Tuesday March 27

Simon’s Warehouse
3:35 pm

Nikki and Simon had visited the 2 remaining sites and installed Simon’s extra security and camera equipment. They had been working at their computers most of the day when Simon leaned back and was slowly shaking his head,

“It can’t be” he muttered. Nikki stopped and looked up at him as he was slowly shaking his head from side to side, brows furrowed as he looked closer at his monitor and clicked a few more times.

“What is it Simon, you look like you just saw a ghost?” Nikki asked with concern in her voice. Simon leaned back, his right arm scratching the back of his neck as a puzzled look came across his face.

“I just found some code on one of the servers at the first site that was hit. I recognize it but it can’t be. The man who came up with that code is dead.” Nikki got a puzzled look on her face,

“Are you sure he’s dead, you couldn’t be mistaken? I don’t understand, how do you know he is the only one who could have written the code?” Simon looked at her for a couple of seconds before answering,

“He’s dead.” His tone and body language left no doubt in Nikki’s mind that Simon knew what he was speaking about. “This code was written by a man in my old unit. It is a worm program that he wrote to monitor a person we believed was spying on us for China. The target was working as a professor at one of the universities that the government was working with to develop the Star Wars missile defense system several years ago. The worm program allowed us to see exactly what the professor was working on and we found out he was passing information to someone in China. Unfortunately, we also found out that the man who developed the program for us was also selling the same information to another government. I was tasked to solve the problem.” He looked at Nikki who nodded in understanding. Simon looked off into the distance as he was thinking,

“There was only one other member of my team that even knew the worm program existed but I never got a chance to find out what they did with the program or to the target in China because I left the agency shortly after shoring up our internal leak. If this program is being used now, it means that he kept the program and is now siphoning intel on the current missile defense system. This is bad Nikki. If the person responsible is who I think it is, and I have no reason not to, we won’t find him. He’s the one who taught me how to stay invisible.” Nikki had stood up and was walking over to Simon’s monitor when an alarm went off and several of the monitors on the wall came to life with live footage at one of the two remaining sites. All of the site’s external security and cameras were off, but the footage they were watching was coming from Simon’s equipment around the second perimeter.

“There” Simon pointed at something tiny in the air above the site. He quickly clicked a few keys and the tiny object became larger and Nikki saw that it was a drone with some sort of attachment on the top of it. “That’s how they are defeating the security systems, that thing on top of the drone is an EMP device that was being developed while I was still working for the government. If they have access to that weapon, we have no idea who is involved. It could be some rogue thief, or it could be someone working from within our own government. How else would they have access to this equipment?” As he was talking to Nikki, Simon was moving through his apartment gathering supplies. “There’s only one reason to steal this information and that is to sell it to someone else. Whoever is behind these thefts cannot be allowed to get this information out of the country.”

Simon finished gathering his things and Nikki reluctantly agreed to stay at Simon’s while he went out to the site. His satellite program was already sorting footage and once he finds a target, he and the Rage are going to go calling. Nikki had a secure connection to her FBI computer and Rob agreed that she should continue working the lead with Simon from here while they are following other leads. After Simon left, Nikki was sitting back at her computer wondering if she would ever get used to him leaving all the time. At that thought, she picked up where she left off checking deep background for the site’s personnel

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