Anonymous

Anonymous

Chapter 00000001- Narrator

Lara sat back in her chair and looked around. At least twenty other
students were bent over monitors- some writing emails, some typing up
essays, and some simply lost in cyberspace.

She thought for a minute, running her hand through her dark hair,
before placing her manicured nails on the keyboard.

She typed with such ease, her fingers dancing on the plastic keys, her
eyes never leaving the screen. She knew where every key was, and could
type more than one hundred words a minute.

She opened Str@nge.com, the website she spent most of her Internet time
on. She clicked 'Mail' and tapped the mouse impatiently as the computer
groaned, loading the page.

When it had loaded, Lara moved the mouse to the 'Log In' box and typed
her username, Lara273. She pressed the 'Tab' key, and typed her
password-:!LARA?@. She pressed the 'Enter' key, and moved the cursor to
the 'Start' menu, and navigated through the options with the arrow
keys, mouse forgotten.

A password prompt flashed up, and she typed LBRONTE for her username,
and simply future as her password. She glanced over her shoulder, at
the girl next to her, Anne 'Gates'.

Well, Lara didn't know what Anne's last name was really, but due to
Anne's computer smarts, everyone called her Anne 'Gates', and joked
about her being Bill Gates' daughter.

Anne was a small, timid girl, with a bad posture and large glasses. Her
eyes and nose were constantly streaming, and behind those glasses, it
made her look like a goldfish in its bowl.

She was always on her laptop, it had Internet access, and her main goal
in life was to work for Microsoft, or develop her own operating
system.

Anne was completely taken in by the code she was writing- a program
that could get into another person's computer, and show her the
contents, without the owner knowing.

She had gotten the idea from 'The Blue Nowhere', which was not only her
bible, but Lara's too.

Only Lara wanted to master a more sinister code. And she had. And it
was only a matter of minutes before she found out if it worked.

She had written a program, which was activated by the 'Send &;
Receive' command, and had attached it to the email she was
sending.

She smiled, and hovered the cursor over 'Send'. It would send the email
(plus program) to the computer of a small, mousy boy with brown hair
and hazel eyes- David. He was sitting at the next row of computers,
close enough for Lara to see the results, without getting hurt
herself.

She closed her eyes, and clicked 'Send'. She counted to twenty? and
then? BOOM!

David was flung away from the computer as it exploded, his body limp
like a rag doll. His eyes were closed, and blood covered his intricate
features. His chest was still- he wasn't breathing.

He had been killed.

Lara had killed him.

The confusion that followed gave Lara a change to Log Off, and slip
from the Computer Room. Nobody would ever know.

Chapter 00000010- Patrick

"A teenager has today been killed in a freak accident at the local High
School. David Winters, 13, was the unfortunate victim of a computer
malfunction, which caused it to explode. No-one else was hurt?"

I sat back, terrified. That was no malfunction, and the reporter knew
it.

Truth is, all the computer activities were monitored by a main computer
like a server. From this, we had gathered enough information to find
the culprit, and cause of the explosion. But the police didn't want to
let that go public, this girl was brilliant, and she was slipping from
our grasp.

She had encrypted all her data before logging off, and the program
she'd used had taken days to decrypt. She had used some of the most
powerful software this half of the equator, modified from the
Pentagon's own firewalls. How she had hacked in, I don't know, but one
thing's for sure- we needed someone to match her, and hopefully beat
her.

We didn't know what Lara273 looked like- we only had her first name.
But we weren't going to lose to her- or let her strike again.

We employed a girl, little older than fifteen, called Yvonne. She had
dark hair, and blue eyes- cold and steely. She was a computer genius,
self-proclaimed, with a smug grin on her face. We also employed a girl
called Anne- she had been in the room when the computer exploded, and
knew how.

Chapter 00000011- Anne

I couldn't believe they had picked me!

I mean, me. Anne.

As the police marched into the room, I knew they meant business. They
briefed me and the other girl- Yvonne, on the case, and issued us both
with identical hard drive chips, exactly the same as Lara's had been
before she'd?

I didn't like Yvonne, she kept looking at me, with knowing glances. I'd
seen her before, but I couldn't place where. If I'd been able to,
everything would have been different.

