USCYBERCOM

Fort George G Meade, Maryland, US

Harry's eyes were tired as he concentrated on completing an algorithm as his fingers made clicking sounds on the keyboard. He had been working a lot the past week. Especially, he did not sleep for the last 36 hours. His blue eyes were now dull and drooping due to fatigue and sleep deprivation as his back was bent in an unhealthy angle. Coffee cups could be seen strewn around.

Ten people were also working under him as he pressured them to keep up with him. His teammates seem to have noticed that he was acting differently as they threw all kinds of gazes at him. Some looked worried, some looked irked while some were just plain curious.

Harry knew that the work was actually not that demanding and he could take it slow but somehow, since the last few days, he had this sense of urgency like he had no time to relax. He completed his portion of the code and loaded it into the system after adding parts written by his teammates as well.

Anthem, an insurance company was hacked by an unknown group of hackers which resulted in a loss of personal information of 80 million Americans. This was done through spearfishing and by planting a backdoor in their main database server.

Harry usually volunteered to work in the National Mission Team against broad Cyber attacks. Tracing a cyber attack back to the culprit was much harder than the actual hacking. So, only major cyber attacks are taken seriously plainly due to the high cost of the investigation.

Also, most of the small time Cyber attacks are usually dealt with by others before the case could reach him. They were really some newbies out there who don't even hide their own IP address and hack using their own computer leaving information about him all over the victim's computer.

More experienced and professional hackers are more difficult to deal with as they hide there true identity and the trail usually results in misdirection like indicating another country or just some random coffee shop's WiFi or they could control another innocent person's computer to do the bad deed through malware.

Even among these people, some people become overconfident and actually brag about their deed in social media platforms or while talking through mobile when their phone is tapped. One dumb idiot actually posted a blurry picture of his girlfriends bosom, it was more than enough for them to track him down.

But Harry knew that he was dealing with trained professionals this time as he could see their professionalism through their method of operation and the procedure they followed. He was currently using a previous generation supercomputer available at his disposable to search all the records of interactions that the database server of Anthem Insurance company had. All the accounts, anomalous files and malware were been looked into.

Although these people had altered their log files and other traces of activity, 100% of the traces could never be completely erased as they are myriad of different logging and monitoring configurations in real-world systems. So, Harry and his team had to create an algorithm to identify these 'bread crumbs' left by the hackers. Given the computational speed of the supercomputer, it was a matter of hours before they discover vital clues.

Harry had an idea on which country was behind this attack based on their method of operation, target information, execute script, malware and tactics but he did not jump to a conclusion without solid evidence.

Harry stood up as the algorithm started running, he stretched his fatigued back and adjusted his spectacles.

"Wake me up when you have results."

"Okay, boss."

it could be seen that despite the hardships they were subjected to, Harry had a good reputation as the leader.

Harry went to the empty lounge down the hall as he leaned towards the side on a couch and slept. He knew that the reason he was sleep deprived was not because of work pressure but the incident at the Pentagon he had witnessed when he had accompanied his commander. He never thought he would see a day when his superiors and other legendary military figures would feel powerless before a single person who acted unrestrained and overbearing in front of them. He still did not understand what was going on.

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A second blow to him was when he heard that the woman who he liked, Amanda Miles, had violated her contract and left her mission midway and had an intense verbal contention with one of the Marine Generals in front of many officials which caused her to be detained in prison for a few days before the management of 'Blood Water', a private military company, she and her brother worked for, bailed her out. He came to know that she had been posted in a very insignificant job of guarding AN/TPY-2 radar systems in Japan. Even though he did not plan on confessing to her, he was concerned about her as he liked her. He had pushed the only prodigy of their team, Kevin fatty to find out the whole truth in one way or the other.

Since last week Harry had been searching for any kind of abnormal news from all over the world so that he might get some hints and the result had shocked him. One had to note that a guy in a position like Harry did not read news from a daily newspaper or television. Based on his position and merit, he had access to ECHELON's (a global surveillance program based on Five eyes i.e. UK, US, New Zealand, Canada, Australia and other countries) information up to two-star classification.

