Mahan was first to speak. “You are being erased. “

What?

“Your personnel file, your case files, your case notes, all of your work with the government is being erased or encrypted or moved.” Christina said.

“For the past 5 plus years, slowly your files have been disappearing from the Bureaus records.” Morph added. “No one really noticed it until the OIG got a FOIA request for records about a Western Union hack and Mr. Kozlov. The OIG had limited records, primarily those about you and your involvement in the case but during the review they found pages missing. Everyone thought it was just a data integrity issue but then a FOIA request came in last year to the NSA for information on the 'Idolin Project.' The NSA has no 'Idolin Project' but there was a reference to you and a wire intercept that was authorized in the early 2000’s but no other data.”

“Again no one thought anything was wrong until someone saw the page numbers on the bottom of the files that were still in the system. Pages were missing from the files,” Christina add.

“Is this some form of 'there was a water leak in the records room and all the files were destroyed' scenario? I asked. How does the US government lose records? Scratch that, how do their systems lose specific records and why does that warrant me, and I assume my family needing protection? I’m well trained, and I can protect myself and my own. I’ve been living a dual life for 10-plus years.

You could have just left me in position and let me know what was happening. I could have worked it from my side. I have my notes, my records, and my memories.” I stated.

Mahan re-entered the conversation, “6 months ago we finally tracked back the real source of the NSA FOIA request. It appeared to come from a reporter at the Guardian, but they dug deeper, and it originated out of North Korean servers. Of course, they did some deeper digging and found references to you by name, Idolin, and AntCity.”

Perplexed I said, “So let me get this straight. Our friends at the NSA hacked the North Korean servers that were the source of a FOIA request about the Idolin Project. I assume they broke whatever encryption was in place and then they found records that link me and the name Idolin.

That’s no big deal, I have been telling the world I was an FBI agent working undercover as a hacker using the name Idolin. That’s open source.”

Christina started to chime in

“Wait”, I said, “they also found records about AntCity and some linkage to me correct?”

She nodded.

“What did the records say? How was I linked?”

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“We don’t know,” Christina said. “The NSA reported that their infiltration was detected before they could pull all the records. They were locked out. They were able to get back in a few days later but the files were gone. They don’t know if they were moved or deleted.”

“Ok,” I said taking a breath. “Makes since why you closed AntCity. Various parties know something about it and it might go public. So why not get ahead of it, control the narrative and spin a wonderful tale of national security operations. Some might get upset including governments, business and even some of our own politicians but so what. The intelligence community takes a public slap in the face, a private commendation and we move on.

Hell once it goes public I can write a book or sell a movie script. Im still not seeing why I need protection. Where is the physical risk to me personally? Was there some threat to kill me?” I asked.

Morph, Mahen and Christina all looked at each other and then Morph spoke. “We don’t know what AntCity is. We know it involves you, we know it was to address cyber-based threats and we know it’s not finished. We have the paper files that Christina has been using but they don’t cover everything. In the last six months, the deletion of you has increased. We are also seeing a large number of files that appear to have been connected with AntCity being encrypted. Like ransomware without a ransom. The techs think it was a timed job that was kicked into overdrive after the North Korean hack. They have been able to decrypt a couple of files, but they are incomplete.”

“We also don’t know what they know. We started a review of all intercepts looking for any reference to Idolin and AntCity. We have chatter about New York, London, Dhahran, Singapore and Los Angeles. There has also been chatter about you and your family. We don’t know if they are going to move on you. They clearly think Idolin is some project or program. Our analysts believe that your public use of the name Idolin is considered a false flag by them. If they don’t have a full understanding of AntCity, which we don’t think they do, they will likely make a move against you likely through your family in the very near future.” Mahen finished.

“I still have a few questions. Actually, I have a ton of questions but its focus time.” I said.

“Who are the “they” that you keep referring to? North Koreans? I never worked directly against them save for some crypto manipulations.

Also, what do you need from me? A full debrief? The operations 14 years of work at this point. It will take forever to go through everything.

And why the hell didn’t you make copies of the files? You know backups.”

It was Mahen turn to lead, “We are here to get the whole story from inception to current day. If possible. We need to focus on the start of the operation and any reference to New York, London, Dhahran, Singapore, and Los Angeles. We know those are all locations you have lived or worked in for a period of time.

We also are on a time crunch. We have about a week to understand what AntCity is and craft a media narrative for release. Your gut was right, we need to control the story. If we can get in front of this and put your face on it the right way, we can cast you as a hero. We need to announce it before it can be leaked and twisted by our enemies on social media. If we get to it first we can discredit anyone who tries to pervert our storyline. “

As for the backups and tech issues, we are working on that but it’s not relevant now. We have teams to address it.”

“Before we start the deep dive. We need to know one thing first and foremost. During your time working AntCity, did you ever kill anyone?” Mahen asked.

All eyes turned to me as I stared back. I slowly pinched the bridge of my nose and just shook my head.

“So, you didn’t kill anyone.” Christina stated.

Clearly, they didn’t understand AntCity.