• Fair talk, this chapter is mostly explaining a lot of what happened 'behind the scenes' in Genius, as seen from Caleb's side. Not a lot of talking, but if you ever wondered what Caleb was up to during the time Mia and Eli were fucking like rabbits, this is it •

If you had ever hacked into all the things I had and knew all the things I knew, then knowing how Big Brother watched your every move was an understatement.

But now imagine Big Brother had a secret older brother. Or younger. It didn't matter—all you had to imagine was two fucking brothers watching over you, and one was more obsessive than the other. And not in the sexy, kinky way.

– Well, congratulations. You just entered my life.

As if hiding and hunching and working the camera angles all around town like the world's sickest game of hide and seek wasn't bad enough, I had a constant sense of paranoia itching on my back with every move I made. I slept a maximum of two hours at a time unless I'd found a completely secluded place where no one could find me. Even then, I always slept with one eye open.

C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S was following me. Or at least that had been their plan. When I wouldn't give Eli up to them, I had deduced they had been left with two choices; one, capture me and hope Eli would come out of hiding to find me, or two, let me go and watch me lead them straight to him. They knew I'd go to my sister eventually. I had to. She was my sister after all, and where my sister was, so was Elijah. So they had went with option two.

– And that was exactly the reason why I hadn't gone back to my sister.

It had taken me a week to shake C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S off my back and another one to make sure they weren't bluffing and secretly still tracking me. I still couldn't be completely sure, but I felt about 90 percent confident I had lost them completely by the second week. Still, I took no chances.

Leading them astray had been necessary. If I stayed where they had found me, they could've found Eli through various methods. On the other hand, if I left and kept leading them further away, they would've suspected I was trying to keep them away from something in that part of town. It was a meticulous and well-calculated back-and-forth between four cities; Sometimes I gave them a glimpse of me on a local CCTV camera at a gas station, but other than that, I had gone solid MIA. If they were fucking with us, I was fucking with them. Those were the rules.

But playing the game was taxing.

By the third week of desperately going from one city to another and crying myself to sleep alone in alleyways thinking about my sister, I was getting exhausted. I knew I eventually had to contact Eli somehow and tell him what the deal was, but how? They couldn't catch me with him and he couldn't come looking for me if he saw me from a distance trying to send fucking smoke signals with a blunt or whatnot. It needed to be inconspicuous and in a way only he would catch me and know I was alive and not... taken.

Where the fuck was Liam Nesson when you needed him.

The perfect opportunity presented itself when I one day caught wind of what'd happened after our break-in at the Alexandrettia. I had kept tabs on my boy, knowing now I couldn't bail him out. The strangest fucking thing had then happened, though; after his community sentence got processed, the verdict hadn't made it into the system. At least not digitally.

I had been up for hours waiting for it, but it never appeared. Maybe someone had been lazy and simply filled out the paperwork by hand, stuffing it into some file that would disappear in a filing cabinet in a few weeks, but I didn't know. I couldn't exactly go find out either, which was making my already wound-up body antsy; It was only through street gossip I found out that Eli had been sentenced to 400 hours of community service at the Alexandrettia, cleaning up the mess 'he' had made.

As pained as I was about the fact that he was paying for my troubles, I was relieved it hadn't been worse. And, something good seemed to have sprouted out of it. Or, well... something somewhat good.

Fermat's last theorem. The smart fucker hadn't been able to resist the challenge, and of course it had caught the local media's attention. Everyone was reeling over the person whom had been able to solve the unsolved riddle overnight, but apparently the so-called 'Genius' hadn't stepped forward to claim his or her praise.

Wonder-fucking-why.

His little stunt had been amusing and reckless all at once, but it had led me to keep a closer, though still distanced eye on the school, just in case C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S caught wind of it. While doing my best to confine the news to only the local stations, something had suddenly happened as I'd hacked into the school servers. I had used the secret, hidden CCTV cameras around the school (cameras no-doubt installed by their principal whom I figured had been the reason I hadn't been able to cut the alarms that night; he had one-upped them, personally) to keep an eye on Eli, but as I'd been doing that, I'd noticed it.

