[3129111032]
[Files from Thursday's mission were received. However, a security breach on the line was detected Sunday. Our backup was sent in but unable to cover it up in time. This mistake has the potential to be detrimental. An appropriate amount for compensation will be extracted from your account.]
[Protect the computer and cable at all costs!]
[Keep safe.]
Ivan wasn't sure he had read the email correctly, so he read it again, and again, and once more. Messages from the circle were always concise and vague; Ivan didn't care that he was to assume compensation money had been supposedly "extracted" from his account. He was more concerned about being discovered. He had never made a "potentially detrimental" mistake before, and if he had, the shadow "backup" had always corrected it. Then again, Ivan had never hacked the FBI before, nor did he wish to be reprimanded for doing so to such a ruthless organization.
Most haunting were the last two words, which alluded to the true gravity of the situation. It had never seemed like the circle cared about his well-being before. Were they even in DC? Was "backup?" He stared silently into the bathroom mirror over the computer and had that same creepy sensation that someone else was watching him—the very feeling he used to sometimes get when talking to Mr. FBI, except his phone was still charging in his bedroom. The faucet spilled a single drip into the sink. A dog barked two floors up. The hair on Ivan's arms bristled.
Through the mirror, he watched the doorknob behind him turn.
Natalya walked in. They both caught themselves and exclaimed "Oh!" in perfect unison.
"Ivan. I apologize," she said, retreating so only her face was visible through the crack between the trim.
It took a second longer this time for Ivan's composure to wash over him, and the delay was scary. "Natalya!" he eventually breezed out. "I apologize; I wish I had more than one bathroom."
"We'll be ready to go soon," she informed with a dismissing nod. "Katya is washing breakfast dishes now. I plan to shower."
"Yes. I am just finishing," he declared, calmly stepping forward to place his hand on the knob. She got the hint and backed out.
And then Ivan remembered the computer. Behind him. Easily visible from the door through the mirror. His heartbeat began to pick up pace again.
Alfred was feeling really good for once, a kind of good that carried over from his date with Ivan, stayed when he went to bed last night, stayed when he slept in and woke up late the next morning, and even remained as he was on his way into work now. He hadn't checked in on Ivan through the spycam either last night or the next morning, but they had texted a little, making Alfred feel even better. He had no qualms about being late to work, and walked down the street with a spring in his step. Of course, though, he knew the feeling wouldn't last. Being happy and enjoying himself came with a price these days.
It turned out Alfred wasn't the only tardy attendee of the day. Someone called his name down the street, he turned around, and there was Toris, stepping out of his car and hustling towards him.
"Hey, dude!" Alfred offered. He couldn't tell if Toris looked worried or if that was just Toris's normal expression.
"Did you get the message?" Toris wheezed out as he caught up. So, worried, then.
"Uh, what message?" Alfred slowed his steps.
"From the Chief." Toris gestured to his phone. "There has been a security breach. That's all he said."
Alfred froze in his tracks, and the temperature around them seemed to plummet accordingly. Had he heard Toris correctly? His movements were sluggish as he reached for his phone. Sure enough, right as he picked it out of his pocket, it burst into a frantic ringing. Arthur Kirkland's name was at the top. "A security breach?"
Toris scratched his head. He, too, looked sick in the stomach. "I can't believe it. It is the FBI. No one is supposed to be able to steal information from the FBI."
"Wait a second, is it us?" Alfred shoved his phone back into his pocket and hastened his pace again. "Someone hacked our divisions and stole data?"
Toris nodded. "I can't believe it."
When they checked into headquarters, Chief Héderváry was there. She was statuesque in her sharp pencil skirt, her hands crossed over her chest, wearing sunglasses. The dreaded memory-zapping stun gun rested at her hip.
"We—We heard there was bad news," Alfred began tentatively, holding up his badge.
