Exploited
Page 78

20:59 <Freed0m0v3rdr1v3> Fuck the money. Fuck your pride. This shit is dangerous. I do not want a program of this magnitude exploited.
My doorbell rang and I jumped in my chair.
All the lights were off in the house; it would look like I wasn’t there. I quietly got up and sneaked toward the front door. I looked through the peephole.
What was Mason doing here?
He started pounding on the door.
“Your car’s out front, Hannah! I know you’re in there!”
I pressed myself against the wall. I couldn’t answer the door. Not with the exploit in full swing. Not with the incriminating files all over my hard drive.
He rang the doorbell again. “Why did you put a root kit on my computer? Damn it! What are you up to, Hannah?”
I felt light-headed. How had he found out? I had been so careful.
Except for that woman who claimed to have seen me.
Shit.
He stood on my stoop pounding on the door. He wasn’t going away. I could hear my email ping in the kitchen. Over and over again.
“Who the hell are you, Hannah? What’s going on? Open the fucking door!”
Go away….
He was close to knowing everything. I should have known he’d figure it all out.
“This wasn’t all an act, was it, Hannah?” He sounded broken. So, so sad.
I had done that.
“What were you looking for?” I heard a thud and imagined him pressing his palms against the door, his head bent low, his shoulders stooped as the weight of my deception dragged him down.
Another ping from my computer. I had to figure out what I was going to do with the tracker software. I had to deal with Toxicwrath.
But Mason…
I stood by the front door for almost fifteen minutes. He rang the doorbell a few more times. Part of me wanted to go to him. To open the door and explain everything. To tell him the truth. To free myself of this horrible, horrible guilt.
I didn’t want him to leave. I didn’t want to hurt him.
I thought of the tracker program. Of how I had been duped by my shadow partner.
I was such a fucking idiot.
Toxicwrath had been using me all along. He needed me to do the dirty work.
And my ego had made that very, very easy.
I had been the mark all along.
“Hannah!” Mason shouted, banging on the door harder. He wiggled the doorknob, but it was locked. “Please open up!” he pleaded. “I just want to know!”
I walked slowly to the door, pressing my hands against the wood. The urge to go to him was overwhelming.
I realized that the instinct to turn to him now that my world had imploded was strong. Because I trusted Mason to make me feel better.
Because I cared about Mason.
No. This went deeper than that.
“Mason,” I whispered, covering my face with my hands as he pounded on the door, my name a curse on his lips.
But I never opened the door. I couldn’t.
And when he finally drove away, I felt like curling into a ball on the floor and never getting up again.
We were officially over.
There was no coming back from it.
I had to find a way to be okay with that.
But I wasn’t.
Not even a little bit.
I screamed into my hands, the sound muffled and distressed.
I took a deep breath, scrubbed the tears from my cheeks, and squared my shoulders.
Falling apart wasn’t an option.
Not when I had other things to deal with first.
Then I’d deal with Mason.
I’ll make him see….
See what?
Was I ready to tell him everything?
The thought chilled my blood. And warmed my heart.
I trudged back to the kitchen. I noticed that Toxicwrath had left the IRC chat.
I opened my email and saw eighteen messages from the last twenty minutes, each one more agitated than the next. I was withholding his property. He wanted the program. That was the deal. I was breaking our contract.
Then they became threatening.
The final email left me frozen.
From: 06050900oneforallunitynet
Subject: Pants on fire
Date: April 12, 2016 21:25
To: 12080512alwcawunitynet
The world will know. You’ve made a dangerous enemy.
Liars and deceivers will be punished.
I quickly copied the Virtuant file to an encrypted drive before destroying all traces of it on my computer.
I should have listened to my instincts about Toxicwrath. I had known something wasn’t right about the exploit, but I had allowed myself to be swept up in the righteousness of it all.
Now I’d pay.
I had to go into damage-control mode, and fast.
And that started with finding out who exactly Toxicwrath was. To protect myself I’d have to find him. I’d expose him before he could expose me.
I sat down at my computer and fired up a VPN tunnel. It was time to go deep and dirty.
I banished all thoughts of Mason from my mind. I couldn’t afford to lose focus. Not now.
Toxicwrath would soon learn he couldn’t mess with Freedom Overdrive and survive.
Then my phone rang. The sound was piercing in the quiet.
I thought about ignoring it. I had to deal with Toxicwrath. Time was of the essence. But when I saw it was a private number, I answered it.
Could it be him?
“Hello?”
“Hannah? It’s Mom.”
The tremble in her voice, the fear in her tone, took me back to seven years ago. To that fateful day when our world changed.
“What number are you calling from?” My head was spinning. I was scared of exposure. Worried about what my cyberpartner would do now that he felt betrayed. Frantic over Mason’s possible discoveries.
And now I was terrified of whatever my mother was about to tell me.
“I’m calling from one of the office lines at the Appleton Center.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Charlotte. She had another seizure. She’s in a coma. They’re not sure if she’s going to make it. The pressure on her brain—” My mother started sobbing.
And just like that I hit rock bottom, shattered into pieces on the floor.
Not now!
Not Charlotte!
“When?” was all I could ask. My brain was about to overload. I stared at the bright glow of my computer screen, not seeing anything.
“A couple of hours ago. I didn’t want to call you until I knew something…”