Elliot Alderson awoke to the sound of the doorbell ringing. He looked at his digital clock groggily. It read 8:41 A.M.. He bolted up, grabbed a T-shirt and dashed out his room and through the living room toward the door, hurriedly putting his shirt on. This is the day of another fsociety meeting. We meet in an old warehouse every few days to talk about new stages of our plan.

"I'm coming!" Elliot shouted as he opened the door. A shorter woman with heavy eyeliner on came through the door. That's Darlene. I think she's my sister. She stops by before we head over to an fsociety meeting.

"What are you doing?" Darlene asked. "We're gonna be late."

"Sorry. I just woke up." Elliot replied.

"What's the next stage?" Darlene asked. "What are we doing next?"

"I'll let you know when we get to Rubel Corp." He answered.

"Ooh, sounds mysterious." Darlene grinned. "Let's go. I'll give you a ride."

Elliot and Darlene walked up the old Rubel Corp. building. It's a fitting site. Samuel Rubel got rich buying off competing companies, becoming a millionaire. Now, his building is in ruins. A sign of what's to come. Elliot opened the door and let Darlene in behind him. The room was poorly lit, with only one overhead light and a couple of lamps in the corners. Mobley, a chubby bearded man with glasses was setting up a PC on the only desk. He glanced up.

"Hey Elliot." He said.

"Hi." Elliot turned away. I don't do small talk. At least not very well.

An Iranian woman in a hijab sat in an old cushioned chair, sipping sparkling water. Trenton's always sipping sparkling water. Don't know why.

Elliot ran his hands through his hair and sighed.

"Elliot!" A familiar voice rang through Elliot's head.

Furiously, Elliot turned to his left and saw a balding middle-aged man with a small beard wearing a scarf around his neck. That's Mr. Robot. A figment of my imagination. He's the one who comes up with a lot of ideas for fsociety. And he looks exactly like my dead father.

"I told you to leave me alone!" Elliot hissed.

"Well, that ended in a stalemate." Mr. Robot whispered. "You can't ignore me."

"What do you want?" Elliot asked.

"Nothing. I'm going to give fsociety their next mission."

Mr. Robot walked into the center of the room. All eyes were on him as he began revealing his plan. "Let's all give ourselves a nice round of applause for our work in the 5/9 attack."

Everyone clapped and grinned at each other.

"Today," Mr. Robot said. "Today we open a new chapter in fsociety. We pretty much destroyed Evil Corp. Their reputation is in tatters. Nobody trusts them. We have started a revolution. Do you want to take it to the next level?"

"Yes!" Trenton said.

"I said, do you want to take it to the next level!" Mr. Robot shouted.

"YES!" The other members said.

"I have a new plan to finalize the end of the evil world capitalist system as we know it." Mr. Robot said. "We need to destroy Wall Street. The stock market."

"The New York Stock Exchange?" Mobley asked. "How?"

"The Stock Exchange has two data centers: one in Mahwah, New Jersey, and the other one's in Basildon, in the UK." Mr. Robot explained. "If we can shut them down, the evil corporate money-grabbing will be forced to end. Now, we can't access the UK site remotely, but if we can operate a DDoS attack on Basildon while shutting down the Mahwah center, Wall Street will be done."

The whole team was silent as the pondered the magnitude of his words.

"Are you sure you want to go through with this?" Darlene asked.

"How can we do this without getting caught?" Mobley asked.

Fear. They're all afraid. That we'll get in trouble or something. Nothing good comes of fear. Name one man who changed the world through fear, who made Earth a better place by inaction. You can't.

"All we need to do is infiltrate the computer systems in Mahwah." Mr. Robot replied. "Set it up so that with the press of a button from our end, their system will literally destroy itself."

Darlene smiled.

"Come on, man." Mobley said. "Wall Street? Sounds a bit unrealistic, if you ask me. How will we get into the systems?"

"We can use whatever method you like best. Hot mixtapes, click jacking, social engineering." Mr. Robot answered. "It's your choice if you want to be part of this. You all have a week to make up your minds. Hit me up on the IRC once you've made up your minds." He walked out the door and closed it noiselessly behind himself.

"Let's go," Darlene announced. "I'll be back tomorrow to help set up everything." She told fsociety.

Elliot followed Darlene without a word. They walked out the door and put on his hood angrily. They walked to the parking lot and got in Darlene's car.

