Chapter 159 - Neo's Revenge Pt.1

When he had woken up this morning, none of the things he expected to happen went accordingly. His usual routine was to grab a meal and then head back to the computer to look over some files or leads he had. It wasn't the most entertaining job but he did not feel comfortable not watching either. The behaviour, over the years, naturally developed to a controlling level where he would not be able to sleep peacefully if he had not checked things over. 

There was just this fear inside him that if he missed something important, it would be too late to fix things. Checking everything over himself, ensured that he was able to prepare ahead of time for planned attacks and react quickly when something went wrong. The difference between life and death lasted in the seconds you had after an attack. In terms of cyber information, hacking into someone's computer was a very intimate way of learning about the other. 

Often people failed to lock their computer from hackers and left multiple important doc.u.ments lying around. The doc.u.ments would also not be in any secret or encrypted folder, just laid b.a.r.e with a descriptive name. So items such as their passport, health card, court doc.u.ments, revenge videos, would be sitting on their desktop ripe for the picking. Just by surveying those folders, you could get a good image of how the person conducted themselves in real life. 

For example, if they had a sporadic layout and a bunch of doc.u.ments listed with no folder, he easily deduced that they had a hard time letting things go. Those individuals were the time to be more laissez faire and keep loose papers. How that would translate for them, was that they were an easy target and a little bit of snooping was all he needed to gather the information. 

On the other hand, someone could have a completely clean desktop with only a few folders on the side. Each folder would be correctly named and placed exactly xx spaces between each other. While it was visually nice and clean to see, you immediately could tell that they had control issues. These were people who often had deep rooted anger issues and were easy to trigger. That is contingent on the fact that they use their computer often and actively keep it in this layout. If the computer looked like that purely because it was not used often, the analysis immediately became nil. 

There wasn't information you could gather from those type since they are mainly shells of who they used to be. Obviously some idiosyncrasies in their personality would stay with them as the grew but would be technically inaccurate as a whole. In order to understand the person correctly and strategize around them, the information would have to be more up to date and close to their current personality. Not to say they did not look at older information, however, that was for data.

There was no time requirement on data, all data had a purpose and reason to be dated such. The older it was, the more chances to find something to use against the other as barter or blackmail. A lot of people tended to commit crimes in their younger years and use the age restrictions to their advantage. Knowing that they could get them expunged or sealed made a lot of the bolder in their actions. It was because they were so confident no one could access those files and subsequently, trace it back to them.

Throughout his years of hacking, he realized that the people who looked the 'holiest' on the outside, were actual demons on the inside. It was crazy how many people held in carnal d.e.s.i.r.es and pretended to be a normal functioning member of society. There was one individual in specific he remembered that had given him a major shock. It was several years back when he was still naive and he had been forced to search up a local social worker. The individual had entered their radar for their mission and he had researched him through association. It was a routine check and he had not expected much from his investigation. 

All the publicly available information about the man praised him for being kind and charitable. No matter how many articles he read, they all held a similar rhetoric. There were even live comments from people who had been helped by him as additional testimony. However, the minute he started searching deeper and hacked into his personal computer things took a dark change. Gone was the social servitude image that he held and it was replaced by a vile man. 

He was actually fairly surprised that he had managed to survive so long without being called out his hidden skeletons. It only took one person to pull up the same information as him and immediately ruin the others' life. The truth was they enjoyed torturing animals and humans alike. There was no part of his mind that was sane, it was all a well crafted mirage. His computer held image after image of all the horrific things he had committed. It was a memento of sorts and it was disgusting how many times those videos had been revisited. 

That was the first time he felt sick to his stomach and had to physically throw up in the middle of a job. It was also the moment where he decided that he would no longer trust public image's blindly. He always distrustful and vigilant against strangers. However, there was still this naiveness left in him supported by his young age. He was probably fifteen around the time he had to complete this investigation and it scarred him. 

This was also the beginning of his hacking career, he had no base to look back on and understand what to expect from it all. What he had experienced in his life was confined to the environment around him. As in if he lived in hot country, the struggles of snow were not things he could understand. Murderers who carved and tortured their victims were obviously not situations that could be met easily. Even if you did, the chances of living to tell the tale were rare.

Who would even expect a social worker to be like this? One that was revered to such a high degree? It was only after looking deeper into him did he understand the whole concept he was selling. When all these murders started coming into light, he would automatically be at the end of the suspect list purely due to his image. A cover almost, to make people trust him and lower their guard. Just by cross referencing some of the images and victims, he could tell that they were people that the man had helped before. They were people who came in search of social welfare and some assistance yet were met with a gruesome ending. Since then, he had been extra careful with people and double checked all corners before coming to a conclusion. 

It also made him extra vigilant about the security on their computers. They as a group, tried their best to stay on the low radar but there were several identities they held that could not do the same. Adding on that, they had access to a lot of information that they had gathered over the years some of which could be considered state level. With that much data on them, it was important their computers were well protected and hidden from hackers. From how easy he could break into others, he knew theirs would be just as easy if there was not constant development. So while he continued checking his leads, he kept adding different security measures and tried his best to develop new ways. 

Through this he was able to advance his skills exponentially as well since the best way to hack is to build. If you know how to create a security system and different firewalls, it was just that easy to understand how to break them. However, that information did not come very easily. He slaved many hours over the computer and textbooks scrambling against time and himself to improve faster. 

Due to this change in him, he was required to be on the computer more and expend so much energy to make sure it was done correctly. The things that he would want would take much more time to explain rather than doing it himself. He could not trust others to do it for him nor would they look for the same things as him. Both Ming Ming and Ying Yue had hacking skills, however, he was the most experienced out of the three. It was the main reason that these duties had been passed to him in the group. He enjoyed doing it as well so it felt well suited but in times like this he appreciated having it. 

Being the first man to find out that there was a code being made on Ying Yue, also gave him the right to exact his revenge first. 

'You try to mark my best friend, just watch what I do to you...'