Hack the Planet
He skipped past the Police firewall with the utmost ease. Skipping was really the only way to describe it, it was easy as falling off a log, a phrase he had read in a book sometime. Police, he thought. He'd been here before, and knew it was really quite boring. Still, he might get some inspiration from reading latest crime reports. He went straight for the murders, reading about some grisly death would probably make him feel a bit better, might give him some ideas for revenge when he was let out of the "program." Grinning at that thought, he began reading.
"On a preliminary inspection, the corpse was completely crushed as though it had been placed inside an overpressure chamber. At this point, STN-J arrived to take control of the investigation, and further inspection was impossible."
Once he found one report referring to STN-J, others began coming out of the woodwork. Some secret branch of the police that investigated the weirdest deaths.
"Now that could be fun", he thought, "definitely need supplies for that one."
With that he stood up, stretched, went to the loo then returned with crisps and cola. He knew that, with hacking, having to leave the screen at the wrong time could lead to some very unpleasant consequences. Returning to his seat, now fully equipped for the challenge, he put Killing in the Name Of on whilst he got organised, a bit of rebellion music to get him well in the mood to go. As the track faded out, and his trance music kicked in, he began, dancing through the internet, hunting down his quarry.
Finally he found it, it had been better concealed than most networks he'd gone after. Loading up his custom security analyser, he watched with interest as the program probed the firewalls and security features of the organisations' computers, providing readout after readout describing the security in detail. This was going to be tricky, he was very surprised it was better protected than the police, but, he supposed, it did seem to be a more secret organisation. He was starting to run through the list of possible vulnerabilities, realising he was going to have to think on the fly if he was going to bring this firewall down, when he saw it, the way in. Fingers flying over the keys, he made his way towards the back-door and did the virtual equivalent of opening the magnetic lock with a credit card. He was in. He took a deep breath and ran his hands along the wrist rest of his keyboard.
"Let's go look around," he whispered.
Once in, he gasped. It was Huge, far bigger than he was expecting, far bigger than the police reports had led him to believe. An enormous database stretching back eighty, no, a hundred, no, two hundred years. Files on thousands and thousands of people, people described as witches, people with strange extra-worldly powers, like the power to control fire or to crush and maim using only thoughts. He read about organisation called Factory, which dealt with the bodies of the witches. He made a mental note of the name, it would be an interesting place to check out on the Net after he had finished here. But then he went back to the database of people, their amazing powers and the great danger they posed to the world. What the hell had he found? He wondered. What had he stumbled across? He could see why it was hidden, why there had never been any mention of these incidents in the human world. It would cause panic. He closed his eyes for a second, horrified that something like this could be going, across the entire world, it seemed, with branches of witch hunters in Europe, America, even the Middle East, as well as Japan, right under the nose of the general population, undetected.
Undetected, shit! He glanced up at his Windows clock. He'd been in the database over an hour, he would have to leave, his initial scan had reported a status checker which activated every so often and would find him if he wasn't out in time. He ducked into the administration logs and began deleting the records of him coming in through the communications access ports. He was just about to slip out when the database refused to let him go. Every time he tried to leave, he ended up back at the initial administration page. He was trapped in, and trapped in with the logs of his hack still intact. He couldn't leave until they were gone, he knew that unless they were gone, he could be traced easily.
"Shit, shit, shit," he cursed, as he carried on trying to get out.
Nothing, he couldn't get to the logs either. He began chewing on the sides of his mouth, typing frantically, throwing commands at the administration program in the hope he could disable this security device, but nothing seemed to be working. Suddenly, he was ejected from the database and his computer rebooted. He stared in shock at the startup screen, frozen in place. It dawned on him that if he had been kicked out of the database, that probably meant they were coming for him. He pushed away from the desk and stood up, it was the last thing he had a chance to do.
Two men climbed in through his open window, aiming guns at him. They were dressed completely in black, their weapons gleaming in the light from his desklamp. One crossed the room in a couple of strides, grabbing him where he stood, too shocked to move or scream. The man placed a mask over his face, which must have been treated with some substance, because Michael felt himself going woozy. He was still conscious, but was unable to move or speak or focus properly as he was lifted out of the window by the two men and grabbed by others outside. He was handcuffed, he tried to tell them that there was no need, that he could not move even if he wanted to, but the paralysis was so complete he could not move his mouth to speak, and only a thin gurgling sound left his lips. They carried him towards a truck, and loaded him in to a coffin shaped space in the back of it. He was terrified, panicking inside, but unable to move, he just lay, his mind saying prayers to any and every god he could think of to get him out of this alive and in one piece. He felt the truck start up and pull away, then heard a hissing noise, and felt himself grow cold, so very cold. He took a breath, fighting the pain, and closed his eyes. This is it, he thought, as he felt consciousness fade.