Season 1 Episode 4- What is going on?!

He managed to get to the apartment complex without drawing attention to himself from the police. His unit was located on the twentieth floor, but the elevator was down for the entire week which meant he had to take the graffiti-covered stairs. The complex looked more like market square with people trying to hock their bootlegs and digital drugs.

Devi-NT didn’t take the time to admire the view, he was on a mission to clear his name which meant having to do some investigating in the online world of Trinity Fire. A MMORPG with an economy that may have single-handedly took the country out of debt. People traded money for in-game services or goods that you weren’t even going to get physically. The prices players paid were beyond ridiculous, but lucrative. Devi-NT couldn’t complain, since he was able to get out of doing full-time jobs with just fumbling around the game.

Unfortunately, his visit was more personal than business or pleasure. He started up his laptop and searched for the main page of the video game’s developers. The site was basically built like Fort Knox except with firewalls and encryptions in place of rifles and possibly bombs. This was a cakewalk for Devi-NT—he went through the sign up page and scoped through the player database by breaking into the admin page.

A new page appeared with usernames of players with their first name “Eustace”. The results showed two pages. All it took was just matching the IP address with the one he found at the murder scene.

“Seriously,” Devi-NT scrolled through the pages, “How many people have the name Eustace?”

One by one, he searched their accounts until the addresses matched up. Two minutes became twenty minutes, but his lengthy investigation finally paid off. The culprit was named Eustace Towers, a rival of his during the weekend raids, but what drove him to murder?

Finally, he found the matching numbers as well as his username “Don_Rey”, who was currently online. This gave him a chance to exploit Eustace’s mistakes and to rub it in his face that he was the superior coder. He soon found himself logging into the game to locate the person who framed him. The raids were only open for the next hour, so he had to make each minute count.

~ ~ ~

He signed into the game with his avatar ready to do some searching for Don_Rey. The main menu opened up with the new raids and duos from the latest updates, so he knew the murderer would be checking out the newest maps. Devi-NT sent out private messages to his guild members and other players asking if they’ve seen his rival around. As expected, a couple of them pointed him to the new raids. He made us way to the entrance zone to the map they told him about.

A bunch of avatars exited the map with their newly earned loot, ready to be equipped, sold, or traded for other rare items. Unfortunately for the young hacker, he had more important things to deal with. He entered the dungeon to locate Eustace, but for sure the killer may already be halfway through the map. Devi-NT’s high-leveled character immediately rushed through the field, easily destroying the creatures of the game. He overlooked the loot with an uneasy feeling of incompleteness.

“So. Much. Gold.” He struggled to continue forward, “I need to finish this. Quick!”

He swiftly cut his way through the map until he found a field covered in battles, either against a monster or a PVP fight. Devi-NT didn’t want to attract anymore unwanted attention and silently dashed through the field before finding the name he desperately sought to find.

“Hello,” Devi-NT smiled to himself, “Eustace.”

“What do you want?” Eustace replied back.

“You know what you did,” Devi-NT cut to the chase, “I have the evidence you sent me! Don’t play dumb with me!”

Eustace’s face probably changed from arrogance to fear. He opened up his menu and quickly exited the game. Devi-NT quickly followed suit, but not before leaving a remote-viewing spyware into Eustace’s computer. This would allow him to view the usage of Eustace’s computer. The videos he watched, the music he listened to, and even who he contacted. Nothing was out of reach for him—just how he liked it.

~ ~ ~

Devi-NT quickly traced the IP address to Eustace’s home. He decided to try scaling the side of the house to the window above him. He doubted that the killer would be expecting him since he promptly left the game. He inched closer to the window, but something bugged him about it. The room looked dark and a cracked hole showed itself through the moonlight. His heart began to pump with adrenaline to quickly climb the gutter up to the second story window.

His face turned pale with the hole looking back at him, it looked like a bullet hole. Devi-NT used the sleeve of his sweater to quietly open the already unlocked window.

He silently entered the room intent on confronting Eustace with everything he learned as well as the incriminating videos.

His heartbeat began to pump even harder after viewing the floor covered with blood-smeared path leading to the corner of the room. A man sat on the floor struggling to breathe with his hand over his abdomen.

“Oh my God!” Devi-NT’s night just continued to grow uglier by the minute. He rushed to the wounded man, applying pressure to the bloody wound.

“Tell them…” Eustace struggled to let air in his lungs, “That I’m finished.”

“They?” Devi-NT couldn’t make sense of his words, “Who’s they?!”

