Conspiracy by Zanna
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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Every time I type one of these intro's I wonder if people it read at all, and for those four who do, if they enjoy it. Just about when I'm about to give up on all this, I remember the enjoyment I get from reading other authors intro's, so why deny you yours ? Intro's are a funny thing, they can either reveal the author's personality completely or can fog it up even more between the anonymity of the net.
I know that it's been a while since my last post, but we've been having technical difficulties here at Madhouse Central so my apologies.
And the lucky winner to that 1013 competition is ... Lexie ! Congrats and continue reading. For those of you who missed the clues completely, there were exactly three 1013 references and no, I am not going to name them.
Zanna
zannamjs@yahoo.com
Conspiracy
part 8
by Zanna
Reynard's Bench coffee house
Washington D.C.
Senator Whitehead usually came here in the evenings, but tonight he derived no pleasure from it at all. Tonight he was meeting HIM. The coordinator. The bell tingled and Whitehead glanced up to see and elderly gentleman walk towards him.
"Where is Midea ?" the old man wheezed
"Joining us soon, would you like to sit down ?"
The old man complied and the Senator hastily ordered another refill before his guest could protest about his drink of choice. When the waitress brought his Mochachinno over, the old man ordered his usual scotch on the rocks. Before she could protest about the lack of a liquor license, the old man slipped her a twenty and she murmured something about five minutes.
The bell tingled again and Jonathan Midea entered the shop cautiously.
"You certainly took your time." the old man glared accusingly.
"So you would prefer that I be followed rather than be late ?"
"Who was the tail ?" Whitehead asked.
"That idiot Sam. Lost him five miles outside of Blue Cove. Where's my cup ?"
Whitehead sighed and signaled the waitress for another cup. The three men remained silent until both the coffee and scotch had been served and the perky waitress disappeared behind the till.
"Midea, why did you call this meeting ?" Whitehead began. The sooner they started, the sooner he could get out of here.
"That Pretender and Parker woman, it's worse than we thought. They have taken my Pretender and placed him under Sydney's care. They have formed their own Special Operations Group and they've got a hunting license to boot. They have discovered the virus and ..."
"Calm down, what do you mean they have discovered the virus ? I thought it was untraceable."
"It is, I mean they still think it's a worm and they have no idea what it's capable of but ..."
"So why are you worried ?"
"Jarod had a hunch that that wasn't all that it was programmed to do, so he set Broots on the damn thing to figure out all there is to know. One of the flaws of the worm is that it remembers where and when it was activated. From then on it's child's play to trace it back to us."
"What about the boy ? Will Sydney's teachings hinder the project ?"
"Unless he instills values that directly contradicts us, no. If they were to analyze his blood however, they would instantly recognize the gene and this will only add fuel to their fire."
"The red files were dicey enough son, but how certain are you that they will work ?"
"You're looking at living proof sir. Besides. your daughter qualifies as a purple file, since she is a mixture of both projects."
"I'll leave it in your capable hands then Whitehead. Midea, do you think that Steven could surpass Jarod's potential ?"
"Easily."
"Sir, about the termination order ..."
"It's still a go. But I want it done in ways that doesn't make it look too unnatural. The last thing we need is another Pretender out for revenge."
Whitehead grinned in anticipation. He was so looking forward to getting his hands on his employer's daughter. To watch her squirm under his hands, making her beg for him to fill her and then to finally slit her throat. Whitehead was having a hard time keeping his expression cool.
Mr. Parker stood up and swallowed the last of his scotch.
"Good evening gentlemen." and walked out into the night
Simlab 12
The Centre
Blue Cove, Delaware
Broots arrived five minutes later; hair wet, clothes in disarray and a steaming paper cup of coffee in one hand and his laptop in the other. He was waiting for the usual teasing greeting but the somber atmosphere quickly made him realize that this wasn't an ordinary meeting.
Like Sydney earlier, Broots detected the tension between Jarod and Miss Parker but thought nothing of it. He had seen plenty of weird things in Jarod's house and it had been a toss up between the fact that they had been sleeping together or Jarod's weird taste in art that had creeped him out. It did make a great ambience for watching horror movies though.
Broots didn't see Steven and thought that he had gone back to Dr. Midea, but as soon as Broots formed the thought, Steven appeared and walked towards Debbie. Broots no longer questioned Debbie's presence in the Special Ops Group, having long ago come to the conclusion that she was a valuable member of the team.
