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credince--writes · 1 year

Text

Humble Beginnings

AN ACT OF ARSON

JITTERS AU

AO3

A/N: IT IS HERE! I SPLIT IT INTO TWO. WELCOME TO THE CONTINUATION OF JITTERS!

WARNINGS: SA Themes are discussed. Not fuckin around on that note.

At first, it started with the shitty online tutorial classes. Following Reddit threads and watching hours of YouTube videos as if she were learning an entirely new language. She was scraping up as much information as she easily could to harass her high school's IT guy.

Maybe he allowed it because she was interested.

Maybe he was a pervert.

Either way. She had started to get what she wanted- feeding the beast, soon enough it changed from reading Reddit threads not understanding what was happening to selectively strangling the internet connecting in a class she didn’t want to work in, maybe even remotely triggering the fire alarms in a separate building if there was a test.

Then, it morphed into more.

When she was sixteen, she had begged her friend who had her driver's license- and such a rickety and old piece of shit car that it was a wonder they got to their destination in the first place- to take her to a college party. For them both to slink around the background of the party to rub elbows with a computer science major she barely knew- one she was fascinated with.

He spoke with sweet, honey-like words that made her feel like she was special. Like she wasn’t a stupid teenager that he could easily manipulate because the simple concept of his attention made her giggle as no one had ever gotten her to do before.

The way he softly touches her shoulder lures her into a sense of safety.

The way he would pick her up after school and take her to get food before dropping her off at home- not that her parents were home to notice that she wasn’t walking home anymore. That it wasn’t her friend taking her home and dropping her off.

The time that he was unconscious, in the back seat of one of his friend's cars while she sat next to him. Leaning down and reached into his book bag because he’d come straight from the university- there was no time to stop and drop his things off. Just toss the bag in the back of the dar, drive to the party and then move about his night with it in tow. Sticking her hand into his back and pulling the USB drive that held all of his TA documents, logins, files, and grading information. Quietly tucking it into her pocket and playing dumb and innocent when he couldn’t find it the next day.

And he would fade from her life, when she was no longer fun to play with. When she didn’t put out enough she supposed. When she wasn’t going to reach that goal of another pin in the wall for him to brag to his friends about. As if all of those sickly sweet words never meant anything- which she realized now never did mean anything.

It made her feel a lot less guilty about all of the drives, files, passwords, and more she’d stolen from him.

It marked the change.

Her realization.

The malicious intent blooming in her.

She knew his fucking birthday - what his first dog's name was.

It was the first time she’d felt so alone- her friends could only do or say so much. Not that there were many for her to console her pain in. Horrified of admitting her faults outward to her parents in fear that yea, maybe she would be reprimanded and punished on top of her emotional suffering.

It was the first time she had wanted to give that pain right back to the person that brought it onto her.

And what a dark, dirty feeling that was. It scared her- it really did. To look into the mirror and to be able to say ‘I want to ruin his fucking life for breaking my heart’.

But she didn’t.

It was her pain.

Not anyone else.

Maybe that was her way of wallowing in her own sorrow. For her to say ‘This is it, I’ll never do this again because I’m gonna make sure it really hurts this time.’ Like she was little, sticking her hand on the metal coil burner on top of the stove wondering why it had turned red.

Or that she was terrified- terrified of hurting the same man that hurt her. That maybe those sickly sweet words still had some purchase. That she was still worth something in his eyes and that all of it wasn’t a lie- even though she knew it really was.

But life lives on.

She graduated high school and started her work on classes at college at seventeen.

Then her parents got divorced. They just wanted to wait until she was old enough to move out- she was the only reason they were together in the first place .

And she had to move into the dorms.

And they stopped talking to her.

Her grandma died-

Then her grandpa.

Said he couldn’t live with a broken heart.

Couldn’t blame him.

The familiar light blue of her bedroom walls turned into white-painted cinderblocks in the dorms. Where they hid a air fryer under their bunk rather than a bottle of wine so that they could fry up snacks late at night while she crunched on a topic, going above and beyond as she always did because lackluster wasn’t a fucking option in her mind. She was proving herself, proving that she could set the curve without any remorse to those behind her. That she was able to build friendships- build bonds with the people around her.

