With a truce secured, both Alecs felt safe in going back to their normal lives. For Hardison, that meant searching for Parker – since the crew split up four months ago, she had literally disappeared off the grid.
For Alec, this meant a quiet life at his family's farm, dodging his stepdad and stepbrother who seemed convinced that technology was the root of all evil. He spent all his time coding, writing new programs and coming up with idle ideas for inventions in his spare time. He also got his GED, because school had already been a waste of time for the 17 year old, and he didn't really want to go back for another year.
(In the back of his mind, he admitted to himself that if he ever needed credentials, he could create them for himself; there was no reason to sit through college just for a degree.) His chores were pretty mindless, brushing the horses down, taking them on rides when they needed it, cleaning out the stalls. He had plenty of time to think about things, and that's how he found himself re-initiating contact with Hardison.
He hacked the CIA, NSA and FBI servers - eventually, he'd get company, be it Hardison or another hacker. But it seemed that his fellow Alec was often using web crawls similar to the one that had lived in his server for a few minutes, so his software would identify the familiarities - like a white blood cells to a virus, he thought bemusedly - and, in a week or so, he'd hit the bullseye.
Turns out, he didn't have to wait long at all. A google hangouts page popped up on one of his many screens. "Really, google hangouts?" He said aloud.
Hardison's face popped up with a zipping sound, and he smirked. "Better than Skype," he argued.
Alec adjusted his headset, fiddling with the microphone. "Everyone has Skype." He shrugged. "And its easier to hack. Some people don't have google."
Hardison snorted, but let the subject drop. "So," he started, "What are you looking for?"
"Oh, me?" Alec leaned back in his chair, forcing nonchalance. "I was bored."
"You were looking for me - you found me! Nobody just finds me cause they're bored." Hardison muttered on angrily. "That's my system. Ain't nobody who can track my system."
Alec had to refrain from laughing. The American did have a certain charm, when he knew they were on the same side. He responded dryly, and the time flew for the two hackers. Alec soon realized they had been chatting on and off for hours. At some point one of them would chuckle or scoff, and it was nice to have someone there who understood why google glass was so interesting, or why people who thought HTML was a language were ridiculous.
It got to the point that they had a video chat set up pretty much 24/7, even if they only spoke twice a week. (They had long ago abandoned both Skype and Google Hangouts, after Hardison complained that they could make a better one in an hour. They beat his estimate by ten minutes).
"Yo, man, what's up?"
Alec jumped as Hardison's voice brought him out of his reminiscing. "Not much, Hardison. Is something wrong?" Hardison sent a picture to his screen of a design for what looked like a bluetooth, but… "Hardison, this is amazing!"
"What's not so amazing is that the new upgrades aren't working." He grumped, glaring at the screen.
"But with what you have now, that's… that's revolutionary. That would ruin the global market in a day! You could make millions."
"Who needs millions? Money, I got. What I don't got is the solution to this glitch." Alec froze, looking up at his webcam. Hardison seemed to notice, because he stipulated, "You've never stolen money before?"
Alec squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "I haven't-"
Hardison cut him off. "Alec, Alec, I'm not judging you. If anything, you know, you should be judging me! But I don't do that anymore. Well, ok, I still have money whenever I need it, but I haven't stolen something for the heck of it for over a year."
Alec calmed down and tilted his head. However he had expected this conversation to go, it obviously wasn't going to go there. Hardison's voice cut through his internal musings as he babbled on. "Ok, maybe I should just take it from the beginning. Now, over a year ago, I got this offer…"