"You have need of me, because I am rich and you are poor. We will therefore come to an agreement. I will permit you to have the honour of serving me, on condition that you bestow on me the little you have left, in return for the pains I shall take to command you."

Who’s the real criminal? Someone that has been disenfranchised by society, failed by education and social structures until they see no other viable lifestyle than theft, robbery and fraud – or is it the people that use their privilege to slip though every legal loophole to enrich themselves while taking from others by exploiting the structure of the system?

If you asked Lillian Stewart, it was the latter. That was the reason she had become active in the scene, using her own privilege and access to make the world a better place. Under the alias Kiterunner, she had spent the last seven years breaking into bank accounts, mail servers, and myriads of personal devices to expose and correct the imbalance of wealth and fortune that was fucking up society.

She hated the term ‘Robin Hood’, but she begrudgingly left comments of that nature stand unchallenged. Always best to have the world assume you were a dude. That came with even more privilege. Online, you got treated with more respect, and offline, no one expected the curvy twenty-something in a sun dress and jean jacket to be snooping for RFID signatures.

Starting today, she was going to be following a lead from another activist who had spent ten thousand hours of stolen compute time on decrypting and dejunking a fifteen terabyte leak of VPN tracking data and server caches that had never been supposed to exist. There had been some really juicy stuff in there. Some of it had already been published, and some of that had even led to tangible consequences for the motherfuckers they had managed to expose.

Other data points, however, were going to require the most extreme actions possible.

And for that, they had to investigate in meatspace. 

That was where Kiterunner came in. She was one of the few people in the scene that had both the balls and means to really focus on in-person social engineering and physical penetration. She was good at it, too. A natural extrovert, she could play the ditsy lost girl just as well as the intimidating professional. Being friendly and flirty was as much in her playbook as was putting up her hair into a tight bun and acting like she was supposed to fix the fucking intranet two hours ago.

Today, she wasn’t going to go that deep, though. Today was only her first day of proper recon, and getting the access she required was going to take time – but she had to get this right, and she had to be careful. 

If what the data implied was true, this might be the most dangerous thing she had ever exposed.

She really hoped that it wasn’t true.

She parked her Toyota Camry three blocks away from her target, checked her deliberately unflattering make-up, and walked the rest of the way to the place she was looking for, which was a bar called ‘Russeau’s’. It was seven p.m. and the place was starting to get crowded. Perfect.

She scanned the room and clocked the usual mix one would expect: suits and civilians and the occasional guy that looked like an old-time regular, scattered across tables and niches, and occupying bar stools in respectful distances. Some lone wolves, but mostly pairs. A waitress came out of the kitchen, carrying a tray with sodas and burgers, giving her a friendly smile and telling her to pick any free table she wanted as she walked past.

Lillian nodded, smiled, and found herself a small round table in the back from where she had a good vantage point. She got hardly any looks, and those she got didn’t last. Good. Her body was just as much of an asset as her skills and knowledge, and being a pretty girl with nice tits often came in handy when she wanted marks to open up to her – but today, being good-looking was more of a hindrance. Today, she wanted to be invisible.

She sat down and checked the menu, and took a quiet breath. She had done this often enough not to be truly nervous anymore, but there was always a certain thrill of being on a mission and harboring secret intent, carrying a fake ID and a brand-new burner phone. No matter how much info she had gathered beforehand, there always remained a sticky residue of the unknown and unprepared that she might have to improvise and adapt around. Chance and uncertainty as factors could never be eliminated.

She didn't worry though. She knew she was good – and so, as it turned out, was her intel. It didn’t take long before the first employee of Lotus Industries arrived, exactly like she had hoped.

Jackpot. 

Honestly, it should have been no surprise to see one of them actually show up. Whenever Big Tech decided to open a facility in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere, the employees were naturally going to hang out at the only halfway decent spot in town.

