!y E-Book

Nalle Windahl

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: M3rqrie
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 110

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Do you remember M3rqrie? Did you follow the hunt for N3v3r!and? If you did, then the story continues here. If not, the first book is a better place to start, than to start with this one. But as always, it is your choice! Speaking of choice. M3rqrie made quite a few in the last book, leaving them in a lonelier place than when the first book started. With trust scattered and broken, can M3rqrie trust again? Is there even someone that will support her cause? And if the N3v3r!and was hard to find, how hard will it be to find new allies, if there even is such a thing? And can the fight be brought to the N3v3r!and? On their turf with their rules? Is it even possible to go up against an invisible giant dragon that is supported by the people in the shadows, the ones with all the power? !y may give you answers to the questions above, but then again, maybe it will raise several more that might or might not be answered here. Do you dare to take the risk of reading this book without knowing if your curiosity will be satisfied or if it is just teased further? It is your choice. Always!

Leseprobe

This book is meant as entertainment only. None of the organizations or used components are real, only fiction.

Table of Contents

Part I: Lost

Waking up from the best nightmare ever

Lone Wolf

The new operation

The failure

Lost and found

Safe House

Security control

Entering the cage

Paranoia

Consultant

New perspectives

Getting answers

The satellite network

The botnets

The three man army

The request

The personal advice

Passing time

The return

Arranging the meet

Days in blur

The ride to Bella

The question

Departure

The long trip

Part II: The job

Meeting the!y

The first part of the job

The second part of the job

The Broker

The arrangements

The new operating center

Confirming

Communication

The rescue plan

Executing

To Madrid

Arriving in Madrid

More?

The message

Leaving Madrid

Part III: Leaving

Escape

The dance

Getting papers

Arriving in America

The proposal

The Wedding

New life

Closing down a digital lifetime

Executing

Last chapter?

Part I

Lost

Waking up from the best nightmare ever

Did you wake up? Did you find your white rabbit? Did it lead you somewhere unexpected?

Mine did. I found the N3v3r!and. I lived my dream. No, better than my dream! I got everything I ever dared to wish for. But it was a dream. And the price tag was just too high. I could not live with myself knowing the things I found out. I could not be part of it.

I woke up, from the best dream that I’ve ever had, but it turned into a nightmare. And the worst part is that the nightmare remained even after I woke up.

My life before finding N3v3r!and was not exactly prime time, but it was a good, stable and independent life. Far away from the real action. Far away from the “real” world, only circling like a fish in the deep pond of the dark web. But I knew that life was more than that, I knew that the world was more than that. My rabbit opened my eyes. And as mr. Andersson in the Matrix, I saw the entire world in a different light. And just like mr. Andersson, I cannot undo the experience. I woke up. Didn’t like what I saw. I left. I started to resist and fight. I was naive. For a little while I really thought I could bring down the N3v3r!and on my own. Turned out I could not. Turned out many had tried before me. They could not either. But others had tried. That was good news for me.

But again, let’s start at the beginning, this new beginning that followed after leaving the N3v3r!and.

Lone Wolf

Have you seen Rambo - first blood part 2? That was my first contact with both the character John Rambo, and with the actor Sylverster Stallone.

The younger me, also feeling like an outsider, was greatly inspired by the absolutely amazing things one person could do. Rambo’s field name Lone Wolf, it was my first identity on the web. And after leaving the N3v3r!and, knowing I needed to disappear and once again break all bonds with the world as I knew it, I mentally saw myself being reborn as the Lone Wolf yet again.

I needed to take on the N3v3r!and alone and try to inflict them as much damage as I possibly could, hopefully even bring it down. Somehow, somewhere as Muddhedd put it in a title (freely interpreted).

My enemy, as I knew it, was located in London. Thus, after walking out on my life, only telling Bella, I stayed in London, but hidden. I thought.

Turns out that it is hard to hide from the N3v3r!and. Especially in their own backyard.

The big pile of money I had gotten from my old life had slowly grown from my time as a well paid consultant at Barrie IT, and I knew that money would not be a problem for a while, but I figured that I needed to find a new way to make money. But I also knew that the old ways that I had used before finding the N3v3r!and would be impossible to go back to, they would find me right away.

And I kind of figured that me walking out on them would not be very appreciated.

Now, for being a good hacker, and a paranoid person, I was pretty stupid. And I am not saying anything to defend my poor choices, nor the lack of clear thinking, but when I left, it was a big loss for me as a person. Clouded judgment had put me in a tricky place, both in walking in the cut path put in front of me by the N3v3r!and, and breaking my own rules and promises to myself and connected to Bella, both emotionally, mentally and physically. First getting the life that I always secretly had dreamed of, then having to choose to leave it all behind, especially Bella.

The entire situation made me rush down the stress cone without thinking clearly, and the more I rushed, forcing myself to act, while I still could, the worse it got. It was like the situation put blinders on me, leaving me with a very slim field of view, and a single minded way to think. Which, according to me, is a good way to set yourself up for failure before you even start.

The new operation

I rushed into a new operation. I first dropped off the grid (I thought) by physically leaving the known parts of London, hiding out in the outskirts. I left everything behind, except a bag of clothes, my phone and my computer. Both the phone and computer were big mistakes to keep. Both were red flagged by the N3v3r!and as soon as I stopped showing up.

