Chapter 58– Czar
Chapter 58– Czar
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Shit. I tripped a buried script. Fucking rookie mistake… and from someone who is used to drifting in and out of black market data vaults tracelessly like some phantom. Now I have less than two minutes to scrub every byte of my cipher off this server to avoid being discovered and shut out completely.
I'm distracted.
Obviously.
Black Sheep is ignoring me again.
It's been a week since she sent me that text ending our contract and I haven't heard from her to this very moment, even after I messaged, telling her that the drama she is currently pulling is entirely her business and when she is ready to come off it I'll be waiting.
They weren't just empty words meant to trigger some reaction from her, no. I was plain telling the truth. She is aware that she needs me and she will come crawling back. How long it will take her is the question because even I know that Hera was made from a very rich blend of crazy.
Proof of that? Well today makes it the eighth day since I asked her to quit her childishness but the text sits in the chat unresponded to, along with all the others that succeeded it. In some of them I am teasing, others, near-pleading and a few, outright threatening her to talk to me or I would come see her at the manor despite saying I wouldn't enter the house until she lets me. And while I was really just bluffing, it's interesting to discover that threats don't faze her.
Something tells me she might even want that– my barging into the mansion one of these nights, demanding she explain what the fuck she thinks her problems are… tearing the door down or picking the locks because had I knocked she definitely wouldn't have opened up.
But while inside I would stare just once into those crystal blue pools of hers before my hand would reach for the nearest light switch, plunging us in total darkness… and then my mask would slide off to make it easy for my lips to claim hers. In the end I would be left wondering not for the first time what it is about her that keeps calling me like a summon I just have to obey.
Lone Wolf: Fine, you don't want me investigating the disappearance of your parents for unreasonable reasons best known to you. But you should at least be able to respond to a friendly text, shouldn't you? I don't think someone with one-and-a-half friends should be in a position to be picky about who she keeps talking to.
For the record this did not work.
Lone Wolf: And I thought I was the lunatic. Suddenly you're dissociative because I refused to fuck you at the abandoned recreational center. Here I was thinking you hated the very air I breathe. I recommend a very good psychiatrist.
Neither did this.
Even attempts at getting on her very sensitive nerves ended up worsening things. Now, forget give me a reply, she doesn't even view my texts anymore.
Lone Wolf: Fuck you.
And the longer it takes for her to get her shit together the more reason I have to believe that there is something really serious going on with her beyond her general frustrations at me.
Am I supposed to be able to tell? I don't think so. Because I’m not really one for emotions… Yet somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind I feel like something is wrong. But I haven't been able to figure out what it could be as I have my hands full already trying to get to the bottom of what Kingsland is all about.
The bloody threat that Hera received some weeks ago is connected to the place somehow and because regular browser searches have only led to very misleading surface information– dead ends– I am headed for the dark web in search of some phantom location I'm not even sure physically exists anywhere.
It's been minutes since I finished accessing the phony college's listed deepweb database, logging in as an admin and very nearly getting caught yet it's all nonsense. School records. Employee information. Course schedules and materials. Clean stuff attached to an entity with a fictitious address.
Would I have known had I not travelled all the way there to check the place out? Of course not. The directory is definitely a smokescreen... strategically placed there to throw people like me who come searching off their scent. These guys are good. It's why my ass is so occupied digging for info on the dark web instead.
But how to start? The darknet is not your average Google-accessible gateway. You can't just type in some keywords and expect to stumble on your choice destination by means of browser smart handling and redirects. Nothing is indexed over there so specialised addresses have to be used if one plans to access any webpages and most of the time these are just strings of disjointed letters and figures with a domain extension that is not your regular. Yet this is not my first time. Shoddy, unknown organizations or no, I know my way around.
On the regular web, Kingsland is listed as an institute of higher learning with a deep appreciation for medicine and the sciences in general so I assume that in the shadows it is most probably an illegal Pharma organisation. So I go to the usual forums where some of the most medically-related crimes are transacted anonymously through onion routing– multiple layers of intricate encryption– as is with the custom in the space.
Two hours accessing the illicit marketplace and I link Kingsland to another organization with a penchant for the sales of human organs.
Solis.
Apparently, the email address attached to the supervisor running the organisation on the darknet matches one of those listed under Kingsland on the regular web– [email protected], also known as a loophole I plan to fully maximise. I get to work at once trying to gain access to the email account on the surface web wondering how all of this is connected to Hera, her parents and Novadale.