"Cool plan." Darlene said as he maneuvered the car out of the parking lot.

"It's not all that spectacular." Elliot said. He looked out the window. Every hack or coding project always starts this way. Get a vague idea of what you want to do, then narrow down how you want to do it and get out all the errors and obstacles that stand in your way.

Darlene shook here head. "You are really something."

Elliot opened the door and went into his house.

He opened a canister of fish food and tapped some gently into Qwerty's tank. He's one of my friends. I like to think he understands me better than anyone.

Better than Mr. Robot.

Mr. Robot.

Elliot instinctively looked around. He's not here now. That's the scariest thing about him: he's inconsistent.

Well, so am I.

Elliot walked over to his desktop and sat down at his desk. He powered on the machine. Kali Linux is my favorite OS. It's based off Debian and runs the GNOME interface. It's cool because it comes with a lot of neat hacking tools that I use on a daily basis.

Elliot started typing in his password, but paused as a subtle noise came from the corner and glanced over his left shoulder. He slowly hit enter and turned around in his chair very slowly. He saw a silhouette of a man sitting in the rocking chair, but it was hard to make out any discerning features in the darkened room.

"Bonjour, Elliot." The man said.

Elliot bolted up and instinctively took a couple steps back. "Who are YOU?" Elliot burst out.

The man stood up, and his facial features became plain as he was right next to the closed window blinds. He was a slightly shorter man, and obviously aging, as he had a large bald spot above his forehead, and both smile lines and worry lines were teased about his face. He was wearing a suit, and an ID tag hung over his breast pocket.

"How do you know my name?" Elliot asked wonderingly.

"We know a lot more than your name." The man sat down and folded his arms.

"Who are you?"

"Phil Coulson, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.. I recruit people with amazing abilities who can do great things for this country."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'll be blunt: you're an amazing hacker. We have a big problem on our hands, and if you can incite riots, you can help us."

Elliot shook his head. This is typical government, friend. They create a story. A narrative. Something they want you to believe.

Why should I trust him?

"Why should I trust you?" Elliot asked.

"Because I'm going to let you hack me." Phil replied.

"WHAT?"

"You heard me." Phil said. He nodded to the laptop Elliot had left on the table. "You have five minutes. Hack me."

Elliot sat down on the old, plaid couch, snatched up the laptop and powered on the laptop. Like his desktop, it too ran Kali Linux. One pro tip, my friend: for every machine you have, use different usernames and passwords for each account. Elliot typed in his username and password. If someone hacks you, they'll only get access to that one account and won't have control of your entire digital life.

But I digress. Here, I'm going to scan the Bluetooth activity of Phil's phone and slip in some malware disguised as a security update, forcing it to install instantly. Ubertooth One is what I use for this kind of thing; it can send and retrieve Bluetooth packets. He opened bash and typed "hcitool scan." A list of nearby Bluetooth devices appeared on the screen. Phil's phone showed up as "S.H.I.E.L.D SP 1093442" and had the MAC address of 88047213. Elliot typed "ubertooth-btle -a 88047213." Elliot saw that Phil's phone was connected to his ID tag and constantly communicating with it. Interesting, but not what I came here for. I don't have much time. Elliot quickly changed his MAC address to "37189420" and his computer name to "USA_PHIL_CLSN" to match Phil's tag info. His device was instantly paired because Phil's phone still trusted the connection and sent the file "0.000 . .zip" to Phil's phone.

"Time's up." Phil got up.

"Phil?" Elliot asked.

"Yes?" Phil replied.

"What is this really about? Nobody just lets me hack them."

"Then you should be grateful."

"No, that's not what I mean." Elliot shook his head. "What do you really want me to do? Don't beat around the bush. You could just be trying to make me incriminate myself."

"You already have." Phil sighed. "The truth is, I'd love to tell you. You're a trustworthy person. But unfortunately, my word alone doesn't carry with S.H.I.E.L.D.; they demand proof, so I'm giving it to them."

"How will I reach you? Let you know I hacked you successfully?"

"You know how." Phil answered cryptically. He opened the back door, then turned. "One more thing; visit your little fsociety over that IRC of yours and cancel that absurd project of destroying Wall Street. You'll have your hands full with what I have in store for you.

Your days of effing society are over."