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The Mark of Kain

A number of years ago ...

It was three a.m. on a Thursday morning when Kain Algorath met the person that would change his fate.

In many ways, Kain was a typical teenager. At sixteen he was restless, bored, and distrustful of the values of his parent's generation. He dreamed of changing the world, of becoming famous while benefiting all species, of making his mark.

But Kain was not a typical teenager. He had a natural flair for electronics and programming, probably inherited from his father, who was a pioneer in the defence communications network that would become the Internet and a leader in the booming computer industry. His father's status and fortune, along with his own talent, promised to open the doors of the most prestigious educational institutions for Kain. And with the best education that money could buy, as well as the family fortune to back him up, Kain was quite capable of changing the world .... one day. However, waiting for that day to come was proving to be tedious for the young Arctic fox.

Kain was impatient. High School, even in the private boarding school for the gifted rich that his parents had enrolled him in, was a drag. He had already finished all of the school's material on computer science, and found that most of it was outdated. He learned more hanging around the labs of his father's company during the summer break. He had also zipped through the math, physics and chemistry courses in record time. As far as he was concerned, he was done with formal education and was ready to be let loose on the world.

His parents, and the authorities in their home state, disagreed. Even the school board in their second home, the High-Tech town of Kanata in Ontario, insisted that Kain be enrolled somewhere until he was eighteen. Since his parents rotated between their Canadian and US residences about every three months they thought that the boarding school would be a more stable environment for his education. It was co-ed and had an excellent athletic program in addition to its acclaimed academic curriculum. With the help of aptitude tests that were off the charts in some areas, and a bucket full of money from his father, Kain was placed there until he was deemed ready for university.

He would have qualified for early entry to MIT or any number of other institutions already, if the rest of his marks had matched those of his science classes. But Kain had no aptitude for English literature, no flair for geography, and could not remember if it was Lewis and Clark or Hope and Crosby that had explored the Mid-West. His inability to motivate himself to learn enough to achieve a passing grade in those subjects was the sole source of contention between him and his parents. The latest argument had been due to his failing an exam on the works of Shakespeare. The essay question had been 'Did Hamlet hesitate in killing his uncle, King Claudius?' Kain's answer had been 'Who cares?'

One advantage of the elite school, Kain had to admit, was the residences. Each student had their own private suite that included a bedroom, study room, bathroom and changing room. After all, it would not do to have to keep one's sweat-soaked athletic supporter in the same chamber where one studied the Bard. The school had maid service, laundry service, and the biggest Internet access point for an institution of its kind in the world, thanks to Kain's father. Having watched the technicians from his dad's company set it up, Kain knew more about it than any other student in the school. That was why he was able to bypass the firewall that prevented the rest from surfing the net after eleven p.m., and why he could access sites that were blocked for the others.

So at three a.m. on a chilly night in May, Kain Algorath was delicately trying to hack into the State of Virginia's Department of Education server to steal a copy of the make-up exam. While he was there he would look for the answer sheets for the upcoming geography and history exams as well.

Kain had wandered out onto the World Wide Web when he was barely able to talk. His first memory was sitting on his father's lap as the older Arctic fox typed in the code and characters that would connect him to one of only a few hundred host computers that existed in those days. He was fascinated by the line of glowing amber letters and symbols that appeared on the small black screen. Kain learned how to type in IP addresses before he could write his name, and could write the code for simple animations before he finished kindergarten. At parent's day his artistic submission had to be hastily removed from the wall when his father recognized it as the Internet address and access code for the CIA communications server, rendered in rainbow colours. Kain had seen his father type it in, and like all the addresses and codes he saw, had memorized it. Mister Algorath vowed to stop bringing work home, as long as Kain was around anyway.

Kain made the rounds of the usual sites as he and the Internet grew and matured together; the games, the billboards, the chat sites, the porn. For a while it was amusing cracking the password protected sites and giving his friends free access, but it became tiresome quickly. It was too easy, and Kain was seeking something more challenging. By the time he was enrolled in the private residential school he had already drifted away from the mainstream blogs and IRC channels to those frequented by the hackers.

He started out with a group known as "Technical Gravitation" or TG for short. They were a friendly but competitive group of junior hackers that were in it for fun. Mostly computer science students from the D.C. area, they liked to mess up the web sites of small businesses and local celebrities. It was all for yucks, they didn't steal any data, mess with files or reveal any secrets. A photoshopped image of the mayor's head on a pin-up bunny's nude body was about as far as they went. The guys and girls of TG were a good bunch, but they steered clear of the murky world of the hard-core hackers, the 'Black-hatters' as the criminal element was known.

Kain began to drift away from the playful TG crowd as he explored the dark side of the web. He became fascinated by the Canadian hacker known as Mafia Boy. The guy had managed to do over a billion dollars in damage to some major corporations, and that was American dollars, not the colourful Canadian play money. When the guy was arrested, after the biggest counter-intrusion effort ever mounted, it turned out that he was just a fifteen year old kid working out of his bedroom in suburban Montreal. His mistake, as it turned out, was in attracting the attention of the American security agencies by attempting to hack into the FBI so soon after the attack on the World Trade Centre. Once he was detected the newly established cyber security agencies were on his trail with the cooperation of the main Internet providers, like Kain's father's company. Privacy had disappeared from the web in the wake of 9/11.

Kain was obsessed with accomplishing what Mafia Boy had not. He wanted to be the first hacker to crack all of the 'Big Three': Defence, CIA and NSA. The pentagon had been penetrated several times, Kain had done it himself twice, but only one person had ever managed to touch the Central Intelligence Agency, and no one had ever gotten into the National Security Agency's servers. It was the 'holy of holies', the ultimate prize. Kain knew that the first hacker to manage the cyber 'Triple Crown' would go down in history, and he wanted to be the one to do it before he reached adulthood, for a couple of reasons. The first was the added prestige of accomplishing the task at such a young age, and the second was the prospect of being tried as a juvenile when he was caught. Despite his deplorable marks, Kain understood that in order to go down in history one often had to be taken down. Wasn't that little rodent from Corsica more famous for the battles he lost in Moscow and Waterloo than those he won?

Kain was good, very good, and he had managed to keep a low profile amongst the hackers, and those that hunted them. He was not motivated by money, so he left the paranoid financial institutions alone. He used a lot of his own hardware, leading edge stuff acquired through his dad's labs, so he did not have to hack into a host with the right equipment or pay someone else to switch him around the network. And he wrote a lot of his own hacker tools now. But it was not always so.

When he had fist started, Kain had to buy or trade for tools, tips, and access the most useful sites. The entrance requirement for the very best ones required him to hack into the site, or course. It was on one of these, a site that shifted locations constantly but where the most advanced hackers traded tools and information, that he met the Long Guy.

The Long Guy was considered a mysterious figure, even amongst the shadow world of the hackers. He was credited with breaking into some of the most secure and secretive sites in Europe and Asia; the Russian Nuclear Command, the Chinese Ministry of State Security, the Vatican. Impressed with the young fox's talents, the Long Guy took a special interest in tutoring Kain, who he knew only as AF_651. It was the Long Guy to whom Kain first confessed his ambitions, and who counselled Kain to keep it to himself. He should not brag about what he was going to do, or discuss his plans with too many other hackers. That would just alert the authorities. The Long Guy also advised him not to attack the three government sites individually, but as a group.

"These agencies are interconnected." The Long Guy had written. "That is their weak point. Find a way into the system that controls the inter-agency chatter and you can worm your way into all three from there. Then you must attack simultaneously, blazing your name across the public and private pages of all three before they can break the connection."

The Long Guy was the only other hacker that Kain felt he could really trust. Others would challenge you or try to hack back into you to prove dominance. If they thought you were a 'script kiddie', an untalented amateur, they would ask you to pull dangerous hacks, which often resulted in arrest. But the Long Guy wasn't like them. He never challenged, probed, or exposed Kain to overly dangerous situations. And he never asked how old Kain was, where he lived, or whether he would like to meet in a motel somewhere. Kain wished that all of the people he chatted with on line would show similar restraint.

They discussed tactics and technical aspects often. The Long Guy said that he though Kain might just have the knowledge and ability to adjust on the fly that would be required to pull this off. When Kain asked why the Long Guy did not do it himself, his mysterious tutor replied that he had made attempts in the past, but was almost caught and was now forced to move around to keep ahead of the FBI.

"Each hacker has a signature, like an electronic fingerprint." The Long Guy told him. "Mine is known now, and they keep an eye out for it. Each time I venture onto one of the sites that the establishment runs they get a little closer to taking me down. But that doesn't mean I can't help someone else. Now, about these randomly shifting IP addresses. I have a tool that will help predict what the next shift will be ..."

Kain was using one of the Long Guys tools to pry open the server that guarded the portals of the Virginia State Department of Education. The Long Guy had told him not to use the special tools he had provided until it was time for the big hack, but Kain wanted some practice with them first, and he was interested in finding out whether they were as good as the Long Guy claimed they were. A minor state-level department should be low-profile enough, it was not like he was trying to crack Wells Fargo or one of the high-tech firms that did contract work for the intelligence agencies.

The tool worked beautifully. Kain was through the firewall in half the time it would have taken with his old tools. Kain tool a deep breath and ran a paw over the short black hair on his head. He would have preferred to wear it long, but the school had a haircut code along with a dress code. But once he got his paws on those exams he could graduate and move on to someplace less restrictive, like Harvard. He decided to try out the Long Guy's decryption tool to unlock the exams. It was the latest thing from the Long Guy. Kain had looked at its code; it was a beautiful and complicated piece of work. He could hardly believe that one person alone could have developed it. He was just about to activate it when a chat bubble unexpectedly opened up on his screen.

Kain had built a lot of security into his system to protect him from the authorities as well as other hackers. He used proxy servers and clones to create a fast-switched network of his own to keep from being traced or blocked and he had cut outs and filters at various layers to prevent anyone from reaching his laptop. He had positive control on all the ports, which were monitored constantly. Even the Long Guy had to send him a message requesting an open channel for communication. It was definitely not supposed to allow a stranger to initiate a chat session. Kain's paw hovered over his keyboard, instinct telling him to break the connection now, but curiosity got the better of him. He adjusted the rimless glasses that sat halfway down his snout and read the message.

