November 27, 2014

“It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas” echoed lightly throughout the house mingled with laughter and the aroma of Thanksgiving dinner being prepared in the kitchen. Jamal Walker laughed loudly at a joke his brother had just told him. He sat with his six year old daughter on his lap who giggled along without knowing what the joke even meant.

“Daddy, what’s “riding dirty” mean?” She asked innocently.

“Oh, uh.” Jamal stammered, casting his brother a look as he struggled to find an innocent explanation.

“Ridin’ dirty is when Santa has too much coal on his sled.” His brother offered quickly. It didn’t make sense, but the little girl on Jamal’s lap seemed to accept it.

“Congratulations, you just saved yourself.” Jamal said before turning his attention to his daughter. “You ready for Christmas, Princess?”

“Yeah!” She shouted enthusiastically.

“You gonna help us decorate the tree when we’re done eating?”

“Yeah!” She shouted again.

Just then, his wife came in from the kitchen where she had been cooking with his mother carrying a bowl of gravy.

“Alright boys, taste this and tell me what you think.” She said, holding out the spoon for her husband to sample first.

“Mm!” Jamal said. “Yeah, Baby that’s good.”

“You think so?” She asked, thankful that she had gotten the recipe right.

“Damn Alex.” His brother exclaimed as he took a taste himself, “That’s some good shi- Ow!”

Jamal gave him a dirty look as his wife popped him in the back of the head and motioned to their daughter. 

“Hey, my bad.” The man said, raising his hands up in surrender.

His wife went back to the kitchen as the little girl sitting on her father’s lap giggled, entertained by the exchange.

Some time passed as the two brothers talked about this and that while Jamal’s daughter played with her dolls on the floor. The TV played on mute as they reminisced about their childhood while the smell of turkey filled the room. 

“Mmm-Mm! Smellin’ pretty good in there ladies.” Jamal called out having breathed in the delicious aroma.

His mother shouted back something in response but just as “Jingle Bells” started playing, a heavy knock sounded from the front door.

“I’ll get it, honey.” His wife called as she came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands off on a towel as she hurried down the hall.

Jamal went back to talking with his brother about something that happened at work the other day for a moment before his wife was back in the doorway.

“Jamal” She said sternly through gritted teeth. “Come here.”

A look of worry crossed over Jamal’s face. He hated it when his wife called him like that, it meant he was in trouble for something.

“I thought you said you were done with that mess.” She said as soon as he was close enough for her to whisper.

“Damn, woman. What are you talk-.” Jamal stopped short as he came around the corner where two people in black suits were waiting in his entryway. One was a tall man with a short fade and sunglasses and the other was a woman with blonde hair styled in a short bob.

“Uh…hi?” He managed to say. 

“Mr. Walker, a pleasure to finally meet you.” The woman smiled as she pulled out her badge. “Special Agent Samantha Kraus, FBI. And this is my partner, Special Agent Anthony Reeves. Sorry to barge in on you like this given what day it is and all, but we’d really like to ask you a few questions.” 

Jamal cast a worried look over at his wife who stood with her arms crossed, arching her eyebrow at him as she shifted her weight to one leg. 

“Listen,” He started, turning his attention back to the agents. “I don’t do that shit anymore, okay? And it was years ago, the Statute of Limitations-.”

“The Statute of Limitations doesn’t apply here, Mr. Walker.” She said, cutting him off with an unnerving grin. “Relax, alright? We’re not here to arrest you.”

“You’re not?” He was only half relieved.

“No, no.” Agent Kraus laughed. “In fact, we were hoping you could help us with a case. Fact is, you’re the only one who can help us.”

“Okay…” Jamal took a deep breath. He really didn’t like where this was going. “We can talk in the dining room or-.”

“No offense Mr. Walker, you have a beautiful home but, we already have someplace more…specific in mind. Someplace a little safer from listening ears.”

Jamal sighed. “I suppose I don’t have much of a choice…do I?”

The woman smiled the same, unnerving smile. “No, Mr. Walker. You do not.”

_____

“There’s no Place Like Home for the Holidays” Played loudly over the shoddy sound system in the dingy diner where Jamal sat tapping his foot nervously in the silence. Agent Kraus hadn’t spoken since she had ordered a cup of coffee and Agen Reeves just never spoke.

