InsaneJournal

Who: Tony Stark and Caleb Rivers
When: Thursday, September 10
Where: Caleb’s hotel room/Tony’s Lab at Stark Tower
What: Caleb attempts to hack Stark
Rating/Warnings: Low/None
Status: Complete

Caleb’s fingers flew over the keys of his industrial grade laptop. He had numerous windows open on the screen. Hacking into Stark Industries was no joke. There had been some online chatter recently about a new invention Tony was working on. If Caleb could get the plans for it and sell it on the black market he would be set for life. Hell he may never have to hack into anything again. Well that might not be entirely true, but he could at least breathe a bit. Take some time before figuring out where to get his next pay day. Just focus on where to escape to next to they couldn’t find them.

Now wasn’t the time to think about all that. He couldn’t lose his focus for one second. Stark’s security was good. The toughest he had ever faced. He had to be on his A game.

The security at Stark Industries was pretty amazing. In fact, as soon as the hacker started working his way in, Tony was notified. He hopped over to his computer to watch… whoever it was… in action. He started reading the code, enjoying the show. But then he realized that this kid (why’d he assume it was a kid? He just did) might have the chops to actually get in.

So Tony slipped into his chair, cracked his knuckles and his neck, then started a counter attack. He set up a program that would take over the hacker’s computer interface, taking control of the other computer’s input (mouse, keyboard), then started to correct the code. The hacker would see his mouse moving without his consent, and text appearing--correcting lines in the code. It was already strong code, but with the corrections, it was unstoppable.

Caleb continued to do his thing, typing away furiously, hand moving over the mouse at lightening speed. He was moving so fast he almost didn’t notice that his little operation had been taken over. Almost. Someone was messing with his code. But wait. They were improving it?

“What the fuck?” Caleb muttered to himself eyes wide as he watched the screen before him, hitting keys to try and take things back into his own hands.

A text window popped up on Caleb’s screen. Some word doc program, nothing fancy. Notepad, maybe, whatever was available. And text began to appear there: “You’ve got chops, kid. Who are you?”

“Fuck,” Caleb cursed to himself when the window popped up. He wasn’t sure what to do next. His first instinct was to shut off the laptop and flee. But something told him not to. For some reason Caleb found himself typing a reply. “Clay,” he typed. No way in hell was he going to give his real name. Might as well give his half brother’s name. The family his mom chose to keep. “Who are you?”

“Tony Stark.” Tony replied via text. It wasn’t like he had anything to hide. Everyone knew who he was, anyway, and this kid, Clay, must have known, too. Because he was trying to hack in. “Just what are you trying to find in my servers, kid?”

Wow. He should have figured Tony Stark would be the one to catch him. It was his network Caleb had hacked into after all. Still the fact that he was talking to Tony Stark, it was a bit intimidating. Caleb wasn’t going to let on to that fact though. “You’ll never know,” he typed back a small smirk on his face. Did he really just say that to Tony Stark? Oh well. He had gotten himself in an out of worse situations before.

There was a pause while Tony considered those words. Sure, if the kid (why did Tony insist that this was a kid?) wanted to keep it secret, then there was no way that Tony would ever know which of his inventions the kid was chasing after. There were a lot of really great and important secrets hidden in Tony’s servers. Not just in the Stark ones, but those, too, held a wealth of information.

“I’m surprised you got this far,” Tony typed. “A talent like yours really shouldn’t be wasted on hacking.” Beat. “At least not when it pits you against me.”

During that pause Caleb was already up out of his seat, packing his things. It was time to move on to the next place. Find some other way to make money. He should have gotten his computer offline. Shut it off, but for some reason he kept it on. Then there was another message.

Well he certainly wasn’t expecting that. He knew he was talented. Caleb wasn’t stupid, but it was something else entirely to hear or rather read Tony Stark call him that. Still, Caleb kept his cool. “What are you saying?” wanting to get right to the point, before he absolutely had to bolt.

“I’m saying,” Tony paused again for a moment, then corrected himself in type, “Rather, writing, that you should be working for me, not against me. You want to come in for an interview, Clay?”

That was certainly an interesting proposal. Caleb wasn’t entirely convinced that it wasn’t a trap, but something told him he should check it out. “Do you often offer jobs to people who steal from you?” that was basically what he was doing after all, or intending to do before Tony had interrupted his little endeavor.

“Only from people who attempt to steal from me.” Tony said. He was confident that Caleb hadn’t actually attained any sensitive information. “But if you’re not interested in an interview, I can withdraw the offer.”

Caleb sat there staring at his screen for a few minutes. Weighing over all his options. If this was a trap he could probably get himself out of it. He had in the past and he hadn’t actually gotten far enough to get anything from Tony Stark, yet. There was also a small part of him that was holding on to hope that he could change his life around. Getting a job with Stark would be a damn good start to that.

Caleb finally typed his response, “I’ll come in.”

Tony couldn’t help but smirk at that. He leaned forward and tapped a few keys. “10am. Ask for Pepper Potts.” He’d have to make sure to set up that with Pep. He figured she probably wouldn’t mind.

“10 am. Got it,” his typed his reply quickly. He had a job interview in the morning. What the hell had he just gotten himself into?