"You are out of your depth kid." Was all that it said. The sender ID was "Shadow Lady"

It was probably another hacker, he speculated, someone breaking into the same server as him at the same time. A rare occurrence, but not unheard of. The rival hacker must have used the backdoor the Long Guy's tool had created to send their message back to Kain. Not to shabby, he thought, but let's see how you like it.

His paws flew over the keyboard as he isolated the channel and searched for the other hacker's backdoor. If he could find it he would flame their site, hosing it with enough hostile code to keep them busy cleaning their hard drive for a month. Strange, he thought, there was no sign of the other's entry. His laptop went 'ping' and another bubble popped up.

"Forget it kid. You won't find me."

Kain adjusted his firewall. Her next communication was going to bounce back at her like a squash ball on steroids. He continued his search. Maybe she had logged on the education server under a legitimate, but stolen, account. That would explain the lack of a backdoor. He looked for the site's web log to see who was signed in at the moment. At the very least he could cut her off, block her, and continue his work. His laptop pinged again, and he almost knocked it off the desk in his surprise. How was she doing that?

"I'm tracing you now kid. Your parents are going to be some pissed when the FBI SWAT team kicks in their door in about five minutes. Save yourself the anguish. It's the Long Guy I want. Cooperate and we'll just confiscate your computer and force you to go outside to play. It's nice outside. You can go swimming in Lake Erie nowadays I hear."

Kain knew what was up now. Somehow the security agencies that were after the Long Guy had picked up his signature from the tool he was using. They thought that Kain was some script kiddie being exploited by the older hacker. Her allusions to Lake Erie proved that his last line of defence was still standing. It was a fake persona, that of an eleven year old Labrador retriever from suburban Toledo, Ohio. The family that owned the computer had the bad habit of never shutting it down or disconnecting from the Internet, so he had turned into one of his clones. Kain had sliced off a bit of hard drive space near the end of the disc and used it to send out his tools and probes. The puppy's parents would be some pissed, and so would the FBI when they discovered that they had kicked in the door of the Ohio State Attorney General.

Kain closed the port that the chat was coming in over. At the same time he opened a new channel to his clone in Ohio. He could intercept her chat there and transfer it back here without fear of her tracing it to Virginia. It took only seconds to set up, and he sent her a reply to keep her talking so he could test it out.

"Gee lady, don't send the police. I'll do whatever you want. Don't make them take my Dell away!!!"

Her reply was swift, and it opened simultaneously on both the family's computer and his laptop. She had broken through his firewall, again. Shadow Lady was really starting to piss Kain off.

"Don't bullshit me kid. I know that you're not some pre-pubescent prick in Toledo; but you are still a pimply punk with only his learner's permit for cruising the information highway. Now are you going to help me find the Long Guy or do I have to get medieval on your ass?"

Kain executed the emergency break away procedure. Throughout his network, connections were snapped, routers were reset, and memories were erased. Inside the home computer of the Ohio Attorney General the hard drive began spinning at a frantic pace. By the time the drive burst into flames it had already set off the smoke detectors. The fire did not spread, but the disc was ruined. All of its data, theirs as well as Kain's, was gone and unrecoverable.

The next step was to erase his laptop, remove the hard drive and the chips and smash them with a hammer. He set about this task quickly, just in case she really had traced him further than Toledo, but he doubted it. Still, he kept his ears swivelled back for the first sound of combat boots on the residence's walkways.

* * * * * * * *

Special Agent Naomi Blake stared at the blank window where a second ago the data from her trace had been scrolling. She almost had the little bastard but the punk had managed to break the connection. He was better than she thought, but not as good he thought he was, she mused. She lit a cigarette, her third within the last hour. She was not supposed to smoke in here, but she was one of the few agents with access to the special room and the air exchangers did a good job of clearing the smoke. Of course everyone could smell it on her fur when she came out, but so far no one had complained.

At twenty-seven Naomi was the youngest, and most effective, 'White Hat' hacker in the employ of the CIA. The Central Intelligence Agency kept its own stable of hackers rather than rely on the services of its rival agency, the NSA. Their job was twofold, to protect the Agency from hostile cyber assault and to counter-attack the computers and networks of those that tried.

Naomi finished her cigarette and decided to call it a night. She stood and brushed the ash that had fallen from the simple, tight-fitting black skirt and jacket she wore. The stark blacks and whites of her wardrobe went well with her snow leopard's markings and her cold, grey eyes. The full, round curves of her hips and breasts went well with anything she wore. She swiped her card to exit the insulated room where they kept their hardware electronically isolated from the rest of the CIA network and strode down the hall to the group's offices. The Agency headquarters seemed deserted on this chilly night in May.

She cursed the fact that most of the hostile cyber activity occurred in the middle of the night. Because she was the best, in her own opinion as well as that of her superiors, she was assigned to the graveyard shift. Because she was also an ambitious workaholic she could be found working from home the rest of the time. The hours were playing hell on her sleep cycle, and her love life had died of starvation five years before, when she first started working for the Agency. It was a lonely job, as well as being dangerous and stressful.

It was one thing to be an analyst or a clerk in the CIA in the post-cold war period. They were in no real danger. But the field agents and certain others had a price on their heads, the Anti-cyber squad included. This was not a friendly game of out-hacking the other guy. Some dangerous and violent groups tried to hack into the Agency's network, and when Naomi or one of the others traced them back the SWAT team that went in was not overly concerned about making arrests. And if the trace route ended in the rugged hills of some third-world country ... well that is what cruise missiles were for, giving someone that long distance feeling. One day she hoped to give the Long Guy that feeling. Tracking down the Long Guy and putting him out of business permanently was Naomi's mission in life.

It was very difficult to form any sort of relationship with another creature when you lived in the shadow world, but she had grown close to her former supervisor. He was an older wolf, one of the first to conduct aggressive cyber security. It had not been a sexual relationship, he was happily married, but an intimate one none the less. The two of them, the old pioneer and the young prodigy, spent hours discussing the art of their trade and the character of their opponents. It was something he could not discuss with his mate and she could not reveal to her few social contacts. It was her supervisor who had first detected the Long Guy's attempts to break into the nation's most secure networks, and it was he who had stopped those first attempts. A month later he was found in his car outside an off track betting shop. A gun was in his paw and his brains were on the windows. The computer records of the booking joint showed that he had run up more debt than his salary could account for, and the agency suspected that he may have sold information to cover his debts up to then. His death was officially listed as a suicide, but Naomi knew better. She suspected a set up. She suspected the Long Guy

Her new supervisor, an ex-field agent nearing retirement, was not convinced either. It was too convenient. He let Naomi have carte blanche to track down the Long Guy and prove her allegations, providing she keep up with her regular work at the same time.

So the former child-prodigy worked even harder and longer, and the strain was starting to show. She lived and breathed her work now, and was rarely seen outside the special room by anyone, including her supervisor. She was on the edge of a breakdown, and she knew it. She was tired, frustrated, and she had not had sex in so long she may have technically regained her virginity. But she only had to hold it together long enough to stop the Long Guy, and she had a feeling that she was getting very close.

The next time that punk pokes his nose onto the internet I'm going to be on his ass like flies on shit, she thought wryly, like flies on shit.

* * * * * * * *

Kain had a very bad day at school. He was tired because he could not get back to sleep after destroying his laptop, he had been too worried. Who was the Shadow Lady, and who did she work for? Had her trace gotten any further than the clone in Toledo? He was distracted because he could not stop thinking about the incident. He decided not to mention it to the Long Guy, he would be upset to find that Kain had used his tool without his permission. The worst part was that he did not dare go back to steal the exams, so he would be forced to study for a change.

A little research on the library computer and a few innocent questions to one of the teachers who specialized in defence issues answered one question at least. The Virginia State Department of Education server also handled the communications between the various university-based think tanks in Virginia and the intelligence agencies around Washington. It was a gateway connecting the CIA, the NSA and the Pentagon from the old days when the net was a Defence communications tool. No wonder it was being monitored, it was a potential back door, just the kind that he and the Long Guy were looking for.

It was blown now, they would be watching it like a hawk, but it gave him an idea. His father had worked on that system before it went public in the eighties and had known all of the interconnected host computers on the original defence web. And one thing that Algorath senior had mentioned to him struck a chord. No one ever disconnected, they just built new servers to handle the private and commercial traffic. Somewhere deep inside the hundreds of millions of hosts on the World-Wide-Web the original few hundred hosts still existed, and some probably still answered to their original IP addresses. And somewhere, deep down in Kain's memory, those IP addresses were stored. All he had to do was start writing them down and trying them out. A simple ping sent anonymously from a remote host would be enough to tell which ones were still operating. And Kain was willing to bet that modern hacker tools would break into those old forgotten servers in no time at all. Then they would have a platform to launch the great hack from, and he and the Long Guy would be famous.

Kain bought a new laptop that afternoon. He used the backup disc from his old laptop to restore the operating system and his special programs, rather than use the ones that came with it. He had all the spare parts he needed to modify it to suit his needs in the bag he kept in his room. Once it was tricked out he could activate another set of clones and get back to work. By supper time he was back in business.

Kain started working his way through the IP addresses he could recall, pinging them, looking up the registry data for the ones that answered. He ran trace routes on those that had blocked their registry information, hoping to identify them by their location. He looked up addresses on either side of them, knowing that larger institutions tended to have blocks of addresses and only suppressed the secure access points. While he was working a chat request arrived from the Long Guy. Kain opened a line for his tutor and they chatted for a few minutes about his latest idea. The Long Guy congratulated him on his insight, it was a promising avenue that he would not have thought of himself, he admitted.

"Other than that, how is everything." The Long Guy enquired when they were finished discussing the technical details of Kain's initiative.

"Fine." Kain answered. "No problems."

"No heat from the security services?"

"Nope." Kain lied. "Been playing it cool, like you said, until we have the set up we need for the big hack."

"Good." The Long Guy replied. "You'll let me know if any of them come sniffing around?"

"Sure thing, LG. But don't worry, even if they somehow find me there's not much they can do to a minor, not while my dad's lawyers are on the case. They will never get to you through me."

"You don't know the establishment's guard dogs like I do." His mentor advised. "They are relentless, and operate outside of the law. It is up to activists like us to unmask them by breaking in and exposing their dirty little secrets to the world."

"Activists?" Kain wrote back. "I never thought of myself as an activist."

"An activist for freedom. Freedom of information, freedom of the internet, freedom to go where your talents can take you and do what only you can do, without being regulated by those that would control everything and everybody."

"I thought we were just going to vandalize their home pages?" Kain was confused. This was getting too political for him.

