36

BURTON drove five miles above the speed limit, which was still much slower than all the cars that passed him on the main highway towards the Experfax building. There was no way he could risk getting pulled over right now. Even at this pace, they would get to their target position before they needed to.

Behind him, Reggie was typing on his keyboard with intent.

"Okay Goblin, just standby for a moment as I do my work." Reggie said as his eyes bounced from screen to screen and his hands tapped feverishly on his keyboard.

"Did you just give me the name... Goblin?" Bryce responded.

"Do you not like it?"

"I'm not sure if I should feel insulted."

"It's a compliment. Goblins are thieves. Thieves are boppin brah," Reggie said as the van made a lane change and he nearly fell out of his workstation chair. He repositioned himself and tightened the chair's seat belt.

He was buckled in tight and seemed to not even notice that he was in the back of a van. All he saw were the screens into the laptops and systems he was now in control of. He had less than five minutes to complete what he had been working on for months. Roman was in position and the window of time was small where he could remain. It was all up to him.

He could feel the tension building in his shoulder and neck muscles as he tensed up. His brain was going into overdrive and being pushed to the limit.

He was sending commands to a hundred thousand computer drones to continue the distraction attack of Experfax's enterprise system. He needed the network security team to be occupied with a serious issue. One that was trivial, of course, in comparison to what they were really doing. The system engineers were unusually competent and starting to subvert his drones, but he continued to send denial-of-service attacks, which was working for the time being.

He was simultaneously hacking into the three computers that would provide the access he needed to get them to the next stage. He had been able to break the encryption and log into the three computers Bryce had chosen. He exploited the company's password and two-step verification systems. He could access anyone's computer on the entire network as long as he had physical access to them. Bryce had completed that connection with the specifically designed USB drives. Through the dome antennae on the roof of the van, they had a direct connection to the communication unit Hope installed on the roof, via a hijacked satellite signal. This allowed him to be seamlessly connected to Bryce's laptop.

Reggie enjoyed the complicated nature of his solutions, but he had to admit that it wasn't his intelligence alone that had gotten him to this point. It required the whole crew; all five of them, to make his solutions viable. Most hackers and hactivists that he came across in the dark web were of a single minded sort, focused on the technology alone and what could be done through the wire. There were a few other contributors who focused on media attention and organizing, but it was the rare group that combined those skills with physical thievery.

Companies, after years of high profile hacks, were getting better at subverting attacks by remote hackers from around the world. And they also had many defenses that protected them physically. There was an opportunity to attack using both methods at the same time.

Now that he had complete control of the network's lead hardware engineer, lead software engineer, and lead network administrator, he knew where every network component was physically, what applications were on them and he had full administrative rights to access them.

Reggie searched all three computers and the network drives they had access to. All the pieces he needed were there.

"How are we doing, Dungeon Master?" Roman asked over the comm.

Reggie looked up at the digital clock in the middle of the array of screens. Its milliseconds were racing, like his brain. Below was a smaller display counting down, with fifteen seconds left, and counting.

"On track. Going dark in ten, nine," Reggie continued with the countdown.

He flashed his eyes across the screen, reviewing all the windows within windows. This was the moment of reckoning. He was ready.

"Power shutting down in three… two... one." Just as he finished saying one, he could see the screens showing the security cameras go dark. "Confirmed, power is down in the building."

"Confirmed. Ready when you are, Dungeon Master," Roman said, with a tone of excitement that resonated through all of their ears.