Elias sat under the cover of a bush, barely concealed in the mess of branches from the peering eyes, listening to the thunderous pounding of feet on asphalt going all the way up to the stairs leading to his front door. Echoes from the voices of men in his living room were just audible but completely incomprehensible all the same.

The flashing red and blue lights whirled across the sleepy street, illuminating the officers for the briefest of a moment before they faded back into darkness. The shadows of agents were like ghosts passing before the lighted windows, revealing only a small amount of the men inside. He wasn't exactly sure who all of them were. There was obviously police, but there were several other men with them. Whether they were Central Criminal Police, the Security Police, or something else, he had no clue. In fact, about the only thing he did know was, the letter was right.

Two days previous, he was doing... well, what he did every day. The clatter of keys blurred together with the whine of the fans forming the background music to his life. His eyes, unblinking, scanned over line after line of the wonder that was computer commands. Where others saw an orderless jumble of numbers, letters and symbols, Elias saw the flawless cycle of information through his own program. It had one purpose, and one purpose only; to attack servers, slip inside, and siphon information back to him. And by information, he meant credit card numbers.

He'd been skimming numbers for a while now, but nothing on this scale. He was about to all but automate the process, and he was likely going to more than double the amount of numbers he could sell in a month.

His agile fingers stilled, checking once again to make sure the test hash strings had been decoded successfully. As the correct information popped up on the screen, he couldn't help the way his porcelain-white features stretched into a tight smile. Moments later, his new pet project was coursing through exactly seven servers. Servers he'd long ago hacked into and left a backdoor to let himself in as he pleased.

He stood up and stretched, knowing that it would take his spyware some time to produce results. A couple of stiff joints popped in protest to the sudden activity, then he was off to try and pass the time in whatever way he could.

He turned the TV on, flipped through the myriad of channels, deeming everything that flickered across the screen an unwatchable pile of garbage. It was all dramas and reality shows. Was there really nothing interesting on? He turned the devise off, hoping that he'd at least burned off half an hour or so. However, with a quick glance at the clock he found he'd been downstairs for little over ten minutes.

He had to do something, already his mind was returning to his program, and the urge to check on it was driving him mad. Though he was sure, much less maddening than returning and staring at the blank screen. 

He tried to form a list of things to do in his head, but the only thing that he came up with was to go in the kitchen and help his mother prepare dinner. Though that, he decided, would be worse then sitting on the couch waiting for the time to pass. However, this decision was quickly made for him when his mother called out his name.

He popped his head through the doorway, asking "What?" His mother gestured behind herself to the counter and said "You've got a letter." He starred at the stack of white envelopes and wondered who on earth was sending him junkmail. He was fairly certain he'd kept his name off of all the major lists, so it must be a smaller company. With a small grin he thought and their computers probably aren't too secure. Maybe I should pay a visit?

As his mother stirred some pot of delicious smelling something, he sorted through the stack until found one that said, in bold black letters, "For the attention of Elias Heikkinen". There was no return address, no stamp, no markings of any kind apart from the block lettering on the front. This kept getting stranger.

He made his way out of the kitchen without another word, tossing the torn envelope into the garbage as he passed. His legs subconsciously took him back up the stairs and toward his room as he read.

Would you like to play a game?

1.Godfrey De Vries
2. Michelle Sanchez
3. Tony Blake
4. Kamali Ncube
5. Ebisawa Hitomi
6. Alexi Bogdanov
7. Mei Yu
8. Thiago Torres
9. Vahide Younan

Kill these people, and it will all go away.

There was a mixture of confusion and delight playing around inside Elias's head as he read the letter again. Confusion as to who he knew that would send a joke like this to him, and delight in the lengths they'd gone to to keep their anonymity. It wasn't hand written, there was no return address, and he'd been around computers long enough to know that this hadn't come out of a printer, which meant it wouldn't have the serial number of the machine embedded in the page.

As he came to this conclusion, he realized he was back in his room. The temptation to see if his brain child had paid off was too great, and even though he was all but certain he'd find nothing, he checked. He was half right. There weren't any credit card numbers, that was for sure. There were, however, roughly thirty files that his bug had for one reason or another downloaded to his computer. He clicked on the first document, and sitting before his eyes was the symbol of the Central Criminal Police.  He looked over the document as his heart rate began to climb.

This was classified stuff. It was different from anything he'd ever done before. Sure, maybe he'd hacked a couple websites, sold a few credit card numbers, and had a whole library of pirated music, but this? He could be charged with treason! As quickly as the panic had come, he shifted gears into damage control mode. How had those files gotten on his computer? He hadn't sent it into any government servers. Even if he'd tried, it would have just bounced off their firewalls, wouldn't it?

Yet, here they were. His mind was still racing through possibilities when another file was added to the list. A text file, this time, different from all the others. But what was truly strange was it was titled "Open Me". He figured he didn't have much to lose at this point, and with two swift clicks the simple text expanded before him.

If you play, the government can't touch you. You have 49 hours.

He raised the odd paper in his hand and laid it out on his desk. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened. He'd been set up. The question was, who, and why?

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