– The server glitch.

Technicians in green suits had been running in and out of the server room like confused ants, trying to locate the error and get them up and running again. Idiots. I had watched them like a 90's comedy for almost half a day before it had hit me.

This was my way in.

It would be hella risky, but I saw it as my only chance. What better way to send an encrypted message to the one person who would be smart enough to solve it with a moment's glance through something as benign as a glitch? It was perfect. Nobody would suspect anything.

Although... considering it was a school of supposedly smart people, I guess I shouldn't let the message say something too obvious like 'Yo, C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S is up my ass man, but I'm hanging tight for now, keep going.' Maybe something a little more pragmatic.

At the end of the day, I had chosen three simple words. Words that held no particular meaning, but were sarcastic enough to let him know I was okay and communicating under own free will. I had expected him to be mad that I wasn't giving him more, but at this point, I couldn't. It was too risky. I could only hope he'd keep looking after Elana until I could find a way to contact him without compromising his location.

Three weeks after that incident—a total of six weeks since all the shit went down—I was losing my fucking hope. C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S was still on my fucking case, trailing me wherever I went. I had hoped they would give up... Had hoped they'd realize I'd never give him up.

But they knew at some point, I couldn't keep it running any longer either. At some point, I would miss my sister so much, I wouldn't be able to fucking resist going to see her.

– That day was coming closer and closer with every hopeless passing hour I spent curled up in an alley, praying and begging God to make this nightmare end.

I had never known fucking heartache like this. I had never been away from Elana this long before. Hell, I had never been away from Elana period. She was my everything after our parents died. I was all she had and she was all I had left to keep myself from going insane. I was slowly losing my mind being away from her, one painful tear at a time.

If only there was a way I could check up on her. If I could see that she was okay, see that Eli was feeding her regularly and keeping her bedtime and remembering to wash her behind her ears... people always forgot about the ears...

I knew beneath all that ink and ego, Eli was a good guy. He knew what Elana meant to me, and whatever feud went on between us, he would never take it out on her. That was my only consolation as I currently stared at my laptop, looking at her baby pictures.

"I'll see you soon, princess," I rubbed my thumb against my screen, right over her chunky baby cheek. Fuck it, I had already cried once today, two times would get my mancard revoked. "Sleep tight, baby girl."

It was 2.47pm, early for any normal person, nap time for Elana, and late for the ones trying to escape the government's eye. I was tired from walking all night, from pick-pocketing poodles on Rodeo Drive and hungry from buying cheap food and sharing most of it with homeless people who were kind enough to borrow me a blanket.

Tonight, though, I sat in solitary. I needed it. I was running on my last fucking fumes, trying to figure out how I could get through to him. How to escape C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S... how to fix all this fucking mess—

Pling! Pling! Pling!

Frowning, I shifted my blurry eyes to my laptop as my spyware went off. A red alert triangle was flashing on my screen, making my brain wake up and realize what the fuck was happening.

Someone sent a fucking bug after my laptop.

Oh, heeeeeeeeell no.

Grinding my teeth, I dramatically rolled up my sleeves and made ready to bugbomb the hell out of the shithead who thought they had a prayer at my computer. My mind briefly wondered if it could be C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S trying again, but I had been too precarious with them to know it couldn't be them, and besides, I think we had established they couldn't get into my laptop.

No, this was someone else. But who?

Suddenly finding a slight curiosity as to whom the hell would try and bug me and how they had even traced me, I decided to run an algorithm on the bug and reverse it. Lead me home, bugsy.

Here was the thing; Everything online was like leaving breadcrumbs or trying to eat Cheetos without getting orange finger dust on everything; if you didn't know all the smart life hacks, you couldn't get away with it. If you didn't know how to hide your sin in a world of sinners... you were pretty much bound to end up dead in an alleyway like the one I was in.

But at least I was alive, wasn't I?

Frowning confused when my algorithm came back a few minutes later without results, I stared at my screen dumbfound for another moment. What the hell? No score?

So it was a professional hacker. I had dealt with my fair share of them and knew if anyone had even a chance of fooling me, they had to be professionals, and not bearded overgrown man-children still living in their parents' basement.