"Very few outside of those agencies will see what you do to their sites, and they will come up with a story to cover up the truth. No, you need to bring something back out. Some data that will prove you were inside, something only they would have."

"Sure, I can see the sense in that, LG. But won't that be harder to do? The home pages seem like an easier target, and the word will get around, eventually."

"It's not as hard as one may think, AF_651. Home pages are the first choice of vandals, so they are monitored for changes and alternates are ready to post in an instant. But the last thing they would expect is for a hacker to go after they archives and take a few old files. They have no value, not like credit information or social security numbers that can be sold to identity thieves. Trust me. Once we are in we will be able to get what we need and get out again before they even know we are there."

Kain agreed in the end. It was not what he had expected, but it made sense the way the Long Guy laid it out. Now all he had to do was find that one vulnerable server that was still connected to the old network. He went back to running traces and lookups. A ping from the laptop announced a popup chat bubble. The Long Guy must have more advice for him. But hadn't he closed that port after the Long Guy had signed off?

He glanced at the screen and groaned. It was Shadow Lady again. The bitch was relentless.

"Hello again, punk. Miss me?"

"Just who the hell are you lady?" He fired back angrily. "And why are you harassing me? I'm not doing anything wrong."

"Breaking into a government network is illegal, even a state government's network. In fact, breaking into anyone's private network is illegal. Didn't you read the Patriot Act, punk? As to who I am, I am your worst nightmare. Someone who can out hack the best and that stands guard on our nation's secrets. You don't stand a chance kid."

What a tailhole, he thought. Kain decided to try some of the Long Guy's rhetoric. "You are just hiding behind that to suppress the truth. There is a constitutional right to freedom of movement that can be applied to the Internet ..." Kain continued to type the dogma with one paw while he worked his mouse with the other. She must have been set up to be alerted when a vulnerable server was pinged. That meant that he was on the right track. If he could isolate the return signal she had piggy backed on he could cut her off. He scanned his logs and identified the port on the clone in question immediately by the level of activity going through it.

"Why are you typing with only one paw?" Her next text bubble cut him off. "Busy with the other one? Is this a skill you learned cruising the porn sites? And don't tell me that you believe that 'freedom of the Internet' crap the Long Guy spouts. He's using you kid. He's not who he claims to be."

God, but she was irritating. She must have noticed the slowdown in his typing rate when he switched paws. He continued to monitor the open channel she had created to the clone, analysing her moves.

"Just because he almost beat you once." Kain shot back. "And what makes you think that I'm not the one using him?" He could see that she was sending in probes as they chatted. She was looking for traces of him on the clone's hard drive. Well, she wouldn't find any, but maybe, if he could anticipate where she would look next, he could leave her a little present.

"The Long Guy doesn't hack for fame, fun or political ideals." Her next bubble began. "He's a black hat hacker that works for the highest bidder. He's been hired by someone, who we don't know, to cripple out intelligence collection and dissemination capability. He recruits punks like you to do his dirty work then throws them to the dogs when they get caught. You are not the first script kiddie to fall for his line, but you could be the last, if you agree to help me find him."

Script Kiddie? Who's she calling a script kiddie? Kain had had enough of her for one night. His logs showed that she was probing the clone, but was nowhere near to tracing him. He was being more cautious, thanks to his near exposure last night. Now to show her what he could do when not caught unawares.

While trading insults via chat, Kain isolated her signal on the open port and waited for her to make her next move. She slipped in a request for the archived logs of his clone, hoping to find a trace from when he initially took control, he supposed. To bad for her that he had already erased that record. But he injected some of his code from the emergency destruct program into the logs as she downloaded them. Whatever computer she was using to hack back at him was about to suffer catastrophic failure.

As soon as the files had left Kain entered some commands that were the electronic equivalent of slamming the door. He sent one last message as the connection was broken: "Take that, bitch."

Kain disconnected from the clone and set about deleting all traces of his trail to it. But he wondered about the claims she had made regarding the Long Guy. Had he been naïve, or was she just trying to sow the seeds of mistrust? Either way, he had a feeling that he had not heard the last of Shadow Lady.

* * * * * * * *

Back in the special room at CIA headquarters, Naomi coughed and lit a cigarette as the fans struggled to clear the smoke from the burnt out hard drive. The entity she now knew as AF_651 was starting to earn her grudging respect. But she was smiling because she had hijacked two of his ports, not just one, and while he was distracted by the one she was using to chat with, she had sent a simple bundle of code through the other. That bundle was designed to latch on to his exit command and reside in whatever computer he was using to send it from. It would probably be another clone, she suspected, but every time he sent or received a packet through it her bug would report the route it had taken. He may be on a fast-switched network and using a large number of clones to reroute his communications but eventually she would have it all mapped. And once she had it mapped she would be able to figure out which node was his real location.

Naomi ejected the ruined drive and plugged the back-up drive in its place. It had a one-minute delay and had stopped recording automatically when the primary was infected, so it had survived his attack. She smiled again as the bug she had slipped past Kain's firewall settled in and made its first call to the mother ship. Naomi settled down to wait. If he was as good as he was shaping up to be this could take a few hours.

But I got you punk, she thought happily, it's just a matter of time.

* * * * * * * *

Less than an hour later Kain's new laptop went 'ping' again. Kain felt something in his brain go 'ping' too when he saw that a chat bubble had opened without his permission. But this time it was not the Shadow Lady that was violating his security. It was the Long Guy.

"Kain, why did you not tell me about Shadow lady?" The Long Guy's message began. "Now you have put us both in jeopardy."

Kain was startled. First off, the Long Guy had just demonstrated that he could crack Kain's firewall at will. Secondly, he had never revealed his real name to the Long Guy. And third, how had he known that Shadow lady had been in contact with him? Kain typed a reply.

"How long have you been able to do this?" While he waited for a response he started examining his ports and drives.

"Always." The senior hacker replied.

"And the name you used, Kain?" There were some files tucked away in his operating system that he could not account for. He examined them carefully with one of his hacker tools.

"It is your name, Algorath, don't bother denying it. You too leave a signature when you venture out on the web, whether you go as AF_651 or as Kain Algorath, sixteen year old private school student and airsoft enthusiast. Nice gun by the way."

Kain cringed. He had just purchased a new classic army M15 assault carbine for the war games he played with some of the other students on the school's wooded property. It was the latest thing, and of course he had immediately posted a picture of himself with it on his old myspace page. He continued to examine the files he had found while he typed his next question.

"I'll concede your mad skills and my error in being too public. But how did you know about Shadow Lady?"

"If you ever get around to cracking those files you have found you would know, Kain. I have to be very careful, and while I trust you personally, you do not know how to keep yourself or the information you have about me safe. I installed a monitor on your system early in our relationship, in case someone like Shadow Lady contacted you and tried to poison your mind with lies about me."

"You know what she said about you then?" Kain abandoned his examination of the files.

"No." The Long Guy replied. "But I can guess. She is a rival hacker who also desires to be the first to accomplish what we seek. She scares others away by claiming to be a government official. She probably claimed that I was some sort of enemy agent. She wants to examine your computer for traces of me, correct? What she really wants are my tools. She has never been able to duplicate them. But no matter, I was wrong not to tell you about the monitor and about her. I have betrayed your trust by being distrustful."

Kain was pissed at him, but he wasn't sure if it was because the Long Guy had not trusted him or because the Long Guy had hacked him like Kain was an amateur.

"I can tell that you are upset." The older hacker continued when Kain did not reply. "You can keep the tools I gave you. Good luck in your endeavours. Goodbye."

Kain typed hurriedly. "Goodbye? Why?"

"I can't expect you to continue working with me after I treated you so shabbily."

"But we're so close. I can't do this without you." It was true. It may have slipped the Long Guys mind, but he not given Kain the tool he would need to sneak past the watchful eyes of Shadow Lady and into the secure side of the three agencies yet.

"Forget it. I've gotten you into enough trouble already." The talk bubble disappeared. The connection was broken.

But while the Long Guy may have better tools than most, Kain was better at using them than most. He quickly deployed a trace that would sniff out the Long Guy's trail, examining all recent connections until he caught up with the old hacker. As long as they had not been closed too long or secured too hard, that was. After ninety seconds of frantic work, an eternity in cyber time, Kain found an open connection back to the Long Guy on the MAE East exchange point. He sent a message through to his tutor's next clone a millisecond before that too could be closed.

"Long Guy, I've found the server we need."

* * * * * * * *

The creature known to Kain as the Long Guy could have been anywhere in the world. Kain had only traced him as far at the great Internet Exchange Point that served the US north-east. It handled traffic to and from cities like Washington, Boston, and New York, the greatest volume of all the exchange points in the world. But from there the route may have followed any one of the backbone broadband providers to the south-west, Canada, Latin America, or Europe. It could even have hopped up to a satellite router and come back down again in Africa, Asia or Australia. But a hacker as good as the Long Guy would have obscured his trail, and twenty five trace routes would produce twenty five possible locations, so Kain did not bother tracing him further. If he had, he might have been surprised to find that one of those locations was a rented office space just down the road from Kain's school.

The Long Guy knew that Kain was close to finding the portal he wanted. He also knew that the portal would likely be found in the infrastructure-heavy D.C. area, close to the servers of the three agencies. The Long Guy wanted to be close to that portal when it was found for two reasons. First, the closer to the portal that the attack was launched the less likely that a packet would be dropped. In the middle of a delicate operation like this that could mean detection and failure. That is why he had selected a young hacker close to D.C. to find the portal for him. Second, he wanted to be close by in case he had to take over the operation at the last minute. He thought that his act had convinced the young fox to continue, for now. But when Kain realized what the long Guy was really after he would probably baulk. If threats didn't convince him to continue, all the evidence would point to him after all, the Long Guy would have to take over and finish it off. And speaking of finishing things off, the Long Guy hated to leave loose ends, and a young, idealistic, betrayed fox was about as loose as you could get. But he knew where Kain lived, and the FBI would find that the trail had grown as cold as Kain's corpse by the time they found it.

The Long Guy could terminate him anytime now that Kain had found a suitable server, but the kid definitely had a way with the tools, a much finer paw than the Long Guy. His chances of pulling off the hack successfully were much better, the Long Guy had not lied about that. However he had lied about building the tools himself; they were supplied by his client, who probably had a thousand technicians working on their development. No matter. As long as Kain believed him long enough to open the gateway to the three agencies, the Long Guy could do the rest. Then, goodbye Kain.

