig was going to become hers.
The blonde showed her a figure – which was about in line with what she'd thought – and Riley accepted the tablet, opening up her cyber coin wallet and approving the transfer. Someone at the Phoenix – or DXS at the time – had been bright enough to squirrel away some cyber currency when the currency was first developed. They'd had the computing power to mine their own, and that investment had paid for itself a thousand times. She'd had the keys modified, so they didn't look quite as old as the originals – that would be hard to explain – and the transaction went through without a hitch.
Now she just had to explain to Matty that it was money well spent.
"When we're ready to ship, I'll text you for the address."
Riley nodded, and threw in a Google Voice number. It tied back eventually to a virtual phone out in the cloud, which would be as far as any hacker could get to the next three hops to another virtual phone that was installed on her rig.
No one here expected any less.
"Been a pleasure, Miss Connor."
"And you . . . uh –"
The blonde grinned. "Let's go with Tera."
Riley nodded, and shook the outstretched hand. "Pleasure chatting with you, Tera. See you at the social later?"
"Con suite?"
"You know it."
Her wad of cash effectively spent, Riley browsed the rest of the vendors on the aisle. There was some cool software, not Phoenix appropriate but certainly conceptually worth checking out. The large conference TV at the end of the aisle gave the speaking schedule and rooms, and Riley browsed it before she decided she had some downtime. It was only nine pm.
Good time for a nap. 27FlyingMonks was part of a panel on cyber currency key mods at 2 am, which she definitely wanted to hit, and there was a fair amount of overlap between hackers and gamers. Naughty Dog Games was looking for real hackers to voice some characters for their upcoming game, and Riley was just curious enough to check into it.
Not that she would volunteer. That'd be a hell of a way to get real hackers' voices sampled for future comparison, or in an attempt to circumvent multi-factor authentication. She really just wanted to go for the laughs. And maybe a download code to beta the next game coming out.
This particular convention had landed in Vegas, where the clothes and the gear wouldn't look out of place. Las Vegas was the site of many legitimate tech conferences, and the hotels didn't know the difference. Neither did law enforcement, usually. She took the elevator up to the twelfth floor, pleased that she wasn't sharing it, and fished the honeypot phone out of her pocket, just to see.
Oh yeah. Twenty-seven attempts to clone, fifteen to exfil data. She scrolled through the list even as the doors opened, and she nodded to the older couple who didn't seem at all surprised to see a woman in ripped jeans and a tank stepping off onto the floor of a very posh hotel.
Everything was cool in Vegas.
She keyed into her room, logging into her rig to check the cams. Outside of housekeeping coming in, no one had passed by the cam she'd hidden in the slats of the closet door. Riley IDed the jackhole who'd hassled her and Tera and started a quiet scan, then scoured down the list of those who had attempted to get into her phone.
She wasn't legitimately upset with them; a honeypot was something temping you intentionally put out for hackers, to see who would stick their hand in. Basically a boobytrap. Conventions like this were a good way to brush up on your skills and find the latest exploits. People tried things out in a place like this, because if a technique was going to get you pwned, it would happen here without mercy. Better a fellow hacker set you on your ass than the FBI when you tried the same trick on a bank next month.
But none of the attempts had been anything she hadn't seen before. Probably automated crap running unattended on other phones. Just feeling the crowd out.
An alert pinged on her rig, and Riley toggled over, then reached into her duffle and grabbed a bag of chips. Scan on the script kiddie's machine came up with nine configuration errors, at least two of which were almost certainly honeypots. The rest were legit because the kid didn't know what he was doing.
In his defense, he'd hacked an invitation. But even within this crowd, there was a certain expectation of expertise outside of what was needed to find the site, parse the HTML, find the hidden IP address, hack that system, and issue the invitation.
She decided a skull and crossbones graphic on his desktop and an eventually breakable encryption – say 128 bit – would teach him the lesson she wanted him to learn, and she'd just set it into motion when another alert popped up.
This one was a little more interesting.
Riley glanced over the scan results, then opened up a window and accessed the system. At least, she tried to. It wasn't airgapped, but it wasn't exactly accessible either. Wherever it was, it was on the hotel network, and it took Riley longer than it probably should have to realize why the hell she couldn't seem to execute any actual commands on the machine.
It had been hardwired to only accept input from its keyboard.
Riley stared at her screen a second, then grinned.
It was a scavenger hunt.
There were always multiple layers to hacker conventions, be them white, black, or grey hat. Little games the attendees or the organizers played on each other, to find like-minded individuals for more serious conversations. Black hat events were mostly illegal, so this kind of scavenger hunt could get you killed as frequently as it could score you a job. White hat events had this kind of thing, but it was almost always sponsored and resulted in some kind of prize and some swag, but nothing really worth your time.
Grey hat events – where the good guys and the bad guys mingled – now this could be anything from a secret consuite to a threat hunter gig to a quick meeting with the regional NSA director. But whatever it was, it was bound to be interesting.
And the system had come online only in the last twenty minutes, which meant she might have been the first to figure it out.
Riley backtracked, and used credentials she'd stolen the first hour she'd been on site to access the hotel routing system. Less than sixty seconds later she tucked her room key and a dry erase marker into her back pocket and slipped out into the hallway.
She could almost hear Mac and Jack in her head as she waited for the elevator. She should have changed clothes, put on a ball cap to hide her face from the cameras. Maybe taken the stairs instead. Hell, she probably should have commandeered a housekeeping uniform and cart. It was way too obvious, taking the elevator, letting them see her approach.
