Summary:Felicia has her in house technician dig deeper into this mysterious Peter Parker - the results are somewhat unforseen. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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A couple weeks had passed since the heist on Kali's heart. Up in the penhouse base, sitting in what could ammount for a cubicle self made by Jane was the notorious programmer, a dozen screens showing code flowing by. And all she was doing seemingly was sitting in the chair in the center, eyes closed the fingers moving just a little, but not at all close to the keyboard. Yet code started to appear in several windows at once. On the desk before her lay what looked like a couple gutted drones: small stepper motors, bigger ones, cameras, tiny speakers… and a huge pile of LED panels. A project?
Felicia had been in a snippy mood for a few days after the heist. Things had gotten sorted out. The client managed to cool off once the Broker had a little…CHAT with him. She'd been able to sell the concept of scaring the client into playing straight with the hired help, and the Broker had conceded that the client had acted in bad faith.
Felicia had felt an immense relief when she signed off from the Broker. Even expert thieves knew not to mess with people like the Broker. Antagonize him, and suddenly no one was going to buy the swag without gouging you. Jobs would just dry up. And the police would show up everywhere you go.
As time went on, Felicia busied herself with the day-to-day errata. Bills to pay, contacts to pay off, inquiries for work, talks with the money men handling her accounts. She had to stay liquid.
Now, she was waking up at the obscene hour of 9 AM, pouring herself coffee while dressed in a terrycloth robe. She strolled over to the cavernous room set aside for Jane, peeking inside. She spotted the extensive computer stup and the workstation with the parts, and stepped inside, sipping her coffee before asking, "Working hard?"
There was no response from Jane herself, the body still sitting in the chair, the hands moving just a little. A short inspection showed she had strapped herself into the ergonomic thing, seatbelts holding her onto it should she jerk. Was she sleeping? The code was scrolling over the screens, tidbits changing actively.
Suddenly one of the screens turned back, the others followed seconds later, one by one. A jolt went through Jane's body as she blinked her eyes open, brushing a sweatband from her head, letting it hang from a couple cables hanging out from the back of it. "Oh, what's up? I was just revieweing some code…"
Felicia hmmed. "I was curious, natch. What are you working on?" She looks from the screens to the drone parts. "Looks like a sizable project."
"Just the regular stuff… basic self. A quadruped drone shell, wayfinding, collision avoidance, a self-learning AI-Agent to plan movement paths. You know, the kind of 'I can find my way somewhere' AI-Agent they plan for self-driving cars. Just for a tiny drone. Maybe even add some cute behavior so they make for a cute CyberPet." Jane slowly unstraps, stretching her back before sorting the headband she used into its container on the side of the chair. "So, just checking in?"
Felicia sighs. "Something like that. No new jobs in the pipeline, but I'll get notified if something we can do comes up." She pauses for a moment, then said, "I'd…like to ask if you can do some background on someone I…recently met. I want to know a little more about who he is. Would that be a problem?"
"A background check? What databases you want me to check? I mean, I could google them or go the long mile and check their Taxes, birth certificate and if their great grandmother got her shots regularily. Or I could go extra deep and go on a dance with SHIELD's firewalls…" Jane chuckles as she lays out the options, pulling a keyboard over and tapping keys, the screens coming back to life to show a basic browser window. "Just tell me who to get and where to stop."
Felicia looks thoughtful. "Start with the basics, then go deeper. He has no social media presence, but…" She takes a deep breath.
"The name is Peter Parker."
"Peter Parker, huh? Let's see…" A couple moments Jane hammers the keyboard, pulling up a couple search engines at once. "Ok, here we have facebook, a twitter account…" The mentioned pages appear on the screens as she speaks, and she points to them "That's what a simple quick search shows up. How deep into the rabbit hole you want me to go? He's apparently production year 2001, so much is easy. Where to go from here is the big question."
Felicia takes a deep breath. "Family, education, personal details, occupation…if someone that young HAS a job…"
Felicia seems to sigh resignedly at the mention of being born in 2001.
