Crazy Seduction(erotica)

Sigrid opened her arms, and Meixiu moved into her embrace.

“Me too,” she sighed.

**************

Henry found himself once more staring at his computer screen at work as the sunset.

He’d gotten a break early on in the day when the net he’d placed over the NSA firewall detected an intruder. He was running VRL’s intrusion detection algorithms on a third party network. This would not be detectable to them, outside of a slight lag, as it reviewed incoming traffic. He had the intruder’s feed captured and analyzed and found password attempt entries. He set those aside for later use. He logged the identity of the owner of the workstation, and when the intruder pulled some files, Henry detected them as his signature files. He appended a flag byte on each signature as they transferred. Inert on their own, if the files were added to data packets sent through the Internet, they activated other capabilities. Most important of these was the breadcrumb trail the data packets left.

He now believed he knew who the intruder was.

There was silence for hours as this ‘Kent’ fellow from the NSA planned his next move. When the data packets next appeared it was on the dark web.

Henry’s eyebrows rose. Kent had to be going off script. Henry doubted Kent’s employer sanctioned his new activities. But then, they might. He watched Kent engage with some pretty subversive accounts, and slowly a picture emerged of the man’s plan. He was recruiting them but being cagey about it. He wasn’t disclosing the target of his attack which just increased their interest.

Henry was almost tempted to let them try. It would give his firewall a true test.

There was a knock on his door, and Henry looked over to see Mr. Duncan standing there.

“Hi! You’re just in time to see our NSA snoop, whose name is Kent by the way, attempt to hire the dark web’s most notorious hackers to crack our firewall,” Henry said.

“WHAT?!?” Roy barked and rushed around to stand behind Henry. He peered at the screen which was only showing a grid of encoded packet data. “I can’t make heads or tails of this! What’s it say?”

“It says it’s time for me to shine a light on Kent so these evil doers can see who they’re truly dealing with,” he said.

“They aren’t going to see who it is that’s telling them, are they?” Roy asked in a worried tone.

“Are you nuts? Unlike Kent, these guys have real potential to be dangerous. No, I’m going to make it look like Kent sent a packet without stripping the ID from it. They will immediately backtrace it, and voila, the NSA is trying to set them up.” He glanced at the screen and fired a packet off.

He pointed to the screen. “Here, I’ll color code this.” He entered a couple of commands, and the text blocks in the interface changed colors. “The blue ones are the hackers Kent is trying to hire. He’s the shit brown one. The yellow ones are incidental accounts, browsing the boards. This red one is me or my seemingly legit connection to the board. I’m watching this overview from a signal piggybacking the legit connection.

“The blue ones are disappearing!” Roy noted.

“Yes, they are. They’ve seen Kent’s true identity. I think we’d better-” He stared at the screen then shut down the window.

“What happened?” the security chief asked.

“Well, one of the dark web hackers is more paranoid than expected. They tried following my legit account and discovered it led to a dead account in Germany. It was safer to shut down before he or she discovered my piggybacked link.

“So… how will you know if it worked?” the big man asked.

“We keep an eye on the activity reports for our firewall. That’s always been our first line of defense and early warning system,” Henry said as he shut down his laptop.

“You drop a bomb then you just go home?” Roy asked incredulously.

Henry blinked tiredly at him. “Yes. I’m tired. It’s past time for me to go home. There is nothing I can do outside of trusting the firewall will hold. They could still knock out the services that give us our connection, but we should be fine.”

He saw the big redhead was not happy. “Look, if one of those dark web hackers decides to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong and becomes a nuisance I have ways to deal with that, but there’s no sense in starting a war we don’t need to fight. Right now, the worst they will think is that I’m one of them and I just saved their asses,” Henry assured him. He saw the man was more comfortable with that. Henry snorted. “You know that Kent opened a backdoor in the NSA’s firewall for his personal use? The balls on that guy!”

Roy snorted as well. “That’s something the NSA would like to know.”

“Oh, they will. According to Kent’s email logs, he has a bestie at work named Graham. This bestie is going to report him,” Henry said.