He gently placed his coffee on the table and (not so gently) his laptop. Sydney and Angelo was absent from the table but Broots didn't worry about that. He was however puzzled by the seating arrangements. Jarod sitting at one end of the table and Miss Parker at the other. Debbie and Steven sitting on one side and he, alone, on the other. Miss Parker was lighting up a cigarette and Broots nervously looked at Jarod for his reaction.
There was no reaction. It was as if they were ignoring each other.
"Let's begin." Miss Parker barked
"Why don't you fill Broots in then ?" Jarod shot back and stood up, walking towards the dark corner. For the first time Broots noticed Sydney and Angelo.
"Broots! Over here." Miss Parker snapped her fingers
"I am going to give you the abbreviated version of what happened so pay attention. Firstly, we have Lyle on our sorry asses. It's not that big a problem since I know what he's after, but he saw Steven outside the Centre and the Triumvirate will want to know why. We will need to think up some really convincing reason other than the fact that he was out with your daughter."
"What ?"
"Daddy, didn't you listen when I told you this morning ?"
"Secondly," Miss Parker continued
"Jarod and I have a hit out on us. Someone is paying a lot of money to observe and neutralise. As of this moment we are on code blue alert. Suspect anything and everyone that hasn't to do with this team directly."
"Finally, we haven't seen that last of Raines's hobbies. How much do you know of the Blue Files ?"
"Blue files ? I thought there were only Red ones."
Jarod stepped back into the light and chipped in.
"Blue Files was a project opened by Raines between Prodigy projects. The earliest one that we know of dates back almost fifty years and the most recent, five . The project involves destroying certain parts of the brain, while enhancing others."
Miss Parker cut in again.
"From what we could piece together, the area that it enhances is the part where targeting, manipulation and deceit lies. The part that it destroys are those of self-doubt and passiveness. Most of the subjects are avid hunters and very little can restrain them from their prey. In one of the files that we found, a candidate waited for nearly six years until he murdered his antagonist."
"Where did you guys get this information ? And why does it concern us ?"
"Where we got the information is not important, what matters is our mission."
"What is our mission Jarod ?" Miss Parker hissed and lit up another cigarette.
"Um ... before you guys get into that, I have something you should see." Broots piped up.
He turned his laptop's display screen towards the others. It clearly showed a clock ticking off seconds, minutes and days. According to the clock, it had slightly less that seven days left until zero.
"This clock is ticking off the time until a virus is let loose on the Centre's mainframe. Because all the computers of the Centre and all it's field offices are connected to the mainframe, it'll spread like a brushfire. The virus will be delete everything. Every file, every command and every job or project that the Centre has had in it's entire existence will be deleted."
"Where did it come from ?" Steven asked curiously.
"Remember that flaw that I tracked to an open terminal a while back ? I believe your old mentor was one of the suspects. Anyway, what was a flaw was actually a dataworm."
"Datawaorm ?" Sydney asked
"A dataworm is almost like a courier who works for the underground. It goes into hostile territory, grabs the information it needs and then gets out of the system masked as something else, usually as an e-mail. Now a courier can take information as well as leave information behind."
"In this case the virus" Jarod said.
"Exactly ! The trick is just how to delete it without it destroying the Centre."
"Isn't that just a little bit melodramatic ?"
"No, the Centre is a covert organization who deals with information. If you delete everything that the Centre did for the last sixty years, an unimaginable amount of information will be lost. We'll have to start over."
"Giving a wide enough gap for our competitors to take over the market. Son of a bitch !" Miss Parker started pacing.
"I've got a question. What's stopping us from deleting the virus ?" Sydney asked.
"If you attempt to delete either the dataworm or the virus, the virus will automatically start deleting the files. Who ever created this sucker sure knew what he was doing."
"Where is it hiding ?"
"In the main .exe files. The reason why we haven't detected the virus so far is because it's been hitching rides by using inter-office e-mail."
"I know how to stop it." Steven chipped in.
"What ?!"
"Jonathan asked me to create a virus exactly like that a couple of months ago for a SIM. What he didn't know is that I always put in a failsafe. The only problem is that I will have to work for at least 36 hours non-stop to hack into the Centre mainframe from the outside. I'm not sure, but I think that you can only deactivate the virus five minutes before it activates. "
"Why do you have to break in from the outside ?"
