Most people have this vision of CIA agents going to elaborate, elegant cocktail parties in foreign countries, cajoling diplomats and planting bugs like James Bond or Ethan Hunt himself trying to entrap the evil super villain. That sounded great to me; my problem was finding the fucking super villain in the first place – and getting invited to the party.

I quickly realized that finding someone whose entire life was dedicated to not being found wouldn’t be the easiest task. It’s not like this movement had a fucking website; if Judas was telling me the truth and they had any idea what kind of an organization they were up against, Clarity wouldn’t exactly advertise their intentions over a public forum. However vast an ocean the internet is, it’s still not deep enough to hide from the Council.

My only lead after three days searching for Clarity was that IRC chat room Evalina told me was her contact point with the group; even that, though, seemed like a dead-end. It seemed like a great place to get free software or pirated music, but its utility as a meeting ground for a terrorists was questionable at best.

Searching through the files available in the chat room, I finally found something of note: about five different sources were distributing the source code for a worm that would unleash a distributed denial of service attack to a server in upstate New York. Upon first glance, it seemed like a strange target; it was not a corporate headquarters, and it wasn’t obviously a military or government installation. In fact, I couldn’t find a reference to this server anywhere.

It sounded promising, and it was my only lead. So I started digging.

To say my hacker skills were lacking would be a vast understatement; I was smart enough to be able to find an IP address, track it one step down the traceroute, and decipher basic code, but tracking people through proxies and spoofed addresses was beyond my capability. So, given the fact that these guys were better at this game than me, I hit yet another dead-end when the IP addresses appeared to be coming from all over the fucking planet. Unless there were some Eskimos planning on taking down a server farm in fucking upstate New York, I doubted that was a solid lead.

It wasn’t going to be quite that easy, clearly. I was going to have to get my hands dirty.

One of the five hosted quite a stash of pornography on his machine; some of the shit on there was downright disgusting, and then it hit me. The greatest traitors in the history of our country were recruited through personal weakness; these men weren’t necessarily bad guys, but they were flawed. Whether it’s money, drugs, sex, or power, the second you figure out someone’s weakness, you can compromise them.

[23:14] LAsweetsixteen: hey, how are you?

It was a complete shot in the dark, and I felt like a fucking creep, but I had to try. Several minutes passed before the reply.

[23:17] {OP}roloDEX: whos this?

I thought about it for a second, but I realized I had the perfect answer to his question.

[23:17] LAsweetsixteen: im julie. asl?

[23:18] {OP}roloDEX: 32/m/nyc. u?

[23:18] LAsweetsixteen: 16/f/nyc. thats cool, lol

The more I chatted with this guy, the more I felt like a fucking fruit. But, it’s all in a day’s work. Pretty soon, I had him hooked; when he logged off at the end of the night, he emoted me a fucking kiss, and I knew I had him hook line and sinker. Now, the trick was reeling his pedophile ass in.

Four days after I first made contact, he made his move.

[10:34] LAsweetsixteen: so darlin, how is it that your always online during the day? dont you work?

[10:35] {OP}roloDEX: yea. why rnt you in school??! hahaha

[10:35] LAsweetsixteen: i have irc on my pda usually but i stayed home today

[10:36] {OP}roloDEX: nice

[10:37] {OP}roloDEX: wnana go to lunch?