Prologue
The hacker glanced over their shoulder – briefly, so briefly. It took years of navigating social circles to be able to maintain such stimulating yet easily severed conversation with bigwigs; even longer to practice keeping track of everyone in the room at the same time. Well, everyone important or dangerous.
They had always been a natural at this anyway. Easy lies, deceptive masks, anything requiring an engaging distraction while you simultaneously stole their life from right under their nose.
It would be too dangerous for such a flirtation tonight. The hacker was perfectly happy to keep away from Chance Claybourne's conversational circles. It made the job so much neater, slicker, if they could stick to observing for the right moments of engagement – and soon, in a minute or two, they were sure that skinny ginger girl would pull all his attention; he had been too intent on her all night – the hacker would be able to oh-so-smoothly slip by to replace what they had borrowed.
Chance wouldn't feel a thing. No drop in the pocket, no brush of fabric, no waft of scent.
He wouldn't have noticed his shiny new phone was missing, either. Too used to that old Nokia brick, the rebellion it represented, he wasn't in the habit of checking it. Certainly not at a social event like an art show, either. Chance Claybourne would see no difference in the makeup of his phone, and wouldn't know how to force the back of an iPhone 6 if he tried. He would never know he was tagged at all.
Every movement. That was what they would see. When the hacker opened a certain laptop tonight, they would have all screens – all activity – recorded and stored away for the near future.
All that paranoia… for all Chance's paranoia, twitching, constant checking over his shoulder, he would never check in the places that mattered. He never had.
The hacker smiled to themselves, though the old art collector across from them took it as encouragement to continue his monologue.
This was not an attack, a declaration of war. It was a pre-emptive measure that really Chance should have been expecting, but never would.
Silly little boy. The Claybournes always were stupid in the most crucial of ways.
The hacker excused themself from the art collector's monologue and began the trip to brushing past the Claybourne heir.
A/N: welcome to my new fic! All planned out across four pages of Word, I'm trying to keep to the same structure as the Reichses do, including for subplots. If you want a more interesting pre-Prologue, see my oneshot "Night Obsessions". Also, this prologue's scene takes place halfway through "Exposure", when Tory is at the art show. The rest of "Catalyst" will be taking place straight after "Exposure" and therefore will have no spoilers barred – be warned if you haven't read it yet! Also, I've tried to incorporate all the info we currently have about "Terminal" (from Brendan's ask page) into "Catalyst".
I'm also trying to keep ANs short and sweet since I'm so bad for always doing massive ones. Whoops.