"It's kind of a private joke. My bargaining chip if you will. I knew that at some point someone would want to activate the virus so I figured that I could use it to get out of the Centre."
"Well, here's you chance to prove it. " Sydney gently laid his hand on Steven's shoulder.
I know that it's been a while since my last post, but we've been having technical difficulties here at Madhouse Central so my apologies.
And the lucky winner to that 1013 competition is ... Lexie ! Congrats and continue reading. For those of you who missed the clues completely, there were exactly three 1013 references and no, I am not going to name them.
Zanna
zannamjs@yahoo.com
part 8
by Zanna
Reynard's Bench coffee house
Washington D.C.
Senator Whitehead usually came here in the evenings, but tonight he derived no pleasure from it at all. Tonight he was meeting HIM. The coordinator. The bell tingled and Whitehead glanced up to see and elderly gentleman walk towards him.
"Where is Midea ?" the old man wheezed
"Joining us soon, would you like to sit down ?"
The old man complied and the Senator hastily ordered another refill before his guest could protest about his drink of choice. When the waitress brought his Mochachinno over, the old man ordered his usual scotch on the rocks. Before she could protest about the lack of a liquor license, the old man slipped her a twenty and she murmured something about five minutes.
The bell tingled again and Jonathan Midea entered the shop cautiously.
"You certainly took your time." the old man glared accusingly.
"So you would prefer that I be followed rather than be late ?"
"Who was the tail ?" Whitehead asked.
"That idiot Sam. Lost him five miles outside of Blue Cove. Where's my cup ?"
Whitehead sighed and signaled the waitress for another cup. The three men remained silent until both the coffee and scotch had been served and the perky waitress disappeared behind the till.
"Midea, why did you call this meeting ?" Whitehead began. The sooner they started, the sooner he could get out of here.
"That Pretender and Parker woman, it's worse than we thought. They have taken my Pretender and placed him under Sydney's care. They have formed their own Special Operations Group and they've got a hunting license to boot. They have discovered the virus and ..."
"Calm down, what do you mean they have discovered the virus ? I thought it was untraceable."
"It is, I mean they still think it's a worm and they have no idea what it's capable of but ..."
"So why are you worried ?"
"Jarod had a hunch that that wasn't all that it was programmed to do, so he set Broots on the damn thing to figure out all there is to know. One of the flaws of the worm is that it remembers where and when it was activated. From then on it's child's play to trace it back to us."
"What about the boy ? Will Sydney's teachings hinder the project ?"
"Unless he instills values that directly contradicts us, no. If they were to analyze his blood however, they would instantly recognize the gene and this will only add fuel to their fire."
"The red files were dicey enough son, but how certain are you that they will work ?"
"You're looking at living proof sir. Besides. your daughter qualifies as a purple file, since she is a mixture of both projects."
"I'll leave it in your capable hands then Whitehead. Midea, do you think that Steven could surpass Jarod's potential ?"
"Easily."
"Sir, about the termination order ..."
"It's still a go. But I want it done in ways that doesn't make it look too unnatural. The last thing we need is another Pretender out for revenge."
Whitehead grinned in anticipation. He was so looking forward to getting his hands on his employer's daughter. To watch her squirm under his hands, making her beg for him to fill her and then to finally slit her throat. Whitehead was having a hard time keeping his expression cool.
Mr. Parker stood up and swallowed the last of his scotch.
"Good evening gentlemen." and walked out into the night
Simlab 12
The Centre
Blue Cove, Delaware
Broots arrived five minutes later; hair wet, clothes in disarray and a steaming paper cup of coffee in one hand and his laptop in the other. He was waiting for the usual teasing greeting but the somber atmosphere quickly made him realize that this wasn't an ordinary meeting.
Like Sydney earlier, Broots detected the tension between Jarod and Miss Parker but thought nothing of it. He had seen plenty of weird things in Jarod's house and it had been a toss up between the fact that they had been sleeping together or Jarod's weird taste in art that had creeped him out. It did make a great ambience for watching horror movies though.
Broots didn't see Steven and thought that he had gone back to Dr. Midea, but as soon as Broots formed the thought, Steven appeared and walked towards Debbie. Broots no longer questioned Debbie's presence in the Special Ops Group, having long ago come to the conclusion that she was a valuable member of the team.
