Chapter I -----------
William Pelekai, son of Emperor Stitch of the Turogian Republic, relaxed in his leather recliner, reading a new issue of National Geographic. Setting it down on his lap, he took a deep breath and gazed outside his window.
The glare of the sun's light on the countryside hurt his eyes. The weather was beautiful. There was not a single wisp of a cloud in the bright blue sky, the sun gave a bloom-effect to the fully-lush Pine trees, towering at 52 meters, with the ankle-high grass covering the rolling landscape that gradually morphed to silhouettes of mountains.
Seeing the landscape always brought a smile on William's face, as he always loved the outdoors and wilderness. He likes the city life as well, but he prefers the outdoors. He rubbed his dark blue eyes, to help calm them after smarted by the glaring bloom of the sun's effect, and brushed back his black headfur that covered a part of the right side of his face.
A few quick beeps on his wrist-mounted communicator ripped him from his fantasy, prompting him to reply.
"Yeah?" he grunted, slightly irked his alone-time was disturbed.
"Sir...? We're...being hacked..." his security chief, Uhnar, said with a tone of concern and worry.
"What?! Who?" he cried, his eyebrows hunched downwards in angry-focus.
"We're working on that...but he's bouncing his connection, we don't know how long it'll take..." he replied, cowering a little.
It was a particularly sunny day out in the Valley region of Oregon. The blue sky had a mix of gray into it, the diverse trees beginning to grow back their leaves, and the outside slightly bright, a welcome sight for the people who experienced only rain, wind and overcast.
"Alrighty...let's see where you are..." a shaggy-haired, square-jawed teenager with a five'o clock shadow, chuckled as he cracked his knuckles and began firing commands onto the computer with a black, slim keyboard. He grinned as his tracker alerted him that he was being traced, and estimated he had 172 sec. to perform his mission before he was caught.
"Steal Unity-file 91724..." he repeated the target file when he brought up an e-mail explaining his mission. His employer, US Steel, was interested in a certain data file that was held in a certain computer down in Coastal California, and offered 1923 USD for him to procure it. And he was one click away from doing that.
"Alright...got it...now, to cover myself up..." he thought aloud, moving to the administrator section, bringing up the logs and deleted his access information containing his IP address. Click. They were gone. All evidence of his access, now gone to the wind.
He chuckled as he disconnected stopping the active trace on him, attached the file to his reply, and clicked send...
"What do you mean he disconnected?" Uhnar almost shouted. Their trace wasn't even close to being a quarter done, and the hacker disconnected.
"The trace was incomplete, said the hacker disconnected from the mainframe..." the network engineer, Renhj, whined, forehead in paw.
"William's gonna kill us..." Uhnar whined as well.
"PERFECT!" William screamed, slamming his magazine onto the tanned-brown linoleum floor. "What damage did he do?"
"Nothing serious, everything's intact...wait, oh, nevermind...I don't think he did anything sir..." Uhnar shrugged, obviously relieved. Relief coursed through William, but not enough to calm him.
"I don't want this to happen, again...am I understood?" he growled, his voice dripping with venom.
"Y-yessir! We'll review protocol and make necessary revisions!" he nodded, stammering. William cut the line afterwards. He wracked his brain, searching for answers as to why he would be hacked.
After not finding anything, he decided to search his brain for people who might...Andrew.
"Yarenh, get me a transport to Oregon...I gotta make an important business...for a friend..." he contacted his secretary, a tone of suspicious happiness.
"Of course your highness...the transport will be at your private manor in a minute..." she replied in a professional tone, almost like a robot trying to sing.
"Thank you..." he smiled, cut the line and put on his casual clothing. "Boy...if you did that, your dead..."
"'Bout damn time..." Andrew growled as he was informed an e-mail has arrived. He had waited nearly a whole hour and now he finally got a reply, even with his top of the line modem.
"Good work on your success..." the e-mail was read by a synthesized voice. "This file will be of huge importance to our work, and, as agreed, the appropiate funds are transfered to your account...we hope to do more business with you in the future, have a nice day..."
"Now that that's taken care of, let's see what else I can do..." he hummed, directly accessing an IP address.