She recognized the face. Lawrence Corbin, 28. Junior Engineer. Caltech graduate. Single since May. Liked Old Trek, flight sims, and subscribed to a porn site specializing in latex and leather kink. Harmless. Potentially vulnerable to flirting, but he only had base level facility access and almost certainly no idea what was secretly going on with his employer. Wasted time.

Still, she did her thing. Regardless of how likely she was to use him, it was never a bad idea to go down the list; and so Lillian made careful mental notes of his mannerisms and general vibes, carefully watching out for security badges, wallets, phones, and where he kept them. Car keys: Ford Edge. Android phone with an OS that looked jailbroken. Inner left jacket pocket. Clean sneakers; no jewellery; no visible tats. Not much to go off of, but this was just the first scan. If she had to, she would dig deeper – but right now, that was enough.

When she was done, she went back into full incognito mode, scrolling through her phone like any good innocent woman sitting alone would do, hardly paying attention as she committed the details to memory and thought about her plans to infiltrate the rotten operations of Lotus.

They were going to suffer for what they had done to those women. 

She was going to leak every part of their secret trafficking operations, of course – even if that kind of action tended to have infuriatingly little consequences for corporations with enough bystanders to take the fall for the ones that were actually responsible.

The real attack however, would be on what actually mattered to them: Their wallets. 

Any assets she could redistribute, destroy or at least make unrecoverable, she was going to rip out of their holdings and offshore accounts and give it back to the ones that it actually belonged to. Crypto, laundered donations, hundreds of thousands of direct deposits to the IRS – anything to make them pay.

What’s yours is ours, you assholes.

But all of that was still a long way off. Right now, she still had to find a way in. 

She kept up her persona, ordered some food, and occasionally glanced across the room to check for more newcomers. She had no idea whether to expect any. For all she knew, Lawrence Corbin could be the only mark she would get to see all week.

But she was lucky.

After half an hour, while Lillian was in the middle of her hash browns, another potential target walked in – and this one was far more promising. 

Doctor Christine Bouvier, 33. Lead Medical Engineer. Headhunted straight out of college ten years ago. Basically vanished from social media since then, save the occasional facial recognition hit in official company postings. Clearly much better at data hygiene than the rank and file, but occasionally detectable through outgoing emails and media consumption in unsecured networks. By all accounts a consummate workaholic, and–

She was walking straight towards Lillian.

Fuck.

Lillian was too good to be caught off guard. She simply gave the approaching woman an awkward smile of ‘accidental’ eye contact, and went back to her phone as if nothing had happened.

Christine Bouvier sat down right across from her.

“Hello,” she said very matter-of-factly, put down her black leather purse on a free chair next to her, and placed her phone on the table, face down.

“What the…? Do I know you?” asked Lillian, with an incredulous chuckle. Her pulse was going quick, but she knew how to keep her cool. In this case, keeping her cool meant slightly freaking out because that was what someone innocent would do. “Am I in your spot?” she joked.

Bouvier smiled. She looked way too elegant to be here. Honestly, she looked way too elegant to be the lead scientist of anything. The gold and cream dress she was wearing was stunning.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not big on ownership. Or maybe… actually, I might be very big on ownership.”

“...what?” Lillian asked, blinking in confusion. Her face felt hot, and her thoughts heavy. She hadn’t expected this.

“Lotus Industries policy is never to waste talent or words,” she said. “And we want what you have.”

Again, she had to keep face, and she chuckled and smiled innocently. “Lotus… what?! What is even going on right now?”

Bouvier’s smile didn’t waver, but there was a casual coldness about it now. “Cut the crap, Lillian, I know who you are. Your kite got all tangled up.”

Lillian’s guts filled with ice. Fuck. Don’t admit anything. Deny. Distract. Gaslight. She hadn’t done anything illegal, yet. They couldn’t prove anything. This was just a lucky guess.

“I’m sorry,” she said, getting up. “This is so fucking weird. I… don’t know who–”

“Sit down, Lillian,” said Bouvier calmly.

Lillian obeyed.

…wait, what…

Bouvier pushed her cell phone further across the table. “It’s okay, you don’t have to be ashamed. You are really really good. We almost didn’t catch you – and we caught everyone else.”