"So did I," she confirmed, scanning their IDs and prints. "But I am smart enough to not to talk about it right here. You never know who could be listening." She lowered her sunglasses and gave them each a stern look and an indecipherable wink. "No stolen government secrets in my lobby."
Alfred and Toris gulped in harmony.
Héderváry finished confirming their identities, sighed, and reached for the gun. "Time to run, now, boys. Today I'll give you a five second head start."
They both knew better than to stand around chatting. Alfred and Toris bolted for the elevators, the nightmarish sound of the gun charging up behind them.
"Go, go, go!" He pushed Toris into the elevator just as a bolt of energy glanced off the wall ahead of them. Alfred screamed and charged in himself, slamming the close button while Héderváry neared. Another bolt stung the interior of the box, and Toris fell to the floor. The doors shut on the Chief's maniacal grin.
"That was too close," Toris shivered. Alfred nodded.
"Gilbert once said she was the only person he truly feared," He restated, gazing at the mirrored ceiling. They didn't say much more after that.
Upon reaching the negative two hundredth floor, they found it was startlingly vacant. An aria of suspense hung in the humidity, and there was no sound but the coffee machine and frantic typing coming from deep within the cubicles.
When the elevators dinged, the typing halted, and Chief Arthur Kirkland rose out of the mist above the walls. His expression was furious and panicked, his thick eyebrows condensed into one angry unibrow. "You."
Alfred gulped. "Sorry we're late—"
Kirkland marched through the maze. "Yes, you'd better be sorry, boy. The past few hours have been hell. We've been hacked, Alfred. Files from our combined database—both the black and gray divisions—have been copied and stolen. Luckily, the rest of the FBI wasn't affected, but they may as well have been. The hacker or hackers targeted us specifically through a government network."
"Fuck," Alfred breathed. That was huge. "Do we...do we know what was stolen? What network?"
"That," alerted Arthur, "is what I'm working on. Today it's all hands on deck. And what that means, Alfred F. Jones, is no lunch break." Alfred gulped again. Did he…no. There was no way he knew. "If we all work together—well, all of us minus Francis and Antonio and Gilbert and Elizabeta and Ludwig, because three of them are practically presumed dead and two of them are with the enemy may we never show suspicion in absence—maybe we can solve this bloody mess faster."
Toris spoke up nervously. "Um, and, what about monitoring? Our, erm, people?"
"If you can multitask, then by all means do so. After all" —another withering look cast at Alfred— "if anyone were to hack the FBI, it's one of those buggers."
Alfred's heart was racing, and he suddenly felt sweatier. He didn't know what to think, but he knew there was no way what Kirkland was insinuating was true. He had kept a particularly close eye on Ivan in the past few days. Wait. "Do we know when the breach occurred?"
The Chief nodded, slower and less sure of himself this time. "I did find bugs in the network on Friday, but only noticed the stolen data and connected the two occurrences yesterday. I say, while you're at it, check your own computer. You wouldn't want anyone…listening in."
Déjà vu disguised as a freezing chill tiptoed down Alfred's spine.
Toris immediately made a beeline for his computer. Arthur continued staring at Alfred. "What's the matter. Have you noticed something? Have something to report? Any odd behavior from Ivan as of late?"
Alfred quickly shook his head no. Arthur had called Ivan Ivan this time, not just Braginsky like he normally did. "I just—"
Kirkland took a step forward and leaned in closer so Toris wouldn't hear. He raised one bushy eyebrow in deadly speculation. "Any odd behavior from anyone as of late?"
There was no way. No. Way.
"I haven't noticed anything," Alfred stated, meeting the Chief eye-to-eye. It wasn't a lie.
They held an impromptu staring contest for a couple of seconds, and then Alfred dropped his gaze. The Chief tsked. Softer, he stated, "It might be time to get you those upgraded glasses, then. The ones with the x-ray and the night-vision and the lasers and the recording you want. Ludwig has them now, and they seem to be working exceptionally." And with that, he stalked off.
