PRESENT DAY

A bizarre tune came from the radio, and Titus had to lift his head to look at the boom box, questioning what his ears were hearing.

“What the hell is this?” he asked his border collie, but Janus only cast him a baleful glance, as if to blame him for the poor music choice. Titus grunted, placing a soldering iron down on the worktable before switching the stations. He had no idea how songs made it onto the radio anymore.

Talent is an extinct trait, he mused. It seemed almost impossible to account for some tastes. His fingers worked to dial another station, and Janus barked abruptly as a shadow appeared in the garage.

“Have you heard some of the crap that passes for music these days?” Titus asked without raising his head. “No one even tries anymore!”

“I imagine you long for the days of The Clash and The Rolling Stones?” Marta, his housekeeper, offered, striding inside the garage-turned-workshop to place a cup of coffee and a sandwich at his side.

Titus snorted but didn’t comment. He didn’t need to remind her that Keith Richards was still alive… somehow.

I long for the days of minstrels telling stories of genuine pain and victory, not a bunch of teenagers crying about the angst of buying an avocado.

“You need to eat something,” Marta told him.

“I need to find a proper station,” he said, his fingers still working the dial. “I can’t work without something in the background.”

“Tito,” she sighed. “No offense, but not only are you one of the richest men on the planet, you also own a cutting-edge tech empire, and you still use this blasted little radio when you could have a robot singing music to you. Hell, you could have a robot composing music for you.”

Titus laughed and turned to wink at her. “I like to keep in touch with my roots,” he replied, but Marta only grunted.

“Leave the radio,” she insisted. “Please eat something.”

Titus grinned at her affectionately. “Thank you, Marta. I will eat.”

She muttered something under her breath. but she turned away as he finally settled on a news station.

“—considered armed and extremely dangerous. She was last seen at St. Francis Airfield, where she disembarked a private plane and disappeared. If anyone has any information leading to her capture, a reward is being offered. Please contact the South African Police Service immediately. Again, she should not be approached.”

“Inmate escape?” Titus asked aloud, even though he knew Marta had already disappeared back to the main house, leaving him alone with Janus. The dog barked, and Titus turned back to the circuit board he had been studying most of the morning. He wasn’t even certain he knew what he was doing, but that had never stopped him in the past.

Marta had not been exaggerating when listing his credentials. His company had been around almost as long as computers themselves, Titus managing to stay ahead of the trends in a way his competitors could only identify as superhuman.

If only they knew, he thought wryly. It’s probably better that they don’t.

Living in St. Francis Bay had been the best move Titus could have made for himself, venturing into the southernmost tip of South Africa even before it had become trendy to do such a thing. Like his brother Cassius, he had seen the appeal of disappearing from the public eye during his private moments. It was a beautiful country, and while there was a constant threat of political uprising and civil unrest, Titus felt secure in his gated community, a distance away from the incessant issues the government seemed to face.

He traveled to Europe and the Americas so much, he had little first-hand knowledge of what was happening in his home country. Titus preferred it that way.

Just me, Janus, Marta, and Solomon. It’s the way it should be.

As if on cue to mock his sense of inner peace, his cell phone began to chime at his side.

Instinctively, Titus ignored it. He had left explicit instructions in Port Elizabeth that he was not to be disturbed, but since when had his words ever been heeded entirely? Gradually, his sooty eyes flittered toward the display, curious to know who was bothering him and why.

Trina, he thought, seeing the name on the screen. Of course.

Titus reluctantly answered it, shaking his head at his own lack of resolve. “Yes?”

“Hi, sorry to bother you, Tito, but you need to come into the office today.”

“Let me guess,” he offered, reaching forward to turn down the volume on the radio. “There’s a problem with the latest app—”

“We’ve been hacked.”

Titus pulled the phone away from his ear and gazed at it for a long moment, wondering if he had heard wrong. “What?”

“We’ve been hacked,” Trina repeated. “Our servers are all down; the firewall has been violated. There was a full power outage, and we’ve been compromised.”

Titus began to laugh. This must be some kind of prank, he was sure.

“That’s impossible,” he chuckled. “No one can get into our systems, we—”

“Titus, you need to get your ass into the office right now!”

Trina’s voice reached a strange pitch, and Titus realized that she was serious.

“You’re not kidding,” he mumbled. “Someone has actually broken through our system?”

“Does this sound like something I’d joke about?” Trina growled. “What kind of asshole do you think I am?” It was a rhetorical question that Titus would have usually answered, but his mind whirled with the news.

“I’ll be there in an hour.” He disconnected the call before Trina could add anything else.

Typically, the drive would take two and a half hours, but desperate times called for flying measures. Even if it was in broad daylight.

Titus landed on the banks of the Swartkop River, his giant frame landing with a thud against the white sands, but outside the prying eyes of town. As his form shifted from the massive olive beast into his mortal body, he quickly took note of his surroundings. The beauty of the South African cape never ceased to take his breath away, even after such a long time.

