September 30th

It was the first time he'd worn a suit since his mother's funeral. Shit. Was that already six years ago? Well, at least now the pant legs had been properly hemmed and the jacket's shoulders were tailored. They'd better been. He'd spent forty-three hundred bucks on the two-button, Savile Row bespoke creation. Of course, he'd never actually been to London. He hadn't been much of anywhere, really. At least not in person.

Walking through the cubicle farm, he frowned at the techies in their ill-fitting khakis and logo-emblazoned polo shirts hammering away at their wireless keyboards. Feckless bastards. Not quite experienced enough for one of the coveted managerial positions in the private offices on the perimeter and not mature enough for a work-from-home deal. At least they were able to ditch the monkey suits.

Stopping at the elevator, he tugged at his collar. Its confinement was the price he'd have to pay for the chance to supervise the twenty security analysts on this floor of one of the country's biggest banks. Sure, he needed to get the offer first, but he'd crushed the interview. There was no way they'd let him get away.

He could never publicly admit it, but his work had led to the development of the software they were now using to keep their systems secure. Work. He scoffed as he stepped inside the elevator and pushed the button for the lobby. It had never seemed like work. Accessing data - about people, businesses, and countries - was a hell of a lot of fun. And for someone like him, it was easy, too.

The anonymity didn't bother him. It was a comfortable cloak in an industry where the ability to keep secrets depended only on how good the other guy's own code breakers were.

He rode down in silence, exiting the impersonal glass and steel building after passing by the security desk. The faint glow of six, black-and-white monitors with closed-circuit images of various entry points into the facility shone onto the faces of the two guards. Their dour expressions showed that they either hated their jobs or their lives.

Maybe it was both.

Walking to the nearest bus stop, he stood out of earshot of the people already waiting there. It was somewhat absurd, really. He had no qualms about digging into anyone's most personal information online, but when it came to real life, boundaries mattered. When the crosstown express arrived, he waited for the Spanish-speaking woman and her young son, as well as the graying, retired couple to get on before also climbing aboard. After dropping four quarters and a dime into the fare box, he only sat when the machine beeped its approval and the driver nodded.

It would take him forty minutes to get home. Parking in the city was too sparse to own a vehicle and car services only took payment with plastic. Until they accepted bitcoin, he was stuck using the cash-based public transportation. The last thing he needed was someone to track his movements via the cyber trail left from credit card purchases.

He pulled out his smartphone and opened the Mitre Square app. One of the newer social media sites, it had gained popularity recently when others unwittingly became propaganda tools of foreign governments.

The irony of using such a site to get his fix of information didn't escape him. But in a world where a nationalistic uprising in eastern Spain had almost instantaneous repercussions in spurring bids for independence in a half dozen other countries across the globe, the phrase "knowledge is power" could not have been any more true. And nothing spread information faster than cyberspace.

Luckily, not everything on the web was as dramatic as racial tension, religious intolerance, or the threat of nuclear holocaust from leaders taunting each other with childish nicknames. Yet even much more trivial matters like a leaked promotional trailer for a highly anticipated summer blockbuster movie (although trivial in this case was wholly subjective) could become significant.

Because in most instances, the content wasn't what mattered. Intent, method, and impact were often the real goals of so-called "news".

Right now, though, he just wanted a little fluff to unwind.

Scrolling through his feed, he glanced at the pictures of adorable puppies, shares of various articles about the new Star Wars movie, and stupid memes involving the president. Then it caught his eye. It was one of his favorite authors Elizabeth Stride. Her debut novel Duttfield's Yard - with its realistic depiction of mental illness from the point of view of the protagonist who kills from compulsion and misguided obligation - had made her a household name practically overnight. But this message had nothing to do with literary crime.

Thanks for the support, but due to the unfortunate events of earlier, I'll be taking a brief social media break.

When he went into her timeline, the most recent post before that was two days ago. Everything else had been scrubbed. Well, scrubbed from the direct interface. He knew it all had to be there. In the background. Embedded in the networks. Saved on the servers. Nothing could ever really disappear from the virtual world.

Finding the deleted posts was child's play. Even a novice could use the Wayback Machine or one of its countless clones. Scrolling through the feed in reverse chronology, he began to read:

I'm speechless.

A screenshot of a private message between Elizabeth and someone from the app's support team was below. The relevant part started with: Thank you for bringing this to our attention. After careful review, we have determined that the submitted content does not violate our terms of service. You may consider blocking the offensive party from your timeline ...

The next set of postings from various individuals (many with Confederate flag profile pictures) all shared a similar theme.

Stick to writing!

I don't want to see politics from authors. Won't be buying your books again.