The only fly in this particular ointment was Shadow Lady. She had been on his trail for years, but he had beaten her at every turn. He would have taken her out but she was much more careful about her personal security than her former supervisor had been. But living like that, and working as hard as she did to catch him, was surely taking its toll. He suspected that she was close to cracking, and that could make her unpredictable. The Long Guy had left Kain with some advice on how to block her, and a warning about communicating with her.

He stood up, stretched his scaly arms and stepped out side into the parking lot of the industrial park where the office was located. He looked up, and admired the same moon that was casting its light through a residence window five miles away, illuminating the sleeping form of a young Arctic fox with short black hair.

* * * * * * * *

The next day was a Saturday, so Kain spent the morning cleaning up his hard drive. The bug that the Long Guy had put on him had been restored when he used the backup disc from the old laptop. But the Long Guy told him where to find it and how to remove it.

Just before lunch he ventured out on the web again. He routed himself through an unusually large number of proxies and clones to make tracing him back more difficult, and set his system to reroute every minute. Only then did he connect with the server he had selected for his attack.

It was an old four-eighty-six in the basement of a defence think tank that spent most of its time doing management consulting for the big government departments these days. But they did enough classified work to justify keeping the old machine connected, and that was all Kain needed. Using the Long Guy's tools, he started to pick it apart, looking for a port that was not secure and not monitored.

He had found a suitable port and was just easing it open when his intrusion alarms went off. Someone was poking around his network of clones. Kain disconnected from the vulnerable server, just in case. Then he isolated the machine that was being probed. A trace of the intruder revealed the beginnings of a route that matched the one he had for Shadow Lady, and it was blocked at the same point too. It had to be her, and if it was, she could probably guess who it was probing her back. Kain opened a channel on the clone and waited. He did not have to wait long.

"Morning punk. Not giving up yet?" The chat bubble was accompanied by an attempt to break out off the clone and back to the next link on the chain of pirated machines that would lead to him. Kain reset the system to reroute every ten seconds.

"Why would I?" He replied, sending a flame code like yesterday's down the line at her. It bounced back, and almost made it through the clone, but Kain had anticipated the possibility and redirected it. Somewhere in Denmark a surprised clerk watched in horror as her workstation began to shake and smoke.

"Because it's better than spending the next twenty years in jail. Now that we have you on obstructing justice, interfering with a national security investigation and destroying government property we can try you as an adult." Kain found bits of code, disguised as one-by-one pixel graphics attached to her text. He stripped them off disdainfully and tried sending her some text that actually had malicious code embedded in the font. She converted it to plain ASCII code long before it reached her home base.

They traded insults and attacks for another twenty minutes. Suddenly they both stopped inputting at the same time. Kain sat in his residence, realizing that he had met his match. She must have given up also, because the alarms remained silent. Kain was wondering what would come next when another chat bubble opened.

"I can prove that what I say about the Long Guy is true." She had typed. "If you give me a chance. We need to talk, face to face."

Kain shook his head sadly as he read the message. He lifted his paw and let the tip of one digit rest on the button that would break the compromised clone out of his network, cutting off their communication. The Long Guy had said that she would try to seduce him into meeting. So that she could identify him and set the cops on him, leaving the field clear for her. And like the Long Guy had said, she was far too good to be working in some low-paying, dead-end government job.

"Sorry babe." He said out loud as his digit pressed down and the screen went blank. "No can do."

Kain sat back. A rumbling from his stomach reminded him that the dining hall would be closing soon. And he would need to eat well for the activities he had planned for this afternoon. Kain shut down his computer, locked it in his desk, and stood up to leave.

He grabbed the bag with his airsoft gear as he headed out the door.

* * * * * * * *

Naomi Blake was disappointed by the way the conversation had gone, but on the other paw she was very satisfied with the performance of her bug. By probing and provoking him she had lured AF_651 out in the open. As suspected, he was switching his routes regularly, and further probes had induced him to speed up the cycle for increased security. Too bad for him that the more routes he used the better her mapping bug worked.

While they had been exchanging attacks and insults another program had been analysing the data returned from the mapping bug and moving it along, closer to the ultimate source. He had a lot of cloned machines and compromised routers on his network, and a switching protocol that was pure genius, but at the rate the data was coming in finding him was inevitable. When she had stopped attacking it was not because she had given up, but because she had his location. She performed a quick hack into the school's server, technically illegal but hey, she was CIA not FBI.

She was looking at Kain Algorath's school records by the time he stopped attacking, and the pause gave her time to absorb them. A few seconds was all that she needed. Sheesh, she thought, a sixteen year old Arctic fox and the son of one of our leading entrepreneurs to boot. The Director is going to have a cow. Since the Director of Central Intelligence at the time was a canine that would be a bad thing. The kid was probably using network connections from his daddy's firm, and proprietary software as well. The legal implications would give the Director nightmares. Unless ... unless she could convince him to work for them.

"I can prove that what I say about the Long Guy is true." She typed. "If you give me a chance. We need to talk, face to face."

Naomi waited for a reply. None came. A minute after sending her plea he disconnected.

She sat back and stared at the blank screen, wondering what to do. The kid must be close to getting in, but how close? He was still using a lot of clones, so he could have gotten no further than inserting his tool kit through an unsecured port. That meant that the hack could come anytime, but probably not until after dark. The net was busiest from noon to dusk and packets tended to get dropped more frequently. While it would be more obvious to hack in later it would also be quicker and safer. If she only knew which server he was using.

She could ask for the local internet Service provider's records and try to match his activity with a list of possible targets, but that would take too long. She could ask for a warrant to seize his equipment, but she had no legal evidence to show the judge, and it was not likely to lead them to the Long Guy. This kid was too smart for that. She gazed at the digital photo attached to the file. He's not bad looking either, she mused, for a kid, but he'd look better with long hair.

Her supervisor, the ex-field agent, had taught her a few things. The first was that it was easier to beg forgiveness than to get permission to do something risky. The second was how hacking computers and breaking into buildings used the same attributes of patience, attention to detail, and a few good tools. Tools that resided in his desk. The third was how to defend herself should she get caught using said tools, and since the 'suicide' she had been carrying a side arm of her own.

Naomi left the secure room and returned to the office. She grabbed her oversized purse and dumped its contents into a drawer. She filled it again with the tools and electronics she would need to get into the kid's rooms and into his computer. If he was out she would simply break in and hack his computer to find the info she wanted. She put her pistol, a small Beretta, in a waist clip under her jacket. If the kid was in, or came back while she was there, she would ... what would she do? Shoot him? Tie him up and torture the information out of him? She wondered if she wasn't taking things a bit too far.

The school was less than half an hour away from CIA Headquarters. She could think about what she was going to do on the drive over.

* * * * * * * *

Naomi found the school easily enough, although it took her a while to locate the residence. They didn't number the buildings, apparently if you belonged here you knew where everything was. Then she had to find a place to park where no one would notice an unfamiliar car. It wasn't as easy as she had hoped, her older Chevy, all that she could afford on her government salary, did not blend in well in this land of Mercedes and BMWs. She finally slipped it into a spot behind the mechanical building, amongst those of the cooks, maids and janitors, she assumed. Fortunately her simple black suit made her look like a visiting parent, and she was able to walk back to the residence without attracting any more attention than the usual wistful looks from the males over the age of puberty.

She had a wear analyzer and rapid code puncher ready to tackle the residence entrance, and had it opened in less than two minutes. Next she visited the alarm panel, it was always near the main entrance where the firefighters could find it in an emergency. It showed a schematic of the buildings electrical system, including the intrusion alarms and entry controls. She was able to follow the diagram and found the security circuits in a locked panel in the utility room. The lock was easy to pick, and she deactivated the alarms in Kain's suite before plugging in a card copier. She inserted a blank card in the copier and stored the code to Kain's rooms on it.

She glanced at her watch. Almost two hours had passed since he had cut her off. Would he still be in his room? There was only one way to find out.

Naomi checked that the coast was clear and then walked down the hall like she belonged there, in case anyone came along before she reached his door. No one did, and she was able to slip the fake swipe card in with one paw while she drew her pistol with the other. She opened the door quickly, but as quietly as she could. There were no lights on inside, but then again it was a sunny day and the curtains were wide open. There was no noise either, but how much noise does an average sixteen year old make when he's on the computer? She moved through the suite, checking the rooms. She came to the study room last, like the rest of the suite, it too was empty. There was a laptop open but dark on the desk there, and a bag full of electronic components hung on the back of the chair. Bingo.

Her next step was to go back and pull the curtains, so that no one would see her inside and report an intruder. Then she sat down at the desk and examined the laptop. The CIA had spent a considerable amount of time and money teaching her forensic examination techniques so she would be able to analyze computer components without tripping bobby traps or frying the data on them. This one would be a piece of cake, she could tell. Young Algorath may have the best encryption, but he probably thought that the law would protect his hardware from unreasonable search or seizure. But she didn't want to convict anybody, she just wanted to stop the Long Guy, locate him, and kill the bastard.

Naomi lost herself in her examination of the young fox's laptop. It was fascinating. Once she got past the password protection a wealth of hacker tools was revealed to her. Algorithms for controlling his fast switched networks, circuit board diagrams for signal analyzers he was designing, lists of IP addresses and passwords he had collected, even copies of the security logs from offices associated with her agency and others. The bag she found yielded even more electronic treasures. Direction finders, interceptors, and eavesdropping devices of all descriptions.

She was impressed. She had expected a smart kid who was using code and hardware 'borrowed' from his daddy's company to do his hacking with. But a lot of this stuff was original. Some of the cruder tools were obviously the product of the Long Guy's client, but there was much more. There were notes in Algorath's paw about a new tool for hacking servers that shift access codes constantly, like the CIA's. There was a program for stealing files from other players in the virtual worlds like Second Life. The hardware she found was homemade with parts purchased from the local electronic hobby store. And the code! It was like nothing she had seen before; elegant, simple, and effective.

Naomi forgot about looking for traces of the Long Guy as she read the code and examined the hardware. Her mind was racing with the possibilities of what someone with that much talent could do. Why he could take down the continent's electrical control grid or lock up air traffic or ... Naomi had an epiphany. Algorath was not just some punk hacker the Long Guy was using, the old hacker needed this kid! Even with the sophisticated software that his client's cyber warfare department was able to provide wasn't enough to get into the American security system. Not without someone truly talented and intuitive at the helm, someone like Algorath.