“Why would he do that?” Roy asked curiously.

“Because Kent sent him an email from his work PC bragging about it and included the connection details. To save his ass, this fellow Graham will have to report it,” Henry shrugged.

Roy grinned at Henry. “Masterfully done. You surprise me!”

Henry frowned. “What’s that phrase? All’s fair in love and war? I don’t love Kent.”

Roy scowled. “Wait a minute, email logs! I told you not to hack into the NSA network!”

He looked into the eyes of the other man. “I didn’t. I just followed Kent in when he opened his connection, and I left before he did.”

The security chief fixed his eye on Henry. “I had no idea you could be this devious. You’re making me wonder if our firewall has hidden access too.”

Henry rolled his eyes. “I’m done saying it. Either you believe I have integrity or you don’t.” He made shooing motions to the bigger man. “I want to go home, and I have to lock my door. Unless you have backdoor access to my new door handle.” Which, of course, he did.

Roy snorted in amusement and left the room. “Good night, lad.”

“Good night, Roy.”

The chief smiled back at Henry’s use of his name, but his smile dimmed as he saw the weariness in the young man’s body language as he walked away down the hall to the elevators.

Roy would ask Sigrid if she knew what was up with the boy. Though he wouldn’t admit it, he worried about him.

-=-

“NO! NO! NO!” Kent raged.

His dark web contacts disappeared one after another in rapid succession.

He sat there looking at the screen wondering what happened. He had them all primed. He was about to deliver the payload, a nice juicy target for them to attack with riches within. Then they just left.

He had nothing. Tomorrow when he went to work, he’d stand before the Director, his supervisor, and the two agents and tell them he had nothing to give them. The firewall remained impervious. Could he do it? Yes… maybe, but not without more time and perhaps exclusive access to the Decryption Engine.

He slumped back in his chair and closed his eyes. He just needed a moment… He’d come up with another plan…

As Kent slipped into an unconscious state, he missed the flicker of lights on his router and the gentle whir of his dark web PC’s hard drives spinning up to speed as his visitor had a look around.

Henry felt a weariness seeping into his bones. He needed sleep. He needed seven hours of uninterrupted sleep.

He’d almost nodded off in the train and was dragging himself the last block to his condo. All he could think of was his comfortable bed waiting for him.

As he approached the front door of his building blue and red lights began lighting up the area around him, and he heard a single whoop from a police siren. He stopped and turned to look back as a police cruiser pulled up to the curb next to him. The passenger side window rolled down.

“Henry Gable?” the officer asked.

He nodded.

“Get in.” The man gestured to the back door.

“Excuse me?” Henry asked, beginning to wake up.

The cop sighed, pushed open his door and got out. He was a large, physically intimidating man with an angry look in his eyes. He reached back and opened the door. “The captain wants to speak to you. Downtown. Get in.”

Henry looked back at the man in concern. “Am I being arrested?”

The man sighed. “No. Get in.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Henry said and turned to leave. He’d have to call-

Rough hands grabbed Henry, spun him, and launched him into the back seat. The door slammed shut, and he saw the big man pick up the shoulder bag he’d dropped and walk behind the cruiser to drop it in the trunk.

“You- you can’t do this!” Henry said to the officer sitting behind the wheel.

“Save it for the captain.”

Henry cursed under his breath that he’d left his cell in his bag. The big officer got back in the cruiser, and they pulled away from the curb.

He kept his mouth shut as saying anything might make his situation worse. Besides, they weren’t speaking to each other as they drove.

Once they arrived at the station, the big cop opened his door and gestured for him to get out. He glanced back to where his partner was getting his case from the trunk, but the big one pushed him forward and guided him inside.

As they made their way through the station, Henry spotted Mary Carsten sitting at a desk. The expression on her face was not happy. She also looked exhausted.

They reached a door and shoved Henry inside.

“Sit down. The captain will be with you in a moment.”

Henry took a chair. He could see the big man was looking for an excuse to manhandle him again.