MALWARE // KELSI
Sometimes the universe decides you haven’t suffered enough lately and throws you a little bonus trauma. Free of charge.
I’m standing in the doorway of Conference Room B, holding my tablet and what’s left of my fourth energy drink, staring at Brynn Locke like she’s a particularly unwelcome error message that’s just popped up on my screen. She’s sitting at the head of the conference table - naturally -looking exactly like someone who alphabetizes her email folders and has never experienced an inconvenience in her entire life.
A year. I spent an entire year perfecting the art of Agent Locke avoidance. Different floors, strategic bathroom timing, an almost supernatural ability to sense the approach of uptight federal agents from three corridors away. All that effort, and here she is, sitting in my briefing like she owns the place. Which, knowing the federal government’s hiring practices and their love affair with rule-following automatons, she probably does.
The cosmic joke is so perfect it’s almost impressive. My mother would call it karma, but my mother also thinks crystals have Wi-Fi.
Brynn looks up at me with those dark, analytical eyes, and something flickers across her face before settling back into that default expression of professional neutrality she’s perfected.
“Agent Kavka,” she says, and her voice has exactly the same warmth as a chatbot. “Please, take a seat.”
I should leave. Walk right back out that door and fake a medical emergency. Heart attack? Possibly the most believable scenario considering my addiction.
But there’s something in Brynn's tone that suggests this isn’t actually a request, and more importantly, there’s probably a good reason they’ve dragged me into whatever fresh digital nightmare that's about to unfold.
The conference room stretches before me like a gauntlet of regulation furniture and institutional despair. Every chair looks exactly the same -black, utilitarian, designed by people who clearly believe comfort is a character flaw. The other agents scattered around the table have that particular federal look: clean, pressed shirts, expressions of total seriousness, and the kind of rigid posture that suggests they consider Fun Fridays a sign of moral decline.
I navigate toward an empty chair three seats down from Agent Locke. It’s the perfect distance for someone who’d rather be alone with a computer in a windowless room than sitting in a meeting full of people who think “have you tried turning it off and on again” represents the pinnacle of technical sophistication.
The agent beside me - Henderson, according to his nameplate - glances over with polite curiosity. I can practically see him cataloguing my dishevelled appearance and pink hair with disdain. Fantastic. Nothing says technical competence like showing up to your new assignment looking like you're running on two hours of sleep and Adderall.
“Now that Agent Kavka has joined us,” Brynn continues, and there’s definitely a pause before my name like she’s accessing a file that requires additional security clearance, “we can proceed.”
She clicks something on her laptop and the wall monitor flickers to life. For one moment there’s just a loading screen. Maybe this is about software updates for the Bureau, I think desperately. Maybe someone’s grandmother downloaded suspicious email attachments and we need to explain why Nigerian princes aren’t actually giving away money.
Then the image resolves, and I immediately want to go back to worrying about awkward workplace reunions and my complete lack of professional dignity.
The website sprawls across the screen like something pulled from the darkest corner of humanity’s collective id. Someone has taken the aesthetic principles of clean, professional web design - stark white text on black background, minimal layout, elegant typography - and weaponized them for something infinitely worse.
On the center stage, there's a live video feed that makes my stomach want to perform emergency evacuation. A person - impossible to tell anything about them through the restraints and camera angle, which is probably intentional - bound to a metal chair in what appears to be a concrete room designed by someone with very specific ideas about soundproofing. The rope work is tight, each knot placed with attention to detail that suggests a very concerning hobby. A black cloth bag obscures the victim's head completely, and they’re so motionless I have to stare at the screen for thirty seconds before I can detect the barely perceptible rise and fall of their chest.
Above the video feed, numbers count down with the relentless ticks of a doomsday clock:
1 DAY : 21 HRS : 43 MIN : 27 SEC
And below that - this is the part where my already tenuous faith in humanity takes another significant hit - a bidding interface. Someone has turned human death into an online auction, complete with a user experience design and what appears to be excellent customer service features. The current amount climbs steadily: $50,000, $55,000, $60,000. Each increment comes with a soft chime that sounds like something from a meditation app, because apparently even murder has to have good UX design these days.
Usernames scroll past in the bidding history like credits on a movie no one should ever want to watch. Anonymous_Yu445a. DeepSeeker. User7745821. Strings of characters that required considerable effort and technical know-how to make properly untraceable.