Searching IRS documents and finding the home address of Zoe’s- her roommates- professor. Some staunch asshole who taught physics. The two of them made a trek out early in the morning- timing it out with maps from the rough time it took for him to arrive in the university parking lot every morning, calculating the rough time of his sitting in a coffee shop line, to leaving his house safe some traffic. That his TA would unlock the door, drop some shit off, and pick up papers before leaving for the printer room. Just so that she could plan the perfect time to go in for office hours- catch that TA and bat her eyelashes in a way that made Jayme want to vomit.

The way Zoe’s eyes followed the TA, trailing down as if she were going to drool onto her dark purple top and stain the basic cotton fabric.

“Hey.” Jayme hissed.

“Sorry, I can’t help it.” Zoe would whine.

The two of them, sat on the floor of their shared dorm room.

“We need to make a blood pact if I’m going to do this.” Jayme said, casually.

“We aren’t making a blood pact.” Zoe sighed.

“Then I’m not helping you.”

“I’m going to fail the test.” She whined.

“Maybe you should have, I don’t know, studied?” She questions.

“Oh shut up, you hermit.”

“Just saying. Why would you take a physics class?”

“It’s in my major!” She protested.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be majoring in underwater basket weaving.” Jayme snarked.

“Not everyone gets to sit with the stinky computer nerds all day long.”

“Submissive and pliant men, ripe for the picking with mommy issues.”

“Maybe you can lure one in with a sun dress and a pot roast.” Zoe joked back.

They laughed.

Then it fell quiet.

She hated the quiet- Zoe was just fine with it.

It meant an empty house.

It meant being alone.

It meant she could go down a rabbit hole of thoughts.

“Please? ” Zoe whined, again.

Jayme glanced up at her, from her laptop screen. As if her glance was going to break her determination- she was sure she’d grovel at her feet even in the showers if she had to if it meant she could get her help.

“How do you know I can even help?” Jayme questioned.

“You found his tax return- I’m sure you could find something to help me with a test .”

She wasn’t wrong.

Jayme sighed.

“Yea. I can help. Just go to class and be normal- I’ll figure it out.”

She honestly felt like a burglar. She’d done this before, didn’t know why it would be so nerve-wracking to do now. The cameras on these hallways didn’t work- she had checked. Always double checking, sometimes triple checking if it was going to be something really sketchy. This wasn’t something horrible- she wasn’t burning down a server room or anything. She was simply triggering a fire alarm- cutesy little gadget tucked into her pocket she’d already mimicked the frequency the trigger would emit when the original handle was pulled.

It was a good purchase, she’d scrounged around for the cash to buy it- doing others' homework and projects for them until she was able to obtain enough funding to buy the gadget all the way back in high school. Which was the first place she had managed to do it. Even though it wasn’t entirely on purpose, sitting in the back of the class fidgeting with the little gadget- accidentally locking it onto a frequency and suddenly all of the fire alarms start going off.

She was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over her face, a black fabric gater pulled up from her neck covering her nose and lips. Striding out, keeping her steps even as she walked down the hallways meeting the most important factor of the whole thing- look like she was supposed to be there. It was a little scary how complacent people could be, even if the person was a little suspicious- how could they be suspicious if their steps were entitled? If they weren’t nervously walking around, as if they were about to commit a crime?

Was it a crime?

She’s pretty sure it’s a crime.

She glances down at her watch.

Thirty seconds-

Twenty.

Then seven.

Three,

Two,

One.

Her hand slides into her pocket, feeling the slightly warm plastic- smooth with some small notching on its corner. Pushing down on one of the buttons as she keeps walking, keeping her steps even and her eyes on the prize- the doorway she would be walking out of in no time.

The lights on the fire alarms flash first, following the piercing, chirping noise that lets anyone within earshot know that the building is being evacuated for a fire. Drill or not- the teachers never mentioned anything about a drill. Maybe a stoner set the trash can in the bathroom on fire again.

She keeps walking forward, and the doors in front of her push open, lines of students filing out into one giant sea of people heading towards the same door as her. They mesh around her, and she blends into the crowd as she keeps walking.

Went smoothly, and if she keeps up her pace, she won’t be late for class across campus.

“ It is a crime called "identity theft" when a fraudster acquires vital pieces of "personal identifying information" (PII), such Social Security numbers and license numbers, and utilizes them for their own financial advantage. ” He speaks.

