Chapter 15.3

The men set me on the ground of a small room containing only a pair of chairs and a table. I lay on the ground, whimpering as I covered my eyes and squeezed my eyes shut, still not accustomed to the light. The door opened once more and a pair of footsteps entered.

"Take a seat, sergeant," Otto said.

I found myself complying without a second thought, squinting against the harshness of the light around me. Otto sat across from me and set a tablet and holoprojector between us. The projector illuminated the air between us with running strips of code, filling a screen sized area.

"This is the code used to shut down and isolate this facility for an hour while heavily armed resistance members assisted in the jail break of a prisoner who formerly resided in the cell you now occupy. My people have looked over this code for over a hundred hours and all they can tell me is that it is the work of a professional, who spent several hours before hand preparing this complex code."

I scanned the code I wrote in a haze, noting several rather nasty pitfalls for anyone trying to break their way out of the box. Oh my god, part of the box downloaded a few dozen gigabytes of gay and lesbian porn to their computer directly from a server of confiscated files. Oh, that is gorgeous.

"However the four resident hackers here tell me that the hacker they were facing responded to them directly, forcing them back and away and eventually trapping them within a box. A very heavily encrypted box that took them over twenty four hours combined to work their way out of, only to find that the hacker had vanished from the maintenance terminal they were using."

I raised a bored eyebrow and leaned back in the seat, yawning. I was actually rather tired and the sudden change of scenery had made me sleepy. Otto's eyebrows twitched, his nose crinkling up and his lip starting to raise a little. Was I making him mad?

"Our files say that there are a total of six hackers that could have potentially made this box and implemented it. Two are assigned to Dead Head squadrons in the far east, one is in a coma, one is the Head of Population in Praia, one was reportedly taken prisoner by Alliance soldiers recently, which leaves you."

"I'm sorry, was there a question in that? It is comfortably warm in this room and it's making me drowsy," I said nonchalantly. Otto didn't scare me, he wouldn't scare me. I wouldn't let him.

Otto's lips pursed. "We both know you're an exceptional hacker Tawny; it's almost too bad someone stopped you from operating in the field. You could have crippled Alliance communications, still could if you so wanted to. I'm curious, why that prisoner? There are many more here of far greater political importance than that thug."

I made several faces that I guess were supposed to look like I was searching my memory for a reason, drawing out the silence as long as I possibly could. "Well...I guess it is safe to assume that this man was of some political importance, otherwise the resistance wouldn't have bothered arresting him. Also, that code is much too complex for someone to have typed up on the spot without some kind of free system access, I mean half of it is already existing encryption. The hackers here must have been halfwits if it took them over a day to get themselves out. Are you suggesting someone sabotaged my suit?"

"It wouldn't be hard for you to get into the system, considering what I saw of your final test," he said.

"It's an easy exam, the system is too exploitable," I shrugged remembering the exam well. Mine ended with files coming up on the holoscreen before someone pulled the plug and two soldiers were hauling me away from the computer at gun point.

"Exploitable?" Otto choked. "Do you know what system that is?"

"Obviously something the government doesn't want us in," I said.

"The test is to try to hack the Department of National Security," he said. "This place has similar defense measures. Nobody hacks the DNS, nobody hacks the Pit."

"Clearly someone has," Tawny responded.

"Someone with your level of skill, residing in the capital right now. Which is strictly limited to you."

"So, I am a phantom prisoner in a maximum security prison because of what I can do with a keyboard?" I asked. "How well do you think that will hold up?"

Otto stood, his face turning a lovely shade of red. "Clearly you need some more time to yourself," he said.

I remained placid, tilting my head and looking at him. "If you want me to beg, it's not going to happen," I said.

"You will talk eventually," Otto said. "Get her back to her cell."

"Just how long do you think you can keep me here without someone finding out? You don't run this place."

"Didn't you hear me? Nobody knows you're here."