Some strange and foreign thoughts fluttered across Lillian's mind right then. It was true. Some part of her had felt ashamed to be found out – but that didn’t matter. She couldn’t drop her guard, and she certainly shouldn’t feel relief. Never admit wrongdoing. Never back down.

“You’ve got the wrong person, whatever this is. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s natural to be afraid,” said Bouvier. “But you can relax. It’s over now. You’ve been caught. The worst has already happened. The rest will be so much easier.”

“No,” Lillian insisted. Something was strange. Something was wrong. Why was this happening? All of this felt so fake and weird. What…

“I’ve read your manifesto,” said Bouvier. This time, Lillian didn’t have the impulse to answer. What was even the point? All of this was so messed up. What was she even going to do? Running away hadn’t worked. Should she try that again? That seemed so exhausting.

“What’s yours is mine,” Bouvier quoted. “And what's mine is ours. We are the true stakeholders. We are the people, and you don’t own us!”

Yes. She had written that. It felt so far away now. Hearing someone else say it felt so strange. Like the words weren’t her own anymore. Like she was just… watching from the outside.

“I like it,” Bouvier said. “But not for the reasons you’d think. It just makes it so much more exciting when I think about what we’re going to take away from you.”

“Please,” said Lillian. “Don’t.”

She didn’t even know why she had said that. It had felt like some sort of automatic impulse. Sheer reflex. She dimly remembered that she had tried to run away a minute ago. Had it only been a minute? Wait. Why hadn’t she kept trying? Why… hadn’t she been thinking about that before?

Bouvier smiled, opened her purse, and produced a small plastic package of makeup remover wipes. Lillian watched it happen, hardly wondering what she was going to do with them.

“Lean closer.”

Lillian obeyed, and leaned across the table. Bouvier started taking off her makeup. 

“You know,” she said as she wiped across Lillian’s cheeks. “We never managed to make the external induction field work more quickly, even after years of trials. Shut your eyes.”

Lillian did as she was told, and Bouvier brushed across her closed eyelids. She went on. “We did, however, find improvements on the field modulation. By now, you should be perfectly aligned and caught in the field, and you won’t acclimate for at least an hour.”

“Yes,” said Lillian. She didn’t really know why. It just felt right to agree. She couldn’t see. Her eyes were still closed. All there was was the cool touch of the damp wipes against her face. It felt nice. She let it happen, and it continued to happen, until it was no longer happening.

Everything was just… happening, now.

Yes. 

This was happening.

“Much better. I gotta say, it takes a lot of skill to make that face unattractive. Well done.”

Yes. She had done a good job, hadn’t she? She had thought so herself, earlier.

“Okay, let’s go,” said Bouvier. “Open your eyes and follow me.”

Something about this felt really sudden, but…

This was happening.

Yes. 

Lillian opened her eyes and got up to follow. They were leaving. She was following.

“See you tomorrow, Lawrence.”

The young man at the bar was watching them leave. 

No. 

Not just him.

Everyone was watching them leave. No one was talking. They were all just watching. 

Something about that seemed strange.

“Get in the car.”

Lillian noticed that she was outside, next to a black Bentley. She got in the car.

“Buckle up.”

Lillian put on the seat belt.

“Hold this.”

Lillian took Bouvier’s phone and held it. It felt warm against her skin.

After that, they were driving.

Until they weren’t. 

She got told to get out of the car, and she did. 

She got told to follow again, and she did. 

She noticed that Bouvier had driven them to the parking lot of Lotus Industries, and they were now walking into the depths of the facility. Bouvier had a badge and used it six times to pass escalating layers of security, crossing an airlock at some point, and taking an elevator underground at another. 

When they got out, they got held up by a guard.

“That the hacker whore?”

“Yes,” said Bouvier.

“Master’s waiting. Have fun.”

“I will,” said Bouvier. “Come on, Lillian. We’re almost there. Follow me.”

Yes. 

She was following.