"Hmm, who could this be?" Varvara squinted her eyes and straightened her back to face her monitor properly. "Was this man trying to put up a competition between me and a random rookie? So shameless", Varvara sneered in disdain.
Let me show you what true hacking is", with anger in her eyes, she changed her target to the connection on her target's computer and began running a series of commands to disconnect whoever had initiated that connection.
Unfortunately, despite all she tried, she couldn't remove the connection. It made it look like the connection was part of the target's network. "You are good, you are good", she nodded slightly and ran a backend attack on the computer. The idea was that it triggers the target's computer so that it rejects any incoming connection, even at the cost of her connection. But she had plans.
While it worked, it only managed to flicker the connection a little. Varvara frown deepened. Who the hell is this person? Was there anyone better than her in this field?
She felt stupid. While she failed to remove whoever was connected to her target's, she had alerted the person of her attack. Maybe right now, the anonymous hacker would have been aware of her attacks.
This was something that had never happened to her before. Even when she hacked military servers, she always make sure she cover her tracks. Even if there were hundred cyber security experts on the server, she could easily gain access and take whatever she wants and quietly leave, without alerting even one of them.
That was until now.
Instead of getting angry, Varvara was excited. She had finally met her match. She was too good at her work that she felt no one could match her in a thousand years, as a result, she felt lonely at being at the top.
With sheer excitement, her hands flew all over her keyboards crazily. She imagined the mysterious hacker was competing with her, trying to counter her attacks.
"Why would he tell me to close my laptop lid?"
Varvara suddenly heard a girl's voice from the microphone of her target. For a moment, she was confused. Was that a girl's voice she just heard? She has not even asked herself who was even using the laptop she was trying to hack. How could she be that stupid?
What is even wrong with her these days? She was becoming careless, and that was scaring her. If she had made a single mistake and landed in the hands of the authorities, she would be instantly doomed.
However, the girl mentioned that she wanted to close her laptop. That would mean she would lose connection to her target. It could be that her mysterious hacker had somehow informed her target that she should turn off her laptop. Maybe the hacker was losing the battle of computer possession to her.
Maybe he, or she was not even as great as she thought. With a sigh, she felt lonely again. Although she had speculated that the unknown hacker was inferior to her, the realization disappointed her.
Putting all things aside, she was about to turn off her laptop! She hastily threw everything she had, but it returned with countless failures. Why was MacBook this damned secured?
When she realized she no longer had the luxury of time, she finally dropped her trump card. She grabbed her flash drive and uploaded her self-written remote access trojan malware and uploaded to her network.
Just as the upload displayed success, she suddenly lost the connection. She stared at the "connection lost" bar on her screen in a daze. That was so close.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
For a moment, she was at loss. Why would the person Mark sent to compete with her help his target? Varvara could not think of an explanation. If it was not Mark that sent that hacker, then who would it be?
The only way to answer those questions was to call Mark. He has an explaining to do. She took out a briefcase filled with cellphones and picked a Nokia burner cellphone and insert a new SIM she bought yesterday.
After two rings, the line connected. "Hello, who is this?" The voice sounds hopeless as usual. "Are you trying to joke with me? What the hell are you doing Mark Ardolf?"
Mark seemed to knew who was talking. "What do you mean?" He asked sceptically. "What do I mean? You paid me to take a document on a kid's laptop and pitched a competition between me and some random guy on the internet, I mean what the f**k?"
The voice on the other end was silent for a moment. "Look Natasha, I didn't hire anyone apart from you. I mean you are the best in the market, so why would I…". Varvara suddenly interrupted him.
"So, who the hell was he, or she? It could not be a coincidence that the computer you told me to hack into was already hacked by another hacker. Maybe there was another person that is interested in whatever was in that little girl's computer."
"No, no, no one knows about this except me. It's not possible that anyone would know about it. It's… it's not possible", the voice started panicking.
"Quiet down old hag, it was only speculation. However, I can fix this small issue. I only need you to upgrade this service", Varvara said flatly.
"What do you mean by upgrading this service? You want me to pay you more? Are you trying to rob me, because that's what you are trying to do".
"Look, I can just do this, I would get the documents you want, and that would be the last you'll hear from me. As for whoever was connected to that computer, he probably would still take those documents and claims it as their own, rendering yours useless. Or…or, you could pay me to double, and I'll solve the two problems. You get your document, yours and yours only".
"Natasha, please, I beg you. My bank account is almost dried. Please do this for me. It took me a lot to get that $700 to give to you. I'm begging you…"
"Cut the crap. You think I give a f**k how much you are and how broke you are. If I don't get this money by this evening, consider our partnership revoked."
"Alright please, do it, just… do it. I'll send you the money. But Natasha, you are killing me. This is the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life, meddling with a hacker."
Varvara rolled her eyes. "Well, life is all about regrets, you've got to learn from them, otherwise, how would we proceed?" She disconnected the call and smiled slightly. "Suck them dry while you can", she mumbled to herself.
"Varva…", her mom called. "I'm coming mom!" Varvara said with her dialect and ran upstairs.