I turned on the Christmas music, and sang along as I got to work.
When I was little, Christmas was my favorite holiday.Other people hated being Christmas babies, but I loved it.We never had much money growing up, but Mom decorated every December.The house would be lights and color and amazing, and then there was that one day a year—my birthday—when I’d wake up and there would be a present for me under the tree and a small pile of candy.
We weren’t religious, so I didn’t understand the significance of the day to other people.I assumed Mom was doing it all to celebrate me, and I loved it.I figured out as I got older, went to school, listened to the other kids talk, that our Christmas was nothing compared to theirs, and the way Mom did things meant only one present for both birthday and Christmas.I didn’t care.By then I already knew that we decorated the house, people decorated the mall, everyone around the world bought presents for their loved ones, because it was my birthday.
Ah, to be young and that kind of arrogant again.
I still loved the holiday, and the good it brought out in people, though.
It didn’t take me long to put everything up.I’d never found a small enough tree-topper that was appropriate for me, but I would.When I reached the bottom of the box, a smaller box sat at the bottom, taunting me.
It would stay there, the way it did every year.With the snow blanketing the ground outside, and the music having stopped in the background, a somber mood sank in.“I miss you, Mom.”I blew the tree a kiss, and settled onto the mattress to read and distract myself from the loneliness.
Six
Danny
We’d turnedPhillip’s living room into a war room.Dustin and Brandon had spent the entire afternoon scouring for any traces of the stolen and leaked content, and getting it taken down.That didn’t mean it was gone—once people realized it was from an existing game, we expected new copies would pop up.
Luna and Elliot were represented by the two phones sitting between us.Once Elliot confirmed no code got out, only music and images, he’d started helping us dissect the video.
The stress in the air was tangible, and I loved it anyway.I retired from this kind of work years ago, because the clients were unpredictable and the demand added to my drinking problem.But the problem solving… I could do this all the time.
When my phone rang, I jumped.Reese’s name flashed on the screen, and my heart sank.“Hey.”I answered, giving her most of my attention, but keeping a sliver on my work.
None of the pieces we’d looked at so far had their original headers.Which made sense.The person doing this knew enough to strip out the information that said where the video came from, so that it looked like it was theirs.
“Decorating?”she asked.
“Fuck.I’m sorry Reese, I got so caught up in this thing, I lost track of time.”There had to be something hidden in this file that said who it came from, though.
“No worries.”Her disappointment was masked under false cheer.After knowing her for years, it was easy to hear.“I’ll see you for practice tomorrow night?”
“Yeah, definitely.I’m sorry.”There was one place, and as I dug into the audio, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find what I was looking for or not.Not a lot of people knew how to stash information here, but Brandon was one of them, because I taught him.
“Seriously, it’s okay.How’s everything going?”Reese asked.
“Eh.Not as bad as it could be, but not as good as we’d like.Hey, I need to get back to it.Catch up with you tomorrow?”
“Sure.Talk to you th—”
I disconnected before she finished, and winced with guilt.But I found an answer to our leaked information issue.Or at least a hint.A tucked away piece of metadata with our home IP address on it.“Fuck.”The exclamation slipped out, and everyone in the room stared at me.
“I found something.”Luna’s voice came from the phone closest to me.“Is it the same thing you found?”
I hoped not.Could I pretend I didn’t know what this was?Not the best idea if we wanted a solution.“Don’t know.Is it?”These audio files came from our network, and it was very possible the images did too.Brandon kept a lot of work on his personal machine.AcesPlayed hadn’t been hacked, we had.
“Before we go back and forth too much,” Luna said, “I’ll point out that I have a whitelist of IP addresses for employees who access the network from home, and I can tell who this belongs to.”
I sucked in a sharp breath through my teeth.“Yeah.We found the same thing.”
“And you were going to blame poor, innocent me for not doing my job.”Luna’s tone was light.
This hardly seemed like the time to point out that she was a lot of things, but I doubted innocent was one of them.“I had no intention of saying such a thing.”
“You were thinking it.”
Busted.