In front of her, the face she saw was the same friendly face that tried to pull her into a conversation months ago. The same smile and short dark hair met her eyes yet again, but it was a bit more awkward this time.
"So, we meet again," he said.
"I guess you weren't part of the newbies as you tried to claim."
"Not at all," he said meekly.
"I'm going to assume that you were just doing your job," Carter told him. "Let's just start over, okay. I'm Carter Williams."
She held out her hand to the taller agent.
"Bryce Gibbons," he responded, shaking her hand in return.
"At least you didn't lie about your first name," Carter said sassily.
"The best lies are the ones that aren't really lies," he said cheekily.
Carter was about to give him another sassy response when Lawson decided to interrupts the groups' introduction to each other.
"Alright, ladies," the man said, "It's time for your first test. I'll let you get set up at your stations. you have five minutes."
The entire room dispersed into little sections as they worked. Bryce led Carter to a small set up in a far corner of the room. Unlike other desks that had about four screens to share between two people, there were only two. Carter sat down in front of the one on the left, the side without personal belongings. Getting comfortable in the chair, she turned toward Bryce, prepared for instruction.
"You have your ID, right? I'm going to assume so since you got up here. There's a number associated with your badge; that's your username."
Reaching into her bag, Carter quickly brought her badge out. Sure enough, there was a number written around the sides. She promptly typed id into the username box.
"Now, the password is 'password,'" Bryce continued.
Carter quickly turned, looking Bryce straight in the eyes. "You're kidding, right?"
"Don't worry. The first thing you're going to do is change it. It's just something so you aren't given some random code you have to figure and type out.
"That's a relief." Carter typed in 'password,' and sure enough, the computer unlocked itself. The desktop background was the SHIELD logo and had a couple of icons up.
"Click the icon with the lower case I. That's where you are going to bring up all of your personal information. You can change it ay anytime.
She clicked on the icon and was asked to log-in again. She put in the same information that she had before. Here she was brought to a listing of links.
"I assume that you know what you're doing from this point," Bryce told her.
"Don't worry. I got this," Carter said as she clicked the 'change password' option. "Turn around. I don't want you to see my password."
"I'm not going to steal your password."
"I don't know you yet. Just turn around.
"Fine," he said, pretending to be put out like a petulant child.
Carter quickly came up with a password that contained a series of symbols, numbers, and letters that she could remember. As soon as she clicked enter, she informed Bryce that he could turn around.
"So, Carter, have any questions that I can answer for you?"
"Yeah. Was callus us 'ladies' supposed to be an insult?"
"I'm pretty sure it was. You'll learn in time that he's pretty old-fashioned."
"Second, why do you have the worst set up compared to others?"
"He doesn't like me. He even made me change positions in line to the back. I'm assuming that he wanted me explicitly partnered with you."
"So in his eyes, we're the underdogs with something to prove," Carter sighed.
"Yeah," Bryce informed her. "And he does so in a way that it's tough to prove what he's doing. He blames it on sensible things like budget and amount of work done. Of course, if you aren't given assignments or given assignments that are nearly impossible to get done quickly, you're kinda screwed."
"Out in the hall, he sounded like he hated Agent Hill."
"Oh, yeah. He definitely hates her." Bryce looked around the room before leaning in closer to her, whispering, "He was up for her position when the spot opened up before. He's still pissed that she was here longer, yet Director Fury chose her. She pretty much the second head honcho here, and he technically has to listen to her."
"Wow, the first day, and there's already so much drama."
"We're pretty much a high school. You, freshmen, need to catch up."
Their conversation was cut by Lawson at the front of the room, yelling at everyone. "Over the next couple of days, I'm going to put you through multiple tests to figure out where you can be the most useful. Your first test is to hack into "SHIELD's" system. You have four hours. And your time starts now."
As the word "now" came out of his mouth, a time showed up on the big screen. There was the sound of scrambling as everyone moved toward their computers.
"Did he really just ask us to hack into our employer?" Carter asked Bryce.
"I think so," Bryce answered, confused. "Honestly, hacking is not my specialty."
"What is your specialty then?"
Languages, mostly. I am fluent in most spoken languages and have reading and writing capability in those and more."
"Wow, you must be a child-genius."
"Words just come naturally to me, m'lady," Bryce told her with a tip of his non-existent hat and bowed slightly.
"You're an idiot," was Carter's only response.
Turning toward the computer, instead of bringing up coding software, Carter brought up a sticky note.
"Is this a new way of hacking that I've never heard of?" Bryce asked.
"No, it's to write notes. I was a freelance white-hat hacker. I kinda know what I'm doing."
"Well, excuse me, princess," he said, holding out some of the vowels.
Chuckling at him, Carter told him that she had questions to ask him.
"Shoot."
"Are any systems connected with SHIELD?"
"Not really. It's more of an internal system and server. The most outside source you can get is email and Google searches, but even then, it has to go through a pretty intense firewall, so that would be a difficult thing."
