After spending the better part of a week collecting code, hiring programmers, and securing the processing power and network bandwidth from less-than-reputable internet service providers, Freeman was almost ready. He found his delivery system by mistake when looking for random exploit code for the Colossal Machine.

His red phone chirped. It was his new benefactor.

“Hello D, I suppose you’re calling about the status of your project,” he said upon answering.

“Yes, among other things,” she replied. “Are we ready for deployment?”

“Almost, I’m still assembling code. I may have had a breakthrough on the delivery system. I should have it ready in a few days.”

“Good, I need the code fully operational in less than a week. And I need you to provide a demonstration to my colleagues. I’m sending you the funds to cover the costs of travel,” Dahlia said.

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“Travel? I thought I would make myself available remotely.”

“No, you’re too far away, I need you in Newport in four days.”

That’s a Thursday, I can make that work . . . I think.

“Okay, I’ll be there.”

“Good, and one other thing. When the malware gets deployed, how will the Cabal protect its machines?”

“The malware detects and exploits a vulnerability in more than ninety-one percent of machines running High Tower operating system (HTOS). It’s the most popular OS in the world. My machine runs Hally Ninex, and ChangeOS, another Ninex variant.”

“Wait a minute, let me see if I understood you. If I’m running this ChangeOS, or the latest version of HTOS, I’m not vulnerable to the exploit?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What about anti-virus programs? Will they detect it?” Dahlia asked.

“This custom malware I’m developing is a zero-day exploit. That means no anti-virus mechanism in the world can detect it—yet. So we need a swift delivery system. We need as many systems affected as possible.”

“Okay, so we need to identify the OS our targets are using. How can we accomplish that?”

“Hmmm, it shouldn’t be too difficult. I subscribe to a service called ShowALLD. It scans every machine connected to the internet for out-of-date versions. I can correlate the public IPs that it has with our targets. It will take a day just to do that.”

“Just make sure you’re ready by Friday,” Dahlia said as she disconnected.