Alfred let out a long breath of air he hadn't realized he had been holding in. He was no longer feeling really good.
He slowly crossed over to his cubicle and plunked down into the wheely chair. Sluggishly, he dug his laptop from his workbag, swept an arm across his desk to clear space, and opened up the computer in the middle. In one window he pulled up a visual of Ivan. In the other, he pulled up the shared database of the black and gray divisions.
Alfred was smart. Not intelligent like Arthur Kirkland perhaps, but smart enough to do well in school, and smart enough to get into the FBI at the youngest age allowed. Alfred could handle this. Hack into his own database to track down a previous database hacker? Easy-beaver eager-peasy difficult-squeezy lemon. He cracked his knuckles and went to work.
In the other window, Alfred could hear Ivan and his sisters talking. They seemed to be complaining about the heat and their feet. He flashed over to their screen for a hot sec. Ivan had the camera open and was taking pictures of his sisters in some park in DC, and they kept trying to block out the lens. Alfred smiled to himself. Ivan's sisters did look a lot like him. It was cute. Alfred should text him.
Alfred should not text him. Alfred should work on tracking down the security breach. He scanned lines of code, his brain already throbbing from absorbing the computer language and the Slavic language at the same time. He lowered Ivan's volume and minimized the window. The database, the database, what had been stolen from the database?
Encoded files filled his field of vision. There would be clues left behind, if Alfred could only think to look for them. He rolled for a perception check.
"How much longer?" Yekaterina moaned. "Please tell me the water's just up ahead. Otherwise you're carrying this backpack the rest of the way."
"Only ten minutes," answered Ivan. "And if you stand up really tall, you can see the dome!"
Natalya scoffed. "You'd have to lift me."
Nothing about their data seemed to have been...altered, as far as Alfred could tell. Any malware was either expertly hidden or nonexistent. For the time being, Alfred decided to assume it was nonexistent. "Got anything?" he mumble-called out to the others openly.
"No," Toris responded meekly next to him behind the cubicle wall. Even more distant was the Chief's voice.
"Not yet, but I'm working on the IP address."
Alfred considered. The whole situation was ironic, really. The hackers became the hacked, and suddenly their whole pattern was thrown off. He was at least glad they had discovered the breach right away. For many organizations, a data breach could take months, or even years to detect. But those organizations were name-brand; open source; top-page. The general public was supposed to never know Alfred's division of the FBI existed, memes or no. He didn't even want to imagine what would happen if their secrets got out; there would be global outrage.
So how had the hacker(s) know to come after them? Had they been targeting the black and gray specifically, or stumbled across their existence whilst scanning the rest of the government network? In either case, the government could be in serious trouble. Alfred wasn't aware of how often the government got hacked, exactly, but he knew at least that. The government was shit sometimes, but damn Alfred if he didn't depend on it.
A few hours later, in the middle of running a loop, Alfred felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He heaved a grateful sigh, let the computer run, and opened it up. Ivan had texted him a photo of one of those cats from Russian tumblr. It was a Sphynx wearing little red underwear, the caption underneath spelling out "shaved and ready for solarium." Alfred didn't wait for the translation—he answered Yassss. look at those legs gurl. get that summer body glow. what a queen.
Ivan: i made this one on myself. (*≧∀≦*) do u think i should post?
Ivan: wow how do you know what it says?
Crap. Alfred had been listening to Ivan and his sisters talking in Russian and had forgotten that he wasn't supposed to know Russian.
Alfred: google translate
Ivan: very fast.
Alfred: ...don't use that period at me of course i'm fast
Ivan: ;)(;
Alfred: yes u should post
Ivan: you know spanish too?
Alfred: …
Alfred: buenos días muchacha latas
Ivan: O_O
Ivan: okay i have to go see things in the city now goodbye
Alfred: well goodbye
He tabbed over to the window where Ivan's phone was on. It appeared Ivan and his sisters were just leaving the Jefferson Memorial, his camera pointed at the bordering Tidal Basin as he texted. He was smiling that soft little smile.
