part0066

T ommy continued to work at clearing his mentors’ good names, his custom-developed software using facial recognition technology to scan image after image pulled from the fake and real accounts associated with the clones of the professors’, slowly tracking down those involved.

He was disappointed how his idea had been abused, a tech company having announced it had used the same technology to scan and pull the faces from over three billion online photos, then selling access to their facial recognition database to various agencies, not the least of which were law enforcement.

It disgusted him. He loved the Internet, and he loved social media. What he hated was what it had become—a resource filled with garbage, vitriol, fraud, and hate. Anonymity was the problem, and a lack of consequences. Until anonymity was removed, social media would forever be a useless tool for true discourse and information sharing.

For now, that anonymity was working against him, though his tool was slowly doing its job. He had pulled each terrorist’s face from the footage taken by some girl on the inside, and had run them against the professors’ profiles, following the breadcrumbs through the fake friends lists, the algorithm digging deeper and deeper until eventually a hit was found for each of them, giving him a direct link to their real accounts.

Many proudly displaying their actual name.

As each came in, he fired them to Leroux, praying his efforts were worth it, because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could last.

Mai entered the room, yawning. “Are you still at it?”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“No. As long as I’m making progress, I’m not sleeping. Not until they’re safe.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

He held up an empty can of Red Bull. “Get me more of this?”

Mai shuffled to the fridge and opened the door, bending over to search the shelves. “We’re out.”

She closed the door. “But there were four of them last night. I just bought them yesterday.”

“Well, I’m not getting you any more. You’ll kill yourself. Your heart rate is probably through the roof.” She pointed at him. “Look at your hands. They’re shaking.”

He held them up and frowned. “Huh, I didn’t notice that.”

She wagged a finger at him. “Okay, no more caffeine or sugar for you. I’m going to make breakfast, low carb, then the first yawn out of you, you get a minimum three hours sleep. You’ll do them no good if you’re dead.”

He checked his phone. “It’s five in the morning. It’s a little early for breakfast, isn’t it?”

“You need something in your system to counteract that garbage you’ve been drinking.”