She was still admiring the code when she heard the commotion outside. It sounded like muffled gunfire. Suppressed weapons? The kind SWAT teams used? Before she could get her gun back in her paw she heard someone running down the hallway. Had she tripped some hidden alarm? Or was this the FBI, come to bust Algorath's butt. It would not be the first time that parallel CIA and FBI investigations fouled each other up. But who were they firing at?

Naomi crouched behind the bathroom door, where she could see the entrance as well as all of the rooms with widows. SWAT teams usually came in from all directions at once. She pulled her CIA identification out and hung it around her neck. If it was the FBI she wanted them to be able to ID her as a good guy, or at least not a bad guy. Whoever it was in the hallway slammed into the door of Algorath's suite. She got her pistol firmly in her paw and slipped the safety catch off, just in case it wasn't the FBI.

The door swung open, and a figure dressed in black assault armour and a full protective visor dove into the suite. It kicked the door shut behind it, and Naomi heard the impact of several rounds out in the hallway. The figure in black, whatever it was, was too small to be one of the FBI's oversized assaulters, and it was still focused on the door it had entered through. Now was her chance.

Naomi pounced.

* * * * * * * *

When Kain and his friends played with their airsoft weapons, they played all out. No holds barred, anything goes, suck it up sunshine, all in, and old school. If you couldn't afford the protective gear you could still play, but you couldn't complain when you get a BB in the ear or up the snout, no matter how much it hurt. If you could afford the gear, and most of the gang at the private school could, then the object was to aim for those spots between the pads and hit you opponent there. And the game did not end when you got the other team's flag, or when you left the woods, it went on until everyone was back in their rooms, so it was wise to keep the gear on, no matter how hot and uncomfortable it was.

Kain's outfit was all black, not bad for camouflage in the forests of Virginia but easy to spot on the lighted pathways of the campus. That's why he kept off them and followed the edges of the buildings. The area near his residence looked clear, but looks could be deceiving, so he checked around every corner and behind every bush before proceeding. Arriving at his building, he raised his Plexiglas visor to tap in his personal entry code, and that is when they attacked. Two badgers from the Ukraine, foreign exchange students, opened up in a deadly cross-fire. Kain spun to fire back, slamming his visor shut before he lost an eye.

He had managed to complete the code, and the door clicked open behind him. Kain pushed back against it and rolled into the hallway. They could follow him, or try to cut him off by coming in both ends of the building, so he had to move quickly. He raced for his suite, slammed his back against the door before setting the access card into the slot, and dove head first into the room, kicking the door shut behind him. He was safe!

Or so he thought. The body that slammed into him took him completely by surprise. Hey, he thought, the dorm rooms were supposed to be neutral territory! But he did not have time to argue, because whoever it was had his arm up behind his back and a knee in the base of his tail. Fortunately the school had an excellent martial arts program, and Kain paid more attention in that class then in the social sciences. He went with the direction the assailant was pulling and managed to flip over onto his back. He brought the bright orange muzzle of his airsoft assault rifle up and around while he worked the safety with his digit, but he did not get a chance to use it. Before he could bring it all the way around it was torn from his paw and sent spinning under the television stand.

Now Kain was getting pissed. A move like that could have broken his very expensive BB gun. This guy was going too far. Kain felt his helmet being ripped from his head, and found himself string down the barrel of a sleek dark grey automatic. Where's the orange cap for the muzzle, he wondered? By law they had to be kept on, otherwise the cops would shoot first and examine later. But this pistol didn't have one. And the hole in the muzzle looked awfully big around for just BBs.

Kain let his eyes focus on the creature holding the gun. A female snow leopard in a black business dress and white blouse. The fierce look on her face almost made Kain's bladder let go, because he suddenly realized that this was no game. The black and grey feline must be Shadow Lady, and she looked like she was finished playing around. Jesus, he thought, spying a CIA identity card hanging around her neck, she really is a government agent. I am dipped in some deep, deep shit.

She did not move or speak; she just kept staring at Kain with that deadly scowl on her face, like she was trying to memorize his every feature before she rearranged them with a slug from her pistol. Kain couldn't bear to meet her eyes, so he looked elsewhere, and what he saw made him forget to be afraid.

She was crouched astride his hips with one leg cocked forward and the other bent back. Her knees pressed him arms against his sides, and his paws were against her thighs, trying to push her off. Her left paw was at his throat, and she was leaning forward to keep him pinned to the floor. The position made her muscles strain and stand out, and there was plenty of muscle to see. A business dress and jacket, especially a tight one, is not the best choice for paw-to-paw combat. Her ample curves fought against the confining clothing. Down below, the flesh won, forcing the skirt up over her hips to expose her white silk panties with their lace trim. Up above, the clothing had won, forcing her breasts together and upward until they looked like a pair of melons bent on escaping. The top half of her nipples peeked out over the straining silk of her blouse. They were pink, bright pink.

Kain's eyes wandered down her throat, across the taut curves of her breasts and then down to where her silk covered sex rested on his groin. The material of her panties was translucent, and tight. Her mons and vulva were outlined like they had been sculpted of the purest porcelain. Why, he could almost make out her clitoris. His eyes grew bigger. Unconsciously, the gun aimed at his face forgotten, his paws stopped pushing against her legs, and began moving in small, gentle circles instead.

He suddenly realized that not only his eyes had gotten bigger, just before she used the gun on him.

* * * * * * * *

She was expecting an assassin, maybe the same one that had killed her supervisor, maybe even the Long Guy himself. She had about two and a half pounds of pressure on three pound trigger of her Beretta and her teeth were barred in triumph and anger. But when she pulled the helmet from the intruder Naomi was shocked to see the face of Kain Algorath. She recognized him immediately from the school photo she had downloaded just a few hours before. The white fur, short black hair, square rimless glasses perched halfway down his snout. He needed them to see distant objects, she recalled. What the hell was he doing dressed like young Darth Vader and carrying an assault carbine?

He was struggling to get up, but she had his arms pinned to his sides and a firm grip on his throat. All he could do was push weakly with his paws against her thighs. He wasn't going anywhere. She examined him more closely.

The armour he was wearing was not ballistic, not really. It was more like street hockey gear. It had lots of fancy pads and intricate sewing, but it was just foam under spandex. She noted the airsoft logo on the collar. Air guns. The kid was a live war gamer. Shit.

Now she was scowling in disappointment and confusion. This was the genius she thought she had found? He looked like he was about to pee himself. He had no idea of the kind of trouble he was in, or maybe he was just getting the idea. She felt like shooting him right now and putting an end to this.

He had been panting, his chest heaving, but now his breathing evened out. He had gone still, waiting to see what she was going to do. Maybe the kid had some guts after all, she thought. At least he wasn't panicking and spraying urine all over the place.

The photo had not him justice. It must have been taken when he first came here a few years ago, before the school's athletic program had its effect. He looked older than his sixteen years now, heavier and more filled out. His armour had come open in their struggle and she could see his little pink male nipples standing up from hard pecs and a rack of washboard abs. He really was quite good looking, but young, oh so young, she thought regretfully. She tried to remember what she had been like at his age, but found that she could not.

She felt something move under her. Something was pushing its way between them. She suddenly realized that she was sitting on his crotch, with nothing but a thin layer of white silk between her and the fly on his jeans, and that's where the protrusion was growing, and growing, and my God, she thought, the school gym didn't give him that!

She was sitting on a rod of steel that had not been there a few moments ago. Then she noticed that his paws were caressing the inside of her thighs. More shocking still, she felt herself responding, growing warm and wet down there as her hips rocked just the tiniest bit, and she felt the rough double-stitched denim bump against her through the sheer silk.

This was insane, she thought. He was just a kid, okay, a big kid, but she had not come ... don't use that word ... she was not here for that. Even if it had been over a year since ... don't think about it. The last guy had been a disappointment anyways, flabby, grabby and too quick to ... dammit focus!

He was staring at her. His bright golden eyes looking deep into her icy grey orbs. His paws were making slow gentle circles on the taut flesh of her thighs, and the mound that had formed in his jeans was pressing against her. He gasped, as if he has abruptly regained consciousness in a strange situation. Maybe he had just come to, but she felt like she was slipping further away with each second.

She lowered the pistol to his head, slipping the safety catch back to the on position as she did, and traced a line from his temple to his snout and up his muzzle. She hooked the rimless glasses with the foresight of the gun and flicked them off, leaving his face unobstructed. She let go of his throat and gripped the fur of one cheek with that paw while pressing the gun flat against the other side of his head. She growled, pulled him up as she leaned down, and forced her mouth against his.

* * * * * * * *

The seduction was unplanned, but urgent.

His mouth opened willingly, as did hers, and their tongues intertwined before she realized what she was doing. Farther down, her hips were rocking harder as she forced her vulva down on the rough ridge of denim. The movement made it hard for his trapped paws to keep contact so she lifted one leg, and then the other to free his arms. His paws returned to the tender flesh at the top of her thighs instinctively. Naomi tossed her gun across the room and griped both sides of his head with her paws.

Kain could look down along his torso and see the outline of her lower lips under the silk. The moisture had made it all but transparent. The lips had split and spread to each side of the protrusion, and the nub of her clitoris stood out against the wet material. He was hard, harder than he could ever remember being while pawing off on the porn sites, but he could hardly feel anything. His jeans were too thick for her touch to penetrate, although she seemed to be enjoying it. Kain removed one paw from her thigh and fumbled with the brass button at the waist. It popped open, and the tip of his cock peeked out, already having grown past the waist band of his underwear.

Naomi felt his paw move and looked down too. Seeing what he was up to, she rose back up above him and began tearing off his airsoft body armour. She stripped off the padded tunic, leaving his torso bare, and then she raised her butt off of him enough to get her paws on the zipper of his jeans. She pulled it down with a jerk, and Kain thought that he would cum right then and there. Naomi reached behind her and pulled his jeans down over his hips, but only as far as mid thigh, trapping his legs. Another jerk and his underwear went down to join them. His cock was free, bouncing in mid air between them.

She put one digit on its tip and gently pressed it back down against him. Then she lowered the silken mound back down until it straddled his flesh. Her hips moved again, and she spread the sweet smelling juices that were seeping through the silk along his length. Once his prick was slick with her moisture she pressed down harder, forcing silk up between the lips, and she moved faster.