Before he could say another word, another bullet zipped through the window to Eustace’s head, successfully finishing the job. Devi-NT quickly dived behind the dead man’s bed. Two more shots fired, but missed him by inches. His breathing sped up to an uncomfortable pace, and with his escape blocked—his only option was going down the steps. His fear didn’t allow him to make a move, even if it was the right one.

“How in the hell am I supposed to get out of here?!” He said to himself with desperation in his voice.

A sudden chime from his phone got him off-guard.

Do you want to live?

Devi-NT replied with a “Yes”.

Crawl out of the room, don’t show your face.

Devi-NT followed the stranger’s order without hesitation. He managed to escape the room in one piece, but he knew the front door would be covered by the sniper.

His phone chimed again.

Sneak out the back, there’s a black car waiting for you.

The hacker stayed crouching, but managed to throw a pan at the glass door that led to the backyard.

Devi-NT texted back with a “Who are you?”

I’m the person who’s saving your ass. Make it quick.

As promised a black car waited by the house, but he saw no one inside. He wanted to check inside the car, but was quickly pulled in by a suited man. The car skidded off to the streets ahead.

“Who the hell are you?” Devi-NT gasped with confusion.

“You know,” The suited man looked at the rear-view mirror, “A simple ‘thank you’ works.”

“Someone shot a dude in front of me and tried to kill me along with him,” The scared hacker said, “Sorry, if my manners are not top priority.”

“You searched a little deep into the rabbit hole, kid,” The suited man pulled out a large pistol from under his seat, “You pissed off the wrong crowd.”

He drifted on a turn into an abandoned warehouse—a long way from Eustace’s house.

“Where are we going?” Devi-NT bewilderedly asked.

“Someone needs to give us answers,” The suited man got out of the car, “And I’ll be damned if I let him escape.”

“Us?” Devi-NT followed him out of the car, “Answers? What the hell is going on?!”

His unpleasant night was just getting started.

Season 1 Episode 3- A Man named Eustace

Devi-NT's analysis led him to the parking lot of OniTech, the police had already taken off for the night. All he had to look at was the leftover blood from the victim and media from his phone. He didn't want to risk staying longer in case the police came back, so he quickly reviewed the area.

The remaining scraps of the victim made the young hacker nauseous, and he soon regretted the decision of looking for clues. He examined the cameras around the building to look for alternate angles of the murder scene. Fortunately, he knew how to gain access to the security feed with his phone. Nothing else looked suspicious besides the blood stain on the concrete and the broken window.

Devi-NT searched for a port behind the building that led to the cameras and managed to connect his phone to it. The screen of his phone loaded up the current feed and used it to find the camera that caught the homicide.

"Now to locate the footage from earlier." Devi-NT scanned the archives from a few hours before to where he saw the supervisor alive. He located the file and played it to his discretion.

The footage revealed the supervisor clutching his bleeding arm, and escaping from someone. He looked desperate, and ill-prepared against his attacker. Devi-NT clenched his teeth in anticipation since he knew what was going to happen in the end of the video. The culprit slowly revealed itself to be a maintenance drone. If that machination had an expression it would be a sinister stare with a blood-thirsty grin.

The drone charged terrifying speed and force that it looked bone-crushing whenever it contacted with its victim. The supervisor struggled to get back on his feet, but was met with another devastating blow.

"The poor guy didn't stand a chance." Devi-NT said to himself.

The maintenance robot charged the knelt down man towards the window crushing his head and allowing him to fall to the concrete below.

The footage allowed the hacker to figure out the cause of death, but didn't bring up how it happened. He searched his files again to locate the "Humpty Dumpty" source code. The camera showed the drone doing the murder, but the source code was hacked using what he now possessed in his phone. The cameras showed the storage facility was located close by the entrance of OniTech.

He quickly hacked the lock to the storage facility and made his way to the drones. He tried to search for the one used in the murder, but the police had already snatched it as evidence. If they successfully find that the source code has been altered with the only owner being Devi-NT, then he will be the prime suspect of a murder he didn't even commit.

His only option was to open up another drone to see its update log and figure out who could've installed it. He plugged in his phone to one of the ports of the drone to open up the programming file. As expected, the code looked almost identical to the one he had in his phone, but all instances referring to cleaning or maintaining objects were changed to human. The drone's tools were built for industrial cleaning, so it violently "cleaned" the victim due to its new malicious coding.

The new discovery was that it was automated to target any human, not the supervisor specifically. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now with all the new knowledge of the crime scene, he can now begin to search for the person setting him up.

The update log opened to reveal who were the last people to visit the facility. The easy part was following the pattern of names to the most recent one which seemed different from the others along with a different schedule. The encryption to reveal the IP address was a simple task for the young hacker, but it exposed his own IP.

