Visions of Chaos

It's Friday night on July 4th and my crew just hacked into Camp 61. We'd been planning this attack for months and finally broke through their IDS, getting into the network through a RAT we'd installed a couple weeks ago.

An intelligence officer monitoring the Area's data center noticed the compromise, but it was too late. We already had a copy of the data.

We could see his chats live between him and the General.

"How?! We've got the best security network in existence!" he exclaimed. He watched in horror as we retrieved the data, and then we were gone, leaving nothing but a monicker on the screen to mock United States cyber-intelligence. "General, our network has been breached and the databases have been compromised!"

"How could you let this happen, Ingram?!" the General typed. "Do you understand what's happened here and the damage it will cause to the United States?!"

"Yes, Sir!" "The hackers who did this left no trace..." "We wouldn't even know where to start trying to find out who it is!" Ingram explained.

"You'd better find out who did this! Get on it! I want a full report on my desk tomorrow morning!" the General typed back.

We closed the port we'd spent weeks getting into and destroyed any evidence that might've been left behind by running a virus that obliterated data beyond recovery.

We finally did it.

"Easy peasy... This is probably the biggest hack of the millennium," I said in the IRC.

"How are you guys holding up on the network?" I typed.

"We're good, you got the data right, Chaos?" Sephora typed.

"Got it," I replied.

"Be sure to send a copy once we close port to the server on our end. Orion should be on later," Sephora typed.

I went over some of the data we'd extracted from The Camp. "I can't believe our own government does this to its citizens," I thought to myself.

I flipped through some of the documents and came across a page on human experimentation. The documents didn't have the patient's real name, just an alias and how to identify them with a microchip inserted into the back of the head. "Psychics" read one of the documents. "Electrokinesis" read another.

"This is some weird shit..." I thought.

I uploaded a copy to the server and bounced my IP before exiting the onion network. I was part of a group of hackers called the Visions of Chaos.

We're a small group of three, just a few tech geeks and gamers with a mission. Some may call us angels, others devils, but the truth is we just do what we please. We do mostly good, but we're not above a little mischief.

I first started talking with my crew in an IRC chat-board for a video game called Lightening Force.

We like to keep our identity private online, but we've sent a few crappy pixelated pics to each other. We mostly just do some business and talk about games and life. I've known Sephora and Orion since 1994 and they're probably the closest friends I have. We all had the same mission and decided to form the hacker group.

"Honey! Come to dinner!" my mother said as she knocked on the door.

"Sure thing, ma!" I replied.

I also saved a copy of the data to disk, labeled it "Homework," and hid it amongst some other disks before going upstairs.

I went to the kitchen to make a hamburger and grabbed a handful of fries. Then I went outside to watch the fireworks. Here we were on a day of freedom and my crew had just breached security at a top government facility. No one knew we'd just hacked into the most secretive base in the United States and gathered top secret data. This kind of information would sell for a fortune. Good thing we worked for free. We liked to think of ourselves as the Robin Hoods of the underground cyber community. We believed that people have a right to know what their government is doing. Also, if the wrong people found out we did it, it could cost us our lives. Rule number one: Never admit you did anything.

When I wasn't "saving the world," I was just another high school graduate working for their mom. No one would suspect anything at all. I didn't look like a criminal; I kept up my appearance, I was a nice person, and I really enjoyed charity and volunteer work. I went out of my way to help the little guy. I just hated the way some of these big companies treated people.

I'll be the first to say that there are some scumbag hackers and anarchists out there who think the world owes them a living. It's unfortunate that society takes the bottom of the barrel and applies it to the whole. I can't speak for those people, but I can speak for myself. I'm not like them. My group may be a little rough around the edges sometimes, but we're not bad people.

The next day I'd be back to work at my mother's boutique. We have a lot of different types of customers show up to The Boutique and some well-known locals occasionally stop by.

One such customer who regularly showed up was the owner of Romano's. Romano's is a popular restaurant right up the street from where The Boutique is. The owner, Giuseppe Romano, was a well-known guy around the Chicago area. Everyone loved him and he got along with everyone. His daughter, Carina, was my best friend growing up. A lot of people would see that as pretty intimidating, but honestly it wasn't that bad.

Carina and I go way back. We went to school together and I'd help her with her math homework. One thing I have fond memories of is spending time at the Botanical Gardens in the summertime. We'd go there just to be in the serenity of the garden and talk about life and what we wanted to accomplish. Sometimes we'd spend hours there reading. The atmosphere of chirping birds and a light summer breeze with the scent of all the flowers surrounding us.

She'd ask me for advice on how to solve some of her personal dilemmas, and I'd always give her some long drawn-out lecture. That's just how we were.

One thing I remember well is we'd play this game where we would leave clues pointing to the next clue till we solved the puzzle. We both got a kick out of that kind of stuff. We get bored easily so that was one way we could have some fun.

Another leisurely activity we'd engage in was the arcade. I'd hack the machines for free plays and Carina thought it was the coolest thing. She always thought my hacking skills were amazing and compared me to some superhero vigilante, which was a definite boost to my confidence. I didn't really do much, these were just simple tricks, but she didn't know any better.

We spent a lot of time together in the summertime. When we weren't out and about we'd both be helping out at our parents' businesses.

When she left for college I spent a lot of time at the raves or hanging out online in the tech chats.

Carina was a little older than I was, so she graduated and was off in the fall a couple years back. She also had a boyfriend that took up her time so we didn't chat online as much either. The guy was a douchebag, but that could be my own bias. It'd been about two years since I'd seen her, but college would be letting out soon for the summer semester and rumor had it that she'd be back for a visit.

Mr. Romano and my mother were also friends. Their businesses were right down the street from one another so they'd run into each other a lot.

My mother really liked the food at his restaurant, and he really liked The Boutique so it worked out well. The support of small business is important so they'd work together occasionally.