He gently placed his coffee on the table and (not so gently) his laptop. Sydney and Angelo was absent from the table but Broots didn't worry about that. He was however puzzled by the seating arrangements. Jarod sitting at one end of the table and Miss Parker at the other. Debbie and Steven sitting on one side and he, alone, on the other. Miss Parker was lighting up a cigarette and Broots nervously looked at Jarod for his reaction.
There was no reaction. It was as if they were ignoring each other.
"Let's begin." Miss Parker barked
"Why don't you fill Broots in then ?" Jarod shot back and stood up, walking towards the dark corner. For the first time Broots noticed Sydney and Angelo.
"Broots! Over here." Miss Parker snapped her fingers
"I am going to give you the abbreviated version of what happened so pay attention. Firstly, we have Lyle on our sorry asses. It's not that big a problem since I know what he's after, but he saw Steven outside the Centre and the Triumvirate will want to know why. We will need to think up some really convincing reason other than the fact that he was out with your daughter."
"What ?"
"Daddy, didn't you listen when I told you this morning ?"
"Secondly," Miss Parker continued
"Jarod and I have a hit out on us. Someone is paying a lot of money to observe and neutralise. As of this moment we are on code blue alert. Suspect anything and everyone that hasn't to do with this team directly."
"Finally, we haven't seen that last of Raines's hobbies. How much do you know of the Blue Files ?"
"Blue files ? I thought there were only Red ones."
Jarod stepped back into the light and chipped in.
"Blue Files was a project opened by Raines between Prodigy projects. The earliest one that we know of dates back almost fifty years and the most recent, five . The project involves destroying certain parts of the brain, while enhancing others."
Miss Parker cut in again.
"From what we could piece together, the area that it enhances is the part where targeting, manipulation and deceit lies. The part that it destroys are those of self-doubt and passiveness. Most of the subjects are avid hunters and very little can restrain them from their prey. In one of the files that we found, a candidate waited for nearly six years until he murdered his antagonist."
"Where did you guys get this information ? And why does it concern us ?"
"Where we got the information is not important, what matters is our mission."
"What is our mission Jarod ?" Miss Parker hissed and lit up another cigarette.
"Um ... before you guys get into that, I have something you should see." Broots piped up.
He turned his laptop's display screen towards the others. It clearly showed a clock ticking off seconds, minutes and days. According to the clock, it had slightly less that seven days left until zero.
"This clock is ticking off the time until a virus is let loose on the Centre's mainframe. Because all the computers of the Centre and all it's field offices are connected to the mainframe, it'll spread like a brushfire. The virus will be delete everything. Every file, every command and every job or project that the Centre has had in it's entire existence will be deleted."
"Where did it come from ?" Steven asked curiously.
"Remember that flaw that I tracked to an open terminal a while back ? I believe your old mentor was one of the suspects. Anyway, what was a flaw was actually a dataworm."
"Datawaorm ?" Sydney asked
"A dataworm is almost like a courier who works for the underground. It goes into hostile territory, grabs the information it needs and then gets out of the system masked as something else, usually as an e-mail. Now a courier can take information as well as leave information behind."
"In this case the virus" Jarod said.
"Exactly ! The trick is just how to delete it without it destroying the Centre."
"Isn't that just a little bit melodramatic ?"
"No, the Centre is a covert organization who deals with information. If you delete everything that the Centre did for the last sixty years, an unimaginable amount of information will be lost. We'll have to start over."
"Giving a wide enough gap for our competitors to take over the market. Son of a bitch !" Miss Parker started pacing.
"I've got a question. What's stopping us from deleting the virus ?" Sydney asked.
"If you attempt to delete either the dataworm or the virus, the virus will automatically start deleting the files. Who ever created this sucker sure knew what he was doing."
"Where is it hiding ?"
"In the main .exe files. The reason why we haven't detected the virus so far is because it's been hitching rides by using inter-office e-mail."
"I know how to stop it." Steven chipped in.
"What ?!"
"Jonathan asked me to create a virus exactly like that a couple of months ago for a SIM. What he didn't know is that I always put in a failsafe. The only problem is that I will have to work for at least 36 hours non-stop to hack into the Centre mainframe from the outside. I'm not sure, but I think that you can only deactivate the virus five minutes before it activates. "
"Why do you have to break in from the outside ?"
"It's kind of a private joke. My bargaining chip if you will. I knew that at some point someone would want to activate the virus so I figured that I could use it to get out of the Centre."
"Well, here's you chance to prove it. " Sydney gently laid his hand on Steven's shoulder.