Alfred: ❤️
Ivan's smile grew.
Ivan: ❤️
Ivan turned off his phone.
Faint typing sounds came from Toris's cubicle next to Alfred's. He pushed himself away from his desk and stretched, spinning around in his chair a couple of times. It was amazing how just two minutes of Alfred texting Alfred's...boyfriend...could fix a whole morning of nausea and anxiety. He was still scared of the hackers, and god was he starved (stale deli lunch sandwiches from the break room mini-fridge didn't last anyone), but at least he still had Ivan.
Alfred reluctantly scooted back towards his desk to check the tests he had been running on the database. He didn't expect anything to pop out at him, and sure enough, all the data seemed fine.
Alfred blew air out of his nostrils. Whoever had done this seemed to know exactly what they were doing. He or she or they hadn't even tripped the protection alarms. It was almost as if they had been handed an easy map of the whole database that listed all the hidden lasers and boobie-traps. The numbers and letters were beginning to confuse even Alfred.
"Um, has anyone found anything?" came Toris's voice beyond the wall.
"Working on it," grumbled Alfred. Chief Kirkland across the room offered up no response but a jumble of furious typing.
What would Alfred do if he were trying to steal information from the FBI? What information would he want to steal? Well, for one, he could go into their division outlines and use all their confidential information to sue the place, exposing them for operating as such under their special terms. But maybe he wasn't that ambitious yet. He could use the files they had on Ivan or Vargas or Felicks. He could use the files they had on—
The elevator dinged. Everyone paused and turned, but it was only Elizabeta Héderváry. She passed through them on her way to the break room, giving each a nod. "I was hungry for a snack, and then I remembered Antonio always keeps extra tomatoes for desperate times!" Her voice thinned as she entered the kitchen. "Too bad they will not be fresh."
Alfred almost called out a "About as fresh as their keeper by this point," but bit his tongue at the last second. He had thought of something.
If he were a hacker, maybe he did know what he was doing by specifically targeting the division database. Maybe he needed to know what he was doing because he needed the information the division had stored. Maybe he wasn't just a random hacker, and this wasn't just a one-time, random scheme. Maybe his reason for hacking specifically had something to do with a very specific scheme, such as, say, a recent string of disappearances.
Alfred rolled for a wisdom check and went straight to the the FBI's working personnel files. After a few more specific tests, he found just what he had been looking for. Files for Antonio Fernandez Carriedo, Francis Bonnefoy, and Gilbert Beilschmidt had all been copied, along with their statements of service.
Ivan's voice echoed faintly from the monitor. "You two, stop dipping your hands in every reservoir in Washington!" Giggling followed. Alfred's heart throbbed. He wanted to be out there with Ivan in the bright summer day, exploring the city and dipping his hands in reservoirs, not slaving away in the dank swamp bunker underground.
"Agent Jones! Are you working?"
In a flash, Alfred silenced Ivan's visual, though he really had no reason to. Kirkland had appeared out of nowhere behind him. Alfred wheeled around slowly, but before he could explain that he had indeed been working, Arthur interrupted.
"I was able to trace the IP address."
Alfred sat up hurriedly. "That's great! Bitch, where?"
Kirkland was staring at his clipboard as if he didn't believe whatever was written on it. "The...Museum of Natural History."
Toris's chair creaked in the next cubicle over. "What?"
"You're kidding." Alfred brushed his hands through his hair, giving the gears in his head fresh air. "That rings a bell. Holy guacamole." He thought back before his date on Monday, to the Sunday afternoon before, to something small and insignificant his best friend had uttered in passing. "That's—That's what Kiku said!" He was surprised he even remembered.
The Chief, Alfred recalled, did know Kiku. "Kiku...Kiku Honda? Your friend who works at the museum? Well, tell me, man, what did he say?"
