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“I stayed in school two more years to get my master’s, but I was also working for this startup tech company. It paid well and I still had time to do schoolwork, and for a while everything was okay.” I pause. “I was a hacker but also a gamer, so I was totally involved in all things tech. Coder by day, student in the evenings, gamer and hacker overnight. I lived on caffeine and Adderall. And no, I don’t have ADD.” I pause again, trying to figure out how to tell him the rest because I’m suddenly a little nervous.
“You know nothing you tell me changes anything, right?” he asks when I’ve been quiet a little too long.
“I hope not, but I was a mess in my twenties.”
“You think you were the only one? I could tell you stories about my deployments.” He shakes his head slowly, the fingers of one hand trailing along my arm. “Things I did that I wish I hadn’t. But right now we’re talking about you.”
“Do you remember a big story that broke about something called the Assault Academy?”
He frowns. “That website or whatever, where men could go to learn how to basically rape their partners by drugging them and whatnot?”
I nod.
“Of course I remember. That was huge. What I don’t remember is what happened with the whole thing. It’s like it just disappeared.”
“What happened was that I hacked the site and got the full list of every single person involved and sent it to activists on the dark web, thinking I would be protected since they would be the ones releasing the information. But I was wrong. There were some very powerful people on that list, and when the FBI got ahold of it, they figured out who hacked the site. And they arrested me for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Which basically means I got access to computer systems without permission. That’s what a hacker does, but in this case, I did a bad thing for the right reasons. Except a lot of people were unhappy so the FBI stepped in. And I could have gotten ten years for that.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rage
It takes a few seconds for her words to sink in.
“Ten years? In prison? For outing a bunch of fucking rapists?” I’m having a hard time understanding this.
She nods. “And when it was all said and done, after I spent every dime I had and a bunch I didn’t have on attorneys, they buried the list and I got a choice—work for the FBI, and essentially protect those awful people, or go into witness protection and never work in computers again.”
It’s hard to think of something to say because that had to be an impossible choice for her.
“I’m sorry, honey. I can’t imagine having to make a choice like that.”
“It was a dark time in my life.”
“I’m confused—isn’t rape illegal? Even if you still went to prison, why aren’t all the rapists in prison too?”
I snort. “Yeah, I’d like to know the answer to that as well. Here’s the thing, there were thousands of names on that list. I recognized a handful, movie stars and politicians and European royalty, but it was thousands of names. I didn’t read every single one. But the one that was the biggest problem was Albert Rifkin.”
All I can do is stare. “He’s…isn’t he the Secretary of Health or some shit?” I ask. “Part of the President’s cabinet?”
“Yup. And as soon as the list came out, the FBI started scrubbing it from the internet and covering up the whole thing. Remember when we got involved in that skirmish in Qatar?”
I nod.
“They did that to give the public something big to focus on. Not a war but some bombs and whatnot, enough to distract everyone while they paid off who they had to and made me the scapegoat.”
“Jesus Christ.” I shake my head. “I had no idea. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You and almost everyone else. They worked fast. I mean, everything happened within hours. I sent out what I uncovered at midnight, thinking I’d wake up to it being a huge headline. Instead, I woke up to the FBI at my door, arresting me at eight in the morning.”
“Fuck.” I reach for her hand. “I’m sorry that happened.”
“By the time I agreed to go into WITSEC, I’d lost everything. I didn’t care where they sent me or what job they got me. I just didn’t want to be involved anymore.”
“Of course.”
“Does that make me a coward?”
“No. It makes you human.” I squeeze her hand tightly.
