The Liberation Paradox

The Last Encryption

Sky

17:39

(25 proxies decrypted, unknown number remaining)

After a full day of watching decryptors hack away at Marcio's encrypted proxies and waiting for the stupid Estrellan's network to slowly be exposed one laborious step at a time, finally things were happening. Sky still hadn't found the stolen data, but he now had an elaborate map of the scumbag's network. It looked like after he'd stolen the data, Marcio had just bounced it off of everything he could access in the secure zone's network. It had passed through personal cell phones, data pads, and room service menus, all without the users of those devices being any the wiser.

The task of decrypting the network up to this point had been laborious and frustrating as the slippery Estrellan had no doubt intended. Sky had resigned himself to an unknown number of sleepless hours as he slowly continued the process, but now there was a potential break in the case. Just a few minutes earlier, one of Mr. Daniau's enforcers named Tin Snips had come into the room. Tin Snips had spoken briefly in hushed tones with his fellow who was overseeing the server room. He had then ordered Sky and the other technicians to bring their office phone online and to call Mr. Daniau directly on his personal cell phone.

Sky didn't really know what this meant, but by the draining of the blood in Marcio's face, he knew it was bad news for the Estrellan. That meant it could only be good news for Sky.

Once the office phone was back online, it could only be used to make calls within the secure zone to any of the few other phones which were online. One of those few active phones was, of course, that of Mr. Daniau himself. Tin Snips said that Mr. Daniau had ordered that all four techs call him on speaker phone. He wanted to talk to them all at once. Sky, Marcio, Ivan, and Camilla all gathered around the phone and made the call.

The phone didn't even complete its first ring before Mr. Daniau picked up. The boss wasted no time. "Are you all four there? I want to hear from all of you."

"Yes, sir. We're all here. This is Marcio Ruiz." Marcio, as the team leader started off. The others followed in order of their rank on the team.

Enjoy being team lead while you can, fucker, Sky thought at Marcio before announcing his own name to Mr. Daniau. "Sky Meussen here, sir."

"Camilla Mays here as well, Mr. Daniau."

"Ivan Law, sir."

"Good." Now that Mr. Daniau was assured that all four members of the IT team were on the call, he began issuing them their new marching orders. "I want you all to drop whatever you are doing and I want you to immediately check Mika Claire's phone for my stolen data."

There was silence around the phone as the gravity of what Mr. Daniau was telling them set in. He apparently had reason to suspect that the missing data was on his own girlfriend's personal cell phone. Sky glanced at Marcio and saw that he was sweating. The Estrellan swallowed nervously. Sky knew then that whatever they found on Mika's cell phone would expose Marcio. He could see that Camilla saw it too. Welcome to the end game, scumbag.

Mr. Daniau continued, "Do it now, while I'm still on the phone."

"Yes, sir," Sky answered for the whole team. Sky stepped away from the phone as the other three watched him. He went back to his terminal. He paused the decryptor that was currently running. Almost instantly, the server load graph dropped from nearly 100% capacity to only 3%. Sky accessed the network devices list and enabled Mika Claire's cell phone. He bypassed Mika's basic biometric security lock and began searching the phone's memory. Mostly all he found was the normal kinds of things he would expect to find on the phone of any bubble-headed bimbo like Mika.