Author's Note: Please be warned that this chapter includes a small amount of smut and behaviour that could be seen as very indecent and salacious, including words or insinuations of a dubious, unseemly or suggestive nature.
This chapter is in line with Chapters 4 to 13 of The Fusion Ultimatum.
Tuesday 19th April
That night
Lincolnwood
Downstairs
"Good evening ma'am – I am Sergeant Fellowes, CPD and this is my colleague Sergeant Murphy..."
"What is this about, officers?" Mrs Dade enquired, concern evident in her voice.
"Who is it, honey?" A man's voice called from behind Mrs Dade.
"The Police."
"What?"
Mr Dade soon joined his wife and they invited us into the house.
"We have had a report of a hacking incident from this address, Mr and Mrs Dade," I began.
Upstairs
The door to the balcony was unlocked and the handle turned both easily and quietly.
The bedroom was large, with a pair of single beds, a large desk and the usual accoutrements that you might find in the bedroom of a teenage kid. The desk was the centre of attention, both for the five kids and for us. On that desk were a pair of twenty-three-inch computer monitors and beside them, a large Dell PC.
Of the five kids, two were girls and all were in their night attire. Nobody had made note of our entry and as our Heckler & Koch G36C assault rifles covered the kids, they continued chattering away as one of their number, a girl with black hair, typed away on the keyboard.
There was no way that Fusion was being hacked by a bunch of teenage geeks!
..._...
One of the boys happened to turn around; maybe he had felt the draft from the open doorway...
"Wow!"
Not the response that we had expected... All five sets of eyes turned to face us and they all went very wide.
"You're Hawk!" One of the boys blurted out as his eyes fell on my wife.
"You're Battle Guy!" The girl at the computer said in obvious awe.
"Hey!" Hawk growled. "Eyes up here – my face is not down there..."
The boy quickly moved his eyes from my wife's butt, but he paused at her chest before looking at her masked face. Damn... It was like looking at myself half a dozen or more years earlier!
"Ewww – Geeks!" Hawk wailed and she drew some dirty grins from the three boys.
..._...
"What would Fusion be doing in my bedroom?" The girl at the keyboard demanded as she stood up.
"You are one lucky hussy, Libby!" The other girl moaned.
Libby Dade was thirteen and tall for her age – I got the distinct impression that she was the leader of the small group of teenage hackers.
"Your IP address was used to hack into a firewall at our datacentre," I explained and we were instantly hit by a wall of indignant denials.
"We would never do that..."
"Hack into Fusion? No way!"
"That would be an awesomely dumb thing to do..."
"A quick way to be on Hit Girl's shit list!"
"Not cool..."
I looked over at Hawk; she just shrugged.
Libby sat back down at her computer and she opened up a command window before she commenced some rapid typing.
"Found it!" She declared after a couple of minutes. "There's an entry in the routing table – it takes incoming packets, rewrites their source and then sends them out again..."
"That might explain why you're being used... We need to..."
"Yeah – we should be able to use the logs to recreate the original packet headers..."
Libby pounded away at her keyboard – then she stopped typing for a moment and looked up at Battle Guy.
"What do you think – maybe another function or two..."
"Yeah – you could..."
"Like this?"
"Yeah; change that to a constant..."
"Is that better?"
"Yeah – compile it and let's see what the result is."
..._...
"You two geeks finished, yet?" I demanded.
"Almost – this program should track back the IP address..." Battle Guy replied.
"So – who are you friends, Libby?"
"This is my brother, Jesse – he uses the handle, Bloodwing. These are our friends, Kate Bradford – aka Psychotic Savage, Laurence Gray – aka Jolly Ox and Peter Savage – aka Atomic Machine. I, of course, am Poison Princess."
"Nice!" I commented sarcastically before turning to the comms. "Mist – you can move out..."
"Copy that – somebody's back in town and I've got an urge..."
I laughed and Battle Guy cringed.
..._...
"What the hell is going on in here?"
I turned to see Mr Dade standing in the doorway with his wife directly behind him. They were both followed by Murphy and Fellowes.
"We're helping Fusion, Dad – what does it look like!" Libby replied tartly.
"Elizabeth Dade, don't talk to your father like that!" Mrs Dade responded sharply.
Libby rolled her eyes.
"Less of the attitude, young lady!" Mr Dade added.
"She's telling the truth, Mr and Mrs Dade," I explained. "We tracked an attack to this property, but it appears that somebody is using them as the fall guy – we need your daughter's help to track them down.
"So you just broke into my daughter's bedroom?"
"You could try locking your doors?" Battle Guy hinted as he tipped his head towards the door that led outside to the balcony.
"What have we told you about that door, Elizabeth!"
"Sorry, Dad..."
Mrs Dade looked at her husband and shrugged.
"It's not like they're hacking the planet or a major corporation..." She mused.
"Yeah – things have moved on a bit since our day, Burn – like mother, like daughter."
"You got it there, Crash."
"It'll take a while for the back trace to run – we should have something tomorrow," Libby commented.
Later that night, across the city
Erika sat back onto her bare heels, her dark cherry nipples glistened with the saliva that coated them. She looked hungrily at Toni and kissed her on the lips, her tongue forced its way inside and Erika savoured the sweet taste of her friend. Toni pushed Erika back, away from her. Erika took a deep breath as Toni's hands touched her very hard and very sensitive nipples.
"I love your face, Erika, and I love the taste, but . . . don't take it the wrong way, but it's not your face I wanna see, nor are those the lips that I want to stick my tongue between..."
