Chapter Three
Kaylin glared at the woman in front of her, taking stock of the situation. Her hands were tightly tied behind her and there was no way she could get loose. She felt her blond hair stuck to the cut in her forehead where this woman's assistant, a huge man now standing beside her, had bounced her head off her coffee gable. She found herself hoping that her roommate Stacy wasn't scared when Kaylin was nowhere to be found. "What do you want with me?" Kaylin finally asked the woman, afraid of the answer, but dying to know.
"I need a hacker. Someone who can help me out." The woman told her. "I'm Amanda by the way."
"You needed a hacker?" Kaylin was confused. "Why didn't you just hire me?"
"In my business we don't hire." She said, her voice completely steady. "We take what we need."
"Great." Kaylin was already annoyed.
"Just do what we ask and we won't hurt you." Amanda directed her.
"What do you need me to do?" Kaylin figured that she may as well find out what she was in to.
"Well, we do some pretty secretive work." Amanda started. "We work for the government. There is a terrorist organization called Division that we are trying to overtake. We need to break them down, then I will take over once we've worn them down."
Kaylin had to admit that at least they wanted her for a good cause. "So what do you know about Division?" She asked.
With a smile, Amanda opened a folder and placed it on Kaylin's lap. On the page were several pictures. "This is our main target." Amanda started pointing to a picture of a small, dark-haired Asian woman. "Her name is Nikita. The rest of these people are her accomplices."
Kaylin's eye scanned the sheet and stopped when her eyes came across a familiar looking face. She couldn't quite place it, but she knew him from somewhere. That much she knew. Ignoring the feeling, she figured that she probably just saw him getting coffee or something the week before. That was, until Amanda said, "And this is their tech, Seymour Birkhoff."
The name caused a shiver down her spine. By the look on Amanda's face, she had no idea the connection between Kaylin and Seymour, but as soon as she'd heard the name, Kaylin went into shock. The last time she had heard of her big brother was ten years ago, when they were told that he'd been killed in a car accident while being transferred to prison for hacking. While he had abandoned the family when he left at 18 due to conflicts with their parents, when Kaylin was old enough, she researched her brother, and found out about him being arrested for hacking.. That was right before he was killed. After that, Kaylin had focused on learning everything she could about hacking to honor her brother's memory.
Now she had a ton of questions for him. Not only had he abandoned her, now she finds out that he wasn't dead like the family had been told, and he had abandoned them again. Kaylin found herself wondering if Seymour had made the decision to fake his death, or if it had been done for him. Everything about the situation had been strange and now Kaylin found herself wondering what it was that her brother might be caught up in especially since she'd now been kidnapped to help find her brother, supposedly in a terrorist group. Nothing seemed to add up, and Kaylin knew she would have to find out what was going on. She was mad at Seymour for leaving the family,, but glad he was alive, and she just didn't know what she would do if she ever got to see him again.
Kaylin tried to shake off her confliction to focus on Amanda to make sure that Amanda had no clue what was going on. She didn't know much about Amanda yet, but she had the feeling it would not be good for her or for Seymour if she found out their relationship. Amanda was continuing to talk, but Kaylin was having trouble concentrating. She could not get over that Seymour had abandoned them, then died, and now he was alive again. The disadvantage was that he might be involved in a terrorist organization. Her brother had a lot of questions to answer, if she ever got the chance to meet up with him again. "So what do you need me to do first?" Kaylin asked Amanda.
"I need you to decrypt this box." Amanda handed her a hard drive. "I got this when I was working undercover for the group.. It has all the information about their previous missions, the people involved and we can use it to get information and make predictions on what they are going to do next."
"Do you have a computer?" Kaylin asked. "And will you un-cuff me?'
"Of course." Amanda nodded to her accomplice, who reached down and unlocked the cuffs. Kaylin rubbed her wrists, sore from the cuffs.
"Where can I work?" She asked, anxious to decrypt the box and see what she could find out about her brother.
Amanda pointed to a computer set up on the side of the room. With a sigh, Kaylin walked over to try to get started. As she did, Amanda's assistant, Davis, walked over to Amanda. "Something's going on." He told Amanda.
Glancing over at Kaylin, then at him, Amanda asked, "What?" she had no idea what Davis was getting at.
"Her face." Davis replied. "She had a reaction when she saw Birkhoff. She knew him somehow."
Amanda just laughed. "Yes. Yes she does." Amanda replied. "She isn't going to know, but I know that she is Birkhoff's little sister. She was looking for him when we brought him into Division, and I was notified of the little sister looking for him. I had her under surveillance, and imagine my surprise when I found out that she is a hacker in his honor? Now, I can get what I want, and I can torture Division- because you know they will pick up that we have her and you know they will have to rescue her."
"Birkhoff's little sister? She's a lot younger than him."
"An accident." Amanda laughed. "She is about ten years younger than he is. She was about eight when he left home. Once she was 13, when Seymour was killed, she decided to take up hacking in his honor. She was a lot easier to track after that. Since then I've just been watching her, bidding my time until I needed to use her."
"Now she's bait?" Davis asked.
With a smile and a nod, Amanda replied, "Yeah. I mean, she's going to get the box decrypted for us, sure. But then, yes, we use her as bait to get Nikita down here. You know they wouldn't leave her in my clutches, and you know that Birkhoff will figure out we have her, he's a smart man."
"So when they come, we'll have a trap set up?"
"Let Kaylin find out some of the information for herself first, but when the time comes, yes, we'll have a trap to get them once and for all."