Hunter sighed as Sam Dupre, his FBI analyst friend, turned into the parking garage of the condo Hunter shared with Cal. “Though I didn’t tell her to do it, Nikki managed to hack the school servers. She didn’t change grades or anything. She was just curious about how well her crush was doing in classes. Stuff like that.”
“But you took the hit.”
This wasn’t something that Hunter told Cal about in detail, mostly because Cal was such a Boy Scout he might try to get Hunter’s juvie record expunged and prosecute Nikki. Exhaling from his vape, Hunter shrugged. “She wouldn’t have known what to do if I hadn’t shown her.”
Hunter scanned his pass and Sam nosed past the gate, frowning. “Hardly seems fair.”
“I didn’t want her to get in trouble. Her dad—my stepdad—kind of pushed me into it.” Hunter put away his vape in preparation to exit the vehicle. Sam didn’t care if Hunter had some bad habits, but Cal worried constantly about Hunter’s standing with the FBI. In all honesty, with this new administration, Sam probably should be concerned, but he wasn’t. Not yet.
Hunter continued. “Now I look back at it, and I figure… I’m a white guy. I’m always gonna land on my feet. Since she’s a girl and black, Nikki’s got a lot of fuckwits to deal with from the jump. The hacking was over-prosecuted anyway. It’s neither of our faults if the district can’t be bothered to fucking lock the front door.”
Sam seemed focused on driving and didn’t comment immediately. He wasn’t as judgey as Cal, but he had a strong moral compass. Finally, navigating toward a parking space, Sam said, “It’s unfortunate the district made it so easy for a curious kid to access their data. I don’t know that more of a challenge would’ve deterred any sibling of yours, but…” He trailed off and glanced over at Hunter. “She’s lucky to have you, Hunter. It’s obvious you really love her.”
“The funny thing is, if it hadn’t been raining that day, she probably would’ve been outside.” It was true that he loved his little sis. She was enrolled in college now, and she could do anything she wanted to with her life. He’d seen to that. “Anyway, it’s a juvie record and theoretically shouldn’t have thrown any roadblocks up, but I got other stuff, plus my, uh, herbal medication that’s always gonna keep me from being a full agent. Not that I’d put up with being dicked around by this administration anyway.”
Hunter eyed Sam as he pulled into a visitor parking spot near the elevators. “Things okay over there for you? You know the door’s always open if you wanna go dark side with me. We have cookies. Store bought, and full of THC.”
Sam laughed and gave Hunter side-eye after he parked. “As tempted as I am… The culture’s changing, you know? Things aren’t the same in this administration. But I’m dedicated. I joined the FBI because I believed in it. I still do.”
The FBI was one of the agencies trying to hold the current administration accountable, despite everything.
“If it gets to be too much….” Sam trailed off and gave Hunter a mischievous little smile. “I’ll let you know, and we can be bad guys.”
The idea of Sam being a “bad guy” was laughable. Not to mention the hell Cal would rain down if he thought Hunter corrupted Sam.
“I’m not a bad guy; I’m just drawn that way.” Hunter flipped his blond hair back. It was tipped in black, which probably looked sinister enough to undermine his point. “Thanks for taking me to the shooting range, man. Cal keeps promising, but he’s so busy and tired.”
And more interested in sex than shooting guns, which Hunter wasn’t complaining about.
During the day, though, Hunter was bored. He hadn’t been taking many contracts from the government. The only work he was interested in doing was taking down the current presidential administration, and the FBI were keeping that close to the vest and in house, for obvious reasons.
Everything else was focused on shit Hunter didn’t believe in, like cracking down on immigrants and caging children.
Fuck that.
He wanted to ask Sam what he was working on, but Sam couldn’t answer. It would probably just irritate Hunter anyway. Sam knew Hunter well enough to only loop him in on projects that he’d approve of. “I should let you get back to work.”
“Yeah, time to go be a responsible, upstanding citizen after helping a troubled young hacker hone his firearms skills.” Sam’s light voice was wry with amusement.
Hunter rolled his eyes. He was hardly troubled. At least he wasn’t working for a corrupt government bent on discrimination against brown and poor people, but whatever. He wasn’t going to get into it. For him, that felt like a moment of growth. “There are guns in my life. Cal has to have one in the house. We agreed I should know how to use it.”
“Yeah, all right. See you, pal.” Sam offered a little disbelieving smile, and Hunter smirked.
Notably, Hunter did not own his own gun but used Cal’s or Sam’s. Having his own would be a whole other battle, but now that no one was specifically targeting Hunter, he wasn’t as concerned. He could get one if he really wanted one. He was pretty sure Cal signed off on these outings to keep Hunter occupied with something other than trolling and setting up bots to mine bitcoin.
“See ya around, Deep State.” Hunter slipped from the car and headed to the elevators.
If only there really was a Deep State. Sure, there were loose collectives within the FBI, but nothing as slick and cool as the conspiracy theorists believed. That had been a major disappointment when Hunter went digging through confidential files.
He was lucky his curiosity in the matter hadn’t landed him in Gitmo.
Hunter sneered at his reflection as he pressed the button to get to the right level for the condo. Sure, curiosity killed the cat. Everyone knew that. But satisfaction brought him back.
Hunter loved being satisfied.