I’d like to say I’m shocked, but honestly? This feels about right for humanity in 2025. We’ve managed to monetize everything else so why not murder?
“This site appeared on our radar eighteen hours ago,” Brynn announces in the same tone she’d use to discuss quarterly budget reports or the proper filing procedures for evidence logs. “Discovery occurred during routine dark web monitoring.”
Clearly nothing unusual about stumbling across someone’s murder being livestreamed to an audience of wealthy psychopaths with entertainment budgets and more money than basic human decency.
“The platform appears accessible exclusively through Tor.” She talks like she’s presenting a software demo instead of someone’s imminent death. “Our initial attempts to trace the location have been unsuccessful. The bidding infrastructure suggests sophisticated technical architecture.”
Professional-grade equipment for professional-grade murder.
“Agent Kavka.” There’s my name again, cutting through my mental spiral of horror and existential despair. “Your expertise in hacking is why you’ve been assigned to this investigation.”
Every head in the room swivels toward me like I’m some kind of magic decoder they’ve just discovered in their cereal box. The weight of their collective expectation settles on my shoulders like a lead blanket. I look away from the screen, which requires actual physical effort because there’s something hypnotically awful about watching those numbers climb steadily.
“Preliminary analysis suggests this may be connected to recruitment puzzle methodology,” Brynn continues, and that phrase snaps my attention back to the numbers with unpleasant clarity. “The minimalist design, countdown mechanics, and apparent targeting of high-intelligence individuals align with documented patterns from previous cases.”
Now we have serial killers with computer science degrees, academic subscriptions, and probably very strong opinions about humanity's declining morality. The internet was a mistake, and this is the proof.
“However,” Agent Locke adds, and I can hear the unspoken footnote in her voice, “this represents a significant escalation from typical recruitment paradigms. Instead of identifying talent for legitimate purposes, we appear to be dealing with systematic elimination protocols.”
God, I love how she can make the execution of a person sound like ordering two shots of espresso. The bid jumps to $85,000, accompanied by that same cheerful notification chime, and somewhere in the world a psycho just dropped luxury car money on watching another human being die.
Ding ding ding.
I’m starting to understand why my mother moved to a commune.
“What do we know about the victim?” I ask, and I’m genuinely proud that my voice comes out steady instead of the slightly unhinged croak I was expecting.
The Agent two chairs down opens her file. “We haven’t been able to identify the victim yet. The site refers to them only as...” She pauses, and I can see her struggling with the terminology, the way normal people do when they’re not Agent Brynn Locke. “PET 243.”
PET 243. Not a person. Not someone’s daughter or son or partner or friend. A numbered entry in someone’s sick inventory. The casual dehumanization is almost worse than the countdown timer, and that’s saying something.
There’s a special place in hell for people who reduce human beings to numbers.
“The website includes what appears to be a puzzle component,” The Agent whose name plate I can't see continues. “Hidden in the elements section.”
There it is, buried in the page’s foundation like a message in a bottle thrown into the ocean of human depravity: a block of text that makes my pulse quicken despite every other horrible thing currently happening.
“Will you simply watch and bid like the rest?”
Below that challenge, a sequence of characters that definitely aren’t random if you know how to look at them properly. Encoded text or a cipher designed to appear like corrupted code. A puzzle that separates actual problem-solvers from people who think they’re clever because they can solve the daily crossword.
It’s bait. Obviously. A trap designed to draw in exactly the kind of person they’ve called me in to be. But it’s also the only lead we have, and PET 243 doesn’t have time for me to overthink the philosophical implications of playing games with criminal masterminds.
“This is your assignment,” Brynn says, and there’s something in her voice that might be satisfaction if she were physically capable of experiencing human emotions. “We need that message decoded. As soon as possible.”
The countdown hits 1 DAY : 21 HRS : 40 MIN : 12 SEC, and someone places a ninety-thousand-dollar bid.
I stare at the screen - at the motionless figure, at the numbers climbing toward an amount that could fund a small start-up or buy a house or pay for someone’s entire college education, at the hidden message that might be the only thing standing between this person and whatever horror show these people have planned. The familiar itch starts building in the back of my brain, the one I get when I’m looking at a puzzle that thinks it’s cleverer than it actually is.