Carter continued to question Bryce on the state of security as far as he knew. Suddenly, a spark of genius came upon her. "Is there any chance that someone hasn't changed their password?"
Bryce gave her a smirk. "There's always one idiot."
Carter quickly got to work. She pulled up a coding program. She quickly typed out a plan that would search for usernames based on a password. She allowed for more spaces at the end just in case someone added something to the end.
"Are all ID numbers nine characters?" Carter asked Bryce.
"I would think so. I've seen people with letters and whatnot in their ID."
Carter set up her program to come up with combinations with nine characters, no matter what type of characters. She then opened a program that would open up a virtual desktop. Since every computer was connected to the same network, it would hopefully let her coding through. The virtual desktop had yet to be logged in; she turned to hack into the virtual desktop.
"So you are hacking SHIELD by hacking yourself," Bryce asked her, slightly skeptically.
"Yep. Since it's running through the same network instead of jumping around, it should be much easier."
On the desktop, they saw different characters running down the screen.
"It's still going to take forever since there are nine characters for it to fill out," Carter explained to him.
"What's your next step?"
Carter took a while to answer. "I'm going to create a worm that will continue on past the initial hack. Instead of having the original code, I will send another one that will constantly look for different passwords. It should continue to work after we're done. I may also have it pick up different information from each account and send it back to this computer. It'll be faster if someone is actively using the computer, but it works. It's slow, but it usually works. I'm hoping that by being on the same network, I can bypass the firewalls."
"Wow," Bryce gasped. "Are you sure you aren't the child genius?"
"What can I say?" Carter mention with a grand air of confidence. "Computers just speak to me."
Carter moved to work on her new code. Bryce continued to ask her questions about what she was doing. Since he was asking genuine interest, she was happy to answer all of his questions. As they talked, Lawson continued to walk around the room, probably making sure no one was cheating.
"There's a lot of chit-chat going on here," Lawson said with a snide sounding voice. "Lots of talking and not a lot of working. There's an hour left. You are farther behind than anyone else. I want to see your results by the end of it."
Lawson walked away with his nose held high.
"I can see why Nadia hates him," Carter said.
"You met Nadia?"
"Yeah, she picked me up from the airport. She also gave us a welcome before he cut her off."
"Yeah, he also hates Nadia. Fairly certain he hates all strong-willed women," Bryce explained.
"You haven't explained why he hates you," Carter noted.
"He's an old-fashioned bigoted old fart," Bryce told her with a tired sigh. "In fact, that's how I lost my last partner. Didn't feel comfortable partnering with the gay guy." He said the last past more so directed at Carter, almost as if he was giving her an out.
"Don't worry," Carter replied. "I'm bi, and sometimes I get the worst responses to that. Told that I'm greedy and more likely to cheat, completely ignoring that fact I've never been in a relationship.
"You would think there would be more people accepting of us, but they're not the ones speaking. So, we need to stick together. Deal?"
With a broad smile on her face, she said, "Deal." She held out her hand to give him a fist bump, which he returned. "But with that aside, we have a problem."
"What's the problem? To me, it seems like you're doing well."
"He wants results. The program I implemented is going to take time to actually go through. It's going to look like I have no results."
"Yeah, that's going to be a problem," Bryce said solemnly.
They sat there thinking about what they should do. They were both at a disadvantage compared to everyone else. Carter kept typing. It was the least that she could do, show that she was actively working the entire time.
"I have an idea," Bryce told her.
"I'm up for anything right now."
"Well, I know how smart you are, but he's never going to believe it. Why not implement something that down the line is going to knock him on his ass? Of course, show him the program that you've been creating, but something like a safety net."
Carter thought about it for a while. "I can make it so that the worm becomes noticeable as it gets to higher security levels. As it collects more data, instead of just sending it to this computer, it keeps traces of itself. Collecting more and more information to find a way to wiggle through hols in the firewall by matching some data on other computers. It will take a lot longer to fo through, but that's the best I can do. Hope his superiors see it before he does so that he really can't do anything about it."
"Sounds like a plan. But are you prepared for this to blow up in our faces for a while since he'll see us as a worthless team?"
"For the chance of shoving it in his face? Of course."
"Now," Bryce said, turning more serious, "How are you going to implement those changes?"
"Since I made the main code, it should take about thirty minutes max."
Carter continued to work on the coding for the worm. Implementing the changes were easy, but making it so the worm was super noticeable after a certain amount of time would be strange. She had never made it so that her hacking was noticeable.
"How long are you going to make it until the worm explodes?" Bryce asked her.
"How would you feel about three months?" Carter responded. "Enough time to make it a complete surprise, but also to put our mark after being here for a while."
"I've worked here for two years. I can handle three more months."
Carter continued to work on her coding. Within her given time frame, she finished working on her worm. Now, it was just time to wait for her original program to render some results. Carter and Bryce sat there staring at the screen, hoping that there was, in fact, someone stupid enough to not change their password.