It had taken Titus less time than he’d thought, distress causing his dark green wings to beat mercilessly against the non-resistant sky. Despite the nearly cloudless day, he was almost certain he had not been seen. It was just another benefit of living in the tranquility of the Indian Ocean.

Moreover, it was a straight shot across to visit Cassius on his private island off the coast of Australia, should the mood strike. But Titus’ mood was not set on a family reunion at that moment.

As he collected himself, he bolted up through the beach toward Port Elizabeth, where his headquarters were based.

How could someone breach our security? he asked himself for what felt like the thousandth time since Trina’s call. We have never been infiltrated, not once in seventy years! Even when breaches were easy, I knew how to stop them.

It seemed unlikely, no matter how stressed his assistant seemed by the perceived cyber attack. After all, Trina was a programmer, not a computer scientist. Titus had no reason to doubt she was concerned, but he was sure that when he arrived at the office, it would prove to be nothing but a glitch she had overlooked.

He hurried through the nature reserve until he reached the isolated Dibansia Road, leading into the heart of town. It wasn’t long before he found himself outside the huge steel and glass structure he had made into Williams Technology all those years ago.

While Port Elizabeth had grown around him, Titus had kept the building as it was, an inconspicuous space where the average passerby had no idea of the level of trade secrets within its walls. That in itself was a security measure, deterring break-ins and broken windows. Williams Tech had field offices on five of the seven continents and added new structures annually, but the Port Elizabeth location had always been home base.

Being Sunday, a single security guard lounged inside the air-conditioned lobby, looking bored. His expression changed as he recognized the CEO, and he instantly sat up in his chair, almost jumping to his feet.

“Mr. Williams!” he gasped. “What— how— what are you doing here, sir?”

“I work here,” Titus reminded him dryly, using his fingerprints to access the entryway before hurrying toward the elevators.

“Of course, of course!” Titus didn’t have time to entertain the guard’s shock, and he again used his prints to call for the elevator.

The building was state-of-the-art in security, and once he reached the top of the fourteenth floor, he was required to give an eye scan before the lift door opened.

Trina was pacing the lobby when he stepped onto the floor.

“Oh! You’re here already!” she choked, relief coloring her face. “I tried to call the others, but no one is answering their phones.”

“Show me,” Titus instructed. “What happened?”

She gestured for him to follow, her heels clacking firmly against the tile as she led the way into her office, pulling up the screens that had caused her so much alarm. Titus’ brow furrowed, and he plopped into her swivel chair, his fingers poised over the keyboard.

“Any idea what they were looking for?” he asked. “Was it the pending patents?”

Trina sighed and shook her head.

“I have no idea!” she wailed in despair. “I’m completely locked out.”

Titus glanced at her and flashed her a reassuring smile.

“It will be fine,” he told her, staring at the breach. Not even a second later, he realized how wrong he was. Oh, shit, he cursed under his breath.

Trina had not been overreacting.

There had been a hack.

“How the hell…?”

“I don’t know!” Trina cried, but Titus went to work instantly, digging into the backup files to see what had been affected.

“There’s no virus that I can detect,” he said slowly, his hands working furiously as he tried to determine what had been done and why. “They were looking for something specific.”

“What?”

“Not sure yet,” he replied. “Get Kamil on the phone. If you can’t get him on the phone, send someone to his house. I need him here right away.”

Trina nodded, and Titus continued to work, his heart hammering.

It was the strangest thing he had ever seen. Someone has been inside his systems, blatantly showing them that they had been hacked, but for what purpose if not to infect or steal? No matter how much he dug around, Titus could not make sense of the reason for the breach.

Kamil needs to confirm this, he thought, but nothing is wrong. Nothing except we’ve been infringed upon for the first time in over half a century. He sat back, a peculiar feeling of worry overcoming him as he stared at the screen. Who are you and what do you want? he wondered, his mind whirling. There must be something.

Titus waited, almost expecting a sudden message to appear before him, a mocking taunt or a demand of sorts. Nothing materialized, leaving him feeling somehow more helpless.

A gentle sweat broke out over his forehead as he continued to stare at the screen. There was someone out there with more tech savvy than him, and a begrudging respect grew in the pit of his gut.

“I got in touch with Kamil,” Trina said. “He’s on his way, remote accessing the systems from the car.”

“No!” Titus cried, swirling on the chair to stare at her. “No, tell him I want him here. Accessing the systems remotely may have been the cause of the initial breach. We will also need to organize a sweep of the building.”

Trina nodded as Titus called his head of operations to stop him from causing more damage.

“I’ll have security come up with the scanners,” she replied. “And I’ll call for back up. We’ll make sure these bastards never get back in here again.”

But as Kamil’s line trilled in Titus’ ear, he secretly hoped that he might meet the man who had hacked his systems one day.

I would probably offer him a job, Titus thought, swallowing his appreciation. Hackers like this don’t come along very often, after all.

He decided to keep his respect to himself. Trina and Kamil probably wouldn’t share his enthusiasm.