CHAPTER 55: GOOGLE CALLS [2]

Amelia Rhodes sat at her desk, eyes locked on her monitor waiting for the timer on the screen to hit zero.

No, she wasn’t waiting for the legendary windows update to complete which would have required a lot less nerves than this.

She was instead waiting for the timer to complete on OmniTech’s CryptCall app.

Finding a way to get in touch with him was a whole lot harder than she thought, impossible even. After all, every meeting they’ve ever had was always cleanly wiped from her systems.

And she had not a single way to trace him, except he got in contact first, or so she thought.

As he had shown in all their previous communications, OmniTech was someone who never does something in the way she expected.

From his avatar to even the last message he sent her when they tried copying Sentinel, they all seem to show that he was a playful individual.

But Amelia was not one to be fooled, a thinking that was not wrong per day, but it was what caused her to overcomplicate the search for Ethan.

She had tried searching online, hacking into black hats forums, tracing deep web chatter, and even fed a few carefully crafted baits into honeypots just to see if anyone knew who was behind OmniTech.

But everything led to a a dead end.

It had taken her two weeks to finally realize that a clue was right under her nose and she wasn’t even actively looking for it.

______

Amelia collapsed into the chair in her home office, utterly drained from yet another fruitless day of chasing a lead on OmniTech.

She booted up her PC to complete some work before finally getting the chance to rest.

But the moment the machine turned on, she was stuck in the boot up screen with the windows update.

"Damn it," she muttered under her breath before leaning back on the chair, waiting for the update to complete.

She sighed again and closed her eyes, letting the tension in her shoulders melt.

But when the update bar finally filled and the desktop booted to life, something immediately caught her attention.

Her background had changed.

Instead of the usual dark theme she always kept, the screen now displayed a pixelated version of the CryptCall logo except it was now glitched.

The disconnected parts of the logo formed a certain trail which her eyes followed, leading to what looked like a document she hadn’t remembered saving.

Her first thought was that she had been hacked, but that thought was quickly discarded due to the familiar logo on her screen.

She had remembered seeing it on the software usually sent by Ethan for them to communicate.

Narrowing her eyes, she clicked on the document and the screen immediately went blank and lines of binary started scrolling across her screen, confusing her.

Was she wrong in thinking that the update was from OmniTech? Had she been caught off guard by some black hat hacker?

But soon enough, with every few lines of binary, a letter scrolled past. After a couple of letters, she realized that a word was formed, forcing her to immediately take out a pen and writing pad from her drawer and started noting down each letter.

By the end of it, the binary disappeared and the PC booted back up, everything resetting back to how it previously was.

Amelia looked down on the notepad, on it was an arrangement of letters that seemed to be completely random.

She stared at the jumble of letters.

rFa2-KmT9q-vQbZ0-XuLw7-pNgE1

It didn’t look like a message. It looked like a license key... or perhaps—

Her eyes widened as the realization struck her.

"A one-time access link," she muttered.

She opened her terminal and ran a sandboxed virtual environment, then launched a secure browser instance.

A habit she had developed even though she knew it was useless to open the link in a secured environment, since her PC had just been hacked without her being able to do anything.

She pasted the code into the address bar, and hit enter.

The browser flickered.

Then the screen faded into black.

White text appeared one line at a time, in a minimalist, monospaced font:

"Curiosity killed the cat..."

Amelia arched an eyebrow.

Another line appeared:

"...but satisfaction brought it back."

Then the screen shifted, and a blinking cursor appeared beneath a simple prompt:

[ Solve me: 13, 1, 20, 8 ]

She frowned. Numbers?

That didn’t give her enough clues to work with after all, those numbers could mean anything and she has no idea where to start.

But that’s when a text box at the bottom of the screen caught her eye.

She immediately jotted them down, then cross-referenced each number with the alphabet.

13 = M

1 = A

20 = T

8 = H

"Math," she said as she typed it in the text box that she assumed was for the answer.

Almost immediately, the screen changed and a new prompt appeared:

[Good, now let’s see how far down the rabbit hole you’re willing to go.]

[Decrypt this: U2FsdGVkX1/Je5AqvpKtk9pJSKF9W7whL0Rzla==]

She blinked, recognizing the encryption format instantly.

"OpenSSL encrypted base64," she muttered, already opening her decryption tools.

But it needed a password. Of course it did.

She paused, glancing back at the original document name [rFa2-KmT9q-vQbZ0-XuLw7-pNgE1]. A one-time access key, a website link... or was it more?

She tried it.

The terminal loaded for a while, then spat out a new message.

[You’re so close, just a few more puzzles.]

________

It took puzzle after puzzle before she finally got a link that allowed her to send only a single email.

Although Amelia was a bit annoyed at the fact that she had to spend over an hour deciphering clues, she couldn’t deny that she was relieved in finally finding a way to get in touch with OmniTech.

The timer finally hit zero and her screen soon changed, showing the same Chibi avatar sitting on a cube with a smile on its face.

"Hello Amelia," it said, "I must say, it has been a while."

Amelia sighed before nodding, "yes, it has."

She expected him to mention the attempted copy, especially since he’d already made it clear he knew. Fortunately, she had a well-prepared excuse ready.

"It seems you were satisfied with Sentinel’s demo," the avatar stated with a smile.

Ethan deliberately avoided mentioning the fact that they had previously tried and failed to copy a simple demo since this was a business meeting and not one meant to taunt them, after all, he needed them as much as they did him.

"Yes," she replied in an even tone. "Satisfied... and intrigued. But I think you already knew that."

The Chibi avatar tilted its head playfully. "Curiosity is a powerful motivator. I counted on that."

"So we’d like to officially meet and discuss the terms," she calmly said.

"Is that so?" The avatar placed a hand on his chin, almost as if he was thinking about it.

"I’m inclined to entertain the offer," Ethan finally said. "But as you may have guessed, I don’t exactly do face-to-face meetings."

"I figured," Amelia replied. "That’s why we’ve prepared secure channels—"

"No need," he interrupted gently. "You’ll be dealing with someone else. My Chief Operations Officer will handle the neotiations, you might know her from Sentinel’s launch announcement."

"She’ll be in touch within twenty-four hours through this same channel," he continued, "you’ll discuss the negotiation dates and come to an agreement."

There was a moment of silence on Amelia’s end as she thought about it. Knowing OmniTech’s identity—or at least someone close to him—would give them an advantage. Not just in negotiations, but in understanding his limits, his vision and his blind spots.

His anonymous status made him seem completely untouchable and although Amelia had no intention to agitate OmniTech since he has more than proved dangerous enough, that information might serve a purpose later.

But knowing him, she knew that he wouldn’t reveal his identity just like that, else he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of hiding it anyway.

With another resigned sigh she said, "fine, we’ll be waiting for the contact then."

The Chibi avatar’s smile playfully widened.

"I thought you’d say that," Ethan said, his tone soft and amused. "Oh, and Amelia?"

She looked up.

"I wouldn’t recommend trying to dig into her past searching for a weakness either."

Before she could reply, the screen went blank and rebooted again, restoring her usual Interface, with the CryptCall software completely gone from her PC.

"Alright then," she stood back up, "let’s hope this goes well."

_______

Ethan leaned back on his chair as the software closed. This was where Lillian’s test began and he really hoped she impressed him.

"Athena, start fanning the flames James created." He said, "let’s keep Nathaniel busy until the deal is done."

{Got it,} she replied, immediately getting to work, collecting every single questioning post as well as releasing some proofs that Nathaniel really was supporting Avance and James.

"This should keep him for a while," Ethan said with a grin.