He’s older- at least to the point where his hair has begun to grey.

“Our data can be formatted and transformed using cryptography to make it more secure when traveling between computers. Modern mathematics is added to the technology, which is founded on the fundamentals of secret codes and safeguards our data in powerful ways. The manager in charge of security needs a methodical approach to identifying security requirements and characterizing options to satisfy those criteria in order to analyze the security demands of a company effectively.”

Professor Wills.

Cold hard bastard- with a seeming soft spot for gingers. That’s at least what she noticed when she stalked his social media accounts. Well, maybe not his social media accounts. Found photos of women he was seen with taking them out to dinner- no doubt paid by him with his tenured salary.

He had started out the first day of class introducing himself, as well as his ‘resume’. He’d apparently worked for the CIA- counterterrorism projects since the seventies. When he retired- he decided to un-retire himself and crawl his ass back to work. So now he sat here, droning on about the lecture she wasn’t sure why he was giving it- this was all surface-level information.

Maybe this was another one of his tests.

“The Playfair Cipher, which treats diagrams in plaintext as single units and converts these units into cipher text diagrams, is the most well-known multiple letter encryption cipher. The Playfair algorithm relies on a 5x5 letter matrix that is built using a keyword. Let "monarchy" become the crucial keyword. The matrix is created by first filling in the letters of the keyword (after removing any duplicates) from left to right and from top to bottom, and then completing the matrix with the remaining letters throughout alphabetically.”

He projected himself across the room, strides forward, sideways. Maybe if he was feeling especially spicy he would throw something across the room at someone seemingly drifting off.

“One Time Pad Cipher.” He drawls out, meaning he will be starting an important topic- or spiraling into a tangent about Panama. “A secure cryptography system. The message is represented by a series of 0s and 1s. This can be achieved, for instance, by writing all integers in binary or by utilizing ASCII. The key is a coincidentally long random sequence of 0s and 1s. A key is never utilized again after it has been used once. And….” He pauses, reaching over for a whiteboard marker, and stalking up to the board. “Is represented as such.”

‘C/i = P/i K/i C/i - i^th binary digit cipher text P/i -^th the binary digit plaintext K/i - i^th binary digit key ’ Is scribbled onto the board- in his nearly illegible handwriting.

“An extremely lengthy key is needed, which is expensive to make and send. Reusing a key for a second communication after it has already been used is risky since any knowledge about the first message would also reveal information about the second…..” He starts again, her eyes slowly closing as she starts to drift off in the lecture. “Developed by IBM, the digital immune system is a thorough method of viral defense. The growing threat of Internet-based viral spread has been the driving force behind this advancement. Recent years have seen an increase in the effects of two significant Internet technology advances on the viral spread: Integrated mail systems: Programs like Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes make it very easy to send anything to anyone and deal with received objects. Systems for mobile programs: Programs can transfer themselves automatically from one system to other thanks to features like Java and ActiveX.”

She swore to herself she’d never fall asleep in class.

She almost broke.

She didn’t quite a few other people did though.

“Remember class. Detection, Identification, Removal .”

…

The SQL Slammer worm first appeared in early 2003. A buffer overflow flaw in the Microsoft SQL server was used by this worm.

She sat- more correctly lay in her bed. Her eyes were tired. Past that point where she had been staring at a screen to long. Feeling cry- maybe borderline itchy. Zoe had offered her eye drops the first time she had complained of it.

She’d never take them.

God, she hated eye drops.

Just the concept of it freaked her out.

Well, it made sense. She couldn’t even open her eyes in the pool.

The sound of the door knob jostling, the jingle of keys, and then the door being thrown open broke her from her trance. She should really be studying. She should really be doing something other than feeling sorry for her dry eyes and actually being productive.

“Jayme!” Zoe charges forward, arms reaching up as she scuttles over the small ladder leading up to her bed, climbing on top of her.

“Fuckin- What?” She half hisses out, moving Zoe over to her side and rolling over to look at her.

“He asked.” Her mouth was split open into a huge grin.

“What?” She asked.

“He asked me out! To coffee!” She squeals, throwing her head back.

“Ohhhhhh.” Jayme grins, raising her hand up and pinching Zoe’s cheek. “See? I told you it would work.”