Frowning a second more at the red alert sign on my on screen, I paused in thought. I humbly considered myself the king of all things hacking, but this particular hacker... this one might just be a brave peasant trying to steal my crown.

Smirking to myself, I started typing again. New plan. A twisted part of me enjoyed the small distraction as I adjusted my algorithm and sent it after the bug one more time. Try this one on for size. For weeks I had been obsessing over all things C..E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S, and seeing this little bug was nice for some reason. I loved a little challenge to brighten my Tuesday.

Finally. My algorithm decoded the bug and led me straight to its owner. Okay, maybe it was a little more complicated than that, especially as I found the owner's digital signature and pulled up the IP. After only a few seconds of processing, hacking and downloading all I needed to get my hit on this crackerjacker, I opened the files collected straight from the fucker's computer. Time to see who this dipshit was.

"Holy... Jésus."

First of all, I wasn't surprised it was a girl. Not at all. There were plenty of female hackers out there, I wasn't conceited.

No, what surprised me and had me dropping my jaw as I opened the folder with her pictures, though... was all the fucking blue that attacked my eyes.

Blue hair. A tuft of screaming blue, wildly styled pixie hair on top of what I had to assume was a 16-year-old girl with a fetish for piercings hit me straight in the corneas like a neon sign. Holy damn hell.

Staring for a moment, I scrolled to the next picture and then frowned in confusion as a selfie of her standing in front of the Alexandrettia with what I had to assume were her two friends, popped up. She looked tiny, all dressed in black from head to tiny toes, but what had me blinking twice was the fact that the pic was tagged; 'first day of Smartypants Lyfeee.'

It hit me like a fuck shovel across my face.

If she was a hacker... and she went to the Alexandrettia... that meant she had fucking found me through that and holy shit, my cover was goddamn compromised.

Staring speechlessly and with my mouth hanging wide open, I couldn't stop glaring at the photo of the girl who had potentially tracked me down and knew where I was. Only 10 percent of me was impressed while the rest of me was silently panicking and internally screaming. If she had found me, then that meant...

"FUCK!" She could've left a cybertrace. Hell, it could still be there. I had to completely flush my laptop from any viruses that bug could've brought with it. Oh, but I wasn't fucking stopping there.

This girl had found me, but h-to-the-ow? And why? What the fuck did she want with me?

Background check coming the motherfucking up.

It took me roughly half an hour to go through everything I could possibly think of to go through (while detoxing my laptop) and the more I found... the more fascinated I got.

She was not what I expected at all.

She was a heavy metal fan, she loved plushie toys, she was definitely emo, possibly bisexual, a supporter of 4-20 and my favorite; She was above 18.

Smirking slowly to myself, I felt the first real smile come onto my lips in weeks, even if it was a slightly creepy one. There was nothing on here that suggested she was a sadistic scientist working for a certain facility or anything that raised any alarms inside my head, other than her obsession with piercings. So far, I counted twelve on her face alone. And those were the ones I could see.

If she was working with C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S (which she obviously wasn't if she was at the Alexandrettia), she was a better hacker than me, and while I found that possibility cute, it simply wasn't possible. And yes, that's as humble as I got.

She was good at covering her tracks, but not that good. As a matter of fact, it had only taken me a ten minute dance with her firewalls before I cracked her itinerary. She was in class right now, finishing up in about an hour and a half. Hmm...

Glancing at the digital clock on my laptop, I made a minor calculation. Yeah, should be doable...

If I jumped on the first train and grabbed the last bus that went by the school, I should be able to make it, security and evasion protocols added in. I would have to make a few detours to make sure I wasn't being followed, but this... this was too good to pass up on.

This was going to be fun. It would appear that a certain smurf was going to meet her worst nightmare tonight and she was going to love the hell out of it.

– Ceynius was officially on the move.

• • •

Hello, hello, Smurf.

And thus began the story of how everything started.

Still missing you guys, but still offline. Writing is hard for me these days, but instead of the drafts laying in my unpublished works and gathering dust for the rest of the year, I'm publishing the ones readable enough to be consumed.
Cheers.