Hollywood Zenith

" My master, send me to deliver you a present." The bulky man pushed the other man motioning him to sit down. 

" Who is your master?" Mason ignored the scrawny person because he wanted to know who he was dealing with first.

" You don\'t need to know." The person replied, seemingly devoid of any expression.

" It\'s hard to trust you. I will be putting everything on the line without even knowing who is helping me and why? I don\'t want to be a sacrificial lamb for your master\'s ambitions." Mason was a shrewd person; how else could he climb the ladder this much?

" It\'s up to you; we are not forcing you to accept our help. My only order was to deliver this man along with a message, " Check his tattoos." I will be going if we are done here?" He gave him nothing, only a hint.

" Check his tattoos? How is that going to help?" Mason was angry that he even considered taking such an offer.

" My master is never wrong. You should do as he told you; I am leaving."

" Wait-" Mason ran after him, but as soon as the man exited the room, he disappeared. Mason hurriedly went to the hall and started searching, but he was simply gone? How was that possible?

" Lizzy, did you see anyone pass through here?" He asked his secretary.

" No sir, were you expecting someone?" She was clueless.

" Not particularly. Keep up the good work." He didn\'t pursue the matter further. With all the strange things happening today, he couldn\'t rule out the possibility of some hidden tunnel connected to his office.

He returned to his office and finally noticed the weak man still sitting on the floor without saying anything. He was shaking lightly and muttering something while looking at the floor.

" You, do you know something?" Mason asked, but there was no reply.

" Hey! I am talking to you!" Mason had to jerk the individual before he came back to his senses.

" Please don\'t kill me! I promise I will tell you everything!" He began protesting at his feet, repeating repeatedly not to kill him.

" I am not going to kill you. Come on, get up!" Mason was left consoling him for a few minutes before he could calm down to a sane state.

" Really?"

" Yes, now, tell me everything. What the hell is going on? Who are you, and where did you come from? Who was the person you were with?" Mason asked a series of questions, but when he heard about the bulky man, he shivered again.

" NO! You are with him, right? You will kill me if I talk? I know it!" His rambling began to start again, which made Mason frustrated. How was this broken man going to help him solve the case?

" He is long gone. No one is going to kill you!"

" I don\'t believe you! Do you even know what kind of hell I have to endure for the past few days!?"

" I don\'t; I can help you. You just have to tell me what is going on? Why are you here?" When Mason asked the last question, the man\'s eyes cleared up slightly.

" Right!" He began to take off his flimsy shirt, which was tattered everywhere. Mason didn\'t stop him, but he saw what was on his back. He was shocked! He was very familiar with the sign embedded on his back! This was it; he could really do it!

" I was asked to do it. It seems like you know about it."

" Good, good! Excellent! Hahahaha" Mason was elated finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. With this, he could start his long-awaited offensive.

...

...

...

In the present, Steve had just reached their base of operations, an obscure property at the heart of the city. It was something Drac cooked up by pulling several of his connections.

Its main feature was that this property didn\'t exist on paper; it was something that the bank foreclosed on, but after the bank was acquired by another large corporation, they decided to cut several of their depreciating assets due to the housing bubble.

This meant now, through a backdoor channel, one could acquire said property but didn\'t have to go through the legal processes as it was a hassle for the large corporation. It\'s a complicated process, but if one had a connection like Drac, they could make it happen.

Steve casually entered the property to find Jane running around, lethargically checking her surveillance system while an unknown man was sitting at her seat, typing furiously. The room was very dark for some reason too.

" What\'s going on?" Steve asked.

" Ah, you are back...Can you wait for a second?" She was bending around the electrical station, checking a few cables.

" Why are the lights off?" Just as he said it, Jane fiddled around the wires, and after turning on the main switch, the power was back on.

" We were hit. I don\'t know how, but it happened." She informed him.

" We have to evacuate; where are the others?" Steve went into alert mode. They couldn\'t risk exposure, not right now.

" Calm down; it\'s under control. I made sure they didn\'t get our location. It\'s been a few hours without incident; I think we are safe for now."

" Are you sure? Did you send Cho on patrol? What about Drac? He could send out some feelers to gauge the situation." Steve was not convinced. This had never happened before, not in the States, while they ran the best technology on the earth.

" I already did. You always get paranoid whenever these types of things happen. I know the protocol too." Jane sighed.

" Umm. Jane?"

" Yes?"

" Don\'t you think you are a little exposed at the moment? I mean... your clothes...with a stranger here...you know." Steve moved a little closer to say it softly, not as to let the stranger hear it.

" You mean this? I didn\'t have any time, but I don\'t think he minds?" Jane said and looked down. She wore short cotton pants and a small top barely covering her bra straps.

" He might now, but I do.. just a little bit." He was embarrassed to admit it.

" Hehehe, Jealous much? But I love to tease you like this." She wrapped her arms around his neck, looking closely at his blushing face.

" But why do you have to include a stranger?"

" Just cause.."

" Y-" She kissed him before he could say anything else. Steve was initially surprised, but he gave in after a few seconds.

" Oye! Lovebirds, I cracked it sort of." The man signaled after his long stare match with the computer screen.

" Right, sorry, Steve, this is Adrian, the hacker who helped us a few years back. You might know him as the \'Homeless Hacker,\' his nickname. Adrian, this is Steve, our captain." She quickly introduced them to veer off the subject.

" Homeless Hacker? From London? You flew him in? Why didn\'t you tell me anything?" Steve said when he realized the attack had happened hours ago.

" It was already midnight; we didn\'t know anything then, so we followed protocol while you protected the boss. It was a massive attack, and Adrian was the perfect person for the job as we know him as trustworthy." Jane tried to explain her reasoning.

" You guys can argue later. Let\'s discuss my findings first." Adrian interrupted directly; he didn\'t have time to listen to their drama.

" Ok, tell us," Steve said; they could resolve their differences later.

" I have to emphasize when I say this, but this computer virus was solely created for destruction. I mean, I have never seen anything like this before. It\'s a beauty but deadly nonetheless." Adrian was excited, almost euphoric, looking at the code flashing on his screen.

" What does that even mean?" Steve didn\'t know what he was rambling about.

" In simple terms, this virus, whatever its name, is potentially the first ever virus to be capable of affecting hardware." Adrian declared with confidence. Even for him, a world-class hacker, this was uncharted territory.

The bad news was this was in the enemy\'s hand, which meant there could be another \'MyDoom\' virus but with the added bonus of obliterating one\'s system. MyDoom was the most malicious of all computer viruses; at one point in time, this worm virus generated up to 25% of all emails being sent worldwide, which was mind-blowing when one thinks about the scale of it.

" So, that\'s why everything was heating up. I diagnosed several times, but the system showed no change in temperature. Fortunately, I disconnected everything just to be safe, or else all our data would disappear." Jane felt the horror of such a result. They had some backups, but she built a hand-crafted system from scratch; it was like a baby to her!

" It\'s like war just on a computer, like cyberwarfare? What has the world come to, right?" Steve added.

" It\'s already here. But whoever created it is far ahead regarding technology, which begs the question of who could access government facilities, and why are they targeting you?" Adrian raised the most important question.