It felt like an eternity before the waitress came by with the coffee who reminded them to call if they needed anything else before hurrying off.

The silence dragged on in the mostly empty diner as Agent Kraus emptied several packets of sugar and two tiny cups of creamer into her mug before stirring it together and carefully taking a sip. Setting the cup down, she finally acknowledged Jamal’s presence with a warm, satisfied smile. 

“Okay, now we can begin.” She started. “Mr. Walker, do you know why you’re here?”

“You, uh. You said you wanted to ask me some questions.” He replied.

“Yes, but do you know why you’re here?”

“Because…I…”

“You’re a hacker, Mr. Walker.” She said, answering for him. “Damn good one too if I may add. Honestly, it’s a wonder the Bureau didn’t recruit you outright when you bypassed our firewall back in-.”

“Cut the bullshit, already.” Jamal said curtly. “What do you want from me?”

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Agent Kraus’ expression turned from flattering to disappointed in an instant. With a heavy sigh, she looked to her partner and cocked her head at Jamal as Agen Reeves opened up the briefcase he had carried in with him and placed a file on the table which he then slid to Jamal.

Agent Kraus began explaining as Jamal opened the file and began reading the documents inside. They were investigation reports; a man who went AWOL in 2009, a social studies teacher from a private school for children in foster care discovered to have falsified credentials, many of said students missing, various rare earth mineral mines employing undocumented workers and owned by people who didn’t exist, the reports went on and on. All of the reports had one thing in common, whenever the authorities moved in for an arrest, all involved parties completely disappeared. 

“Okay…” Jamal asked as he continued to read through the documents. “So what does this have to do with me?”

“We still have no leads on what happened to the missing children or the undocumented workers,” She went on to explain. “But we believe the suspects at the center of all these cases to be one singular man.”

“Mhm.” Jamal simply said, he turned a page and began reading through the list of suspect names and aliases.

“Three years ago,” Agent Kraus continued. “You broke through a firewall that we think may be related to this case, or cases depending on who you ask. It was a system that to this day has only been infiltrated by one person. You.”

Jamal had hacked countless networks and systems in his younger years, he still didn’t get it at first, until he read a certain name listed under the “aliases” section. The Pariah.

 Jamal’s eyes went wide and he immediately closed the file and promptly slid it away. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

Agent Kraus raised her brow at that. “Can’t? Or won’t.”

“You don’t understand-.”

“No. You don’t understand.” She said, cutting him off. “You do realize that we have enough dirt on you to put you away for the rest of your life, right? And what would happen to your family? Your daughter, what’s her name? Keysha, right?”

Of course the FBI would know everything about his family.

“You don’t understand.” Jamal pleaded when she brought up his daughter. “Yeah, I broke into that network. Yeah I saw plenty of shit. Plenty enough to scare me the hell outta there before I went any deeper. You wanna know what I saw while I was in there?” Jamal pounded his finger down on the file. “This man has assets all over the world. This man has resources that any government could only dream of. You do not fuck with this man. If I got involved with that-.”

“What would poor little Keysha think if her daddy got locked up, hmm?” She smiled evilly as she spoke “What if something were to…happen to her while you were gone?”

“You wouldn’t dare…” Jamal breathed.

“You think so?” Kraus asked coyly. “I’m a very good agent, Mr. Walker. Do you know why? It’s because I get what I want, what the Bureau wants. And do you know how I do that?”

Jamal sat stricken with shock.

“I do that by being a very bad agent.” She said.

His knees shook. His hands were fists. This woman barged into his home, on Thanksgiving, and now she was threatening his daughter. And there was nothing he could do about it. His chin quivered, nostrils flaring, but in the end he had no choice. Hanging his head, he relented.

Once they brought him back to his house where his family waited for him, utterly confused as to what was going on, Jamal went into his office and dug up his old drives. 

“It’s all on there.” He said to the agents as he handed them over. “I didn’t get much. Like I said, I wasn’t in there for long, but that’s all I have, I swear it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Walker. You’ve been most helpful.” The smile she gave Jamal made him want to punch her straight in the face.

“Just please…leave my family out of this.”

As the two agents drove off, Jamal went in to his family and hugged them. He only hoped this wouldn’t bite him in the ass.

_____

July 14, 2015

Special Agent Samantha Krause looked sheepishly out the window at the houses that passed by. Her partner, Special Agent Anthony Reeves kept his eyes on the road as he navigated the car through the winding neighborhood streets. 