"Welcome back to CyberTech Operative Phantom..." the voice sounded again. "Three new jobs fitting your criteria has been posted on the job bulletin..."
Smiling, he went to the bulletin. Perfect. The three jobs were listed in a brief, but to the point summary: 1) Clear Criminal History, 2) Falsify a Social document and 3) Remove proprietary data.
Humming, he decided to go with the Criminal History job, and contacted the employer.
"We appreciate your time Operative..." the employer, Electronic Arts Softwares, introduced. "How can we help?"
"Who is the target?" he typed his reply.
"A close friend of ours who is finding difficulty obtaining work" came the answer.
"What should I expect when working?"
"The International Criminal Mainframe uses a Proxy and Firewall defense servers, you'll need to bypass both of them to succeed..."
"Law Enforcement are stepping up their game on Cyber Crime, I expect some more money if you want a good chance of your friend obtaining employment..."
No answer arrived for a moment, and then the IM-window came to life. "Of course, we'll offer you 5600 USD because of the risk..."
"Excellent, I'll take the job, I'll notify you ASAP after completion..." he typed in, sighing to relieve tension.
"Thank you, when you access the mainframe, type in Robert Donald" was the last message before the window informed the employer had left. Before signing off to begin, he exited the work screen and checked the news. A certain article caught his eye.
"...the British Royal Army today, was hacked by an unknown cyber criminal last night, at fourteen hundred hours..." the article read. "While government and private-owned mainframes were popular targets, a cyber attack on a military mainframe was unheard of, and the first in history, since the widespread use of the first brand of computer...the military are investigating this as a possible terrorist attack"
"Dude's either a moron or a genius..." he chuckled, signing off. After setting up a map of where his signal will bounce off of, he began dialing the IP address of the Criminal Mainframe...
Now that his initial anger subsided, William began doubting his accusation. Sure, he is a hacker who's definition of fun is breaking into corporate computers and messing up certain files, but he would never hack his own best friend. Still, he's the most likely source, and he needed answers...perhaps just to strike his name off the list.
"We've crossed the border sire, we're now in Southern Oregon..." his pilot radioed in a cocky voice. He made no attempt to reply, only reflect and think on what just happened. He picked up his communicator, deciding to call him.
Andrew had just decyphered the Eliptic-Encryption Curve security system and is cracking the Admin password when his cellphone rang. People often times think that Turogian communicators cannot call cellphones due to their hardware and how they are used. Well, they're wrong, you just don't have the visual feature, that's all.
"Yeah?" he answered, holding his phone with his cheek and shoulder.
"It's me, William...I wanna talk to you about something..." his friend replied.
"Uhh...I'm a little busy right now, can ya call back later?" he asked, the password cracker half-complete.
"I'm only calling to let ya know I'm on my way to your place, where we can talk personally..." he said.
Andrew narrowly avoided cursing out an 'oh shit', which came out a surprised grunt. "Uhh...sure, yeah...I can, uh, talk to you...can ya wait a bit first? I'll call when you can come..."
"Oy...don't take too long...okay?" the line beeped and then the idle-tone played, indicating the call was over.
"Gotta work fast now..." he whispered to himself, brushing his black Aeropostale tee off of food-crumbs, cracking his knuckles and began concentrating...
"Nice..." William groaned as he ended the call.
"We can stop by Portland sire, that place has a lot of stuff there..." his pilot suggested.
"No...too many people means too high of a chance I'll be seen...I just want a quiet vacation right now..." he replied, wiping his eyes free from exhaustion.
"Alrighty then..." was a indifferent reply. William was sure his pilot could care less if he had a quiet time here in the US...
"Okay, there we go..." Andrew smiled as his target blinked on the screen. "Alright, now where is...whoa, the hell?"
His eye had caught something really unordinary: a conviction for two counts of terrorism, one bioterrorism, the other attempted usurptation.
For the first time in his career, Andrew had a hint of doubt on whether he should do this or not. Something about the guy gave him the wrong impression, and that never happened in his time. Against his instincts, he hit the Clear History button, exited, and deleted his access logs.
"It better be worth it..." he stretched, his hands beginning to ache. He hit disconnect, gave his employer the good news, and awaited his payment...first off though, was William.