Chapter 11
KATE
Build a new team.
Of course I’ve thought about it. I haven’t forgotten the early days of playing Winter Reckoning, the rush of solving so many maths puzzles built into the game.
I remember my hesitant queries as I asked players to join my raiding party, my cautious overtures moving in-game contacts from imaginary quests to real ones.
I know exactly how to do it.
And I know exactly how badly things can turn out. Because it never crossed my mind in the six long years I spent cultivating the Red Cap Raiders that I might be building a team with the first man I ever hated.
Nevertheless, here I am, typing in my administrator password and imagining a new ideal crew.
I’ll only recruit women. We’ll each bring a dowry—unique skills we can teach to all the others. We’ll cooperate in the real world as well as we do in the game. We’ll support each other with words and deeds instead of slinging shite in private chatrooms.
There’s just one catch: Short of meeting in the real world, I can never be certain my new team members are actually women. And the type of hacking I do doesn’t lend itself to in-person meetings, where the police and FBI can make real-world arrests.
But what if I change the type of hacking I do?
The question comes to me with the icy shock of standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down at waves breaking on a rocky beach below. I don’t have to be CyberGhost anymore. I can choose a new name. I can choose a new life.
What if my team didn’t break through unsuspecting victims’ electronic back doors? What if we weren’t always slashing things to ribbons, smashing through firewalls and grabbing whatever we could carry on our way out?
What if we were white hat hackers?
White hat hackers follow the law. They only break into systems they’re allowed to test—companies that offer bounties for finding vulnerabilities in their code or publicly available software.
I wouldn’t have nearly as much money to hand over to Da. But my father hasn’t much appreciated the dosh I’ve funneled to him for the past six years. As a mob boss, he can’t acknowledge my gifts publicly, but he’s never even thanked me in private, not one single time.
Flexing my fingers, I stretch my neck before I settle back in front of my computer. I’ve never considered online life on the legal side of the fence.
I just have to figure out what that looks like. How to become the best in the world at doing it. And how to find a team that thinks exactly the way I do.
My fingers start typing to catch up with my mind.