Meanwhile, Jorge takes on the uncomfortable task of letting Rachael know of Kiko-Lyn’s capture.  He has waited until his response plan is in place.  Better to lead with a proactive action plan than a devastating kidnap alert notification. As Rachael answers his call with a greeting, he cuts in tersely, “Rachael, I know you are under injunction not to involve our company during the investigation of your home and corporate attack. But circumstances have significantly changed.” Jorge reviews what he knows, including sending her Kiko-Lyn’s message.  Jorge asks Rachael, “Have you any idea why she involved herself?”

Rachael, “Well, we are very close.  But I do not understand how she even knew details of the attack.  I only told her parents on the QT.”  Jorge, having gathered a deeper understanding of Kiko-Lyn over these last few hours of extensive data searches, responds that Rachael should recheck her home systems.

Rachael calls Doug Bear of Bear Investigations, a Cyber PI assigned by her insurance company to provide the home investigative services associated with her recent claim of cyber home invasion.  Doug gets back to her. “Looking over the logs we collected during the dump of your house, there are periodic video data uploads from your house to your niece. We assumed these were normal family traffic authorized by you.”

Rachael, “No, not by me. Let me check the recent logs.” Rachael searches her logs and sees an outgoing transmission to her sister’s house in response to an auto-answered incoming request.  Linking in, Doug pulls the stored outgoing data from the house cache.  When decrypted by Rachael’s family key pairs, it shows the attack from a dog’s perspective.  “Why that little stinker! She’s been spying on me using the robot harness she made for Toby, my German Shepherd.”

Doug cannot help the loud guffaw that escapes him. “I’ll be looking forward to meeting this young lady,” he tells Rachael, tears of laughter leaking from his eyes.  Although his mirth is genuine, he can tell Racheal needs some lighthearted optimism at the moment. “So, she is not just a budding roboticist. It looks like she could intern here at the PI firm.”  Turning serious, he tells Rachael, “I have an idea of how we can do the right thing, and provide a legal trail that covers our doing the right thing.  You hire me to track your niece based on this unauthorized call activity my firm has discovered in our forensic dump of your house.  My firm will subcontract your friend Jorge’s security firm for on-sight recovery. His selection will be based on their personal knowledge of the subject from Sabre’s training program for enhanced reality gamers.  We will treat this as an unrelated case until, and if, we discover concrete evidence linking her abduction with the home invasion.”

Rachael dials Jorge into the video conference call and makes introductions. “Doug, I first met Jorge at a bar during the DEFCOM 26 convention in 2028.  His team, ForkingPath, took third in the annual Capture the Flag competition.”

Doug responds, “I remember your team Jorge. So, you are ‘MadPoet' himself? Based on your reputation, I could not help but think you were holding back.”

“You are a fan? Sadly, that is me. But otherwise, no,” says Jorge. “DEFCOM is a recruiting opportunity for us and a chance to stay at the bleeding edge of hacking. It also keeps our name in play by earning current chops.  But my serious amateur days were over after winning in ‘21.  CTF is a younger player’s competition.  Our focus today is the professional world gaming league: prize paying spectator events in the enhanced reality division. Game play uses real players and fake challenges in actual environments that are enhanced with a virtual game overlay: a life-like capture the flag. I’ll send you tickets for the next Cyber Black Ops game.”

“I’m more interested in the real thing,” Doug counters, and outlines the engagement that he and Rachael are proposing.

Jorge nods his assent. “I agree to this arrangement and will send the contracts and NDA. If Rachael vouches for you, I can let you both observe the tactical incursion.  Rachael, you can help with communications to Kiko-Lyn when we reach her.  We have the display standard, Hacksystracker 6, installed. On it you and Doug can visually follow the live hack.  Hey, maybe Doug can jump in and reverse code some with my team.  I can always use a good hacker,” he chuckles.

Doug decides he should trumpet his own chops. “I started right out of Stanford in the NSAs Tailored Access Operations unit. Spent a few years at TAO learning trade before going independent. Contributed some tricks to Metasploit.” In an aside to Rachael, he adds, “That is the open source Metasploit Framework, the Penetration Testing Execution Standard.  Jorge, we do Pentest and certifications as part of our business. It’s been a while but I went a few rounds myself.”

Jorge quits laughing and gives Doug a much more serious look. “We will contact you two when the tactical operation is to begin.” He closes the video call.

Jorge continues tactical setup and scenario run-throughs during the wait for the boat to dock and for Ninan to work his way through Hong Kong. Knowing that network latency will be critical during the hack, he rents servers in an underwater Microsoft data farm in the islands off Hong Kong. There he installs a custom designed and trained multi-layer neural net. He rents high priority, lowest latency availabile VPNs, via trans-ocean fiber to Chile and then over the mountains to his Operations Center outside Buenos Aires.  His hacking team warms up running test scenarios over this fresh platform.

Troubleshooting

Later in his Operations Center, Jorge looks over his team and the displays before him.  The room is set up to look good in live game broadcasts, but behind the glitz is a functional NOC. Jorge thinks to himself, Act One: Breaching International Widget. Begin. He queues his team to bring up Ninan’s personal video feed and keep it center as long as possible.  He looks to the two telepresence screens. Rachael and Doug, are you seeing these displays?” Rachael nods and Doug says, “Roger, copy clear.”