hunter "great social skills" mackenna. (detections) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-01-02 00:03:00 |
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HUNTER: Despite his protestations, something about this bank hacking had planted a small seed of hope in Hunter's mind. Maybe it was the timing, or the aimlessly destructive nature of the hack job which seemed just as pointless as gassing an entire subway line full of innocents -- maybe it was just his gut instinct, which was a frustratingly illogical force but had always been too strong for him to completely ignore. Teamed with Lilja in Europe, they'd started working on the bank's system hours ago. Hunter had lost count of cups of coffee, was barely aware of Conner or whoever stopped by to refill his mug periodically so that he always found liquid inside, hot or cold didn't matter. He was wearing his glasses, too sleep-deprived to try to force his eyes to put up with contact lenses, and the blue screens reflected against the glass, two tiny pale squares that blocked out his eyes in the video display transmitted a third of the way across the world to the Icelander. From time to time, he would shift in his seat, and everything hurt; he grimaced into his palm, waited out the pins and needles, and kept on skimming. There was an insane amount of information to sort through. Even Hunter's expansive mind was feeling taxed, stretched to its limit, as he mined his memory for every single relevant piece of hacker history he could recall. He kept checking the forums, running scans of IRC chat channels he frequented for keywords related to the job, monitoring to see whether any credible sources were taking responsibility for it -- while he and Lilja looked for patterns in the systematic trashing of accounts, poured over program logs to find the disruptions, analyzed every fragment of code that seemed out of place. There was plenty there, but making sense of it was like trying to find a picture in grains of sand on a beach. He didn't know what time it was when he noticed it. Maybe it was daylight outside, even, though it had been night when they started. He wasn't even sure exactly what code he was staring at -- it was just HTML, not even programming. But something there caught his attention, leapt out at him like it was lit up in neon text. He sat up straight suddenly, pushing his glasses up on his nose with one hand. "Think I got something," Hunter mumbled to his coworker. "That's -- that's mine. You see that?" He gestured at the screen of his computer, finger stabbing a line of code like Lilja might magically recognize it somehow through the webcam and know exactly what he was talking about. "That's my fucking signature. What the fuck is that doing here?" His hands practically leapt for the keyboard. "Hold on --" LILJA: Lilja had been talking to Astrid on the phone when she’d gotten the notice that they needed her – she hadn’t immediately gotten her hopes up, after all it could be anything but she had still worked long hours to find anything. Even if it wasn’t Daisy, maybe just maybe this would put out good things for Vols. She’d gone through cup of coffee after cup of coffee and someone had brought her something to eat but it remained untouched. Her arms and legs cried out for her to get up and stretch – but Lilja refused to move, focusing on the task in front of her instead. Line after line of code – going through it was a painstaking task made easier for her with her power. She was no Daisy – there was no instant gratification, each line had to be checked, each lead had to be followed. This was easier, yes but nothing was instant. She immediately looked at the monitor of Hunter when she heard him say something. The evening had mostly been filled with keystrokes from both sides of the monitor punctuated occasionally by one of them saying something. “Wait – what?” she asked. “It’s your signature – do you think it’s a trap?” Her immediate reaction was to doubt it, someone was trying to set him up for something he didn’t do. It wasn’t anything to do with Hunter, it was just her reaction to life. She scanned down the screen and found the line of code that her mind told her didn’t belong there. HUNTER: His partner was right to be cautious and skeptical. Hunter wanted to plunge full-speed ahead, but her questions, however, made him pause for just a moment, fingers poised above the keys. Was it a trap? The answer seemed patently obvious to him. He just needed to put his reasoning into words for Lilja, who didn't live in his head. "No, it's..." Hunter gestured at the screen again, at that strange little line of code, and turned to look at Lilja for a moment rather than the HTML. "You see that little fragment piece of shit at the beginning? It's non-executable, just broken Java embedding, it doesn't actually do anything on its own because there's no end delineator and it's missing applicable specifications. Basically looks from the outside like someone tried to put a cool little roll-out menu or something totally useless there and fucked it up but not horribly, so there's nothing visible on the outside, it just doesn't do what they wanted it to do. It's something I used to fucking do to leave my signature for other hackers, like a 'fuck you, I got here first' kind of thing. We all had our own. None of my friends would want to use mine 'cause they'd never give me the credit they deserved, and none of them would dare anyway. They don't know I'm in Vol prison with limited internet hours. I'd make them regret it." He took a deep breath. Christ. As frustrating as it was to have to explain something that he innately understood to an outsider, by the end of his explanation, he realized that he'd managed to convince himself that he was right, too. There was no doubt left in his mind, no cause for hesitation. The only person who would dare use that bit of code was Daisy. She hadn't understood the point of it at first, but she'd picked up on it quickly. She was the only person who didn't fear his hacker wrath for leaving his signature on a job he didn't do. "It's useless the way it is," Hunter went on, looking at his own monitor once more, not his partner anymore. "Except if you add the end tags, and put in specific delineators, like --" His fingers danced across the keys at a lightning pace. It was so easy, so obvious. "That..." He hit a final key, turning the display from code to the proper page view, and for the first time in hours, reached for the mouse to click the link he'd just 'fixed.' A window popped up. "It makes a message in a bottle," he said softly. Large building, there's snow here, JF DH KK all alive - DH. And a number that could only be one thing. He read the words out loud for Lilja, then the number. "That's the IP. You can GPS that right now. Get their provider, see what region we're fucking talking about." He was grinning like an insane person, grinning so hard his aching face hurt, and he reached for his coffee mug with shaking hands. "That's all yours, Lilja." With her power, she'd be faster than him. Honestly, in that moment, he wasn't sure if he could even keep typing. LILJA: Lilja was a natural skeptic but as soon as Hunter explained it and she listened patiently, well as patiently as either of them could be right now. She wanted him to be right but there was too much at stake if he was wrong. Not that Hunter had been wrong about anything so far. But as she listened she knew that he was right – that line didn’t belong in the code. She bit her nail as she watched the screen. She wasn’t looking at her computer – rather she was watching Hunter and she watched him as he whispered to himself. What seemed like minutes was actually a few seconds and when the words were out of his mouth she let out a little excited yelp startling a few people in the room although she didn’t notice. Quickly she worked to find the ISP – it only took her a few moments and she grinned, unable to stop herself. Daisy had done it – she was a genius and if Daisy had been there Lilja probably would have hugged her. “How do you feel about Alberta?” |