And if this was a spy situation, she'd agree. But it wasn't. It was a hacker scavenger hunt situation, and she would need all that proof to show that she and she alone followed the clues to the prize.
Then Jack reminded her this almost certainly fell outside the realm of Matty's order not to attract attention. Which was probably true. And there was going to be a little B and E involved, which was technically something that could land her in the pokey. Mac chimed in helpfully that the less evidence of the break-in she left, the stronger the argument that the door 'just opened.'
Her mental Jack glared at her mental Mac and accused him of contributing to the delinquency of an impressionable young person. Mental Mac reminded mental Jack that Riley was not a minor and also not terribly impressionable even in the most ideal of situations. Riley gave mental Mac a high five.
She could have hacked the card system and given herself master key access, but that seemed a little overkill, and would have cost her several minutes, plus needing a machine to update the magnetic strip on her card. Something a little more old-school would still get the job done.
The doors opened onto the nineteenth floor, and Riley strolled off the elevator, using the sign to determine which direction room 1968 could be found in.
The hall wasn't empty.
Riley kept her movements casual, and fished her phone out of her other pocket, idly scrolling through messages. There were two gents in perfectly nondescript clothing, standing in front of a door, heads bowed in quiet conversation. One glanced up at her as she came towards them, and Riley completely ignored them.
They were at the wrong room. 1964.
The door to that room suddenly opened, and a third guy joined the first two. They headed towards her in a triangle formation.
Riley looked up, as if she'd just noticed them, and gave them a little nod as they slipped into single file. She paid close attention to the foot position of the trailing male, but he made no move to turn on her, and then they were past. Once she got to 1966, she paused, bringing up her other hand as if texting a message, and waiting for the quiet trio to turn into the elevator bay.
Which they did. Probably just guys at someone's bachelor party or blowing off steam at the blackjack table.
Riley shook her head at herself a little, even if her mental Jack was still insisting that it was always better to be safe than surprised, and she pulled the dry erase marker and her key card out of her pocket, and approached 1968. The key card she fumbled with, as if she couldn't quite get it in the slot, and the dry erase marker, she inserted into the power jack on the bottom of the door lock. Because it wasn't just a dry erase marker. The body of the marker hid an Arduino, with a jack replacing the marker's felt tip, and it was designed specifically to bypass Omni-branded locks. To anyone passing by in the hallway, it would look like she was just holding onto the lock in order to steady her key card hand, but the Arduino hidden in the body of the marker did its thing, and the lock popped.
She withdrew her key card from the lock, then quietly opened the door.
The room was empty, which was good. Meant she was the first one here. It looked as if it hadn't been touched. It was a double, with both lamps between the beds lit, and on the hotel desk across from them was a laptop, the screen glowing a light blue. Riley checked the bathroom – including the shower - and the closet before she sat down in front of the laptop, and woke it out of sleep.
Nothing displayed but a single white text box on an otherwise light blue screen.
Which was obviously just the image sitting on top of the OS. Riley used a set of commands that should have brought up a Linux command box, but didn't.
. . . at least, not visibly.
Riley smirked and typed in the correct commands anyway, as if she could actually see what she was typing, and soon enough she'd gotten the masking screen down. The image now displayed was a mirror of the room she was sitting in, except there was a brown-haired guy sitting in the chair instead of her. Riley waved a hand – and the image of the man in the chair mirrored her. She moved her other hand, with the same result.
She glanced back over her shoulder, looking for the capture camera, but nothing leapt out, and as she turned back to the laptop, she got just a glimpse of the avatar's face.
Riley glanced around the room, then noticed that she was sitting directly across from a framed mirror, hanging on the wall. She grinned, then stood up. So did the avatar.
Then she tilted her face up, away from the screen to the mirror, and watched the monitor as best she could.
On the screen, she could see from the reflection he generated that he was in his late twenties, deeply tanned, and his hair was light brown and straight. He was also smiling, and when Riley schooled her features, the man in the mirror kept smiling.
"Hello," she said, and the image mimicked the word, but she didn't hear any audio.
Riley sat back down, and tried to access the computer's speakers. Now that she knew what he looked like, the next part of the hunt would be locating him within the hotel. As soon as she got audio up, she'd need to take a snap of the monitor to run it through facial rec.
Once she got audio on, she stood up again, this time fishing her phone back out, and she lost her balance and fell into the desk as a sudden wave of lightheadedness washed over her. Stood up too fast, she thought, sucking in a deep breath and focusing on the mirror. She flicked to the phone's camera, but it slipped out of her clumsy fingers, and then Riley found herself on the floor. She didn't even feel herself hit it, barely heard the sound of the chair crashing over beside her.
Riley took another deep breath, still trying to clear her head, but like before, it had the opposite effect. Something was moving above her; it was the silhouette of a human, but the face was all wrong, elongated like a monster from a video game. She knew she should be terrified, she should be reaching for her phone, for a weapon, anything –
But when a gloved hand descended towards her, all she felt was numb.
-M-
So here we go. The sequel I said I wouldn't write til NaNoWriMo. It'll become clear in six or seven chapters why I decided to get it done before next season starts up. This is set pre Season Two finale, and Cage is in Australia recuperating from getting shot.
Because I am not trying to get it written in a month, updates for this will happen slower than the first story. Sorry about that, because there are going to be a couple of whoppers of chapter endings and I'm not intentionally torturing you folks. You've been super amazing, and this little experiment has turned into a hobby I really enjoy. So thank you! This one is being written for you peeps.