"We were chillin' on Sunday, right, and he said they found a virus or something on one of their computers and he was being called in to fix it. I wonder if...if that was the hacked computer."
Arthur took another step forward. "And you? Did you find anything?"
"Heck yeah I did." Alfred swiveled around and blew up his findings. "Get a load of this. Nothing was altered, but all the MIA guys—their files were copied."
Arthur got up real close to the screen, his nose almost touching at. All at once he pulled back. "As if the hackers knew what they were looking for. The bastards. We've got to tell Chief Héderváry."
Toris peeked over the short wall, folding his arms across it. His voice was small and distant. "You are not thinking…?"
Kirkland massaged his forehead. "Whoever is doing this knows what they're doing, that's for certain. I don't want to make any assumptions anymore, but it looks like we are being specifically targeted, perhaps for a greater purpose. It can't be a coincidence that the same files copied coincide to our missing personnel. I just wonder...did the hackers secure the files before or after the three were kidnapped?"
"I haven't gotten there yet," Alfred supplied.
"Me neither," said Toris gloomily. "This puzzle is very tedious; almost too difficult for me to unlock."
Arthur tucked his clipboard under his arms and crossed them. He inspected his employees for a couple of seconds, and Alfred felt another ghostly hand tap his back. In that moment he deduced there was definitely something Arthur knew—or suspected—that he wasn't letting on. The trust Alfred had thought he had earned from him had evaporated.
There was another thing Kiku had told Alfred on Sunday, too. You should either end your engagement with Ivan now, or tell someone what has been happening. I suggest the latter. I know I would be fired instantly if I withheld information from my superiors.
Alfred glanced at the minimized tab on his laptop screen. If he opened it up, he would see Ivan and his sisters, walking home after a long day, peaceful in his city, his country. Then fire me.
"Let's work on it, then," Kirkland declared. "After what we've already accomplished, simply finding the time shan't be too hard. And Alfred, if what Mr. Honda said is true, I'd like to speak with him, please."
"Oh, I can call him later tonight when he gets off work," Alfred offered.
"That won't be necessary," Arthur stated, straightening his tie. "You can give me his contact information and I can do it myself. Or—you could just give me your phone."
Toris quickly ducked back down into his cubicle.
Now Alfred was really scared. He would have to delete all of Ivan's texts, clear his history… "Fine," he muttered. "I'll write down Kiku's number."
The Chief nodded fiercely. "Good. Glad we can come to an agreement."
Ivan had gotten used to staying up late. It was the only free time he had to talk to Alfred, were he felt especially assured his sisters couldn't find them out. "...just got home," Alfred was saying, sounding exhausted over FaceTime. It was past two in the morning.
"Oh no," Ivan whispered. "Why?"
"Long day at work. Really long. Felt too tired to text."
"I'm sorry." Ivan reached out to touch the screen, and then chided himself and pulled back. "If you were here I would give you a big hug."
"I wish. I mean, I wish you were here or I was there." He sounded uncharacteristically broken. "I could use a hug real bad right now."
Ivan sat up. "I could sneak out and come to give you a hug."
Alfred laughed quietly and turned off his lamp so his visual was plunged into darkness.
"Where do you live, Alfred?" Ivan listened for his sisters' snores. They were there, loud and deep and steady. He would do it.
"Sorry. I'm gonna go to sleep now." Ivan heard the shuffling of blankets.
"Oh."
"Thanks."
Ivan held the phone closer. "Спокойной ночи," he whispered, then inhaled and waited.
"'Night to you too," Alfred mumbled.
Ivan exhaled. The call went dead.
ring the alarm - beyoncé
Any theories yet? ;)(;
This is the singular free day I had this week so of course I had to update. Also school's out and I didn't fail anything so woooo. I'm as exhausted as Alfred here.
Visit my tumblr or derevoskymusor's to see adorable art derevosky made from the last chapter! This is, my friends, an order.