Hack Ed. (standard:Suspense, 1475 words)
Author: Nightfyre	Added: Mar 05 2003	Views/Reads: 3582/2432	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
This is a test run for my second novel. It's about three high school hackers that begin an illegit business with their skills, to find out somebody has beaten them to the punch.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

“Listen here, buster! You wanted our help with this business. We did the
work, so now it's happy hour. Got it?” Ryan nodded in forced agreement, 
striving to prevent any tears after the blow. 

Andrew began investigating their new friend, hunting for his identity.
He could have sworn he'd seen that address before. Where was it from? 
And what could this person do that would generate so much network 
activity? It was like there were ten people working at once, trying to 
slow down anybody that accessed these systems. 

“This is weird,” Andrew said. “It's like they aren't even trying to hide
their identity. The computer address looks like it's from school, but I 
can't remember the exact computer.” Then it hit him like Lora's pillow. 
He had taken a peek at the principal's computer when he was sent to her 
office last week. “This can't be right. No way can somebody be hacking 
from Ms. Baines's computer. No way could she know how to hack!” 
Andrew's amazement overcame him, paralyzing him from performing any 
technical moves to elude his cyber-guest. 

Ryan cracked through the air of surprise. “Guess she wasn't as sweet as
we thought.” His face matched Andrew's as they both tried to swallow 
the thought. 

“Like I said, pathetic. Andrew,” Lora snapped her fingers at her
brother. “How about we find out what she's doing and bust her?” 

“All right. Let's take a look.” 

The trio tailed Ms. Baines to every directory that she opened. They took
note of each machine she entered and tried, both from memory and 
previous notes, to resolve which systems she was tampering with. Her 
fluidity around the network made Andrew struggle to keep up, but he 
eventually caught her in the act, like noticing her out of the corner 
of his cyber-eye. 

“You're getting too close, Andrew. You're going into the same system
she's in. She picks up on it and she'll know everything about you.” 

“Relax. I've been here before. This is the guidance database, where they
keep all the attendance records. But there's something quirky about the 
files she's going after. The filename prefixes are all the same.” 

“Like she's trying to attack one person from many angles. Can you
decrypt one of the files she messed with and find out who it's 
associated with?” 

“Way ahead of you, Sis,” Andrew said over the clicks of his typing. 

“Who would she go after? I can't imagine her having enemies among the
students,” Ryan said, adding what insight he could. After a few seconds 
of hard drive churning and processor clicking, Andrew discovered the 
target. 

“Yeah, it's a student. You know Deke Jackson?” 

“Who doesn't? The loser.” 

“I hear he's got one foot in the gutter and the other in a jail cell.” 

“Well if these tweaked files get out tomorrow morning, he'll be taking a
hard push to the jail cell side. She's messing with his attendance 
record, giving him express delivery on tardy slips, and it seems he 
just failed four mid-terms in the last thirty seconds.” 

“That's an accomplishment for the best of them. What's this bit about
tomorrow morning?” Lora filled in the gaps for Ryan. 

“Deke's record could warrant an entire truancy division at school. Every
two weeks his truant officer gets a report on his behavior, a report 
that goes out tomorrow morning. If his record shows he's been slacking 
this bad, I don't know where he'll end up, but I'll bet we won't hear 
from him for a while.” 

“So if we don't do something, he's taking a fall. Simple. We can't let
that happen.” Andrew busied himself at his keyboard, trailing Ms. 
Baines, noting her every route, hop and keystroke from the shadows. He 
tried to predict all the areas of Deke's life she would attack and 
grabbed a snapshot of the file as a “before” exhibit, praying silently 
that Ms. Baines was too busy in her own malice to notice. 

He then switched roles in this cat-and-mouse game, following behind her.
He downloaded every tampered log he could find, hoping the changes were 
conspicuous enough to draw attention. As he was tracking the last two 
logs, his watchdog security programs sensed company. 

“What's going on, Andrew?” Ryan asked, his voice reflecting his panic. 

“Ping flood. She's either trying to find us or trying to boot us. Tell
me when you're ready, big brother.” Lora crouched by the wall jack, 
waiting for Andrew's command. He nodded and Lora dropped the network 
connection. 

“Now, how to use this stuff.” 

“Don't the cops have some anonymous program, some kind of Internet
hotline?” Ryan suggested. Andrew packaged an email and adjusted the 
header information, concealing his identity. He made sure the 
information was useful before getting online and firing off the 
message. They didn't know what the authorities would make of it all, if 
anything. The best they could do was hope. 

The next morning, Andrew flipped on the television as he prepared for
class. 

“In other news, authorities received an anonymous tip that a local high
school principal, Ms. Angela Baines, was engaging in computer crime, 
falsely reporting one of her students as a repeated truant. Ms. Baines 
was picked up for questioning an hour ago. We have no further 
information, but an investigation is underway.” 

Click. 


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