It had been eight months since she had obtained the drives from Jamal Walker, the hacker who had broken into their suspect’s personal network. After eight months of pouring through those drives, they had finally managed to pull a possible place of residence.

“What’s wrong, Sam?” Agent Reeves asked, never taking his eyes from the road.

“I dunno…” She said glumly. “I just never thought our guy would be living in a place like this.”

Reeves frowned. “These houses are a lot nicer than anything I could afford.”

“Ugh. It’s just as big of a fuss the Bureau’s been making over this guy, I thought he’d be living more…lavishly.” She pouted, “You know, like a villa or something.”

“If that were the case, you know the Bureau would never let us go in alone like this.” Her partner pointed out.

She smiled a little at that. She really did enjoy the personal touch she was afforded when she and Reeves went in alone. When it was just the two of them, she was able to get away with things that would normally be considered unbecoming of an agent. It wasn’t that her superiors necessarily approved of her tactics, they just didn’t argue with the results that she brought them. If the Bureau had the need to send in a SWAT team, she would never be able to employ her own…techniques.

As they pulled up into the driveway of a very nice, very large home where their suspect was living, Samantha grinned when she saw a young boy kicking a soccer ball around in the yard.

“Yahtzee.” She said to herself before opening the door.

The boy had stopped playing when he noticed the black car pulling up to his house. He watched confused as the agents stepped out of the car. He was about eleven or twelve, Samantha thought. Blonde hair, brown eyes, handsome, most definitely their guy’s kid.

“Hi there!” She said excitedly “Oh look at you. You were just a baby, last time I saw you.”

“Hey…um. Do I know you?” The boy asked warily.

“Aw. You don’t remember me? It’s you Aunt Sammy.” Samantha played on. “And of course, here’s your uncle Tony.”

Agent Reeves smiled warmly and waved, playing along. “Hiya kid! Been a while. Boy, look how big you got.

“Your dad told you we were coming, right?” When the boy shook his head, she put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes. “Ugh, that brother of mine, I swear. Is he here, right now? I’d really like to give him a piece of my mind.”

The boy who she fooled into believing her to be family led the two agents into the house. As they followed him down the hall and into the living room she grinned to herself as she looked around at all the photographs on the walls displaying the face of her target along with his wife and son.

“Dad.” They boy called. “Aunt Sammy’s here to see you.”

Samantha’s cruel grin only widened when she heard the man’s voice answer from the kitchen. “Aunt Sammy? What are you talking ab-.”

There he was Sebastion Frey, aka “the Pariah” standing there in the doorway with a rag in one hand and a wet plate in the other, acting like a normal man living a normal life. He was right there wearing a stupid look of confusion on his stupid face as she held his son, her gun to his head. 

“Mr. Frey, it’s a very special pleasure to meet you.” Samantha spoke arrogantly. “My name is Special Agent-.”

“Samantha Kraus.” Frey finished for her before turning to her partner. “And you’re Special Agent Anthony Reeves.”

“How did you-.”

The man bowled over her words as he continued. “You’re agents with the FBI, and you have exactly five seconds to let go of my son.”

Special Agent Samantha Kraus was furious. She had solved dozens of cases during her career. She had taken in dozens of suspects. She never let any of them get the upper hand and she wasn’t about to let that happen now.

“Well then,” She smiled calmly, her finger tightening on the trigger. “If that’s the case, you have exactly three seconds to comply with my…requests. One…Two…”

_____

Samantha woke up with a start, blinking her eyes in the dark as she stared up from her bed before letting them drift shut again. What time is it? She wondered as she drew in a deep breath that seemed to echo strangely in her room. As she reached up to rub her eyes, she realized something was wrong when her hand came against something about six inches from her face. Confused, she opened her eyes to see her gloved hand resting against a thick plastic visor.  Beyond that, were the tiny flickering pinpricks of stars.

In a flash, she remembered it all. Sebastion Frey, the Pariah. Her gun against his son’s head. The count of three…

Looking down at her body, she saw the thick padded white suit she had been dressed in. All around her were stars. Her panicked breathing echoed loudly in the helmet around her head as she frantically twisted and turned suspended weightlessly in the dark void around her. 

She screamed, and screamed, and screamed, but floating in the boundless expanse of space, nobody answered her cries.