Jane chuckled as she pulled a small chair out from under the table to shove it to Felicia before taking her keyboard to the control chair in the center. "Ok, Family… let's start with facebook… interesting… let's use this tool here… and now…" She hammers commands and unmasks a couple private fields from the facebook page, pushing the information into a new screen as a profile. Adding a photo from Facebook. Then all the other information facebook contains, and then starting to follow the paths. Ehe listed schools there, composing an E-mail posing as a headhunter to ask for the grades and behavior in school to see if he might be a fit for a client company. Dialing up to the city hall, putting the call on speaker. "Hello Ma'am? Amanda Swanson from the Gabriel and Fudge Law from Chicago here. I am calling on behalf of Mr. Fudge who's in the process of distributing an inheritance. Sadly the family records are incomplete and we were able to track down someone that should be eligble for the 'box of assorted things' that was to be given to a Mister Parker. Could you help me with this?" Just basic Social Engineering using the information she uncovered the other ways…
The initial information is bland, like cheap fast food. Age 18, brown hair, brown eyes, slight build. Recent graduate of Midtown High School. Lives in Queens, New York. Social accounts created, but seldom used. Mostly requests for help from other students, unkind words from a few of them. Classic cyber-bullying if there was more activity. Just another put-upon kid, poor as a church mouse.
But there are little threads, here and there. Like the edge of a web. And when pulled, something resonates.
Mother and Father, Richard and Mary Parker. And there is the first red flag. Employees of the CIA. File 24-AVI-29654. SEALED - TOP SECRET (PRESIDENTIAL).
Valedictorian. GPA 4.1. Smart? How smart? Another red flag: IQ - 250 (SUPERIOR).
Occupation - Dog Walker, Pizza Delivery Guy (Fired - Attendance issues). Photographer for the Daily Bugle. Sample pictures…all of Spider-Man.
Known Associates: Mary Jane Watson, student. Harold Osborn. Son of Norman Osborn, CEO of OSCORP.
Jane Roe chuckles as she compiles the file, playing a few mind games with the city office to get to the address by trying to get the information of Richard Parker first, then playing all shocked to hear that he had passed away and then requesting Peter's address, putting it into the file that was starting to compile. The CIA file she highlighted, the IQ not. But the file grew, the whole thing being more like a sweater: pull at the string and see how much it anravels, then pull at the newly revealed strings to see how much more would come. "Interesting, are you after a spider obsessed boy straight out of college? Isn't he a little young for you?"
Felicia looked to Jane. "Far TOO young. But…I wanted to know what kind of person he was even if he is only a child. What have you found out so far?"
The hacker points to the file at the side that was growing slowly. "Well, he's a smart guy but classmates don't seem to like him. What shall I do about the CIA file? Pay them a visit and try to get it or do we leave sleeping dogs lie?"
Felicia sips her coffee as she moves to look at the file…and suddenly coughs. "TWO-FIFTY? The only one I know of in that range has an IQ of 270 and he's TONY STARK." She clears her throat, takes another quick sip. "A genius. A goddamned genius. And he takes pictures of Spider-Ma…"
She suddenly smiles. "You sneaky little boy." She pauses for a moment, then looks back to the file. "Yes, crack the CIA file. I want to know what parents can breed a genius." She looks for a few moments longer. "And he is friends with the son of OsCorp's CEO…? Who the Hell ARE you, Peter Parker?"
Jane chuckles as she gets up. "I can't do IQ-tests, I break them." Not because she was a genius but because the knowledge of the internet was pretty much on her fingertips all the time, and she had trouble not to use it to solve such trivial things such as puzzles. "Now, let me get a tossaway phone… can't have the CIA or SHIELD knock at our doors, right?" She sets up something that would route her signal via a sattelite, masking the position to 'somewhere on this side of the planet' - even if it gave them a several seconds latency. "Ok, this will be a little slow… You happen to have a favor with someone at the CIA we could call in to speed this up? Or SHIELD?" She started to use an oldschool dialup to get to the CIA server on the most basic level in the meantime.
Felicia shook her head. "I try to avoid being drawing the attention of the three-letter agencies. They have deep pockets and would LOVE to stick my catsuited butt in some off-the-books detention center."
The CIA server responded, the menu coming up in plaintext.
The hacker smiled as as she typed in the commands to get to the retrieve file section. "They would also love to have you bring you in as consultant for Black Ops I guess. You know, stuff like planning to extract people. You should see Argo."
Felicia chuckled. "I saw it. The movie was exciting but completely subverted the Canadian's role."