As Hunter stepped inside, Bruiser yipped happily. He and Bru were tight, especially with Cal working so much. After a quick walk so Bruiser could relieve himself, Hunter settled in front of his computer with the little dog napping on his feet.
He checked his sister’s social media accounts, observing that she seemed happy, not self-destructive. She was apparently thinking of joining a sorority, which twisted Hunter’s guts. It also compelled him to check in on his fratboy would-be rapist, Chad Wallace.
After Hunter had anonymously exposed Chad on a public board, backed up by several women he’d also roofied, things had fallen apart for Chad.
Sort of.
He hadn’t served any time, but Hunter quietly assured all internet searches for Chad’s name were attached to the forum and allegations made against him, guaranteeing that Chad had a difficult time moving on.
However, Chad’s family was wealthy. His dad kept him on track with internships from family friends. Although Chad had escaped virtually unscathed, the dude whined constantly on social media, turning into a bit of a troll himself. He went full MAGA and men’s rights activist, not that he’d seemed destined for anything else.
Chad wasn’t completely stupid. He didn’t Tweet under his own name. For anyone else, it might’ve been difficult to match Chad to his online profile, but Hunter had been watching for months. In fact, Hunter had trolled him on more than one occasion with alts. It was a risk doing that in public, but neither of them seemed to be on anyone’s radar.
This time, when Hunter checked in through his Tor browser, there was an announcement: A meeting for Alpha Men of the Northwest.
Hunter tilted his head. Alpha men. Why were the names of these groups so overcompensate-y? And why did they so often sound like they’d also make a good gay porn? These were questions to which Hunter doubted he’d ever find answers.
The hashtag was interesting and didn’t seem to have anything to do with the vague announcement, which lacked time, day, and location. The hashtag read #weisserdrache.
White dragon? Hunter liked dragons, but he’d learned these days that nothing translated into German led to anything nice. He also knew the current administration’s Department of Justice wasn’t focusing on the realities of domestic terrorism—choosing instead to focus on weed, as if a little recreational reefer was getting people killed.
Clicking the hashtag brought up a thread of similar meeting announcements, likewise lacking pertinent information. If Hunter wasn’t sure he’d found Chad’s private account, he’d assume all the vague, virtually identical messages were the work of bots. Clearly, this was a coordinated…something.
But what?
Hunter checked the clock. Cal was in town, so he’d be home in a couple of hours. Part of him wanted to ask Cal what he thought of this situation, but what could Cal do about it? Hashtags weren’t a federal crime.
Apparently, roaming the streets with torches wasn’t a crime either, even when a woman got run over. Fucking Charlottesville.
Of course, talking to Cal would highlight that Hunter was still watching Chad. They’d discussed the complexities of Hunter’s efforts to keep Chad’s bad deeds ranked high in search engines—which wasn’t against the law but might’ve been psychologically unhealthy, for a value of that word, anyway. If justice had been done, then Hunter wouldn’t have felt the need, and surely justice was something Cal respected.
Just not the way Hunter went about it.
Sighing, Hunter considered which social media identity to burn on Chad. Starting a new account would ring false. Fortunately, he had more than a couple he’d used for various purposes.
This was going to be complicated. And risky. But if it was nothing, it was nothing. Hunter would see what Chad was involved in and then ghost.
If he approached Chad directly, it could come back to haunt him. Hunter needed to be able to vanish, so he scanned the profiles of the other tweeters until he found a few that looked real enough. He had an old Twitter account from the election, when he was investigating Russian trolls by tweeting along with them.
Using a cracked version of Tweetery, Hunter was able to backdate posts that he recycled from users he’d trolled in the past to create what looked like a more active account. With the stage set, he slid into some DMs to ask about the Alpha Men meeting.
“ru (((jew)))?” the first account wrote back.
Hunter rolled his eyes, though knowing that those parentheses meant—their intent to echo the speakers of Auschwitz—turned his stomach. It was a provocative gambit, and Hunter knew that game too well. Maybe he was getting soft; things like that were starting to get to him.
Sure, there was Milo Yiannopolous as an out supremacist and gay man, but for the most part, homosexuals were not welcome in these circles.
Hunter replied, “kek.”
That seemed to work. “u n wa?”
“ya”
Then nothing for a while. Probably the guy going through his tweets and his profile, trying to validate that he was a true believer. Hunter probably should’ve made some purposeful mistakes. If he was too well-concealed, it would be weird. Also, if he missed anything…well, that could be bad.
Then again, if Chad showed up to this thing as well, then someone would be able to identify him. He wondered what witness protection would be like.
“wat u do?”
What did he do? What was he doing? That wasn’t what the guy was asking, but they were questions that Hunter should be asking himself. It wasn’t too late to log out. But, he could keep his options open. Until he went to the meeting, he was still a rando anon.
“programmer”
That wasn’t untrue, and Hunter also knew that particularly in Seattle, the growing alt-right Nazi scene was looking to actively recruit programmers. Particularly if they could get them hired on to big software companies that were presumably liberal, like Google or Microsoft.
That was the right thing to say. The meeting was Thursday. At a park downtown.
That seemed…ambitious. Perhaps Hunter had read this all wrong and it really was going to be a plain old meeting of the He-Man Woman Haters Club. He wasn’t sure whether he’d be relieved or let down.
Either way, he’d need to invent an excuse for Cal. Despite everything, he still didn’t approve of Hunter’s hands-on independent field operations. Sigh.