“Has Meade let us into their system?”
“Yes,” she replied, passing the keyboard and headset over to him, moving to a station besides Jason.
“Deputy Director Perrin here, CIA,” he called over the line, joining the inter-agency team of responders, falling straight into shoring up their firewalls. By his best estimate, there must be a crew of a dozen hackers on the other end. They were getting hit from too many sides at once for there to be any other explanation. He barely noticed Miranda keying in a short while later, nor did he spare a thought for the Colonel taking a position to his left soon after.
It was pushing 8 a.m. before the attack ended, not with a victory, but with a total system shut down. The hackers had breached the NSA. Syler all but collapsed into his chair, stunned.
“Fucking shit,” Director Boothman uttered from somewhere to the left of the bullpen. Well, that about summed it up, Syler thought, somewhat hysterically. “Get me a full review. I want to know who and I want to know how and I want to know it yesterday.”
---
The longer Syler poured over the logs, the more questions he had. Unfortunately, the answer to one of them was becoming undeniably clear the longer he looked.
“Fuckity fuck shit goddamn it.” It was a morning for swearing and that was all there was to it.
“Breath, sweetheart.” His eyes darted up, startled. Dufault sat to his right, pressing a fresh mug of coffee into his hands without comment. Nearly an hour had passed since he’d started his review, absolutely oblivious to everything else including Dufault’s arrival. Syler slumped forward, inhaling his drink, and resisted the urge to whine. “Tell me what happened.”
“Somebody breached the NSA.”
“Got that bit. Do we know who?”
“No.”
“Do we know how?”
“Not really.”
“Are you going to figure it out?”
Syler dug his hands into his hair. “I’m afraid that I already have.”
Arthur hummed consolingly. “That’s not usually the tone of voice people use when they’re reporting good news.”
“Because it really isn’t.”
“Out with it, Perrin,” Boothman barked, apparently still present. It made sense, he supposed. The Director was hardly going to leave before she had answers. Still, he really, really didn’t like the answer.
“What was it you said, Dufault? ‘Wait and see?’ Yeah, well, we just saw. That code signature matched Pyrona.”
---
What followed was a dizzying few weeks of strategy meetings and repeated attacks on various agencies, not all of them located in the United States and not all of them governmental. Syler found himself at the center as representative of the CIA, and point man on the entire case. Everything about Pyrona had flown below the radar of every other agency actively involved and he was feeling the combined weight of their frustrations regarding the dead ends.
It didn’t help that Oliveria turned up dead shortly after the hack on the NSA, computer network dismantled and personal laptop long gone, with all traces of encryption around the companies receiving funds suddenly vanished along with any sign of the shadow organization behind them. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he’d be hard pressed to believe any of it had ever existed.
And then, in early December, it just stopped.
“Well that’s worrying,” Dufault summed up, positioned to his right in the Director’s briefing room. Understatement of the year, honestly. “About the only good news is that they haven’t come after us yet.”
“Does anyone have anything useful to go off here?” Boothman asked.
“I’ve looked through every major known hacker profile with a fine tooth comb, ma’am. We both have,” Syler replied, glancing over at Thompson, who nodded. “None of them come within spitting distance of the skill level to do this, even combined.”
“Well—”
“If you say wait and see, Dufault, I will break your leg all over again,” Jeanette snapped.
“I’m fully open to better suggestions.”
“Dismissed, all of you.”
---
Syler escaped to the private mechanic’s bay partitioned off of the main parking garage, desperate for an outlet that didn’t involve a computer screen and other human beings. He’d run dry of his allotted patience for dealing with them both for at least the rest of the year, possibly the remainder of his lifetime.
“Oh, she’s beautiful.” Syler nearly dropped the wrench into the engine compartment of the BMW he was working on, startled. Dufault saddled up beside him, limp barely detectable, back to being deadly silent now that he’d finished PT. As soon as the doctor had cleared him for ‘retraining,’ he’d eagerly taken to making up for lost time by sneaking up on Syler whenever possible. “And what’s your name, gorgeous?” he continued to croon at the car.
Syler blinked. “How did you even find me down here?”
“I’ve developed something of a sixth sense.” He winked, hands going over the body of the BMW reverently. “So, what’s her name?”
“She is a field grade vehicle I’m retrofitting with plate armor and an expanded capacity machine gun in the engine block, not a woman you need to romance into bed.”
“Sonya,” he decided, utterly ignoring Syler. “I’m going to call you Sonya.” He continued stroking along the black exterior, thumbing delicately over the exposed chassis where the plating was still being laid in, expression doting. “Promise me you won’t tell my Lucy. She’ll get huffy if she catches wind of me fondling a modern lady like yourself.”
“I genuinely can’t tell if you’re talking about a car or a person.”
That did the trick of getting his attention. “Lucy,” he announced proudly, “Lucifer on days when she’s being a brat. I’ll introduce you sometime.”
“Well that clears everything up.”
“Mind if I help?” He tugged the wrench out of Syler’s hand without waiting for an answer, nudging him out of the way and diving into the engine compartment. Syler snorted. It figured that Dufault was a sucker for cars, the giant blond menace.
“Fine, you can help me with the plating though. I don’t trust you with rigging the weaponry around the engine block.”
“I’d wager a year’s salary and hazard pay that I know
