7

7

         “Now that I’m here, now that I’m here…”

         A woman with short black hair was sitting in front of a few green screens, grinning like a kid. She was typing something on the keyboard at lightning speed – her hands looked like they were just put there and not moving. She grinned as she stopped typing and pressed a button on her right-hand side, then she lied down on her bed, where she’s been sitting all the time. She had a satisfied look on her face, as if she just beated the last level of a game.

         “Maybe I’ll play a small prank…”

                                                      ~•~

         The next few hours…

         “Frederich! Frederich!”

         A blonde man lazily swallowed down his bread as he walked to a screen mounted before a mahogany door. He tapped the screen once, and he could quickly see two men standing outside his house, from what the screen showed – one was a rather fat man, eating a chocolate bar, and the other was a blonde man who looked a bit desperate with his friend.

         “What’s up?” he asked lazily. “Work time is about thirty minutes from now. Please, for God’s sake, adjust your watches to Mr. Big Ben.”

         “Yes, we know!”

         “Go home then.” I mean, everyone do have the ‘sloth’ in them, no?

         “No, you can’t not come with us, Fred!”

         “Someone broke into our system! Go see it, Fred!”

         He stopped suddenly, as he could feel the flavour of the bread in his stomach suddenly dissolved and felt ill. He sighed and took his beige trenchcoat lying on the white dining table, then he bit more bread. No work will be done with an empty stomach, after all.

         “Of course, a minute.”

         If it’s the work of some naughty teenagers, then they’re gonna get it from old Mr. Fuller!

~•~

         A black haired woman sighed as she walked into a huge ballroom-like-room, and she quickly looked around. To find an empty table from all the tables in the room that should sum up to tens, perhaps. Either families or just a group of friends, or even tourists have taken over most of the tables.

         “Megan!”

         She quickly turned, only to see a blonde long haired woman sitting on one of the tables, drinking something from a white cup. There were a few plates placed on the table – put on one of them was omelette, put on another was a piece of french toast, and there were slices of apples, bananas, and melons on another plate. Megan walked to her friend and stood next to the table, looking at the foods.

         “I thought you’re on a diet.”

         “I am,” the blonde woman answered. “This isn’t that much of a breakfast, is it?”

         “…”

         “Go have something, Megan,” the blonde woman said. “They have a lot of choices of teas here. There’s something they called Breakfast Tea, Grey Earl Tea, Darjeeling, and, well, there’s a lot…”

         Megan’s eyes quickly brightened upon the good news. She smiled and turned away.

         “Okay, then I’ll try all of them while we’re here!”

         She walked a few steps away as the blonde woman started to slice the omelette served in front of her. Only a few steps, not even ten, after Megan walked away, she turned back to her friend.

         “Oh, yeah – where’s Dave?”

         “Dave?” The blonde woman sneered as she brought the food to her mouth. “He’s got something to do.”

                                             ~•~
         Something to do, yeah.

         “This is a bit strange, Felix.”

         A black haired man was walking around in his room while looking down to his phone in his hands. There was the picture of a middle-aged man with brown hair on the screen, in a military uniform.

         “Slowly, Dimitri,” the man on the phone said. “Tell me what’s strange.”

         Dimitri sighed loudly and looked away, as if it was something that shouldn’t be happening – something that wasn’t planned – but well, it happened.

         “We’re being watched.”

         The man on screen raised an eyebrow in surprisement. See – something unwanted, or else nobody would’ve reacted that way.

         “By who?”

         “I don’t know,” he said. “Nobody knew about us, this stay, this mission – just the three of us, you, the old man, Ivan, and… maybe Mikhail! But someone’s watching us.”

         “Precisely, how?”

         “Well, he put something in our rooms,” Dimitri said. “I don’t know what it does yet – that’s Merlin’s part, no? But I have no idea how to pry it out.”

         “Ask for another room, then.”

         “I can’t,” Dimitri said. “I have asked, but well, they have no rooms left.”

         “Okay, now listen.” When a problem comes, a solution is needed. “Now try to not do anything important in your rooms. Maybe in the bar, or in a café somewhere near.”

         “Whoever this guy is, he must be having a complete agenda of what to do and he should know who we are and what we’re doing in here.”

         “Make sure they don’t get anything while I finish the traitor here.”

         Dimitri sighed and tapped the screen of his phone once, making the face disappear – end of discussion, with a decision, fortunately.

~•~

         “How is it?”

         “I don’t precisely know.”

         In the dark room, illuminated with only a few bright neon lamps planted in the ceiling, a few men were working with green screens, some stacked together, some not. The blonde man with thick glasses looked the most serious among them all – he was typing something quickly as he would look up to the screen every few minutes.

         “Looks like whoever is hacking is looking for some high protected files,” he concluded. “But well – he couldn’t get it. But he actually managed to break into the low to medium security level. Let’s check the top secret files…”

         He typed some more, making a new screen appear with some scrambled words on it. The words kept scrambling for a while, until it has finally formed a few words. He swiped the screen to him using his index finger and looked at it closely. Another blonde man standing behind him leaned down in interest.

         “Hey, tell me, how is it, Fred?”

         “Wait…”

         Frederich typed a few more words, maybe codes this time, and a new screen appeared in front of the previous screen. His eyes widened in surprise as he turned to his friend.

         “Wait,” he said. “He got some top secret info.”

         Emergency. “What?”
         What a situation. First, someone hacked you, and unfortunately managed to take away some important stuff. It’s a bit like Julian Assange Junior’s work, no?
         “It’s a clean cut,” Frederich answered. “He took it, and left the hole he made – very, very tidily. He hacked the lower systems, hoping that we would focus on the datas stolen there…”

         “But bad for him, we didn’t.”

         “However, it was a very tidy hacking,” Frederich said as he typed some more. “See, nothing was taken from the lower systems.”

         “Track whoever it is?”
         “Imposibble. It’s clean – not even a code is left here.”

         This can’t be the work of some random teenager. It’s the work of someone very skilled – trained, or maybe even paid.         

         Terrorists? No, no. This is the work of someone trained.

         Must be someone like… an ex-spy…

         “So what do we do now, Frederich? If we can’t track anyone…”

         “Use a better protection system, of course.” When something fails, make something better and use it – that’s the law of nature, no?

         “Okay.”

         “If someone can break into this one I specifically modified myself, it’ll be easy to guess who did it,” he said as he started typing more. “Since I programmed it myself and only one person aside from me knows about this…”

         Yes. I sure do wonder…

         Are you alive?

~•~

         “Now, now, how perfect!”

         A black haired woman stood up from her bed and turned to a black haired man who just walked into the room. He was a bit confused with his friend – what was the purpose of being so happy, he asked himself – but gave her a grim smile anyways.

         “Something good happened?”

         “I got something on our man,” she said. “You see, thanks to some skills and brains!”

         Keep your cool, Dimitri. “Yeah, yeah.”

         “Wanna take a look?”

         “Okay.”

         “Wait…”

         The woman sat back on her seat and took a small black board with buttons on it – there were all sorts of letters on the keyboard – and started typing. A green screen appeared shortly after. The man looked from her back as some words started to scramble on the screen. A new screen then appeared automatically, where there were a few words and a few pictures of a man taken from the front, back, and sides. The woman smiled to her friend, proud and satisfied.

         “Well!” she clapped her hands, like a kid clapping her hands for a fake Santa. “Tell me, aren’t I great?”