Hannah's Scribbles:

Mia Kitakawa folded her hands over her mouth and closed her blue eyes.  Her head pounded.  Her eyes ached, and the long hours she’d been putting in lately were giving her an ulcer.  It wasn’t like she could see her doctor or talk the stress away, either.  Working in the financial sector demanded silence; it was almost a code of honor.

She was about to break that code to “protect the people,” an impossibility with activists and terrorists teeming in the streets of Old City.  Their affiliation was elusive, a ghost from the old days come back to haunt a better society.  The Hesiod.  Just the name made the muscle above Mia’s eye twitch.

She opened her desk drawer and took out a case of Gold Forest cigarettes.  She held one to her rouged lips and flicked the lighter on a luxury she swore to give up daily.  The smoke was familiar, relaxing.  She inhaled, untroubled by the addicting toxicants of street brands, and paced the gray carpet.

The steel and glass towers that outlined the corporate district were dull and undecorated as decreed by strict zoning laws.  Every office, however, was decorated in its occupant’s style.  Each occupant wore his or her choice of business attire and returned to a family who lived in the safety that only a government complex could ensure.

The government provided freedom out of reason, the enemy only fear spawned by hatred.  She was unable to accept until today, however, that her boss was one of them.

The glass skytower Mia worked in – a large financial trust in the heart of the corporate district – was owned and run by its financial backer.  He left the decision-making largely up to the board of directors but worked directly with large clients from his office suite on the 32^nd floor.  The employees jokingly called him the “Magic Man.” He had a talent in securing investors, though profit had been thin recently.

He had blamed the economy when she’d handed him the digital files.  Now she blamed him.

The screen on her desk flashed twice and began beeping.  Mia reached it quickly and activated the intercom on the control panel.  The disambiguated head of her secretary appeared.  Her appointment had arrived.  Should he admit him now?

Mia nodded and pressed the door release.

Her appointment bustled in with an air of importance.  He extended a firm grip, shook once and snapped his briefcase open.  He removed the digital board and handed over the criminal profile to Mia.

“Ms. Kitakawa, is this-” he tapped on the digital photo–“your boss?”

She nodded and took her seat, taken aback by his abrupt tone.  “Mr. Barrows, let me assure you that I am here to cooperate fully with the police.”

“As is expected of you, Ms. Kitakawa.  We’ve analyzed the reports you sent to us.  Could you explain how he embezzled three-quarters of a billion dollars without setting off any red flags?”

She crushed her cigarette out and sighed.  “I’m still in disbelief myself.  Logically, it’s impossible to pull this off at such a scale, but I thought your department should take a look.  The sheer number of electronic traces put on the money makes it absurd.  The government trade certificates are in place, and you know we can’t operate without those.”

He removed a second digital board and slid it across her desk.  When she saw the slight differences in the signature and the official seal, her face fell.

“Most of the certificates are forgeries,” he said, “and the ones that are certified have been set up to shell companies.”

“Impossible.  I checked these references myself.  They were all intact.”  Her voice quavered as she spoke.

“I’m inclined to believe you,” Mr. Barrows said, “but your network has been compromised.  The hacker who set this up had unrestricted access to your system and a lot of time to work with the records.”

“Total access…” suddenly, she felt ashamed for worrying so much this morning about how her Anton Gouldierre suit would match her eyes.  A breach in the system meant that all bank codes, company histories and transaction certificates for her clients had been accessed and tampered with.  Money could be withdrawn without notice.

“We have to freeze the firm.”  She felt lightheaded.

Barrows nodded.  “It’ll take time, of course, but the termination mandate has already been ordered by the regional Business Board.  I suggest you start immediately.”

“Is there a time frame for reopening the doors?”

He stood.  “Ms. Kitakawa, we’ve traced some money to companies with Hesiod connections.  Since the Hesiod recently began ramping up the scale of their attacks, we believe there to be a direct link between your boss, Mr. Rizden, and the organization.  This freeze is permanent.”

Mia walked him to the elevators and shook his hand.  His words made sense once she considered the recent power fluctuations in the city’s power grid, the increasing frequency of blackouts, the garbled video feeds that spouted nonsense instead of telling the news.

Her head was spinning.  She’d never thought her lighthearted boss would turn out to be the enemy in a quiet war that had been simmering since she was young or that she would have a part to play in the saga.  She’d never imagined having to close down the biggest financial firm in Rochester City and put all 200 employees on the street in an afternoon.

It was a task she could do, however, because she’d been hired to reason with logic, not emotion.  It was logical to cut off a limb to save the body though, no matter how you looked at it, the enemy was resilient, the war was destructive and casualties were inevitable.

Tags: fiction, finance, sabotage, sci-fi, terrorist