Immaculate Spirit 99 :

In a commercial building located on the west side of the city, the elevator opened on the third floor and two persons came out. The first to come out was a tall young man looking around eighteen years old. With his mid long blond hair and sparkling blue eyes he could be consider quite handsome. Following him was a shorter man around 5"8" with brown hair and foreign looks close to forty years old. His face was a mask devoid of any emotion but his dark eyes were restless, scanning everything in his path.

"Welcome to the office of Wolf Internet Protection, what can I do for you?" A male receptionist asked, sitting behind the front desk.

"h.e.l.lo, I'm Nathaniel Lyndon. Mister Sharpp is waiting for us I believe."

"Let me check sir." The male secretary said, picking up the phone.

Talking for a few moments on the phone, the man hang up and got up from his chair.

"Mister Sharpp is going to receive you right now. Please follow me."

Following the man, Amal and Nathaniel started to observe with attention the number of people working here and the number of offices. So far he had spotted no more than a dozen of employees and three offices. Nathaniel was not see any of the employees being more than twenty years old which was worrisome., it also explained a lot of things.

They were all lacking that aura of competence and in fact were not energetic in their work at all. It was almost as if they were bored out of their mind. Still, it was not a big enough force for the number of clients this business had. Nathaniel had poked around a little and found out that they had ten clients, three of them huge companies like his own. Twelve noobies were not enough to create, repair and patch anti intrusion programs for all of them.

The only thing that was encouraging for his plan was that the computers were new and top of the line as far as he could see. Maybe there was something he could salvage here once everything was done.

Arriving in front of the bigger office here, the male receptionist knocked on the door.

"Come in." A voice said.

Opening the door, Amal and Nathaniel were welcome by a six foot tall man with brown hair. He was wearing a high end black suit and wore a warm smile on his good looking face.

"Mister Lyndon! Glad that we finally meet. I'm Ryan Sharpp." He said, getting to his feet to shake his hand.

Nathaniel shook his hand with a smile on his face but internally he was thinking about something else entirely. They had never met before and it was possible that he had not even heard that Nathaniel existed, yet he still welcomed him like they were long lost brothers. That dubious att.i.tude make him sick. He still managed to keep the smile on his face though.

"h.e.l.lo Ryan, glad to meet you too." He answered.

"Please have a seat, do you want something to drink? I have a fifteen year old bottle of scotch if you want a taste." Ryan offered.

"No thanks, I'm good." Nathaniel declined politely.

"Allright, all work I see." He said, sitting back behind his desk. "I'll bite, you called about something concerning our contract, what do you have in mind?"

"Yes about that, I drafted something before coming here. Just take a look, I'm sure it will be of interest to you." Nathaniel said, giving him a piece of paper.

Taking the sheet, Ryan started to read through it. His fake smile quickly disappeared and he made eye contact with Nathaniel again.

"Is this a fuc**g joke?" He said with anger.

"No this is serious. It's the best that you will get so I urge you to think carefully about your next words."

"What is going on here? Me and your grandfather always had a good relations.h.i.+p, this is totally out of line. You want me to give basically everything I own? For what?" He said with chagrin.

"Please stop the atrocious bad acting, we know what you did in our system. You hid a break in our firewall then tempered with our logs and framed an innocent man to hide it for money." Nathaniel said coldly.

Hearing that, Ryan indeed stopped the acting and an ugly expression came to his face.

"You did? That is surprising but not completely unexpected. It's a pity that our working relations.h.i.+p has to changed but this is your own fault. You see, when we take charge of a system I always plant a backdoor into the firewall and now I'm afraid we are going straight to the blackmail part. If your company does not pay me five million dollars in the next hour I will upload all of your data to the internet, making you lose hundreds of millions in confidential information." Ryan sneered.

Nathaniel did not appear particularly surprised by that and just kept staring down the man in front of him.

"What happened kid? Cat got your tongue? Now I want my five millions or I will ruin your entire company."

"Do it." Nathaniel finally talked.

"Euh, what?" Ryan asked, surprised.

"Do it." He repeated.

"You think I will not?" He shouted with anger.

"No I think you cannot. That backdoor entry was one of the first things that we fixed. It was so poorly done and hidden it was basically a joke. You're an embarra.s.sment to the reputation of hackers."

"You are bluffing. I will do it now!" He yelled and started typing on his computer. A few seconds later his face paled with fright.

"It did not work like you expected right?" Nathaniel smiled, getting to his feet and picking up the piece of paper that he gave to Ryan at the start of their conversation. "That was the easy way out. Taking your everything and forcing you out of the country was a little generous on my part but what can I say? I'm nice. Now, you chose the hard way. Let me tell you, it will not be pretty."

"Arghhhhhhhh" Ryan yelled blinded with anger and jumping onto Nathaniel, wanting to tear him apart.

He was intercepted mid air by a stone faced Amal who easily had him in an arm lock in a second. He started to struggle wanting to get away and attack Nathaniel again.

"Stop moving or I will shoot you." Amal warned stoically.

That seemed to catch his attention and Ryan stopped moving while still glaring at Nathaniel.

"Let him be Amal, I think he gets it. Let's go, we are leaving." He said, opening the door of the office.

Letting the man go, Amal adjusted his attire and followed Nathaniel out. They did not talk until they were in the elevator.

"Did you manage to get it?" Nathaniel asked.

"Yes." Amal answered simply.

"Good, we have all we wanted." Nathaniel nodded, satisfied.

They were leaving the elevator and exiting the building when Amal could not hold it in any longer.

"Sir, are you not afraid that he will run away?"

"No, it's too late for that. He is done for."

"Sir?"

"Look at your right Amal." Nathaniel advised.

Looking at his right, Amal did not understand what he was supposed to see until he finally found what Nathaniel was talking about. In the parking lot of the building one ba.n.a.lised car had arrived follow by two NYPD patrol cars. Two detectives had exited the ba.n.a.lised car and were rus.h.i.+ng to the building closely followed by the officers.

"The NYPD is here to save us all Amal, we do not need to worry." Nathaniel smiled silly.