He used all his skills to overcome the additional security measures to locate the actual IP address which seemed to be a wild goose chase until he noticed something off from its properties. The folder name of the original code matched an online game he played at home. The user file name showed a name "Eustace".

Devi-NT decided to head home and get on the game to locate the person named Eustace. He hoped the police had already been thrown off by the IP address change from earlier, so heading home wouldn't be mistake. He clenched his teeth during the walk home in fear to the fact that he'll be confronting a murderer, maybe even a serial killer.

Season 1 Episode 2- Open Source

A young man stared into his phone with an intent of victory. The figures in his screen flew back and forth with miniaturized bullets zipping past the screen. The train-way zipped through the tracks to its several stops of the night.

This is what I get for catching the late-night showing. The young man tried to fight off sleep since he was inside a train car and he would miss his stop. To him, the night didn't feel any different other than looking at vagrants use the train-way as a hostel, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

He looked back on his phone and continued playing his action game where he escaped from the reality of the night. The game was interrupted by the next stop, which a couple of people squeezed their way out and only two people entered. They were dressed the same and seemed older than the young man. He profiled the two just like they were profiling him and the passengers.

Cops, He thought to himself, I wonder why they are taking the train-way.

He ignored them to continue his game since it was online, so therefore no pauses. The black-suited pair stayed standing among the homeless and the passengers. The female of the duo looked into her scanner, which had the map of their investigation and inched closer to the young man.

The young man looked up without a clue of what was happening to give them a smile. He tapped his phone, something inside his phone halted the train-way and he dashed off to the exit. He sealed the doors with his phone, allowing him an easy escape. He jumped to the neighboring rooftop where the detectives couldn't reach him.

"What the hell is their problem?" He said to himself. He didn't want to waste his escape standing on some building. He quickly searched for the fire escape and made his way down to streets below.

He's done some questionable things, but as of recently, he was clean. No DoS, logic bombs, not even cracking. Something didn't trigger right with him or his stomach. His phone chirped with a notification.

"Unknown?" He read the email address, but it was encrypted with a random combination numbers and letters.

It read:

Dear Devi-NT,

Enjoy the company.

The message included some attachments of some files. His curiosity piqued-the hacker now known as Devi-NT opened the folder to reveal the photos, to his disgust. They were different angles of the murder along with a video of it taking place. The final file labeled with "Humpty Dumpty" was a code that he couldn't make sense of in his current circumstance.

Devi-NT quickly made his way to a nearby coffee shop to get his thoughts together and figure out his next move. He ordered a mango tea and sat down nervously twitching his legs. If his goal was to look inconspicuous, then he failed. His only answer at the moment was to change his IP address to throw off the detectives, who were probably halfway across town by now.

He thought about the message and tried to break through the encryption to locate the source, but it led him to ten different IP addresses. His searched seemed fruitless, but he needed to move out of the area quick before the police bump into him again. He chugged down his mango tea and slipped away into the street.

The streets were filled with people making their way to the various establishments in the area. The young hacker used the crowds to hide while he tried to track down the messenger again. He was afraid of going home since the cops were able to track him, but he couldn't understand how if his previous IP address was encrypted with an advanced version of DarkSec, an open-source encryption lock he created for users which allowed them to surf the web without any worries of cookies or other nasty things. The code was open for people to study or build upon, but it seemed to have backfired on him.

There are about five hundred people who downloaded the code, Devi-NT thought to himself, But who would want to reverse engineer it?

His code was obviously going to be used for illegal things, but he never thought about someone using it for murder. His only solution was to investigate where the murder took place and the only clues he had was in the photos and videos he received earlier. He looped the videos and viewed the video repeatedly, with each time searching a new area of the file. Devi-NT wasn't exactly a professional at investigations, but he pieced together what he could find. The name tag of the victim grabbed his attention and zoomed in to reveal the name and location of the body.

His first place of interest was OniTech, but he doubted the body would still be there if the police already got there along with other pieces of evidence. Someone had something to do with it and he's aiming to put Devi-NT along with his DarkNet code into the crosshairs.

Season 1 Episode 1- Mad Machine

The red and blue lights flickered through the dark streets. Police were scattered everywhere throughout the factory's parking lot of OniTech.

A black sedan drove through the blockade where the police had sealed off with a holo-barrier. The vehicle was scanned to insure the other officers that it was indeed someone in their force.

Two black-suited detectives exited the vehicle. A man in his early forties tapped out a cigarette from his pack and lit it while his partner a woman in her mid-thirties went ahead to the crime scene.

"What's going on?" The black-suited woman walked to the officers who were casing the area.