Zoe lifts herself, pushing off of the bed and jumping down onto the ground, starting to rummage through her things. “No, no you didn’t. You spent the entire time telling me how bad of an idea this was. Because A, you’re bitter and lonely, and B-” “Wanting to fuck your TA is on par with sucking your professor's dick?” Jayme asks aloud.

“No, oh my gosh.” She groans, throwing her head back. “I’m filling in for a coworker at the store until closing, so you’ll be all alone.” She grins again.

Zoe worked at a run-down, stinky, Office Depot. Her uncle was the manager- and sometimes, he’d offer up free school supplies to them. Cutesy little pens, sometimes Journals and notepads. They usually had some kind of flaw about them that made it so they couldn’t be sold on the floor, but regardless. She’d gotten a few nice binders out of it and she wasn’t one to complain. Even if the man's constant wheezing raised her blood pressure and made her swear to herself to never pick up the habit of smoking.

“I’ll enjoy every moment,” Jayme replies, rolling back over, grabbing her pillow, and covering her head with it in hopes it’ll drown out the buzz of people walking down the hallway outside.

It never does.

The buffer overflow vulnerability that the worm took use of was first identified by David Litchfield, whose proof-of-concept code was used to present the worm at the Black Hat Briefings. The only thing this short bit of code does is generate random IP addresses and transmit itself to those addresses. A computer that is running an unpatched instance of Microsoft SQL Server Resolution Service listening on UDP port 1434 and receives a specified address becomes infected and starts spreading the worm program throughout the Internet.

She should really be studying, not working on other people's projects.

But, she was hungry. What could she say?

In all honesty, it wasn’t that hard. As dirty as it was, she was feeding it all through an AI system to generate the text, she would read through it and dumb it down because there was no was this asshole knew how to use the word ‘eloquently’. Then feed it back through, generate some filler to get some dings on his grade, all to make it more believable and then give it back to him. Grab the cash, and go buy something for her and Zoe to eat for dinner.

She owes it to her, really.

Without Zoe she wouldn’t really make it. Yea, she was being supported by her parents and whatever pocket change she made off of working at that stinky ass office supply store went to her crippling shopping habits-

But Zoe took care of her. And Jayme would try to help in any way she could back.

Even if it meant stalking a professor to get the perfect window to insert Zoe into a TA’s life so that he would fall in love with her.

As if love were a real thing, she’d muse with herself. Her parents were in love- or at least they said they were. It left a horribly bitter taste in her mouth to be thinking about it. To be thinking about how it was a long haul to wait until she was old enough to move out- out of high school so that they could move on with their lives as if she were a burden.

Not that they ever called her a burden, it was just how she took it.

She was probably right to take it that way.

It would happen the way it normally does.

Zoe gripped the doorknob and jiggled it a bunch of times as if Jayme ever forgot to lock the door. Not ever- never once in their continued stay in these dorms had she ever found Jayme in the room- unlocked. It was like a paradox.

Pushing the door open after she clatters around with her keys for a good while, throwing the door open giggling and squealing about how amazing the coffee date was, and how he was ‘soooo hot’, he had even opened the door to the coffee shop for her, and pulled out the chair.

Jayme would nod, trying not to rain on her parade with her bitter outlook on the concept, and allow her to ramble, at no one in particular if not her about how great it was. Oh, and how she has to try out this new mocha-chai-something-bullshit concoction that he had recommended she taste. Leaning forward and letting her take a sip out of his cup as if it was the same thing as them aggressively frenching out in the bathroom.

She’s back in the classroom, staring at the whiteboard spacing out as Professor Wills rambles about the importance of the autonomy of American citizens- as well as their online privacy.

“I've made light of the fact that I don't really care if the NSA can read my emails during class. They will not be bothered about whatever I have. There are, however, bigger issues involved. ” He starts, standing up and starting to pace, back and forth and back and forth in a way that makes her motion sick.

“ Our best look at how a government can employ computer surveillance to monitor and control its populace comes from the Chinese government, most likely. ” He snickers at the end of it, as if it were some kind of joke the class would get. No one else laughed, because they didn’t get it. Only he would understand it- probably doing his fair share of rooting through, crossing that fine line in the name of evidence. “ The goal is to compile all online data about Chinese businesses and individuals in one location, score each of them based on their political, commercial, social, and legal "credit," and then compile the results.”

