Hacking the Naked Princess

by Andy Kaiser

Chapter 0x18

One of the last things I remembered seeing at the RedAction HQ was a business-casual ladies shoe as it kicked me hard in the face.  Most would consider that a warning sign, but I wanted to get back.  First, though, I needed to know where RedAction had dumped me.

Behind me was the crackling and roaring fire of a burning building, where I'd been trapped for who knew how long.  Though it seemed I was in the middle of nowhere with no hope of rescue, the black smoke leaping toward the sky was a signal that couldn't be ignored for long.  Fire and police would get here soon, but they'd also come with questions I really didn't want to answer.

I walked away, and realized why I was nervous (apart from the recent beating and escaping death by incineration): Whoever had locked me in the old storage building had also emptied my pockets.  I had no phone.  No Leatherman multitool.  Those were my weapons and I needed them.  If I'd stripped off all my clothes, I wouldn't feel any more naked.

Earth's daily cron job kicked in.  The evening grew cool as the world around me shifted into dark mode.  The sun set, the sky darkened, and a glow became visible on the horizon.  I still didn't know where I was, but that glow was a flame to this civilized moth.  I walked toward it.  I sniffed the air and caught a whiff of something weird, a faint funk of rot.

My barely-achieved distraction at RedAction had given P@nic the time she needed to inject herself into their network, but I had no clue how much damage she'd caused.  I just hoped my concussion had been worth it.

Reboot had brought me into all of this.  Not realizing I'd investigate his problem more than he wanted, I'd found the Naked Princess picture and uncovered RedAction's war against P@nic.  Based on my sore nose and the taste of blood in my mouth, I assumed the kick to my face was still visible, yet I was heading back to what was definitely my worst client ever.  I owed it to P@nic.

Up ahead were some unusual hills.  Strange plateaus of land rose high to gaze down over the flat farmland around me.  Dozens of birds circled lazily far above them.  Poised at the top of one of the hills, silhouetted beautifully in the setting sun, was a garbage truck.  The faint, low thrumming of a diesel engine sounded, and the truck lumbered down the hill.  As the wind shifted and a pungent smell carved its way into my nose, I realized I knew this place.

This was a garbage dump, a massive solid-waste landfill serving most of West Michigan.  After decades of use, the trash piles dominated all.  Trash was reclaimed for recycling where possible, otherwise it was poured into the hills before me, where it sat and rotted.  Bacteria blossomed in a beautiful ballet of chemical farts.  The resulting methane gas was collected and routed to processing for energy generation.

Anyone driving the wrong way out of East Rapids knew this smell.  I was in Cooperstown.  For the first time in my life, I was happy to be here.  I took a deep breath, choked on a smell so strong it had a flavor, and I began to jog to where I knew the expressway on-ramps would be.

A few minutes later, I switched from an athletic jog to a gasping speed walk, because I rarely exercised and already felt like I was about to collapse.  A few minutes after that, I reached a gas station.

I was able to make a phone call, courtesy a trusting, friendly gas station employee.  My first priority, I called a number I'd set up that would send a kill signal to my cell phone.  I'd check on it when I got back to my office, see what the GPS logs could tell me about where RedAction had taken it.  They probably wouldn't be so stupid as to keep a working stolen cell phone, but weirder things had happened.

Second priority, I needed to get out of here.  This was thanks to the same employee, who was now noticeably less trusting and less friendly since I still hadn't returned his phone, despite the very specific words he was using to describe where he was about to shove that phone if I wanted it that bad.

He got his phone back because I was done: An Uber ride was heading my way.

I had the Uber take me back to the city, but first with a circling the block before stopping at RedAction.  I didn't need to be that careful.  The building was dark.  The entrance doors were unlatched, open, dancing gently in a slight breeze.  The security cameras that had covered the building's strategic sight lines had all been removed.

The building had been gutted.

I hadn't been unconscious for that long.  After I woke up, it must have taken a couple hours to get back downtown.  In that time, it looked like RedAction had cleared out everything important.  Since my appearance rarely struck fear into anyone's hearts, I assumed P@nic's plan had succeeded.  She'd shut their network down.  Hard.

I made sure the Uber driver saw my account credit balance, told him to wait for me, and I went inside the building.

The entrance was dark, shadows played on top of shadows, barely visible by the faint city lights from outside.  It was enough for me to find a wall switch, and I began clicking on the lights as I continued to explore.

The office cubicles were still here.  The computers were gone.  The cubes looked like they'd been cleaned out, too.  I saw none of the usual proof of humans: There were no family photos. No corporate-critical comic strips posted on the walls.

I found the cube I'd originally used to inject P@nic's USB key.  That too was empty, save for a comfy-looking desk chair with lumbar support.  I explored further and found the server room and office demarc, what had to have been the nerve center of this stripped skeleton.

There were no servers, switches, routers, or anything else I'd expect to see.  The only clues left were a single empty 42U rack bolted to the floor, the door hanging open and unlocked, and a thick umbilical of CAT7 cabling drooling out of the ceiling.  Examining the mess of cable ends hanging above my head, I saw they'd been cut, like someone had just hacked them off with scissors.

In the center of the rack, there was an inside shelf.  The shelf was empty, except for a tiny blue USB flash drive.

I stared at it.

Whoever had run this evacuation, they'd been in such a hurry they hadn't the time to even unplug anything - they'd sliced the cables and ran out with the equipment.  They'd been extremely thorough, so they also must have made a point to leave this USB drive here, placed conspicuously in the center of the rack shelf.

Was the USB key a message for someone?  For me?  Was it a trap of some kind, and I'd plug it into my test rig and it would explode in my face?

There was only one way to find out, so I grabbed the blue drive and dropped it into my pocket.  I'd be as careful as I could, but I couldn't resist seeing what this was when I got back to my office.

My heart was pounding, but my apprehension dropped a bit.  Yeah, it looked like P@nic had finished her inject into the network.  I didn't understand why they'd cleared the building, though whatever she'd done must have really hurt.

I went back to the Uber.

I was dropped off at my office.  Standing out in the dark street with the night too silent around me, I looked up to my rental's second floor, at the window of my office.

The lights in my office were off, but the window shone from a faint inside light.  I recognized the glow and the white-blue color.

It was one of my office computers, the one I usually left on the desk for miscellaneous research and case work.  The one I'd protected with drive encryption.  And two-factor authentication.  And a dead-man's switch ticking away in the OS.

I hadn't left it on.  Someone, right now, was in my office and they were on my PC.

I sprinted up the stairs and slammed my shoulder into my door, realizing that if the intruder had simply slid the deadbolt closed, I was about to be in a lot of pain.

Not only was the door unlocked, it was unlatched.  I launched into the room with unexpected speed and expected clumsiness.

The lights in the office were out.  In the darkness, the monitor's LED lit P@nic's face a ghostly white.  She looked up in surprise as I stumbled in front of her.

"Hey, how's it going?" she said, her eyes shining from the monitor's glow, and also something more.  "We need to talk."