"Detective Brice," One of the officers was holding a bag of evidence, "This one is really out of the ordinary."

"Looks like a basic murder to me," Detective Brice said, "Any suspects?"

"That's the thing," The officer scratched his head, "We have only one."

"Where is he?"

The police officers led to the two detectives into a storage facility where the maintenance drones charged their batteries for the night. One of the drones was oddly fixed in its bay, which didn't give it a chance to charge.

"The suspect is right in there." The police officer left back to the murder scene while the detectives investigated the area.

"What do you think about the whole scenario, Mark? She shined her phone through the shadows of the room.

"Well, that drone says it all, don't it?" The detective noticed the arms of the robot caked in what looked like blood.

"How is that possible?" Detective Brice turned to her partner, "Doesn't the law of robotics still apply?"

"Exactly," He said, "An accident would've been prevented due to its programming."

"So someone altered the programming?"

"We need a tech expert to check out this drone!" Her partner shouted to one of the officers.

She never doubted his intuition and with the types of cases they get-she was amazed by his cool demeanor. Maybe it was the amount of time he spent doing cases like these.

"Detective Ingram," One of the officers went up to Mark, "Someone will be coming in shortly."

The detectives continued going through the evidence hopefully to find some kind of clue that would lead to the culprit. Unfortunately, nothing gave them any leads. Whoever hacked into the drones knew how to cover their tracks. Hopefully, if their tech expert can crack the problem before another drone can be used.

A younger man showed up with a tablet under his arm. His jacket had police stamped across the back to signify to the other officers that he was okay.

"Detective Brice and Detective Ingram," An officer escorted the tech expert, "This is the techie."

"Can you check out the drone and see who had last access to it?" Detective Brice asked.

"Not a problem," The tech expert replied, "I'll have the results soon."

"Holly," Mark turned to Detective Brice, "Remember the McPherson Bank murder?"

"The one where they lost almost twenty million overnight?"

"Yeah," Mark exhaled, "I feel it's the same bastard."

"Two murders in one month," Holly sighed, "Pretty ballsy."

"I remember the days when you can wipe your own ass and not be afraid of your shower head coming to strangle you while you were distracted." Mark flicked his cigarette. They walked to the entrance of the building where the corpse laid. The blood covered the pavement like a crushed watermelon.

Holly scanned the windows to see how the murder may have happened. One of the windows was broken, but the body looked excessively mutilated for it to be just a fall.

"Who's the victim?" Mark looked at the body without a sense of aversion.

"Charles Windsor," Holly peeked at the name tag, "He's one of the supervisors in the building."

"So it can be an employee who was pissed off," Mark scratched his chin, "Although, I can't shake the first theory."

"I guess we're going to have to wait for the results."

"I agree," Mark lit another cigarette, "Can't be chasing our tails."

The pair waited for the coroner to pick up Charles' body to perform the necessary autopsies. The night felt slow as the minute dragged on to the point things felt pointless.

The tech expert finally finished his search with some number shown on his tablet.

"I got good news and some bad news."

"Hit us with the bad news first, kid." Mark inhaled his cigarette.

"Whoever hacked into the drone is beyond genius and used different encryptions to hide his IP address." The tech scrolled through his tablet.

"The good?" Holly looked at the tablet as well.

"We may have discovered the source address." The tech expert smiled.

"Meaning?" Mark didn't want to waste any time trying to decipher his words.

"If we have his IP address," His partner simplified it, "We have the killer."

"What are we waiting for?" Mark walked to the car. "Let's get this sonofabitch."

"Good work officer." Holly patted the young tech whiz on the back.

The duo jumped into the car then activated the sirens. The long wait paid off with a nice, big lead that can get them the arrest. The younger detective loaded up the IP address to a GPS system to track the computer.

"That's weird," Holly zoomed into the 3D map, "The computer seems to be moving."

"What's the direction?" Mark sped through the traffic lights.

"It's above us, but it's moving pretty quick."

"The train-way."

A subway in the sky was the nickname of the train-way. This mode of transportation traveled in the air above the buildings, but was large enough to carry a respectable amount of passengers. The only to get to the train-way cars was in the many stops or using some kind of air transportation. Their budget only allowed them to do the former.

The map showed them the various stops and they expected the one close to the Bio-Med Hospital, where the next stop was scheduled.

The pair ran up the steps to the platform and waited for the train-way to make its arranged stop.

"Don't get your gun out," Mark said calmly, "We don't want to spook the bastard."

"Who is this cold-hearted monster?" Holly breathed deep within diaphragm.

With any luck, this arrest would prevent another murder, but who is waiting for them among the crowd of commuters?