What a libtard. No wonder your writing sux.

Stupid move, lady. How about not getting involved in things you know nothing about.

Another liberal elite going against her race. Sad!

They went on and on and on.

Finally, he found another post from Elizabeth.

If you agree with this sentiment, get ready to also be reported.

Another screenshot, this time with some of it redacted: Hey, c***! Good thing ur famous so we know where you live **** S****** Way ******. Better rethink your n***** loving ways or we'll be coming for you.

Whoa. Doxxing and very thinly veiled threats against her safety? JFC. And the support team thought this was okay to dismiss with a block?

Steadying his hand on the phone, he continued to scroll through the archived feed.

Now they're one-starring my books. Really, people? I'm only trying to earn a living. What happened to free speech? the author wrote.

Another batch of fairly innocuous taunts using standard, right-wing troll language like snowflake, cuck, globalist and even triggered followed. It was quite ironic really, since most of those terms actually applied to their own reactions.

And then finally, there it was. The original post that had started it all.

Stand strong. #BLM

Underneath the seemingly innocuous message was a reposting of the news article she'd shared. The picture was of a line of mostly African American protestors with their arms linked, facing a row of heavily armed police officers.

Son of a bitch. That's what led to the whole uproar? A NY Times bestselling author showing her support for the Black Lives Matter movement?

As the bus rolled through the city bouncing along the pothole lined streets, he could feel his heart rate accelerate and his palms become increasingly sweaty. The ignorant and hate-filled comments from users hiding behind the anonymity provided by the Internet was bad enough, but it was truly the site's casual dismissal of the OP's reports of targeted harassment that pissed him off. He'd seen it before, but for some reason this time it resonated more.

Was it because he'd resolved to turn over a new leaf?

He grinned.

Probably. Being bad was always most tempting when it had repercussions. Even if those repercussions were "only" self-loathing and guilt.

With an action plan quickly formulated, all he could do for now was wait. He'd need the rest of his gadgets to really dive in, but there was another half hour of the ride before then.

Getting off one stop before he really had to, he walked the rest of the way home. It was somehow refreshing to see the group of teens who always hung out on the steps in front of his building in their usual spot. Even if the change in his life was by his own choice, the constancy in others made him less anxious about it.

By the time he'd walked up to the third floor, unlocked the deadbolt, and loosened his tie, his fingers were itching to get to work. Heading across his living room, he lightly touched the folded US flag in its protective, triangle-shaped frame resting on the mantle.

The act was out of habit; the reverence for the object was out of duty.

Tossing his jacket on the back of the sofa and kicking off his shoes, he entered his smaller than usual bedroom. The built-in bookshelf on the left wall easily pivoted on its hinges to reveal a hidden, metal door. After punching in an eight-digit code and looking into the scanner with his right eye, the dual-factor authentication accepted his request.

The door clicked open with a familiar buzz and cool air rushed through the gap.

The company that had installed the self-contained unit behind the door had meant it to be used as a panic room. Creating a safe hiding place for two or three people in an emergency wasn't such an unusual thing any more and having it didn't bring up any more questions than if he had bought a car with ABS, side air-bags, and rollover protection.

What he actually had in the room wouldn't have been as easily dismissed.

One side held three, open-frame racks. Various sized metal boxes filled nearly every slot, their faces blinking with tiny lights in red, blue, green, and yellow. Each signal had a different meaning to indicate the status of the multiple servers, firewalls, gateways, converters, storage, and switches. An elevated desk stood in the middle, holding two keyboards, a joystick, and a mouse. On the opposite wall, four television-sized, flat screen monitors hung in a two-by-two pattern.

The air buzzed with the hum of the equipment, and he got to work.

C. Ed Dowes was the founder of Mitre Square. A seemingly typical Silicon Valley success story, he'd entered a failing market and turned it around practically overnight. His stock was worth billions, but there had always been whispers that his success hadn't come on its own. He also had a reputation for a toxic workplace culture and a less-than-stellar record with the ACLU.

Now was the time to find out whether any of the rumors were true. And if they were, he was going to feel very sorry for ignoring an innocent woman's online harassment.

His fingers danced on the keyboard as the quadruple screens filled with terminal windows, command prompts, and lines of code. Getting inside the networks - first Mitre Square's data center, then their enterprise financial system, and finally Dowes' cell phone provider - was like peeling the layers of an onion except his reward at the end wasn't a stinking sliver, but a treasure trove of information.

Hours later when he had everything he needed, but before severing the connection, he left the only sign that could ever be (theoretically) linked to him. A digital Jack of Hearts playing card waiting on the desktop of every Mitre Square employee who would log into their account the next morning.

