Arthur lounged against the booth partition that butted up to the back wall of the conference hall, eyes on the entire room as well as the desk itself, keeping a clear view of anyone who might come their way. He snorted ruefully. “Oh, I know first hand he’s the best at what he does. That’s your future boss, if he hires you.”
Her eyebrows raced up to her hairline, earrings jangling wildly as she jerked her head to look at him. “Oh Syler, we are having a talk after this. Government employment and you’re the boss? No wonder you have Arm Candy as a minder.”
It was Arthur’s turn to sport a surprised expression. Syler smiled. She’d always been his most clever friend. “I have a job offer for you when this is over. Now do me a favor and head out, please.”
Emily narrowed her eyes, mouth set petulantly. “No. Get on with it, wonder boy. I’m waiting.”
Syler sighed. Clever and obstinate. “Be it on your head then, but stay clear of the aisle and Arthur both.”
Thirty-One
Syler turned his attention to the login screen requesting his name and preferred position. May as well let the target know he was here, he thought. He could practically feel Arthur’s frown as he did, but it wasn’t like the hacker didn’t already know who he was. He opted for the penetrative attack position. Perhaps the answer to the riddle left by the booth sponsor could be found in switching strategies. There was always more to learn in attacking than in defending. It was seeing the puzzle laid out at full completion versus the piecemeal they’d experienced so far with defensive volleys.
Penetrative attacks were very much a matter of looking for a vulnerability to exploit. As the simulation came online and the engineer began reviewing the code comprising the outer firewall, he found no shortage of them. It seemed even he was being started on easy mode. Fascinating.
He cracked his knuckles, setting to work slicing through the first firewall like butter with a hot knife, barely blinking as he pushed through the next layer. The third came just a touch harder, and the fourth—there. His volley was met with a novel firewall, lobed up in an effort to keep him from progressing. He rerouted his attacks, opting to use a multi-prong approach and open several holes at once, hoping to overwhelm his opponent. He slipped through, working his way into the fifth layer in much the same fashion. By now, he’d narrowed his parameters to finding and dismantling the encryption surrounding the connection to the hacker themselves. If nothing else, he wanted to know who and where this bastard was located.
Of course, the problem with fighting penetratingly is that getting in was easy. Staying in without getting evicted was the tricky part. One could always do as he had and force a system restart with a new firewall the hacker in question couldn’t bypass. The young man set up a multi-point volley, pushing against points other than the connection encryption in hopes of throwing off the system long enough to push through the last layer. Three of the five volleys were blocked, and as the fourth was being patched in his attempt to push through the connection, he launched the delayed sixth.
It was a clever little code, letting him piggyback directly off of the rebuilding process—and christ did that AI move fast—slingshotting him directly behind the remaining security walls by attaching himself to the credentials of the hacker themselves. And there it was: a static IP address buried deep in the back with a note left as though it were just for him: Jonathan Byron.
As soon as he hit the last point in the breach, the AI threw up an entirely novel firewall to finally force him out. It really was seamless, the way the binary wrote itself out in real time, too fast to be computed by anything but a machine, executing too quickly to possibly require the approval of the hacker. The code looked eerily familiar, like a mashup of his defense of the CIA and the signature flair he knew Emily preferred, a touch of Miranda’s pragmatic layering at the base. No, he thought, a stone settling somewhere in his gut as he realized what this demonstration really was, not a mash up. A perfect creative merger.
Of course, that was when it all went to shit. The moment the firewall went up, an explosion reverberated through the room, lights and screens going dark, plunging the room into blackness. The computer itself showered him in sparks, surge originating from the tower and moving out along the power lines to other equipment at neighboring booths. He felt his phone go hot in his jacket pocket, damn near burning a hole straight through as the battery heated up. He shoved himself away from the station, throwing his phone on the floor as he did, disoriented by his ringing ears. Even the reinforced frames of his glasses felt warm.
Arthur swore, the noise almost lost in the alarmed shouts of the hall’s other occupants, all of them panicked by the explosion and the sudden darkness. Somewhere across the room, a door slammed open. Across the aisle, an electrical outlet’s ground wire had been burned out, sparking madly before the banner on the wall caught fire like a roman torch, rapidly spreading through the booths and casting their side of the conference hall in a shifting orange haze.
“Localized EMP,” he shouted towards his agent, right as he felt hands clamp around his shoulders and mouth. He went stock still for an instant, panicked, before his instinct kicked in and he elbowed back wildly, briefly unsettling his attacker. “Arthur!”
The weight vanished from his back with the chilling crack of a gun against bone, replaced by the familiar scent of his agent as he pressed him to his left side. Another set of hands attempted to grab for him, similarly rebuffed. Arthur hauled him forward, pushing relentlessly