While waiting, Lawson returned to them, seeing them sitting and staring at the computer screen. "Have you ladies given up already? You have fifteen more minutes left."
"No, sir," Carter said to him, adding sir to seem more submissive and a shy smile. "We were just looking our code over to make sure there were no mistakes. This is my first day, but I want to put out my best work."
Lawson looked on with a shocked look before a creepy smile appeared on his face before he moved on to the next desk.
Bryce turned to Carter with an impressed look on his face. "Nice work, girl."
"I have three older siblings."
"That explains everything," Bryce chuckled.
After a couple more minutes, they got a ping that they found a username for their chosen password. Seeing that there was little time to spare, she sent her other worm through the connection she made. She went to the collection folder she created and already found some information slowly downloading onto her computer. Opening them up, she saw that they were schedules and not very explicit information, but it meant her worm was working. With time, more documents would be collected.
Carter rolled away from the computer, shifting her eyes away from the screen after nearly four hours of staring at it and resting her head against the table. She instantly felt a hand rubbing her back.
"Now, we wait."
"Are you sure you can wait?" Carter asked him, sitting up in her chair. "If he already hates you, can't he fire you? I'm new, so it can be put down on me still learning."
"Don't worry about it. The only person that can fire you is Director Fury. And for the most part, I'm one of the few translators they have here, and no one knows as many languages as me."
"At least I'm not getting you fired," Carter said, relieved.
A few seconds later, a blaring alarm filled the room. Looking at the front, the time was filled with zeros.
Lawson, now at the front of the room, yelled at everyone yet again. "Stand behind your chairs. I will walk around and see what you have done with your time. After I'm done, you may leave."
The room was filled with the sound as everyone simultaneously stood up. Carter's legs felt a little like jelly from sitting in the terrible seats. Bryce stood up as well with a groan. Carter noticed that they were the only ones looking uncomfortable as they stood up.
Whispering to Bryce, she asked: "Is it possible that we have to worst chairs here?"
"From this point on," he whispered back, "just assume we'll get the worst of everything. Like we're probably going to be the last ones looked at."
"At least it will let the program collect more data. It will look like we tried more."
As Bryce predicted, they were the last ones looked at. After an hour of just standing there, he finally got to them. There were not about twenty files downloaded. As Lawson was walking over, she saw another file start to download. If it continued, her and Bryce's plan would be ruined.
Taking in a deep breath, she reached with her mind into the system. She felt out for the code that she wrote. She dug through the trail her worm had gone until she found it. She quickly stopped it in its tracks. She made sure she had a tight grip on the worm before opening her eyes. She saw that the file had stopped downloading and looked like there was an error with the downloading. She got this down as soon as Lawson walked over.
Lawson waved them back as he pulled out the chair. Bryce and Carter took a massive step back, giving the man his space. He clicked around on the computer looked at everything that had downloaded. After looking around for a bit, he stood up and walked to the side.
"You only had twenty files. Twenty files that were not of importance. And one didn't even finish. You found schedules and nonconsequential notes. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Bryce opened up his mouth to speak. Barely a sound had left his mouth when Lawson had stopped him in his tracks.
"I wasn't asking you, Agent Gibbons. I know that you had nothing to offer. I'm asking Agent Williams. I'm sure the girl has something to say as to why she was so far away from her supposed peers."
"I'm sorry, sir," Carter said meekly. "The time just went by so fast. I thought I was doing okay, and then half-way through, I figured out that there was a bug in the code. Then I took the time to figure out what it was. It was a simple semi-colon and bracket issue."
"I can see that you are new to computer hacking. We'll probably end up moving you somewhere else," Lawson sighed.
"Is there any way I can get more training in this area? Carter asked.
"Maybe. Just get out of here."
Lawson walked away from the desk. Carter quickly logged out of the computer and raced Bryce to the door. Once outside the room, they burst out laughing.
"Seriously, having older siblings cannot make you that good at doing that," Bryce told her.
"I was also a Daddy's Girl," Carter admitted.
"When I said that you needed to get along with your partner. I didn't think it would happen this soon."
The two turned around to see Nadia walking toward them.
"I'm sorry. We bonded over our hatred," Carter informed her.
"Totally understand that. Now it's time for dinner. Bryce, want to join us?"
"Shouldn't you be getting home to your kids?" Bryce asked her,
"Nope," Nadia said, popping the P. "The hubby is handling everything tonight. So, are you in or out?"
"I'll go with you guys," he gave in.
"Yes!" Nadia exclaimed, pump her arm. They started to walk toward the elevator when she stopped as if she remembered something. "Oh, congratulations, guys."
"What do you mean?" Carter asked.
"Did you forget that I said that I would be watching? I have eyes and ears everywhere. I applaud you. I hope your plan works out."
Nadia kept on walking as if she hadn't said anything while Bryce and Carter had stopped in their tracks. Over her shoulder, she called: "Are you two coming? I'm hungry."
Bryce and Carter looked at each other with a shrug. They hurried up to catch up to the woman.