A Scandal of Grey

A SCANDAL OF Grey

a silent revolution series

 inspired from Mr. Robot

Sht, I think someone's following me.

No, someone really is following me.

It must be the thing I pulled off last night.

They might have been listening all along, or they're already there right before I did it.

Or I have done something wrong.

Sht, what have I done?

I should've just gone to my boss' party, but instead...I went to...

I sat there, at the corner of the coffee shop while waiting for Leo. It was past nine pm, the shop will be closing soon but I know he'll be here, I checked his phone. He'll be taking rounds of the shops he owned nearby.

I heard the bells chime when the door opened. I saw him. Leo. One of the attendants went to him immediately, brought him coffee and greeted him, "Hello, Leo."

I walk at the almost empty shop. "Good evening, Leo." I say, I don't mean to frighten him but I don't know not to do that. I have that tendency.

He looks up, a crease forming between his eyebrows. I sit at the chair in front of him and stare at him. "Your name is Leonardo Cruz, you're Leo." I point at the embossed letters read as LEO'S COFFEE.

"You have 13 coffee shops, six years since you opened the first one. You'll have three before the year ends." I say, nonchalant. Mostly because this is the way I usually talk.

"Excuse me, do I know you?" He asks.

"I love going here, the coffee is good and the wi-fi is fast." I say. "May I help you with something?" He looks at me intently. "You're one of the few spots that has a fiber connection with gigabit speed. It's good."

He nods and go back to his tablet, looking at the spreadsheets, maybe about the sales of the coffee shop, expenses or maybe about the money he earned from his other business.

"So good, it scratched that part of my mind, part that doesn't allow good to exist without condition, so I started intercepting all the traffic on your network. That's when I noticed something strange. It's when I decided to hack you," he stops abruptly and a look of surprise written in his face.

"Hack..." he says, as if the word is foreign to him.

"I know you run a website called Wild Fantasies. Sorry I didn't ask for your permission." I say, looking straight at him, void with any emotion.

"Pardon me," he says in disbelief.

"You're using Tor networking to keep the servers anonymous. You made it really hard for anyone to see it, but I saw it. The onion routing protocol, it's not as anonymous as you think it is. Whoever's in control of the exit nodes is also in control of the traffic, which makes me...the one in control." He looks around. Maybe looking for someone to approach the table and help him or maybe checking if someone's listening. I don't know. I don't mind. I don't care.

"I must ask you to kindly leave," his voice is hoarse, like something is stuck in his throat.

"I own everything," I pull out a folder out of my bag. "All your e-mails. All your files. All your...pics." He scans the folder I left on the table and looks harshly at me. "You have to leave now or I'll call the—"

"Police? You want them to find out about the 100 terabytes of child pornography you serve to your 400,000 users? Personally man, I was just going to hack the network, to see how secured it was, to check for vulnerabilities, and later on, tell that on you, fix the problem. And it will be done. I was hoping it will be just some BDSM stuff, I thought I will be doing you a favor, but I found something else."

"That...is my personal life." He says in defeat. "What do you need?"

"You don't have to worry—"

"Money? This is about money? Then it's a no. If I gave you money now, you'll ask for more, but you'll tell the police anyway," he stands up, "I'm afraid you'll have to leave now!!!" He shouts, pointing his finger at me, I can almost hear something ringing on my ears, the few people in the coffee shop must've been staring now.

"I don't understand." I say, unmoved by his sudden outburst.

"You're blackmailing me and you don't understand," he scoffs. "Let me tell you this, you also broke the law," he says. I know what he is thinking now, how he will be able to get out of this mess. So slowly, I let my back rest on the chair.

"You'd tell your sys admin to take your servers down, wipe all the data. So I made sure to include the current time and location on my anonymous tip." I stand up with my bag.

His furious face is replaced by terror. "Wait. Hold on. I'll give you money. I'll pay you. How much do you want? I'll pay you."

I hear the police sirens wailing from here, that when I started to move. "I thought I was going to give you my service but I guess I'll be a help to the government to bring your kind down." Before I go out of the door, I stop and look at his frightened stature. "That's the part you were wrong, Leo. I don't give a shit about money."

It's bad. And it's good. It's in between. I don't know. All I know is that...it started there. And now, someone is following me.

"Roosevelt station..." I hear the voice looming over as the train approaches the platform. I stand up and walk near the automatic sliding door of the train. And just when it opens, I saw him. That guy who I've been seeing all day. Looking at me, smug even, I don't fear anything but sht, this is not good.

GREYHAT

(n) something good, something bad, something in between