Kain watched, fascinated, as his cock was massaged from balls to tip by the silk covered cunt of this exotic feline. With each swing of her hips it slid up until the tip of his prick disappeared behind it. Then it would re-emerge as she rode back, until her ass came to rest on his balls, her mons sealed around the base of his cock. He could feel the heat coming out of her, and while the touch of silk was thrilling, he longed for it to be gone, to feel flesh against flesh. He wanted to feel the natural silk of her insides sliding along and all around him.

But Naomi was in charge for now, and she was happy with the status quo. She wanted to move faster, to bring herself to a long-neglected climax quickly, but she forced herself to slow down, to slide almost lazily back and forth along the young fox's rod. She could feel each line and bump of his veins through the sheer silk, and her clit sent out signals as it bumped over them, like the needle on an old record player. And the song it played was good.

She let her paws drift up to her breasts, but her blouse felt rough on her hypersensitive pads. She slipped the buttons one by one until it hung open. Now her heavy breasts were almost free, just restrained by the under cup bra she had put on that morning. She slid her paws under it and lifted it off so that it hung around her neck, tangled with the CIA identification. She trailed her paws back down over her breasts, lingered at her tender nipples, and squeezed them together. She felt another pair of paws on hers. She pulled hers out from under his and pressed them hard against her chest.

Kain did not know how long he could hold back. He had very little experience with this sort of thing. Girls liked him, especially lately, since he had filled out. There had been a lot of pawing, and once a vixen had put her mouth on his penis, only for an instant. That was as far as his sexual education went. He had the notion that he should try to resist the urge to cum for as long as possible, but had also heard that it took females three times as long to reach orgasm than males, so how long was long enough? Just looking at his paws on her breasts, or worse, her panties sliding along his cock, was enough to drive him over the edge, so he shut his eyes tight and let the sensations take over.

Kain did not have to hold out for much longer. Ignored for far too long, her loins were eager for fulfillment. His strong paws on her breasts, his digits being guided by instinct now that his eyes were clamped shut, and the rigidness of youth beneath her was enough. She sensed her insides swelling, filling up, then they let go in a molten flood that tore a cry of pleasure from her lips. Her hips bucked wildly, mashing her clit against him as the liquid fire spilled from her, soaking her panties and him.

The sudden heat was too much for him to resist, as was the knob of her clit jerking against the sensitive patch just below the tip of his prick. Kain's balls contracted and fired. A spurt of cum shot out and struck him on the chest. Another was trapped by the forward motion of her vulva, spattering the crotch of her panties. She spread it back along him as a third spurt filled his navel. His balls continued to shudder, but he had tightened the muscles between them and his shaft, and nothing more came out. It was if he instinctively wanted to preserve his ammunition. It turned out that he had good instincts.

As soon as the juices of her first orgasm in almost two years had stopped flowing Naomi wanted more. She continued to massage his cock with her sex, the silk now sopping wet and gooey from their cum, as she pulled off her jacket and blouse. She tossed them aside and her bra and ID lanyard soon followed. She loosened her skirt and pulled it up over her breasts and shoulders. Now she wore nothing but the sodden panties.

Kain, still stiff despite the orgasm, got the idea. He toed off his sneakers and shimmied out of his jeans and underwear. He could not reach his socks but they were loose enough to roll off by rubbing his feet together. Now he was naked under her. He caressed her hips and thighs with his paws, ready to pull the panties off the instant she raised up, but she didn't. Instead, she took his paws in hers and guided them to the waistband, pushing them under and wrapping his them around the delicate lace. Once his grip was firm she grabbed his forearms and forced them apart violently. The panties ripped apart, the torn material trapped between vagina and cock. Naomi pulled it out, slowly. Kain felt her bare flesh on his.

She continued to slide back and forth on his prick as she had done earlier, but there was a gleam in her eye that had not been there before, and a playful expression on her face. With each stroke she let herself come farther up his length until her clit was tickling the tip. Still she kept it pressed down against his abdomen. But on the fourth or fifth stroke she went past the tip, and when she came down again she tilted her hips just enough to scoop it up inside her. She opened her mouth and sighed as his entire length slid into her, not stopping until her clit was wedged against the base of his cock.

Kain gasped. He thought the silken massage had been the most intense sensation that he would ever feel, but he had been wrong. The silk of her insides was much smoother, and warmer as it wrapped itself all around him. When she slid forward again he thought that he was going to die and when she came down again he almost did. He was certain that his heart had stopped for a second, at least.

Naomi leaned forward and put her paws on him. He claws came out and dug into the fur covering his chest, piercing the skin just a bit. Her digits tightened and relaxed repeatedly, in that was felines do, and the sensation of claws that might drive themselves deep into his flesh at any second just heightened the erotic atmosphere. Kain put a paw on each of her buttocks and helped her to move, raising his hips slightly as she came down each time to slam her clit against his pelvis. Her breasts hung down between them, nipples brushing nipples occasionally as she moved above him.

Kain looked down and saw his cock, bigger than it had ever been, sliding in and out of her tender pink twat as her tail whipped from side to side behind her. He raised his eyes and looked at her breasts, round and firm as they swayed before his face, almost within reach of his lips. Then he looked up into her face, and he was trapped by those glowing grey eyes, lost in their depths.

For her part, she had never taken her eyes off his face. Watching his expression change from wonder to delight before open-mouthed astonishment when he came had awoken something inside her that she had never felt before. She was afraid that she might be falling in love with the youth. But he did not seem so young at the moment. She had never felt herself filled like she did now, as every square inch of her insides revelled in the contact of his pulsating pole. He filled her, and fulfilled her, like he had been built just for her pleasure. She leaned against him and placed her mouth on his again as she moved faster on him.

Kain opened his mouth as hers came down and could not believe that a kiss could still taste so sweet when there was so much competition from down below. He wrapped one arm around her back and bucked his hips harder under her. Fur against fur, flesh around flesh, they rode the sensation to its inevitable conclusion. When they came this time, they came together, and with total abandon.

* * * * * * * *

They talked though the night, between making love, and Naomi taught him a lot, both about hacking and about love. She showed him where to use his paws and how to use his tongue. She used hers on him, and let him explore every orifice of her body. He was resilient in his youth, she was patient in her experience. She had not made love so many times in one night before, and of course neither had he, nor would he again for many years to come.

She described the dark underside that was developing in the world of the hackers for him, so that he could judge for himself the best course of action. Mobsters were invading the net, blackmailing and extorting the young hackers into working for them. They were fuelling the identity theft racket, moving funds across borders, arranging for drug shipments to clear customs, and even helping keep the traffic in children for the sex trade going. The criminals had no soul, and they punished disobedient hacker servants severely, and completely. She showed him web sites that proved what she said, sites he had never thought of looking for. Since his days with TG he just assumed that all the hackers were in it for fun or a cause, maybe a few for personal profit, but now his eyes were open.

"It's not a matter of who is smarter." She told him as she leaned against him in bed, making lazy circles in the fur of his chest with one claw. "It's who is more ruthless, and they have the guns and the thugs on their side. But you have gotten into much more serious trouble." She went on to describe how the Long Guy contracted out his services, and her suspicions about her former supervisor's death. "The only difference between them and the mob is that you lose your usefulness much quicker with them" She concluded.

"What are you going to do if don't cooperate?" He asked after their sixth coupling.

"I'm going to go back to work, forget tonight, and stop you." She answered, regretfully.

"I'm going to help you stop him." He told her after the seventh session.

"Don't let this influence your decision." She answered after the eighth.

When the sun came up she slipped away, setting his alarm for an hour later than usual, but still early enough so that he would not miss his first class. She was sure that he had the stamina to survive another day of school. She left him a note, promising to return that evening, when they would take the Long Guy down.

* * * * * * * *

The Long Guy shut off his monitor just after midnight. He had turned Kain's original computer into a clone a long time ago, when the young fox still trusted him implicitly. Restoring his configuration to the new laptop had turned it into a clone also. The Long Guy had activated the remote connection earlier this evening to find someone examining the files on Kain's laptop. He had turned on the laptops camera, after disabling the indicator light, and saw the face of the snow leopard, the one that worked for the CIA. That was bad news, but it was not the end of world, not as long as he knew which server Kain had prepared for the big hack and she did not. All that he had to do was fry the laptop before she found that particular bit of information. And then take care of Kain before she could torture the information out of him.

It was at that point that things went from bad to worse. Before he could fry the laptop there was an altercation outside the room. The snow leopard left without shutting off the laptop, and the Long Guy was left staring at the open door of the study room and into the bedroom on the other side of the corridor. He could not see what was happening, but he could hear. And after a few minutes the sounds coming from the hallway were unmistakable.

The pair had not talked much after their initial coupling, they had moved directly into the bedroom for session number two. The laptop had a good camera, Kain had bought top of the line, and the Long Guy was able to zoom in on the bed in the room opposite. By the time they were engaged in their forth tryst he had seen enough. He knew long before Kain did how the night would end. Now what was he going to do about it?

Obviously he would have to eliminate the two of them. It was just a shame that he had come so close this time only to face this set back. While he now had a vulnerable server prepared he really had to admit that he could not pull this off without the talented young fox, and how long would it take him to find another so skilled? If only there was a way to coerce him into completing the hack.

The Long Guy leaned back in the second-hand recliner that he had purchased for the rented office and thought for a while. In his head he listed what he knew now compared to what he had known before. Then he looked at each new bit of knowledge to see how it might be exploited. The two items that he kept coming back to were was the fact that he now knew where to find the snow leopard, and that Kain Algorath was only beginning to realize the seriousness of his predicament. But the young fox's knowledge was intangible, his reaction apprehensive. He had yet to experience real fear, and the Long Guy could use that.

He got up and turned on the computer link to Kain's laptop again, so he would know their plans and movements. Then he tried to ignore the moans, grunts and wails as he gathered up the tools he would need to turn this situation around.

* * * * * * * *

Kain had a very good day at school, although he did not pay his classes any more attention than he had before. His mind was adrift on a sea of pleasant, erotic memories, and when he put any effort into conscious thought it was to what variations they would try after they took down the Long Guy.

He went straight to the dinning hall after his last class, and returned to his room after eating. Naomi, a lovely name he thought, had not specified the time of her return, but they had discussed how they would set it up, so he could get things started while he waited.