People who build elaborate traps tend to overestimate their own intelligence and underestimate everyone else’s. It’s a character flaw that works in my favor.
“Sure,” I say, avoiding eye contact with Locke. “I’ll need a workspace that’s completely isolated.”
The last thing we need is to tip off our murder-streaming entrepreneurs that we’re onto them, especially if they’re sophisticated enough to monitor IPs. Which, given the professional quality of everything else about this nightmare, they probably are.
Brynn nods with a precise movement that suggests she’s already running internal calculations about resource allocation, timeline management, and probably the exact statistical probability of mission success. “Agent Henderson will coordinate all technical resource requirements. Agent O'Brien will maintain liaison protocols with missing persons databases for victim identification efforts. I want comprehensive progress reports every hour.”
Every hour. It’s like asking a chef mid-recipe if dinner’s ready, except instead of dinner it’s someone’s life hanging in the balance. No stress, Brynn. Your wish is my command.
“Understood,” I say, because what else can I say? That I’d rather be doing literally anything else, for literally anyone else, in literally any other universe where Brynn Locke doesn’t exist? That the last time I followed her orders, my friends nearly died and I spent five years learning to sleep without nightmares and trust issues?
PET 243 doesn’t have time for my personal trauma or my complicated feelings about authority figures who prioritize rules over basic empathy.
The meeting dissolves - agents gathering files, checking phones for important messages, heading toward whatever important destinations and bureaucratic obligations await them in their organized, procedure-driven lives. I’m finishing the last bits of my energy drink like a caffeinated hoarder preparing for digital siege warfare when Brynn’s voice cuts across the room.
“Agent Kavka. A moment.”
Uh-huh. The conversation I’ve been avoiding for exactly one year, two months, and sixteen days. Not that anyone’s counting, except apparently I am, which probably says something about my mental state that I don’t want to examine too closely right now.
I turn around slowly, like maybe if I move carefully enough I can somehow phase-shift into an alternate dimension where I never have to work with Brynn Locke again. She remains at the head of the table, posture so geometrically perfect she could be used to teach a master class in workplace intimidation.
“I trust,” Locke says in a neutral voice, “that our previous collaboration will not interfere with your performance capabilities on this assignment.”
Previous collaboration. That’s certainly one way to describe “the time you decided following rules was more important than the actionable intelligence we’d gathered through actual detective work and human intuition.” I suppose catastrophic failure of leadership judgment was too many syllables for her taste.
“Of course not,” I respond with the smoothness of someone who’s spent a year perfecting this exact conversation in various imaginary scenarios, most of which involved significantly more profanity.
She studies me for a long moment, and I get the uncomfortable sensation that she’s running some kind of behavioural analysis algorithm on my facial expressions and vocal stress patterns. Which is ridiculous, because Brynn Locke has approximately the same emotional intelligence as a filing cabinet, if not less.
“Excellent,” she says finally, and I can almost hear the checkmark appearing next to my name on her mental checklist of Things That Must Be Addressed To Prevent Workplace Disasters. “Personal grievances are a luxury we cannot afford given current temporal constraints.”
“Completely understood,” I respond, because apparently that’s the only answer I’m capable of producing in her presence. My vocabulary seems to shrink whenever she’s in the room.
She gives a single, precise nod and returns her attention to her laptop screen, fingers already moving across the keyboard. Dismissed, like a task that’s completed its designated function.
I make it halfway to the door before she speaks again, because the universe isn’t done amusing itself at my expense today.
“Kelsi.”
I pause, hand already on the door handle, seriously contemplating whether it would be unprofessional to pretend I’ve developed selective hearing loss or a compelling need to take a piss.
“Your work on the Phoenix trafficking investigation was exemplary,” Locke says without looking up from whatever she’s typing. “That operational success is the reason you’ve been requested for this assignment.”
And then nothing else, leaving me standing there trying to parse whether that was intended as positive feedback, a subtle threat, or simply a statement. With Brynn, it’s always impossible to tell.
“I’ll get started immediately,” I whisper and escape into the hallway.
Let’s see what these murder-streaming entrepreneurs think they know about encryption and whether their computer science degrees are worth more than my spite and caffeine addiction.
Game on.