Venezuela's market has become more volatile without any intervention from the US causing a phenomenal rise in inflation and market disturbances. This has resulted in uncontrolled, unintended destabilization of the Venezuelan government.

The President of Zambia had been removed by the military and currently, Zambia was in a major political turmoil. This sparked Harry's interest as Zambia was the only country between Congo and Zimbabwe. He still remembered that these two countries had been 'sold' to 'that' organization. Well, one was snatched. Was there a connection between these two incidents?

Other less significant news was that the whole Mafia in Mumbai city in India had been wiped out in one night. A prominent casino owner in Macao was missing leaving behind no clues. That person was worth $ 5 billion dollars.

A terrorist attack rattled London resulting in the death of 200 people but only people in higher position knew that this was a totally new terrorist organization unknown to anyone before. It was like this terrorist group was born a few days back. Nobody knew who had facilitated this attack.

The Wittelsbrach Graff which is a beautiful blue diamond, discovered in India over 300 years ago. It was sold to the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Chalifa, for 67.4 million euros in 2011. This diamond was stolen.

Harry could sense the working's of 'those' people behind some of these incidents but was not sure. He also felt that he was just been paranoid. But if there was one piece of news that he was absolutely sure that 'these' people had done it. It was the assassination of the Nicaraguan president.

He was sniped on the steps of the St. James Cathedral on the shores of Lake Managua by an assassin who was riding a boat 6 km away in the lake. All the police and protection guard could neither prevent the assassination nor catch the assassin who jumped into the lake and was never found. This news was covered up as a normal assassination by filtering the information on distance.

A 6 Km sniper kill, 6,208 m to be exact, was more than the double the distance of recorded long range kills in recent history. The longest kill was 2,475m in 2009 in Afghanistan by a British soldier till now. Harry knew that only 'those' anomalies could do this. This was the reason for the feeling of restlessness and urgency that Harry felt. He felt a deep sense of powerlessness.

He had a glimpse of the change in the balance of the world but was not able to resist let alone change the outcome. He really envied the common people who were still worried about the Election results, weather and climate change or those who were preparing for Christmas celebrations.

"Boss"

"Boss"

"Huh?" Harry was woken up by his subordinate. He sat upright as he rubbed his mildly inflamed eyes and put on his glasses and went to the washroom. When he checked the time, he figured out that he had slept for two hours.

"Did you discover the source?", Harry asked as he wiped his wet face dry while walking.

"Yes, Boss, it is as we suspected. It is the Chinese," the subordinate reported while following.

Harry nodded as reached his workplace. He verified the traces of the same malware in the source base and confirmed personally.

"It looks like the work of Unit 61398," Harry muttered as he studied the source in depth.

"The government-sponsored group that already hacked 141 companies in 7 years?" a subordinate asked.

Harry nodded as he typed a report containing names of Dennis Wang and Daniel Jack and forwarded it to his superior. They would take it over from here.

When Harry was thinking of going back to his home, Kevin who he had tasked with finding any information about Amanda walked in with a grim face. It was rare to see this redhead freckled fatty who was usually very jovial put on a serious expression which caused Harry to feel even more inner turmoil. He followed Kevin when he saw him look at him and go into a private cabin.

"Elder brother, are you sure you want to know what happened to Amanda?" Kevin asked when he saw Harry enter the cabin.

Harry nodded as he asked, "What happened?"

Kevin showed a USB drive as he said, "I found this video when I 'searched' the database. It is a piece of four-starred classified information but I suggest you not to see this video."

"Is it related to her?"

"Yes, but more importantly, it is related to 'them'."

Harry's breath stagnated when understood Kevin's words as he saw his expression.

Harry took a deep breath as he nodded, looking with resolute eyes at Kevin. He had already known about them. He could not forget about them even if he wished to. The only way was forward i.e. know more about them.

Kevin also nodded and inserted the USB drive into his own personal Air gap laptop and opened the file.