The Long Guy requested a communications channel almost immediately after Kain signed on. That was to be expected, tonight was to be the big night and the old hacker was probably just as anxious as Kain was, but for different reasons. Kain allowed him access; this too was part of the plan. Naomi's unit back in Langley would be tracing him while Kain kept him focused on the hack. He suspected that she would come over to the school as soon as the trace was established.

"How are you tonight my young apprentice?" The Long Guy greeted him. Kain replied that he was fine.

"Are you all ready for tonight's endeavours? Not having any second thoughts?" His former mentor enquired. Kain answered no.

"Then let us begin."

The Long Guy guided Kain through the steps that he would have to take to link the three agency portals to the server he had prepared. The delicate part of this phase was to synchronize the three to act as one when the next phase started. It took a delicate paw and an alert mind to balance three asynchronous systems and predict the point in cyber-time where they could be linked. They were dealing in nanoseconds. But Kain pulled it off without a hitch. He was feeling very confident in himself, his former nervousness a thing of the past now that his mind was at ease. He glanced at his watch, Naomi should be arriving soon.

He wanted her to be there for the next phase, not because he needed her help, but so that he could demonstrate his skills for her. He was acting like a show-off on the beach he knew, but he didn't care. All that he wanted to do was to show her that she had not picked a loser, that he could perform on the web as well as she claimed that he did in bed. He checked the indicator lights to make sure that the camera and microphone were deactivated. The Long Guy was going to be in for a big surprise.

There was still no sign of her as they moved on to phase two, and that was disappointing. Maybe, he thought, she had to stay back at the headquarters to help with the trace. The Long Guy had been evading her for some years and she probably could not trust such a delicate operation to the rest of the team. Kain carried on with the next step, prying open the firewalls of the Pentagon, the CIA and NSA simultaneously.

It was a complicated operation that required nerves of steel and the ability to anticipate patterns and problems. Kain had the skills, and his nerves were calm because he knew that Naomi had prepared the ground for him. It would be difficult to do, anything less than the real thing would alert the Long Guy to the trap, but there would be no SWAT teams dispatched, no internal alarms if he screwed up, and that knowledge steadied his paw. It became more like a game than a break-in, and he found himself enjoying the challenge so much he forgot about how time was passing. Before he knew it, he was done. All three agencies lay open and vulnerable before him. All that was left was to insert the code that would copy the files the Long Guy wanted.

"Why do you hesitate?" The Long Guy asked when Kain did not immediately move on to the final phase. Kain was not sure what to answer. He was waiting for Naomi to show up or send word that they had located the malicious hacker, but he could not tell the Long Guy that. What could be keeping her? He had to delay somehow.

"I was just taking a break to admire my work." He typed back.

"Fine. Break time is over. The longer you linger the more likely it is that they will detect you. Take a screen shot to remember it by and move on."

"I can't" Kain returned.

"Why not?"

Kain was stumped for a reply. What should he do? Call the CIA and ask for a snow leopard named Naomi in the cyber warfare division? How long would it take to get through? Maybe he could fake an equipment failure.

"I'm having problems with my equipment." He finally answered. "The screen just went black. It's this Beta version of Vista I'm running I'll bet. Give me a few minutes to sort it out and I'll get back to you." Kain reached for the suite's phone as he prepared to put the Long Guy on hold.

"There is nothing wrong with your laptop, Kain." The font inside the chat bubble was the same as it always was, but for some reason it looked more ominous to Kain. "I can see that everything is fine on my remote control panel. Take a look."

Kain suddenly found himself staring into his own eyes. The indicator lights on his laptop camera and microphone suddenly came on. The scene on his screen zoomed and adjusted until the lenses of his glasses filled the image, and he could see himself reflected over and over again in them like in the double mirrors of the barber shop his father used to take him to when he was a kit.

His mouth was hanging open in shock. The Long Guy had been playing him all along, Naomi had been right about that, but even she had not suspected to what lengths the old hacker had gone to ensure control. Kain closed his jaws with a snap and shook his head. He had to regain his composure, and he needed to think fast, faster than he ever had before.

The Long Guy had cloned his computer. The other hacker could operate it remotely, maybe even lock Kain's keyboard out, but he had not done so yet. Kain was still holding the portal open and needed the controls working to do so. He also needed them to insert the code, the final delicate operation. The Long Guy could insert the code himself, although it would be risky doing it from a remote location. Even then, Kain could pull the plug and the portal would slam shut. Sure the Long Guy could reopen the portal from his own location now that the firewall was breached and finish off the job himself, but what was to stop Kain from alerting the government ... anonymously if need be?

The Long Guy needed him to finish this hack, but he had no leverage to use on Kain. Maybe he would threaten revenge, vow to come after Kain, but if Naomi was doing her bit he would soon be behind bars. And if not, then maybe Kain would have to go into protective custody until they caught him. Protective custody with Naomi perhaps. He could even help her out in her work while they rested. Kain could see no down side to this.

"Insert the code, Kain."

He typed his reply slowly. "I think not."

"You believe that you have the upper paw, don't you?" Kain could almost feel the Long Guy smiling. "You think that your feline mistress will swoop down on me and all will be well. You will have hacked into the big three and come off a hero for helping to capture the big bad Long Guy. Then the two of you could slink off to bump uglies again. Oh, yes. I know all about THAT. "

Kain was getting a very bad feeling. Where was Naomi?

"Did you think this was one of your on-line games Kain? Did you think that you could walk away unharmed like after your little air gun wars? That Daddy would bail you out? That the snow leopard would protect you? She couldn't even protect herself, no more than her boss could."

Kain felt the hairs on the back of his head and along his spine stand up. He did not know what to say or what to do. He stood frozen in place. His world was starting to come apart at the seams.

The chat bubble disappeared and a voice came over the speaker of his laptop. A deep voice with a slight accent, eastern European perhaps. It was a voice used to command, and it was filled with disdain.

"Go into your bedroom, Kain." The voice of the Long Guy boomed. "Stand by the bed where I can see you."

Kain stumbled back trough the door and into the room opposite, driven by the force behind those words. He continued until his butt struck the wall between his bed and the closet. He waited, stunned, for the next command.

The image on the screen changed as the Long Guy adjusted the zoom and centering. Now it was centred on Kain, and his head and shoulders filled the screen. As he wavered against the wall it moved with him. Keeping his face centred.

"Open the closet."

Kain could not think, but somehow he knew what he was about to see.

"No." He protested weakly.

"OPEN IT!" The anger in the voice drove Kain back against the wall. His eyes watered and he shook his head. "Open it." The voice was almost gentle now. "Open the closet and see the reality of your situation."

Kain lowered his head, reached out with a trembling paw and took the handle. He slid the closet door to the left, keeping his eyes on his feet. It was fully opened but he still kept his head down.

"Look up, Kain." The old hacker's voice was soothing now. "Look up and claim responsibility for what you have done."

Kain sniffled, a tear dropped from his cheek and splattered on the toe of his sneaker. He looked up.

Kain screamed and fell to his knees. The video image followed his face down, and the anguish there was plain to see.

Inside the closet, special agent Naomi Blake hung by an electrical cord from the cross bar. She was naked, just as he had last seen her before drifting off to sleep, but her muscles were slack and her face was distorted grotesquely by a plastic shopping bag that had been tied tightly around her throat. Her limp body rotated around as it dangled from the cord, like a lover modeling all sides of a new outfit. Kain vomited up his supper, and the sight of it splattered on the grey fur of her feet made him vomit again, and again.

* * * * * * * *

Kain did not know for how long he knelt before the open closet. He had vomited until there was nothing left to come up, and then he had heaved some more. He remembered crying after that, and calling out her name. He wanted to get up and get out of there but his legs were too weak to carry him, and the bed prevented him from crawling away into a corner. The only other option was to move toward the door, and the laptop that was still focused on his tormented face. But he could not bear to look at himself, and he could not bear to look at her, and he was trapped between the two.

His mind was tumbling and he could not think. When he tried to do so the image of her face as they made love swam up from his memory, and then changed into the visage he saw before him now. He imagined himself tearing the bag from her face, and there was a word carved into the flesh of her forehead. It said "Kain". He raised his paw once, to see if what he imagined was really so, but he faltered. What difference would it make if it was there or not? He had killed her with his naivety as surely as if he had struck her down himself.

It was safer not to think, so he let the wild kaleidoscope of emotions wash over him unchecked. He wailed for his loss, and then was overcome with guilt for thinking of his own pleasure while she hung there dead. He screamed at the gods for their callousness, and then begged them to bring her back. He cursed the CIA for letting her out of its sight. He prayed that they knew she was missing and would send a SWAT team. He hoped that they would not mistake him for the culprit and shoot him where he lay at her feet, and then he wished that they would.

Slowly he became aware that someone was calling his name. He looked to the sound and saw that the screen of his laptop no longer showed his image, it was back to showing the server and the portals he had opened. The voice of the Long Guy was urging him to return to his desk and finish what he had started, before others that he loved got hurt.

Kain crawled back into the study room and pulled himself up on the chair. He wiped the vomit from his face with his sleeve and then wiped his paws on his jeans. His glasses were askew so he adjusted them, and he focused on the screen. The voice had disappeared, the chat bubble was back.

"She is gone, it is you fault, and now the government will hunt you like it does me. I can hide you, but only if you finish this for me. Finish it Kain. Prove to me that you are worth saving."

The pain from the guilt he felt was unbearable as his paws moved to on the keyboard, preparing the portals for the insertion. He had killed his lover and now he would never see his family again. He would be on the run, hiding and hunted, until they caught him or he ended up like the Long Guy; cold and callous and comfortable in the muck at the bottom of the world. He worked automatically, the portal was almost ready.

Naomi was dead, just like her supervisor before her, he recalled. She had told him how she suspected that the Long Guy had got him. They had not realized how ruthless he was back then, and her boss had not taken any special precautions. She had blamed herself for his death at first, she had said, but then had come to realize that as a senior agent his safety was his own responsibility. And so she had learned how to take care of herself, and she had taken precautions, but little good it had done her. One night with Kain and she was gone. She had let her guard down just once and ... and ... and something pulled at the corners of his mind.

Naomi had known how deadly the Long Guy could be. She knew how good he was. She had been hunting him for years, but he had been hunting her also, and he had the advantage of knowing what his prey looked like, and which city she worked in. She had come to Kain's school knowing that he was in contact with the Long Guy, but not knowing how deep he was in with the criminal hacker. She had brought a gun, a real gun, and had been prepared to use it. She knew what she was doing, she knew the risks that she was taking. She was a government agent, and he was a minor, ignorant of the ways of the Internets true underbelly ... until now. Even the sites she had shown him last night had only been a taste; today's events had been a full course meal, stuffed down his throat. It was not my job to protect her, he recognized now, although the realization came hard, it was her job to protect me.