I knew they had one of my bank accounts since I got pay checks from them, but I honestly believed that they did not have a list of all my accounts. Thus, fully aware that they would be able to track each and every economic transaction connected to my credit cards, I figured I needed old fashioned real money to get my way around. I made a large withdrawal from one of my accounts and got as much cash as I dared carrying around with me, everywhere I went. Knowing cash is untraceable. Or cash is king, as some say. Up until now, I had really never thought about it, but it turns out that cash is not king, not by far. But it took me a while to discover that.

Once I had a place to stay, fairly good ways to finance it, it was time to go to work. The new operation, as I imagined it, was to break the 3ld3rs by exposing them in any way I could.

I figured that there had to be dirt on them, and I needed to find it and report it to the right authority. I hoped to be able to present very interesting and well supported cases to any investigator, perhaps, if I was lucky, to several. Economic, tax-related, criminal, bribery, whatever I could dig up.

Once the 3ld3rs has fallen, I would try to infiltrate the emergency backup protocol to gain access and control of the surrounding cells, leaving them in my command.

At the time, it seemed like a solid and simple enough plan, and I honestly believed it would work. Naiv and wrong. It was one of the quickest and most embarrassing failures in my life.

The failure

I did not have the inside access to the Barrie IT infrastructure anymore, and even at that point, despite my strange blind spots, I realized that I could not use that method to get the information I wanted. So, using public systems, still from my own computer, I traced the 3ld3rs to find out their real names and private addresses. But I only managed to find the true identity of P@nm@n when an unwelcome window popped up on my screen. A terminal window with the words “Knock, knock…”

It was another Matrix reference. And I immediately realized that my computer was compromised. I closed the lid at once and ran out of the café I was currently at, and took the shortest way to the Thames and threw it in the water. I needed to get my hands on new gear.

My initial reaction was to go to the nearest media store to get a new laptop, and as I was about to enter, my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was an incoming text.

“I hear they have a really good deal on the Lenovo Yoga’s here…”

I stopped in the middle of my step, in the middle of the door, almost blocking the other customers on the way in or out.

They were watching me. They knew exactly where I was, and what I was doing. I turned around, saw a McDonald’s restaurant and went in there, hoping to find a microwave that parents could use to heat food for their babies. They did. And I put my phone in there, pushed start, and the lightshow inside confirmed to me that it had been rendered completely useless.

Now I was digitally disconnected from the world. Untraceable. I thought.

A quick change of clothes, hood up and a pair of freshly stolen sunglasses, I exited and blended in with the crowd.

I thought I could shake them and lose them. Turned out I didn’t. But they made me believe it for the time being.

It took a few days to find and buy a preowned computer and an old school mobile phone with 4G-capacity and cable attachment to the computer. Reinstalling the computer and getting my basic toolkit on it took no time at all, and I felt like I was back in business. And this time I made sure to add a few extra layers of paranoia security to prevent further surprises.

I could finish what I had started, without any more incidents. Of course I was extra careful on each step and took time to carefully hide my traces.

I also acquired a few gadgets and built me a few discreet bugging devices, old school with radio transmitters. So I could install a recorder with radio receivers in close proximity and get the proof I needed.

My first target, just happening to be the closest, was H0kr. As I bypassed the apartment security, again with various gadgets that I had acquired and repurposed, I went inside to install the bugging devices. But I had not more than entered the hallway inside the door when I heard the TV start in a nearby room. It scared the hell out of me, since I was convinced that nobody was home. At first I did not get it, but after a few seconds, when the chock eased off, I realized that it was a movie playing, but not any random movie, it was Star Wars - Rogue One. A coincidence or a subtle message to me?

Then the stereo started, playing the first few seconds of the Queen song “Don’t stop me”, then skipped track to “Under pressure” and after a few seconds “I want to break free”, then “Killer Queen'' followed by “We will rock you”, then “Another one bitest the dust” and lastly “We are the Champions''... at that point I knew they were on to me and sending me messages through one of my favorite groups. And as I turned to the door to get out, they skipped to the last song I heard, “The show must go on”...

Lost and found

I felt lost. And I felt like I had lost. This enemy was too powerful and I had clearly underestimated them.

As I thought about how they had tracked me I remembered the facial recognition software and the enhancements I had helped install and develop. This meant that I could not go anywhere in London where there was a camera. Which basically was everywhere. This would be true for any other place as well, if not now than in a reasonably nearby timeframe as the Barrie IT and the N3v3r!and expanded their system integrations.

I needed to get lost, for real. But I had nowhere to go. I felt beaten. Check mate. The end of the game and the end of the road. My only option was to surrender. But again, I was wrong.

As I randomly flead through the streets of London, slowly moving outwards from the center, I got the feeling I was followed. Now I have followed people before, at a distance, but being followed was a whole new experience, and not a pleasant one either.

In panic, I headed for the nearest train station and boarded a train bound for Brighton. As the train left the station and I had not gotten any glimpse of my tail, I tried to slow down my heavily beating heart and my breath to get to a state of mind where I could think clearly.