* * *

He was still in his flannel pajama pants and plain tee - a completely acceptable outfit for anyone whose home also served as their office - when the Google alert arrived. The email delivering notification of mentions of pre-picked search terms was less frequent lately, but today, he'd been expecting it. It was almost insulting it had taken nearly twelve hours for the news to break. But then again, his target was only a high-tech entrepreneur.

Opening the message, he scanned the headlines:

Is the Jack of Hearts hacker responsible for the recent wave of security breaches?

Social Media Mogul exposed by apparent Cyber-Vigilante

Authorities try to piece together massive data implicating Mitre Square founder

Turning on the television, it was more of the same on every streaming news station. He ate his cereal while the anchor talked in the background:

The bigger they are, the harder they fall is the saying, but social media founder and corporate CEO C. Ed Dowes is experiencing this as an all too reality as details continue to emerge about the real reasons for the success behind his fledgling empire. As of just moments ago, we have confirmed most of the information publicly posted overnight on - ironically enough - Dowes' own Internet app Mitre Square regarding the entrepreneur's connections to top political spheres. The FBI has also joined the investigation into Dowes' alleged selling of user data to a third-party, which has been linked to Congressional committees involved in establishing voting districts. Although the massive amounts of evidence released by the so-called Jack of Hearts hacker is still waiting to be fully analyzed, it appears that part of the payoff Dowes received for the demographic data was absolution from liability for the company's recent trends in turning of a blind-eye to escalating user harassment. It is also yet to be determined whether this most recent cyber-event is linked to the August 31st ransomware attack on far-right organizations that have consistently lobbied against gun control and the September 8th mass-purging of student loan information - and thereby $1.2 trillion dollars of indebtedness - held by the US Department of Education.

The video feed cut to commercial and he put his empty bowl in the sink. Leaning his hands on the counter, he closed his eyes and hung his head to repress the urge to vomit.

There it was: the guilt.

They were putting the pieces together and perhaps he should have also felt fear, but he didn't. There was plenty else they didn't know about and never would. He probably should have stopped months ago.

Dowes' downfall was his own doing, he just helped speed it up. Exposing the shitbag felt good at the time, but it was done on an impulse. If things worked out as planned, he'd have to learn to control those impulses in the future. Otherwise, nothing would change.

November 8th

Getting into the IRS' servers had been a pain in the ass, even by his standards. It wasn't as much a technology issue as simple disorganization. After digging, he found what he was looking for - always did - and it was glorious.

In three hours, the packet of information containing the tax records of every member of Congress would travel the globe, bouncing between domains until it became untraceable before landing in the laps of all major news organizations. Hopefully it would be enough to disrupt, and maybe even delay, the day's scheduled vote on increasing the federal minimum wage. By the time the issue would be reconvened, every legislative bastard who would have denied hard-working men and women a fair, living wage would have been shamed into changing their nay vote.

He didn't leave a calling card this time. It had been stupid that one time he did. It was too late to play Monday morning quarterback now. Carpe Diem. Only the future mattered.

After removing all current traces of his meddling, he signed out and finally left the safe room. His phone beeped as soon as reception was restored.

It was an email, the message he was really waiting for. Jesus. It had been six weeks' since the interview. What took them so long? He'd thought it was a lost deal.

It was from the bank's human resources department. He'd actually freaking gotten the job. The salary offer was all right, the hours typical, and the work mundane. It was exactly as he'd wished, but seeing the words on the screen in black and white made him cringe.

We're excited to get you on board. If you agree with the terms as described herein, fill out the attached documentation and return to me at your earliest convenience via scanned copies through email.

Paperwork. Awesome.

Opening the forms, he shook his head with more vigor. Background checks. Tax stuff. All needing date-of-birth and social security number. Like hell he was going to send those through email.

He made a mental note to report HR for violating security policy 101 to his supervisor once he started work. He was tempted to do it now, but the people who'd be getting him oriented probably wouldn't appreciate it. He hoped such lax behavior in one administrative unit wasn't indicative of the rest of the company.

A loud bang drew his attention up from the screen. The front door flew open; a mass of men dressed in riot gear burst through. With their weapons aimed at him, they yelled in unison as they surrounded him.

* * *

He shuffled his feet along the concrete floor, the tethers between his ankles restricting his steps. The same chains wrapped around his waist and bound his wrists, now held at stomach level.

He didn't know how much time had passed. It didn't matter. He was never leaving.

"I heard about this one," the guard walking behind him said. He was new, first day on the job. "What's his name again?"

"Who the hell cares?" The other laughed. "He's just number 3108H in here."

THE END