The code inside the virus program had, I hate to admit, a certain amount of elegance to it. It was by no means a masterpiece but whoever had written it knew what they were doing. While I took my time scanning through the file, I thought it best that we keep an eye on Haynesworth’s assistant.
“Pam,” I said aloud. “I need you to hack Ms. Voss’s phone and clone it into your telecommunications hardware.”
Most androids came with built-in hardware that made them an overpriced mobile phone. Plus, their optical sensors could display the interface to any make and model of phone within their virtual sight field – so long as the units were regularly updated, which Pam was. This would, in effect, allow Pam to monitor any activity on the phone. My only hope was that Voss had not gone to any great lengths to encrypt her device.
Meanwhile, I had a solid breakthrough in the case. Hidden through a couple of lines of code, I found the architect of the virus – N00B 4554551N. Inserting your name was the Achilles Heel of most hackers and other digital miscreants. And in spite of the inherent danger of revealing your identity, they like to sign their handiwork as if they were some sort of Renaissance master.
To be fair, the practice had fallen out of favor for most of the 21st century because it made it far to easy for the police to track down the culprit. However, including your hacker name has made a comeback in the last few decades. Usually, they try to embed it within several lines of code to make it difficult to find but this wasn’t my first trip to the rodeo.
“Noob Assassin,” I said to no one in particular as I stared at the name. “What a terrible handle.”
Noob Assassin. It sounded more like a gamer’s ID, not a hacker’s, but at least it gave me, at long last, something solid to work with.
***
I was just about to call Pam, again, when she beat me to the punch.
“I have cloned Ms Voss’s phone, sir.”
“Was it difficult?”
“Not terribly, Mr. Helmqvist. Its only encryption was what the service provider had pre-installed.”
Low-level encryption and she plans to sting her boss with blackmail?
Maybe a not so clever girl.
“That’s great, Pam,” I said. “Dump her message log onto my terminal and then I have another task for you.”
The information from Haynesworth’s assistant immediately began to stream onto my display.
“What is it that you would like me to do, sir?”
“A name search: Noob Assassin. Try it both as N-double O-B space A-double S-A-double S-I-N and also capital N-double zero-capital B space Four-double five-four-double five-one-capital N.”
“Anything else?” Pam asked as if she already knew that there was more.
“Focus your search on the forums for game sites. I’d start with the big competitive games.”
“Yes, sir.”
While Pam got to work finding out who this Noob Assassin was, I sifted through the detritus that was Lyric Voss’s message logs, and there was a lot. The woman seemed to text as much as she did anything else. The sheer volume was insane and one day represented a month’s worth of messaging for an average person, or me at any rate.
The prospect of so much reading was starting to make me hungry – and thirsty.
I checked my watch. It was going on 5 PM. We had been at it for a while. Time for some dinner.
Skid Rogue Haven 
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