"You bad girl, Toni..." Erika groaned as she laid down on the ground, her head between Toni's legs.
Erika looked directly upwards into the very moist crotch of her girlfriend as Toni came down onto her knees and then laid down on top of her lover. Toni began to gently lick the shaven vulva before her and she yelped as she felt a tongue penetrate her own moist folds and two hands grasped her firm buttocks.
'Damn!' Toni's mind screamed. 'My girl's on form tonight!'
"God, I've missed you, Toni," Erika groaned as she took a breath from her munching.
"I was only gone five days..."
"Still, I missed you..."
Toni yelped as Erika's tongue began to work its way up her labia.
Wednesday 20th April
Glen Oak Drive
I crept across the landing, pushed open the door to the dark bedroom and stealthily slid inside – the bed was still occupied and the occupant was snoring.
I walked slowly past the bed and deftly pulled the curtains open to allow the morning sunlight to flood in. The sun quickly spread across the room and then directly into the face of the black haired girl who was still fast asleep. The girl grimaced and squinted as she slowly opened her dark blue eyes – she glared up at me.
"What do you want?"
"Time for little birdies to get up..."
"For your information, little sister, a raven is not a little birdie..."
"Still, it's time to stretch your wings and soar around the corner..."
"Enough with the bird metaphors, SD – I'm gettin' up, okay?"
"Yay!"
Forty-minutes later
Sunset Ridge Road
"You could have at least let me have a bigger breakfast..."
"Oh, Morgan, quit your moaning!"
"I... Oh never mind – let's get this over and done with..."
"Here we are, Burr Oak Drive – let's get those little fur balls."
A further forty-minutes later
Sunset Ridge Road
We had to rely on Sophia to help us sort out the pups as they were very excited.
It took twenty minutes to get them leashed and out onto the road – it was exhausting too.
"Josie, heel... Piper, this side of the damn light pole!"
"Razor – get your nose out of that bin... Kiara!"
Hope yelped as Kiara nipped her butt – Sophia rewarded Kiara with a paw that sent her flying, at least as far as the leash would allow. Layla and Hercules were actually behaving themselves for the moment.
"Razor – nose out of Piper's butt..."
Why did I sign up for this!
"This is so awesome!" Morgan giggled as she sat on the pavement and allowed Hercules to lick her face.
"Glad you're enjoying yourself..."
Safehouse F
"This is perfect – those kids did very well..."
"Your little geek pals came through?" Kim grinned.
"Yes, beautiful, they did – we have a target IP address – only there is still a lot more work to be done to find an exact location, but the location is not in the continental United States."
Indian Knoll Road
There was a knock on the door.
I answered it to find Marcus and Cathy. They both looked very grave – Hailee, something had happened to my daughter...
"No, please, no..."
"Vicky, Hailee has gone missing – she is alive; Mindy spoke with her – but we have no idea where she is..."
"My God..."
Friday 22nd April
Indian Knoll Road
When the phone rang, I was too scared to answer it.
But I pulled myself together and lifted the receiver.
"Vicky – it's Mindy . . . we've got her back..."
"Is she okay?"
"One or two bruises, nothing more..."
"Mindy, you can't lie worth a damn..."
"She's gonna be hurting for a long while, but she's alive, Vicky."
"Thank you for calling me, Mindy."
"We are all looking after her and she'll not be going out for a while..."
"She'll go bananas!"
"Tell me about it..." I replied.
Sunday 24th April
Safehouse F
Mindy and Stephanie were in trouble.
They thought that they had escaped their pursuers, but no, somehow the CIA had tracked them to Mâcon.
"Oh fuck!" Mindy exclaimed over the open comms.
We all heard the gunfire – AR-16 my brain told me – and then the wrenching of tortured metal as something hit something else. Then I heard the distinctive sound of bullets piercing glass and then a scream... I began to panic and I grabbed hold of Morgan for support – Stephanie had been hurt, maybe she had been killed...
Goddammit, I was crying!
Saoirse's hands gripped me tightly; she was strong and it was borderline painful.
Her face was a mask of horror and worry. Again the link to that other girl whom Saoirse had tried valiantly to kill in cold blood. I was shocked to see the tears, but I knew that hearing and not understanding what was going on was sheer torture for her.
I was going to be a good big sister and stay by her side.
Later that day
When Saoirse finally put down the phone her face was wet with tears but she was smiling.
"She's okay, just banged up a bit."
"I'm glad to hear it, SD, I really am."
"Thank you for staying with me, Morgan."
Tuesday 26th April
Glen Oak Drive
"So, what are you so damn happy about?"
I looked over at Morgan and I blushed.
"I found a boyfriend..."
"Which creep is it?"
"Ethan... Ethan Anderson..."
"Ethan Anderson!"
"He's cute..."
"He's a sophomore..."
"So..."
"Jeez, Saoirse... You fucked yet?"
The angry scowl told me otherwise!
I knew that Saoirse was not a virgin, but she was obviously biding her time. Ethan Anderson was a nice guy and I knew that he was a friend of Chloe and Josh, however, as far as I knew he was not aware of Fusion. Oh, well, it was up to her who she was seeing – as long as she stayed away from Mike...
I also knew that she was a little upset. Tomorrow was to be her fifteenth birthday – it was also to be Stephanie's tenth birthday. I knew that those two had a bond; I knew a lot of the story, but not everything. Mindy had told me that they had once been mortal enemies and that Saoirse had actually tried to kill Stephanie on three separate occasions.
Mindy and I had talked about tomorrow and I had made sure that Saoirse would not be alone.