No time for that though- first things first- locating the elusive
Lara.

I logged into her decrypted drive, and opened Internet Explorer. I
typed 'fastserver.com' into the Address Bar, and clicked 'Go!'. Once
the site had loaded, I logged in, and downloaded my program- Mouse
Trap. I then used it to sniff out Lara's address, surname and class. I
stared at the screen intently, and gasped at what popped up.

Chapter 00000100- Narrator

Lara hadn't gone anywhere. Ok, she'd moved computer, but the principle
was the same. And she'd already decided on her next victim, the cocky
police chief/detective, Patrick Green.
That afternoon, in the police barracks, she downloaded her program,
Hatemail, and spent the rest of the afternoon hacking together a
program to cover the use of Hatemail. She called it Spy, and clicked
'Save'. Next, she went online, and found an anonymiser program she
could use. She saved all of these in a Hidden Folder. She encrypted it,
and made it password activated. When Patrick came to check her
computer, he'd well, explode.

Chapter 00000101- Patrick

At nine o'clock, just on the hour, I told the girls to leave. They both
logged off, Anne taking the hard drive with her to work on a theory,
Yvonne leaving the hard drive in, saying her home computer was
broken.

Once they'd both left, I logged back onto the computer Yvonne had been
using. I used my Username and Password, to check to see if there were
any emails from my wife, Claire.

I looked up briefly, at the doorway, to see a figure standing there. I
regarded them with interest, before deciding it must be a fellow
officer. I turned back to the computer, and clicked 'Send &;
Receive'.

The next feeling I experienced was strange- a stinging sensation- that
itched it's way up my chest, and exploded into paint beyond belief, as
I was flung backwards against the wall. I gasped, my head lolling
sideways towards the door. My vision was blotchy, but I could make out
the same figure, moving closer. It let out a faint giggle.

It was Yvonne.

In my last conscious breath I muttered:

Yvonne is Lara.

Chapter 00000110- Narrator

After Anne found Patrick the next morning, all eyes were on her.

"She must have done it. She knows how."

But she knew who had done it, and how.

The night before, she had hacked Lara's website- and made the startling
discovery. Anne had been closer to the villain than she had originally
expected. And she had been sitting next to her all day.

But she had no time to deliberate further.

"Anne Landers?" two burly policemen asked. "I think you'd better come
with us." Anne followed them into the Detention Centre, where they read
out her rights. Then:

"You are under arrest for the murder of David Winters, and the
attempted murder, and man slaughter of Patrick Green."

Anne was horrified. She tried to protest, but in vain.

"The program was found on your hard drive." The first policeman
explained thickly.

"Yes! I was working on it!" Anne exclaimed. The policeman on her right
shook his head. "Sorry ma'am. Orders is orders."

And they bundled her into a cell.

*

Lara was on her final mission. Her hardest yet. She didn't want Anne to
go down- she was going to be brilliant. No. This mission would destroy
the person who started it all. Herself.

She decided to post her suicide note on her website, and forward it to
all the people in her address book.

She clicked 'Send'; and the decision was final.

She reached under her bed, and took out her shotgun. She next opened
her closet door, to reveal the bound and gagged body of her twin
sister, Sabrina.

Anne placed the unconscious body of her sister on the bed, and placed
the shotgun in her mouth. She wrapped Sabrina's small, white hand
around it, and applied pressure to the trigger.

As the shot rang out, policemen were surrounding Lara's house. Quickly,
she let go of the shotgun, and kissed her dead sister's forehead.

Then, she ran to the basement, and crept into the hidden tunnel to the
house next door. Once inside the neighbouring household, Lara
relaxed.

Chapter 00000111- Narrator

When Anne was released later that day, she was explained to, and
excused. The policemen invited her to the funeral of Lara, but Anne
couldn't attend. Instead, she booked a flight to America, and took to
the skies, and left Lara and the suffering behind. Lara however, hadn't
gone anywhere. As they lowered the body of her sister into the ground,
she couldn't help it.

She let out a screech of laughter from beneath her black veil. Such a
sound, guests later described it as the devil himself screaming.

But Lara wasn't going anywhere. She wanted to make her point.