Jea’s P.O.V.

My eyes feel heavy, and my head is pounding. Something in the air smells good though, like someone is cooking something. I try to open my eyes but quickly shut them at the sight of a bright light directly above me. What the fuck, my head already hurts and that's not helping. I feel that i'm lying down on something and there seems to be a cover over me. Where- shit. That fucker knocked me out. I try to get up quietly, only opening my eyes enough to squint. The blanket falls onto my lap as I sit up. I look in front of me, where my feet are up against the arm of this couch and I use one arm to prop myself up. I Notice that there are two doors a little ways in front of me and computer monitors are a bit everywhere along with other high grade electronics in what looks to be working stations. I'd recognize this kind of setup anywhere. These people are definitely hackers, and not amateurs. I look over the back of the couch to see a wall made entirely out of windows. The city lights and the dark sky overhead, making a beautiful sight. Jesus that's one hell of a view.

“Like what you see?” I jump at the sudden voice. I turn around on the couch, flinging my legs over the edge to look at who had spoken. The sudden movement has my head pounding harder.

“Ah! Fuck.” I put my hand over my forehead and eyes, as if that's supposed to dull the pain somehow.

“Yea, sorry about that.” I hear the person say again. This bastard. I hear something click onto the coffee table in front of me. I open my eyes just enough to get an idea of what it is. It's a bowl with something liquid like inside. I quickly shut my eyes again though, the light might just make my head explode. “Oh right!” He says a little too loudly and walks somewhere. The lights are suddenly shut off. I open my eyes and the only thing lighting the room is the moon and the lights from the city pouring in through the windows. “Better?” He asks, coming closer again. The dim light coming in through the windows is just enough for things in the room to be visible to me, along with the son of a bitch in front of me. His black hair disappears in the background in this lighting, only the shine in his hair from the moonlight shows a sliver of it. I look back at the boal in front of me, looking a bit closer I realize that that tantalizing smell was coming from this soup.

I go to take the spoon sitting in the broth but stop myself almost instantly. This guy just knocked me out without warning, brought me to some random apartment and is now serving me soup and i'm all ‘yea, this is totally fine, i'll just take the soup’. What the fuck is wrong with me right now? “I didn’t drug it.” He says, seeming to notice my hesitation. I don't even have time to ask him to prove it before his hand moves to the spoon and he takes a bit of soup into his mouth. “See?” He says, placing the spoon back on the coffee table. I don't say anything and just continue to give him an unwaveringly sceptical look. He obviously noticed since he then proceeds to roll his eyes. He then sighs after about another minute. “Whatever man, go hungry for all I care.” He says before getting up and getting a red laptop from one of the work stations. I can clearly see that the thing had been built by hand. This isn't some low grade store bought shit.

He comes and sits down on the sofa next to the one I'm currently sitting on. It was pushed up next to this one in a way that made the two of them form an “L” shape. I watched as he opened up the laptop, booted it up and started typing. Only moments after he starts typing I feel a buzz in my pocket. I pat my pockets down, sporting a confused expression on my face as I do. I then feel my phone in my back pocket and then look at the guy.

“Didn't the police have this?” I ask, clearly unsure of how he both got it back and when he put it in my pocket.

“Yes, and they also had you, now they don't have either.” He said, without looking up from whatever it was he was typing. I looked over towards the door. I could just make a break for it right now… hell he might not even notice with how concentrated he seems to be on what he’s doing. “Don’t even think about it.” Is all I hear, my head quickly snapping back to find that he is still looking at the screen and typing away. How? Just, fucking, how? I sigh and decide to check my phone. The screen lights up and I can already see a full screen of notifications. Fuck me, half of these are just people asking where the fuck I am. I forgot about the hack going on today. I then check the time to see that it's a little past midnight. Technically yesterday then. I then hear the incessant typing suddenly stop, and I feel the pair of eyes on me. This time I'm the one that doesn't look up.

“What?” I ask, a bit annoyed as I continue to go through my phone. I see that the raid had happened and gone fairly smoothly from what I could tell. One of my right hand men had taken over while I was offline and gotten everything done. Network Ghost was kind of a cocky bastard though so I knew I would be hearing about this for days. Fucking hell I’m never going to hear the end of this.

“What are you checking?” he asked, still not typing.

“None of your damn business, don't you have enough shit on me as is?” I say, obviously annoyed, and not trying to hide it at all.

“Alright, alright. Calm down.” If possible there would be a visible pulsating blood vessel on my forehead with how agitated I am right now. He went back to typing after that, finally getting the message. Fuck that guy is nosy. I then get a message from Network Ghost, clearly seeing that I was finally online after having disappeared for almost half a day.

‘Hey man, what happened? You missed the raid. I ended up having to run it for you.’

I rolled my eyes.

‘Some shit happened, it's not important. I want a full report of what happened and the information that you got from the raid.’

I type back, not really wanting to get into it. Not that I ever would anyway. Online, especially hackers, know one thing. Never trust anyone. There is no such thing as friends in the hacker world, only temporary alliances with unpredictable expiration dates. I hear Declan sigh and look up to find him shaking his head.

“What are you doing?” I ask, despite not really caring. I figure that I might as well try and compile as much information as I can about this guy, hopefully I can find enough information to be able to blackmail him back somehow. A part of me kind of wanted to hack into their network and hold their servers hostage but I don't think I could do that without tipping off to this guy that my level of hacking is a lot higher than he thinks. Which of cours could lead to a whole shit load of problems, starting with but not limited to him possibly figuring out that I’m Nameless. As much as I would like to say that I'm just giving him the benefit of the doubt, I can't say that. This guy may be annoying, an asshole, and an all round pain in my ass, but he is unfortunately clearly a very smart pain in the ass. He would be able to connect the dots if enough dots were given to him. As you can probably imagine I don't plan on deliberately giving him any dots to work with.

Just then the door to this guy's apartment suddenly flings open and a bolt of fear strikes through me. The police must have followed this idiot. Now we're both fucked.