The screen goes red and a new prompt shows up. "RESTRICTED FILE. ENTER AUTH CODE TO CONTINUE."
Jane hmms as she eyes the screen, fingers hovering over the keyboard. "It was focussed on the CIA operation. Ok, I need an Auth code… I can't just call up the CIA to get that like I did with the address… hmmm… I could try a brute force for a couple hours… but we'l be disconnected again and again…"
Felicia frowned. "I think the CIA caught wise to that sort of thing. Do it too many times, someone might notice? Could you create an agent account and 'acquire' the right permissions for them before getting into it?"
Jane Roe hmms… "I could, but it would take a couple days to get it done subtly. Or… we look for someone who has the authentification and just log in over their terminal."
Felicia hmms. "Whichever is the quietest for you. We have to make sure we do this completely covert. The CIA realizes someone is digging, they'll yell 'Homeland Security' in a heartbeat…"
Jane hmms slowly as she eyes the screen. Attention Hawk & Kestrel… "Maybe… Ok, I could try to get those two to open the file for us, physicall access to a qualified terminal or I try o dance with their firewall. What you prefer?" The last she would want an hour or two alone for.
Felicia takes another sip. "Try the firewall. I'm going to check on a few things if you don't need my input. See what you can do. I set up a server you can work from. Worst comes to worst, we can burn the server and it won't lead back to us."
"Ok, this can take a while… why don't you go and get a coffee and doughnuts while I go in? Hour, hour and half…" Saint chuckles at the idea of torching the sterver. "Better not, I prepare this and go in then. Maybe circumnavigate the authentification…"
Once Felicia left, Jane sighed, preparing to stap herself into the chair gain and putting the band on again, leaning back and jumping ont the system. Right into the connection to the CIA File server, at least to where she had managed to get. And then work on getting past the authentification and firewall from there. The sattelite bandwith throttle so was going to give her a headache…
By the time the omelets arrived from downstairs, a retired agent had been un-retired, promoted, passed his background check with flying colors, accessed a file, downloaded it, demoted, then retired again. All in the space of one hour. The CIA can work quickly as long as it doesn't pay too close attention to itself.
As jane exits the cyberspace, she rubs her temples, unstraps herself and goes to the printer to get the file out, dimming the light in the room. "God dangit, sattelites are a PITA…" she mutters while prepping the file for Felicia.
And this is when the rabbit hole gets that much deeper.
Richard "Hawk" Parker. Mary "Kestrel" Parker. Eighteen years with the CIA, twelve of those years working as married partners. CIA operatives, working in the Middle East. Terrorist hunters. James Bond and the Black Widow, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Files closed in 2005, MIA, charged with treason in absentia, presumed dead.
CIA assassins.
Jane Roe groans as she puts the stuff all into a binder and leaves the office over to the dining area, taking her NO FOOD sign at the office door seriously herself. "Here… your genius kid? Totally the product of a CIA secret agent breeding program."
Felicia is setting up the plates on the table, the GrubHub bags sitting in the center. She looks to Jane and the left side of her mouth quirks in a half-smile.
She takes the file, but says wryly, "…Pull the other one, it has bells on it…" She opens it, takes a look at the contents, and slowly looks up to Jane. "Christ on a crutch…" She sits down abruptly, opening the file to look at while she eats. "Assassin parents, genius IQ…what's next? A secret lair two miles below the city?" She pauses at that. "Enough childhood trauma to make him a Bond villain, and he's going to ESU in the fall. And since Midtown High hasn't blown up, it's safe to assume he hasn't gone psychopath…"
"Maybe he is a psychopath and has longer plans? He might have replaced all the chairs in Midtown High with ones made from Plutonium, counting on having all the people die from cancer." Jane snarks as she takes the plate offered, munching away, still rubbing her temple at times. "Or he vents his problems in another way. I mean, he has a serious spider obsession."
Felicia nods slowly. "Yes…unless…" She smiles suddenly. "Of COURSE. I bet he does something for this Spider-Man, and in return…Spider-Man tips him off on where to be to get pictures of him doing things that he can sell to the paper. It's almost sublime in its simplicity!"
"What could he give this Spider-Man anyway? That's unless he is Spider-Man but that's ridiculous." Jane remarks, munchinng away. "Can't do image recognition on a mask anyway.