DANGERS IN THE DARK

18:30:20 hrs

A buzzing erratic sounded on the walkie-talkie. Suddenly it crackled and Rick Riviera heard the strangest conversation in his life.

A deep husky voice said, “Shorty. Package will arrive at twenty minutes past twenty hundred hours tonight at the old mill by the end of Silver Arrow Bridge“

“Roger that Tall-O”, replied a girlish voice.

Then the walkie-talkie went dead.

Excitement and puzzlement both fiercely hit Rick’s mind. This was amazing. A vital piece of information in a coincidental frequency catch-up. Too good to be true and too dangerous to try. It sounded like men up to no good and could be illegal business. Rick thought of reporting to the cops and immediately dismissed the thought. He never liked the cops, being a taxi driver. He had the night off. So he decided to check it out but not to get too involved with it.

Rick lost his parents to a deadly car accident and grew up in an orphanage. He turned out to be a natural at computers by the age of eleven. His mindset never really suited him for a regular job. Therefore, he built a hi-tech computer lab underneath his home for developing his own ideas and posed as a taxi driver to the outside world.

Rick’s sole ambition in life is to join the “Black Cross” an elitist organization of hacker cum spies across the world that have altered the world’s perception of hacking. It is no cakewalk to join them. Rick had been preparing ever since he knew about them. He is waiting for their call for the past two years.

Rick’s latest development is that of a computer virus that camouflages itself as the antivirus to enter the user’s computer and instead of scanning and removing malware, it nurtures them until the whole system crashes. It was when he was working on this idea that his personal walkie-talkie disturbed him.

 

19:59:55 hrs

Rick’s digital time generator connected to a powerful refractive telescope that determines the spatial orientation of celestial bodies struck twenty hundred earth hours. Rick shuffled his algorithm sheets into a pile on the table, put on his jacket and exited the house with some money, walkie-talkie and his cellular. His girlfriend Tina, who is actually the only caller to it, presented the cellular to him. He left the taxi in the garage and walked towards the bridge.

The silvery beam of the moon reflected upon the darkness of the street. The bridge was a ten-minute walk from his house. Suddenly an SUV swerved with high beam headlights that irritated his eyes. As he looked away, he heard the screeching and crashing sound of metal against metal. It was like a fusillade of metallic bullets. It rained shrapnel all around him. Ears numbed with the deafening sound, he looked at the road. Sickened by the bloody mess he started puking on the sidewalk. The shock engulfed him and the smell of death stung his senses. As he looked away, he saw a rugged looking man near one of the victim’s car trying to pull something from under the upturned car. The man pulled what appeared to be a sheaf of papers and caught Rick’s eye on turnng. They stared for a moment. Then the rugged man started running like hell. Rick’s instinct told him to chase. Shaking off the numbness in his legs and the shock, Rick started chasing him.

When Rick reached the end of the bridge, the man disappeared. Out of the eye, Rick caught some movement in an alley opposite to the road to the old mill. Rick started running again. The man seemed to be stopping. Rick ran straight into the alley. There was no one there. Suddenly a leg flew from the side and caught Rick on the jaw and he fell sideways. The kick was deadly and Rick lost all senses for a moment. With little strength, he criss crossed his legs around the man and made him fall. The sheaf of papers from his jacket flew all around. The man got up quickly, landed a gut-wrenching blow to Rick’s stomach and started collecting all the papers. This time Rick was totally in pain. By the time he came back to his senses the man and the papers were gone. Rick crawled to the nearby wall and sat there coughing up blood. He saw a paper sticking out of the nearby trashcan. He pulled it out and saw what was on it. It was a computer algorithm. Wait. It was his latest idea. Somebody stole it. This time the shock was so heavy that it suffocated him.

 

20:28:32 hrs

After washing himself in a public toilet, Rick sat on a park bench analysing the things that happened. He took out the folded paper from his jacket pocket and started scrutinizing it. There was a trace in the bottom of the paper. After studying for a minute, he deciphered the word “Almora”. He knew that name very well. It was a movie theatre. He took Tina there on his first date.

 

20:44:19 hrs

The movie theatre stood at the end of a busy street. He walked towards it. Two suspicious looking men were whispering to each other pointing their fingers at him. In an instant, they started sprinting into a side lane. By instinct, Rick started after them. The side lane was silent. He saw a lone light bulb in the distant dark. He ran towards it. The bulb was hanging in an abandoned shed with a table on the far end. A laptop was blinking on the table. Where were the two men? Rick wondered. The laptop showed a small box stating “Enter Password”. Rick’s senses tingled. Even in this scenario, his urge to hack was high. An unquenchable thirst.

He started to hack the laptop using the basic methods. He was almost at it when his cellular rang. He did not answer it. Automatically his voice mail was activated.

“Rick I am kidnapped. They want something from you,” cried Tina.

Distracted abruptly Rick answered the phone.

“We know you overheard our conversation and lifted the package before us. Come to the graveyard adjacent to the shed in the side lane by Almora movie theatre with the package in under an hour if you ever want to see your girl again,” said the same deep husky voice he heard earlier that evening.

Before he could answer anything, the line went dead.

How did they know I overheard their conversation? And I do not have the package as they think I do. They asked me to come to the same place I am standing now. Were they the two men outside the theatre? Were the ones after my virus algorithm? Was that the package in the old mill?

All these questions rummaged through his mind. He developed a theory to account for the bizarre happenings of the night. Maybe there were two gangs. One gang hired another to steal my algorithm. The second gang stole it and backstabbed the first gang by telling them that I retrieved it back. Now so the first gang is blackmailing me directly. But how did they know of my computer algorithm? I told no one. Wait. Tina knew. Is she in on all this? Is she faking a kidnapping? Was she after my computer technology all this time? Things started to fall in place. Tina presented the walkie-talkie to him.

 

21:31:12 hrs

Rick was baffled. He was definitely in trouble. His first priority was to retrieve his algorithm from the second gang. But he had no idea who or where they are? His only link was Tina. He had to get to her and make her talk. He had no weapons. He did not want to call the cops even now. He just wanted to do a reconnaissance of the graveyard and then take a decision. He treaded slowly towards the graveyard with fear. The rusted iron gate creaked as he pushed them.

 

21:38:24 hrs

“I am getting sick of this. He did everything tonight in exactly the wrong way. I don’t know why are we waiting this long?” complained Shorty.

“Okay. Let’s finish this,” replied Tall-O.

 

21:40:05 hrs

Rick slowly started walking inside the graveyard. Suddenly someone gagged him from behind, kicked him in the knees to bring him down. He felt something injected into his hip like an injection. There was a rustle of dried leaves on the ground and the grip on him was gone. Rick took the cloth from his mouth, turned and saw around for movement. There was none. He felt tired of this night, mentally and physically. His foot touched something. It was a black envelope. With trepidation, he took the envelope. The symbol on it stunned him to the core. Anxiety swelling up, he opened the envelope. In black ink was the following:

“ Mission Status : Failed
  Subject  Name : Rick Riviera

Errors:

1. Shock (the accident, haunted by past of parents death)

2. Emotional and physical vulnerability (Tina, fighting in the alley)

3. Personal pursuits in a mission (chasing the virus algorithm)

4. Curiosity without caution (entering suspect’s hideout – shed)

5. Wavering commitment (failure to hack)

6. Indecisive action (coming to the graveyard)

Toxin Source: Black Widow Spider

Black Cross”

21:50:25 hrs

Everything that happened tonight was a test. The revelation shook Rick.  As a lifetime of expectation and preparation came crashing down, Rick embraced death happy to have escaped the worst night of his  life.

__END__