Varvara cleaned the mess her mom made on the floor, which was a usual thing because of her condition. Being paralyzed is not a pretty condition. The paralysis had affected her brain significantly, causing her to forget a lot of things, including her already dead husband.
Varvara was very lucky that her mom still recognized her, otherwise, it would just add to her pile of distress. Her mother had thrown away the food she had earlier handed to her.
However, this was not what bothered her. It was the mysterious hacker that caused her to break a sweat. Who was he, or she? She had to get more information, and extracting information is what she was very good at.
So as soon as she was done, she walked down to the basement and booted her computer. She used to regularly shut down her computer as protection against tracking from the FBI, CIA, or other smaller parties who wanted her dead.
But this time, it was different. She hesitated to shut it down, afraid that she might lose the computer she had been tracking for a while. The MacBook has been inactive for a long time, and it worried her.
Of course, it wasn't because she was afraid of Mark. She wasn't afraid to steal his money and block him. That would be very easy for her.
What she was scared of was that the hacker might be better in her arts than her. Even thinking about it makes her mad. No one was better than her, she was the best!
With a little motivation drive, she launched the terminal and began typing codes. New windows began popping up, some of which were Google maps, others were databases from security agencies.
This was where she showed off her expertise. It didn't take long before two results were displayed on her second monitor. "There you are noob", she mumbled smugly.
However, what she read shocked her. This was not what she had expected to see. The first result was a coordinate that pointed to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
"What the hell?!" Varvara almost spat out blood. She looked into the database, and the profile shown was a description of an 89-year-old woman living in Japan.
She knew this was a farce. Out of desperation, she clicked on the second search result, and while this showed something useful, it didn't provide much information to her at all.
The profile was a description of a 38-year-old woman bearing the name of "Mary Smith". Frowning, she did a little digging and saw that she was a wife to a man bearing Andrew Smith. They both lived in the capital of Massachusetts.
However, they were both dead, and an article published two years ago stated that they both died from a kitchen fire outbreak. What connection do these people have to do with the hacker? Were they his/her parent? Varvara thought this was interesting.
She also realized that they had one child, which the article didn't mention. She made another deep search, but the name of their kid wasn't appearing.
Varvara was already coming to a realization, but she wasn't sure yet. She opened Meta and searched for both parents' names, which popped up without much hassle.
There were photos of them together and on vacation. But something was amiss. Their kid wasn't among those photos. What was happening?
This was when she came up with her theory. The kid in question was the hacker troubling her. And the fact that he couldn't find him meant that he had deleted himself from the internet to avoid detection.
Suddenly Varvara became very aware of the hacker. If he was so good at infiltrating high-end secure social media servers, he won't have any problem finding her.
All of the ego she had for herself disappeared. While she had believed she was the only pro hacker in the entire world, the reality was that there were others probably better than her. Some might even be working for the government.
This realization scared her a little. This was a feeling she hasn't felt in a long time.
The sudden ringing of her burner phone almost jolted her out of her seat. She picked it up and saw the caller ID which said "Mark Dick Head". This guy, Varvara hissed.
The thought to block him surfaced in her mind, but she held back. She had bigger problems right now to deal with, and Mark was a low priority for her.
Suddenly, she had a brilliant idea. Since she knew the location of Andrew and Mary, she would easily locate the nearby schools where they might have admitted their kid to.
All she just needed was to get into the schools' databases, and voila, she would find her target's information, that's if he or she ever went to any school nearby. She just needed to be lucky.
So she did just that. She scanned the schools in the entirety of London, then she began narrowing down.
Multiple pinging later, she landed at two schools: Marquee Middle School and ChrisValle High School. She first tried the former school and searched for the last name of "Smith". There were fifteen results.
But after checking their backgrounds, she noticed that they didn't match Andrew and Mary's profiles. They all still had living parents.
At this point, she was already in her zone. She was very determined to find this person, no matter what it takes. She did the same search attempts and came up with thirty search results.
Fifteen minutes later, there were two search results: Mangala Kenneth Smith and James Nicolas Smith. One of these two must be her target.
However, she ran into an issue. Both of these people were orphans. Their parents were both dead too. Varvara made a quick check at their date of death, then matched it with Mangala's parent's death.
It didn't match, which meant that James Smith was her target. He was a ten-year-old boy at the time of documenting his admission log, which meant that now, he would be almost twelve. His records show that he was a genius, not failing any of his tests even by one mark.
But this was not what made Varvara sure that it was the mysterious hacker. All of the students in the school's database had a passport tagged on their records, all except James Smith.
Even an idiot would realize that he was attempting to hide from the internet. Varvara wanted to laugh out in delight. She had found him. Now it was time to destroy him, finish him once and for all.
But her guts told her something wasn't right. If he was very good at infiltrating high-security servers, surely he wouldn't find it hard for him to erase his name from school records.
Varvara was still deep in thought when she noticed a terminal window open and close. It was so fast, that she couldn't even react quick.
She suddenly broke a sweat, knowing what had happened. The hacker had led her to a trap!