“I bet a lot of you in this room would fail on the social aspect, with those Instagrams of yours.” He teases.

There's a light- may be forced in the name of politeness laugh that fills the room.

“ The three V’s !” He yells, throwing another object somewhere in the room.

“Volume – The amount of data. The size- quantity. How many gallons of dirt do they have on you?

Velocity- The speed at which data is produced is known as velocity. Different processing approaches may be employed depending on the velocity.

Variety- Data might be structured or unstructured. The processing of structured data is ideally suited for computers. Not so with unstructured data. A passenger manifest is an illustration of structured data. Unstructured video from a CCTV camera shows passengers leaving and entering a passenger terminal.

And last of all?

Veracity – Your accuracy.”

There was a stiff silence.

“Um, Professor.” One of the guys in the front pipes up. “That was four.”

“At least someone was paying attention! Class is dismissed!”

The recognition of the worm spreading was recognized too little, too late.

Jayme sits on the cold linoleum-tiled floor, scratching at some kind of chart when the telltale sign of footsteps up to her door breaks her from her train of thought.

The sound of keys jingling first- not the jiggling of the knob. And the distinct sound of her choking on a sob at the door.

She stands, ready to hear about how horrible the date went- that he was talking to another girl. It had happened what- six times already in the few years she had known Zoe? It wasn’t anything new. They’d go somewhere- Trader Joe’s probably. Buy a bunch of snacks and shit talk and pig out until Zoe felt better.

Walking over to the door and opening it up, she’s met with the dark mascara splattered down her face from Zoe’s tears. She opens the door more, stepping out of the way as Zoe drops to her knees- at Jayme’s feet and lets out a sob. One she’d never heard before- ever. She sheer amount of fear- rage- hurt. She blinks, kneeling down with her to realize her horror.

She’s back in her childhood room, sobbing, staring up out of the window, and watching the stars. Her heart aches and the feeling of her puffy eyes and stuffed-up nose do nothing to fight against the horrible headache that blossomed in her head either from the stress, or the dehydration of crying like a baby for this long.

She's standing up, walking into the little bathroom connected to her room, and looking in the mirror, smearing the snot and tears off of her cheeks and seething.

She didn’t want to inflict the pain for her own sake. To make her feel better.

But she would, she will, she would inflict pain for her sake.

The hospital is cold.

Quiet.

The buzz of people moving about doing their jobs. Sipping on stale coffee and listing to the chatter in the radio or clicking on a poorly hidden tab of solitaire.

It makes her itch. The kind of itch you feel when there's a spider crawling up your arm in the dark- you can’t see the spider but it’ll wake you from a dead sleep to freak out. She picks at the skin on her thumb, bites her lip, and taps her foot. Anything while she waits.

One of the nurses brings her a soda from the vending machine.

It was a nice gesture, but she ends up with the tab cracked, listening to the sound of the carbonation fizzling off while she stared off into space feeling nothing but anger- and guilt.

How it was all her fault-

She had started the spiral,

The snowball.

Had she not of given in- had she not of let Zoe blindly chase tail as if she were a neurotic dog. She’d be ok- she wouldn’t have been kneeling at her feet sobbing .

The police arrived. One young male officer, and one female.

The female stepped behind the curtain.

The male officer sat down next to her.

He tried- awkwardly. To try to coax information out of her, what happened? What really happened.

The condescending words as if she had been lying.

As if it was just a jest .

So she calmly, even if she had to stop a few times breaking down crying. Explaining the situation.

He took his notepad and fucked off a while later.

It was three weeks later.

The Disciplinary board ruled in favor of the TA- put him on suspension with no pay due to the circumstances.

She never saw Zoe again.

She Just kind of… Left. One night. She woke up the next morning. She had packed up some clothes, and left in the dead of night.

Leaving her alone.

In Silence.

Again.

Soon enough, one in four computers connected to the internet was affected.

#Jitters Au #Simon Riley #john soap mactavish #john price #gaz garrick #Kate Laswell #Cod #call of duty #call of duty mwii #simon riley x oc #simon 'ghost' riley #john soap mactavish x oc #simon 'ghost' riley x reader #John Mactavish x Reader #SA Implied #I'm serrious ab that warning #JITTERSVERSE #Cross posted #Jitters is a OC

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