New Kid On The Block

Ch 18: Wrench

Wrench

Nothing.

After a week of scouring the internet and every block between the old Hackerspace and the new one and he had nothing. Even when he touched base with everyone after the third day there was no news as to her whereabouts. Instead he found Josh and Marcus struggling with the worse virus he'd seen in his life. He could barely even get inside. The code to the door changed every thirty seconds and the lights inside turned on and off on their volition.

He tried her phone. Both calling it and pinging it but to no avail. When that failed him he resorted back to what he knew, street knowledge. Starting back at Prime8's old base he traced her footsteps or at least the ones she would have taken. If she'd been jump somewhere between there and their apartment there had to some type of sign.

Their apartment.

God she only been their for five days, less than a week and he had already begun calling it their apartment.

When he first got there a small part of him had been terrified of what he would find. He figured she would be asleep but another part of him told him she was gone. Like gone, gone. Like packed up all her things, scooped up Soviet, and was half way to New York City gone. But when he unlocked the front door the Russian blue trotted up to the door to greet him purring and brushing against his leg.

That had given him a small sense of safety but his heart dropped when he found the bed empty. He tried her phone and got nothing but voicemail.

Maybe Kalla had stopped somewhere on her way home to get something to eat. But as more time passed that became more and more unlikely. It had been nearly three hours since she'd left and she wasn't someone to go in to eat.

Wrench tried to calm himself with a Red Bull but it did nothing to off set his nerves. So he grabbed his computer and sat on the couch scrolling through street cameras in the general area with Soviet purring at his feet. It had only been three hours he told himself. He was overreacting, worrying over nothing. It was a hard sell and he wasn't buying it.

Instead his mind turned towards Defalt. The name had only been vaguely familiar. Wrench was pretty sure he had heard his music before. It wasn't really his style, he preferred classic rock. Something with a guitar riff to it but Horatio had been into EDM style music. He use to play it in the Hackerspace.

But now that he was thinking about it, a memory came to mind. He remembered once working on some project in the Hackerspace. Horatio had been there doing his own thing. Some song was playing and Sis was not having it. He remembered Horatio and Sitara getting into the biggest fight over it. Horatio was claiming that it was good music and that she had to respect the art. But Sis didn't want it playing. He ended up changing it and no more of Defalt's music ever came up on their playlist again. He'd forgotten about it until now because he hadn't really cared about. He could not care less about it.

He did a quick search for him online. It didn't take much to find him, the guy had his own Wikipedia page. Nothing about it hinted at him being a hacker or what his real name was. But he didn't doubt Sis that he was. Being a DJ was the perfect cover in someways and Horatio had been one too so it made sense.

He went further checking his DedSec sources and instantly got hundreds of results. The first few were general warnings sent out to all of the different groups across the country. They more or less blacklisted him and advised against working with him. But as he dug more he began to piece together the story behind it all.

He was from Chicago. Which made sense because so was Kit. He use to work for some company called Dot ConneXion. It was some type of music gallery bringing together young new artists. And by the look of the ticket sales, it paid a comfortable wage. Wrench did some more digging and came across the Chicago DedSec's old website.