She had tried to save him from the Long Guy, and had almost succeeded. Maybe she had made a mistake by underestimating the Long Guy, or simply gotten unlucky. She wasn't here to help him anymore, but maybe, just maybe, he could still help her. He could not bring her back, but he could prove for her that he had been worth saving. If he could stop the Long Guy for her.

Kain thought hard, trying to delay by typing in unnecessary instructions so he would not seem to be hesitating. She must have been killed before returning to the CIA, otherwise her team would have tracked down the Long Guy by now. And that meant the alarms at the three agencies were still active. There was no danger of tripping them now, not unless he did something really stupid. But the Long Guy must be monitoring his keystrokes, ready to cut him off at the first sign of rebellion. Whatever he did, it would have to be quick, and unexpected.

Kain checked his progress. The portals were ready, and the code was almost prepared. Each bundle matched to its destination by duplicating its unique encryption and matching time-shifting sequence. He had labelled the portals 'P', 'C' and 'N' and numbered the bundles '1' '2' and '3'. He was ready to insert them. It was the final, most delicate move. He paused.

"What are you waiting for Kain?" The message appeared immediately on his screen.

"To confirm the time shift for each portal." He explained. "If the match is of by more than five nanoseconds the alarms will go off and they will start an automatic trace. We're linked directly to the server now so they will find us if that happens."

"Don't get any funny ideas." The Long Guy cautioned him. "I am watching you."

"Yeah, yeah." Kain mumbled as he adjusted the synchronization on the three bundles. After some fine tuning the readouts of each bundle matched one of the portals.

"I am ready to send them in." He sent. "Unless you want to do it yourself?"

"Go ahead. I'll just watch." The old cyber terrorist replied.

Kain activated the sequence that would send the individual bundles to their destinations. He noted a slight hesitation in the sequence, as the synchronization for each was verified. The Long Guy had recognized that the quickest way to set off the alarms was to send a packet with the wrong time-shifting sequence to a portal, but the synchronization was a perfect match for all three, and he let them pass.

Kain had spit his screen into three, and now each showed the exchange as the packets tried to enter the portals. The protocols were verified, the packet sizes were checked, and the time-shifting algorithms verified. Everything matched on all three screens, and their backgrounds turned green as the bundles were accepted, 1, 2, and 3, into the networks of the CIA, the NSA and Defence. The deed was done, there was no turning back now. In a moment the code would be decrypted and the three file servers would react.

The alarms would have been silent, of course, except maybe in the IT security divisions of the three agencies. Kain had set his interface to flash red and play an ominous organ chord if they went off, and so they did, almost simultaneously. All three sections of his screen were flashing and the organ chord was drawn out into a continuous drone. Suddenly there was silence, and his screen went blank. The Long Guy had shut him down, but he was too late.

"What did you do?" Boomed over Kain's speakers. "I verified the synchronization. It was perfect. They slid in like cocks into old whores. What did you do?"

The microphone light was off, so Kain typed in his answer. "You didn't pay attention to the order I set the encryption in. Bundle 1 was supposed to go to the Pentagon, 2 to the CIA and 3 to the NSA. The time-shifting had to match to get them in, screwing that up was the obvious ploy, but the encryption had to match once they were inside, and each was subtly different. But you weren't expecting me to actually think under pressure and emotional stress, were you?"

A scream of anger ripped through the room. Kain prepared to type in another taunt, hoping to keep the hacker distracted long enough for the cyber security teams in the agencies to locate him. But the wail covered another scream, the scream of his hardware going into hyper drive. Before he could hit enter to send his insult the laptop exploded in a ball of fire.

Kain saw the flame and bits of keyboard coming up at him, and then everything went black.

* * * * * * * *

When he opened his eyes again Kain was looking up into the face of an angel. It was a kindly face, surrounded by a glowing golden halo. Then the face shifted and Kain realized that it was the face of a golden retriever between him and the ceiling light fixture. The dog was wearing a paramedic's uniform, and was shining a light into Kain's eyes.

"You'll be okay." The retriever assured him. "Must of the damage is superficial, some cuts and singed fur, but it looks like a chunk of disc drive caught you right up at the hair line." The canine touched him there and Kain winced in pain. "That is going to leave a scar, but if you grow your hair out it should cover it up. "

The dog packed up his gear, stood up and turned to a figure in black. At first Kain thought that it must be one of his airsoft war game buddies because of the visored helmet and body armour. Then he got a good look at the gun the figure was carrying and the other gear hung about it. The subdued 'FBI' on the chest and back sealed it, this was the real thing, and he was in deep shit.

But the SWAT team did not want to talk to him. They secured the scene, checked for booby traps and moved Kain into the back of a windowless van that took him away. Kain did not bother to protest or threaten legal action at this violation of his civil liberty. He knew that the trace he had set off would lead back to him as well as the Long Guy, but that all of the incriminating evidence was on his gear and on his clone network. With that in mind, and the desire to atone for Naomi's death still strong, all that he wanted to do was to cooperate.

When the van stopped and he was let out he found himself in an old wooden garage. The place smelled of the countryside, all fresh grass and wildflowers. He doubted that cars were kept in it very often. His escort, two burly wolves in loose suits, led him through a door and int a kitchen. They sat him down at an old pine table and left the room, but not before giving him a look that said "sit still or die". Kain sat motionless, afraid to do so much as rest his paws on the table.

A half moon shone in through the window, but the reflection of the interior lights prevented him from making out any other details outside. After a few minutes a red fox entered the room. He was fairly nondescript, average height, well muscled but not grotesque, the usual red, white and brown coloring. But there was something about his eyes, the way he stared unblinking at Kain, that was disturbing. He was dressed in leather shoes, light slacks and a blue blazer. When he swung a chair around to sit facing Kain the jacket swung open to reveal a large pistol hanging from a harness under his left arm. He reached into his pocket with his left paw, his right resting lightly on his lap just inches from the butt of the gun, and pulled out an ID folder. He flipped it open in front of Kain, revealing a white shield with a red compass rose centred on it. The shield was topped with the head of a bald eagle, and the words "Central Intelligence Agency". There was a picture of the fox on the left and a bar code, but no name on the card.

"You can call me Red." The fox told him.

"Kain, Kain Algorath." Kain Held out a paw. The red fox ignored it.

"Also known as AF_651, The White Wind, and Arctic Commando on various Internet sites." The CIA agent said dryly. "We have a lot to discuss Algorath. Not the least of which is how one of our Cyber Counter Espionage Analysts ended up hanging in your closet."

He spoke in an even, emotionless tone, but his words brought tears to Kain's eyes. While Kain was looking down at his lap, his vision obscured by moisture the fox glanced back over his shoulder at a mirror in a plain wooden frame that hung on the wall. He shrugged, turned back and continued.

"We know all about your relationship with the hacker known as the Long Guy." He told Kain. "We'll get to that later. For now, tell me about your relationship with Naomi Blake.

* * * * * * * *

After four hours of drawing out the story of Kain's last few days the red fox turned the interrogation over to the technical experts, members of Blake's team. They would handle the details of the teenager's attempted hack and his relationship with the cyber terrorist. The CIA agent left the kitchen and turned left to enter a room that was once a pantry, but was now used to monitor the soft interrogations conducted at this safe house in the Blue Mountain foothills. Inside were two technicians, a psychologist, and his guest, a large golden fox.

The red fox waved his paw to beckon the golden fox to follow him into the front room. The entire farmhouse was monitored but only the kitchen conversation was being recorded tonight. And except for his guest and the young fellow being questioned everyone else present was an employee of the CIA with the highest clearances. They could talk freely. Red indicated a side board with liquor and mix but the golden fox declined with a shake of his head. They sat in comfortable armchairs on each side of a small table and the red fox began to speak.

"Sorry that this had to interrupt our meeting Gold. It's a shame for you to have come all the way down here from Ottawa for nothing."

The larger golden fox was Tancred Williams, Chief of Staff of the CIA's Canadian sister agency, the Foreign Operations eXecutive, or FOX for short. His few friends called him 'Tanner' due to his tendency to bleach his fur then claim it was pale because of exposure to the sun. But most of his colleagues and associates knew him by his agency codename: Gold.

"No problem, Red." Gold responded, using the codename reserved for his American liaison. "This is far more interesting than reviewing appoints for exchange officers. Your psychologist was telling me that Kain's type is attracted to danger, and dangerous women."

"I don't know if that is still true after what happed to Blake. This kind of thing can change you completely. It can break you down into an indecisive, ineffective follower or it can make you into something better than you were before, something nobler, someone useful." The red fox had debriefed hundreds of agents after catastrophic activity, and he was usually better at predicting how an agent would end up than the agency psychologists were.

"Which way do you think the kid will go?" Gold enquired.

Red shrugged. "It's hard to say. He's young and inexperienced, but resilient. Either way, I think that mister Algorath's childhood is over."

"What will happen to him now?"

"If he is half as good as the geek squad was making out, we may hire him to take Blake's place in counter-cyber. He will have to work alone, there's no way he would ever feel comfortable around her old colleagues, but that's the way she was operating in the end anyway, alone."

"We could use someone with his skills in our agency." Gold noted regretfully.

"Well, he does have dual citizenship. But if the psych is correct you will need a femme fatale to keep him interested. Is Scarlet still around." The red fox smiled, obviously reliving some pleasurable memory.

"No, she retired. You'll guess where to. But it's a funny coincidence. I was reading a file on an applicant for one of our subordinate security agencies the other day, an American cloud leopard. She was accused of murdering her husband but the case was dropped for lack of direct evidence. She has Special Forces training by way of her father, someone who you will remember from that Balkans mission a few years back. I was thinking that after a few years, if she got her citizenship and didn't kill anyone in the meantime, that she would make a good agent."

Gold put a paw to his chin as his mind went into high gear. "Tell you what," he said to his American counterpart, "after you've exploited his talents for a few years let me see if I can't manoeuvre the two of them into my agency's recruiting program. They could make an effective and interesting team, the killer and the computer wiz, don't you think?"

The End

Kain Algorath is © Marcus X Light

The rest of the sorry bunch is © Dikran_O