Falling Stars

Chapter 3: On Thursday

Anita's POV continuing

I woke up from my dream and heard my alarm. I quickly turned it off, and started to get out of bed. I quietly turned my computer on. My parents couldn't know that I was on the computer at three o'clock in the morning. If they found out, my excuse that I was 'gaming' wouldn't work this time. I had to work on a program. Since I wouldn't be able to work on it on Friday, I had to finish it today. Sha wants the program done by the end of the week. Tuwan is working on the viruses. The program and the viruses are meant for the software that the 'T.W.' machines will use for the competitions. Which will start on Monday in every school, all over the world, that will participate in the 'T.'W.' project. The program I'm working on will collect information from the machines and the viruses will be a backup just in case they find out about the program. Sha will hack the programs into the machines once they are online. We will use the info to sell on the underground web. This information will be greatly bought by journalists and other hackers. I have already worked on the program for a month now, Sha helped me with the start and has monitored my progress ever since.

Me and Tuwan, we are successors of Sha. Sha taught us both how to hack. I was the first to learn and be taken in by Sha. When my father was deployed in Kuwait, that was the time I got my first computer. It was about two years ago. I used my computer for mainly gaming, and my mother didn't care much. Eventually I got interested in the 'deep web'. I downloaded Tor, which is a search engine that let's you access the 'deep web'. Tor was meant to automatically hide your computer's IP, and let you serf the part of the web that normal search engines wouldn't let you. There are a lot of bad things on the 'deep web', but what I was interested in the most was Sha's simple hacking videos. They are illegal to watch, but I thought I was safe. I watched maybe all of his videos, and somehow he noticed.

He tracked me back to my computer. He asked me if I wanted to learn how to hack. I was concerned to how he found me, but in the end I agreed. Ever since, Sha is still teaching me how to hack, and about a year ago Tuwan joined us. I do not know Sha or Tuwan in real life, but we are very close. We respect each other's privacy, and have only one mission. And it is to let people know what is out there behind secret government walls. For now we are using the information we hack for personal financial gain, but that's because we need the money. But we are not like Anonymous, which is a hacking organization, that does it for fun, and with no political or moral base.

On the 'deep web' we are known as Moon Droplets. We do services for people who need certain illegal information, but only the information that is needed to be known by other people. We help to crack down people, government programs and private organizations who do unconstitutional things secretly. If our clients do horrible things themselves, and we find out. Then we report them to the right government that would put them into jail. In the Moon Droplets we have many other hackers, who work on attending out clients. Sha is our leader. We all have nicknames, my nickname is Hydra. Sha gave it to me, he said it matched my hacking style. I mainly worked on security or the aggressive 'defense' part of hacking. I was more useful for backing somebody up, like making them almost invisible to people or the programs that we hacked. And if I did get 'caught', my programmed defenses would be even more complicating. As if they grow an extra head.

I am making about half a million each month, but not all the money I keep to myself. Just like Sha and Tuwan, I donate the money anonymously to people who fight against ISIS, groups who try to help North Korean people to escape, sometimes different donation organizations and many other things like research programs.

My parents don't know about this, nor do my friends. What my friends also don't know is that I'm moving. Not even my best friend, Skylar. She doesn't know that my family is going to move to Turkey. I don't want to go, and that's why I think that if we win the competition, I will be able to stay with them. If we don't win, then I'm still not moving to Turkey. Sha knows my position at home, and he proposed to me that I run away if I wanted to. Running away is my backup plan. I have enough money in my bank and enough hacking knowledge to make myself disappear into what will seam like thin air. After finishing the program at about five o'clock. I tried to have another hour of sleep before I got ready for school. But while preparing for all of this, I was still determining if I was going to tell Skylar or not. Cause if I did, I would have to face an angry, but sad Skylar. If not, then that would practically be my death note if she found out.