The System - Chapter 2

sleepless



i have never been able to sleep nightly since my brother died. Coincidentally, it happened during the time I was laid off from work. My perpetual and convenient excuse had always been the fact that I "work with computers" and my "colleagues" are "on the other side of the timezones." Convenient, no one dared questioning me further in that matter.



I hacked people's computers for fun. Never for crime, never for profit, and the only benefits I may have gotten were freebie MP3 or movies, or sometimes eBooks - aside of the satisfaction of being able to. I had no notion that such skill would, or even - could - come in handy.



That is, until I hacked into a computer I thought to belong to a rock star, one of my favorites. Turned out that the computer belonged to his younger brother. Not to mention that he was not as computer illiterate as I'd thought. He tracked me right to my front door. In spite of all the precautionary measures I've had in my systems. But hey, he cheated. He had the FBI's crackers tracking me. Several of them, as a matter of fact. I sure were not equipped to handle multiple attacks from multiple people.



Good thing I never had criminal intentions. When they finally caught me and saw my wheelchair, they couldn't pin any charges on me. There has never been any kind of charges. If I'd stolen something out of somebody's computer, I've never been stupid enough to leave a trail or a calling card - like other hackers. Those people wanted to be acknowledged. I simply want to see if I can. If I were to commit a perfect cyber-crime, no one would catch me.



Well, except a whole team of FBI's computer analysts, unfortunately. Mind you, those so-called 'analysts' were hackers once, too. And it was to my satisfaction when the Captain told me that it took a whole team of them to find me, moving simultaneously to defeat me. In short, they'd needed to gang up on me - using a number of different machines and platforms before they finally tracked me. While I, on the other hand, cracked Cap's machine in under one hour, singularly.



That was why he hired me, I guess.



Oh, my name is Neve Pendragon. I kid you not, it's my name.