Code

Closing the curtains and flicking on the light-switch I did a look around the apartment. There was a new cord plugged into my computer that led to a grey box in the corner of my room. On top of that, there was a signal jammer and wide-range signal interceptor at my disposal. With the right patching the tracking would lead other hackers into believing I was in the empty apartment above.

​With a flick of each switch the devices buzzed to life with a green light showing all checks had finished successfully. I stared at the machines, amazed by the quality, but only for a moment. Now that I was protected from other hackers and prying eyes, I was free to work on the code in peace.

Sitting down in front of my computer I started three pieces of software. The first was a warning system for when people entered the apartment building, the other was a program of my own making, protecting my OS from being corrupted by foreign code. The third was the IDE, again of my own creation, which received the code from the darkest place online.

Pressing a few keys some preliminary code was transmitted and the code was working through appeared. Now was the time to code fast, place backdoors and move further along the stream of code. With each tap of the keyboard more lines appeared on the screen only for my automation to reply to it in turn.

It was an interesting stream of code, but what benefited me was that I was excellent in creating bots that would take similar code and reply to it with code that I used before. It saved me time and this massive streams could be handled in seconds. Soon the new code became less and less until only a single line was appearing. A minute later of coding the screen fell blank and a tone was played that caused me to pause.

An ASCII symbol appeared on the screen which formed a small butterfly on the screen. With a short animation, the butterfly fluttered around the screen, growing larger and larger, until finally it settled in the middle, blank and requiring a password.

I remembered the warnings I received. The password asked for a fourteen character sequence, but in reality it was a thirteen character sequence.

I began to type the sequence I was give, but stopped midway when I heard a whirring noise outside my window. It was robotic, much like the drones that delivered packages these days, but what worried me more was that the drone was tapping against the glass of my window.

I waited for it to give up, but it didn’t and suddenly I grew incredibly worried. I began scrapping the sequence and shutting down the applications. Something was wrong, which meant it was go time. Checking my early warning detection system, nobody had entered the building, but that is not to say they weren’t already there.

With a quick sequence punched in all my data was being burnt, a smoke rising from the hard drives as the acidic compound burned them to a chunk of warped plastic. Pulling a backpack over my shoulders, I connected my phone to the cameras and warning system.

Once I was walking into the hall I activated another sequence of code. There was a soft popping sound from inside as smaller devices were set off, spray a mist of flammable moisture. All that was needed was the spark and my computer provided it when the monitor shattered into an electrical mess.

It wasn’t highly explosive, but with a burning flash of fire the apartment was scorched, evidence turned to ash and fingerprints cleaned with fire. I was now a nobody walking through the hallway. Another sequence later and my phone only transmitted video footage.

As expected, men in black uniforms wearing copious amounts of body armour rushed the building. There were a lot of them, bursting in through some windows. Moving quickly I took to the broken elevator, slipping on my gloved and pulling the doors apart.

Sliding down the cable expertly, I watched as they check the false room and then move to the secondary location that the drone was bumping against. These agents were getting really clever, so in future I would need to take more precautions.

With a grim and unhappy face to having gotten so close, I reached the bottom of the elevator shaft, standing atop the old elevator. There was a bag here that I reached into and began to gather clothing, pulling it over mine. Finally ending with a balaclava and side arm to establish me as a superior to the lower ranks.

Checking the cameras for the all clear I opened the doors in front of me and slipped into the hallway on the ground floor. Within moments I was leaving through the front door and joining the masses of cops that were gathering firearms.

How ridiculous, to have all these men armed to the teeth to find me of all people. I was harmless in every sense, but when you starting learning things that they don’t want you to know, you become a terrorist of something. Still, that didn’t matter now.

Slipping into an alley out of sight I changed back into my own clothes, opened a bottle of that flammable liquid, I splashed some over the clothes and set them alight with a match. There could be no trace of me.

Now I joined a crowd of people watched the masses of police storm and search the building. Without that disguise I would have ran straight into one of them, but now I was gone and they had no clue again.

Of course, I would now need to change my location, probably best somewhere far off and deal with country cops. Yes, country cops. Slow and foolish without proper intelligence and equipment. The real cops wouldn’t find me in a long time, which would give me the time I needed to get into the system and gather all their little secrets.

With a sly smile I walked away. Yeah, I love my work.