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Welcome to the third installment of “A Man Down.” I can only hope this is as fun to read as it is to write. It helps if you read in the voice of the Narrator. He sounds similar to Rorschach from Watchmen in my head; however, not quite as gravely though. Now take that voice, and cross it with the confident arrogance of Michael Westen from Burn Notice, and you’ve got something similar to what I have. But no more dissembling! I welcome you, dear reader, to Part 3!

***

As I enter my apartment and lock my door, I let out a heart-felt sigh. Coming home is one of the best feelings out there. The outside world is grimy and uncertain. At least in the place you live, there is certainty. Certainty that the place is yours. That the rent is late. That the power bill is a month overdue. Certainties that are certainly depressing, but there is a strange comfort in them. They may be problems, but they are your problems. I take off my suit jacket and tie, and crack open a beer as I head to the computer. Time to send an email off to Mr. Pentus. Time for me to see if I can find out what this Manhunt is about.

When you decide to contact some nefarious specter on the Internet to arrange an illegal deed or service, you need a system to cover your tracks. You wouldn’t go to the lair of your nemesis carrying a map to your loved ones and an unspoiled thread leading home, now would you? Fortunatey, it’s remarkably easy to set about covering your tracks nowadays. There is a plethora of websites out there that obfuscate the origins of your queries, and most major browsers include a “Stealth Mode” that doesn’t keep histories or cookies. Never say that porn didn’t give you anything.

I like to go a few steps further. In the apartment building across the street, there are a few dozen people with unsecured wireless routers. It was a simple matter to break into the basement and set up a spare machine behind a false wall. That machine is my Gateway; it randomly cycles between available networks, and allows me to access them remotely from my apartment. The computer I use for my own nefarious deeds, Hale, is connected through this shell set-up; all my personal computing needs are done completely legally, through another computer called Faux that is hooked up to a basic broadband package. The set-up isn’t perfect. But then, it’s only meant to buy me a crucial hour or two that I could use to escape. And yes. I name my computers. It’s really not all that strange.

I sit down in front of Hale and guzzle down half of my beer. Now that I am properly motivated, it is time to see if I can arrange a meeting with Mr. Pentus. I create a virtual operating system session on Hale, and start the process of hiding my browsing from the outside world. I lazily navigate the seedy underbelly of the Internet for a while, until I come across the board that “H1DdeNS3cReT” said he first found Mr. Pentus on. Sure enough, a quick search is all I need to find a post by the dog himself.

Mr. Pentus (2:30:30 AM) ::: Greetings to the depressed and downtrodden of the Internet. I come to you with a gift. Are you tired of the way the outside world treats you? The scorn, derision, and even hate they heap upon you? Would you like to show them your true strength; to show them who you really are? I can help you understand how to show them. All for a moderate fee, of course. All you have to do is send me a Private Message. I’ll get in touch with you.

Part of me always worries when I find someone on these boards using proper capitalization and punctuation. These people tend to think of themselves as the crème de la crème, and tend to treat everyone else like they aren’t worthy of notice. They are the stuck-up royalty of the Internet underground, and they can be prickly to deal with. A few quick tests show that Mr. Pentus has covered his tracks well; his IP address reads out as 000.000.000.000. Which should be impossible. My bag of tricks momentarily expended, the only route really available to me to crack this case open is to join up. Time to see how deep this rabbit hole goes.

For me, it is always a bit of a game to pick the proper user name. I like to choose one that plays upon the ego or expectations of my mark. Mr. Pentus seems to be the arrogant and controlling type, and wants to prey upon the arrogant and egotistical hordes beneath him. A few minutes of thought give me one I feel is appropriate.

PM@[Mr. Pentus] ::: AV3nG1nG4nG3L (3:44:78) ::: y0 d00d. wh4ch00 s3ll1ng? c0uN7 m3 1n. 3m417 @ AV3nG1nG4nG3L@gmail.com

As I said, I’ve gotten pretty good at the vermin-talk. I idle about Hale for a while, refreshing the inbox of “AV3nG1nG4nG3L”, hoping that Mr. Pentus was awake. Seems he wasn’t. I set Hale to do a heuristic search through a bunch of BBS boards overnight, and I went to sleep.

I awake to the sound of a garbage truck blaring its horn. One of the downsides to being a private detective is that it is feast or famine. The pay is great when you get it, but it can often be a long time between paychecks. As a result, I tend to live in some pretty unsavory neighborhoods. I check the clock, only to find I had slept for a short five hours. As I sit in my bed, rubbing the bleary mess out of my eyes and wondering if I could get convicted for shooting the driver of the garbage truck, it occurs to me that Hale looks odd. I had left it running a search; there should be a results page by now. I cautiously stride towards Hale, absentmindedly starting my coffee machine on the way.

The aroma of fresh coffee starts to circulate and imbue the room. I barely notice. Hale has been compromised. Which just can’t happen. The screen is black; but it is the warm black of an active screen, not the cold black of an inactive monitor. At the bottom right of the screen, a single question resides, a cold bone white on the warm black background.

_::: Hello, Mr. AV3nG1nG4nG3L. Would you like to join my game? :::_

I stare numbly at the screen. How did he get past the Gatekeeper? How did he compromise the virtual sessions? How? Underneath the question, the big box of the entry cursor mockingly blinks, waiting for my response. How deep does the rabbit hole go, indeed? There is only one thing for me to do.

y3s.

As I hit the Enter key, the screen goes completely dark. A few moments pass as I wonder if Mr. Pentus had nuked my system. Without warning, a new sentence pops up in the bottom right.

_::: Excellent. I will contact you with details, including payment, in Five days. :::_

Five seconds later, the screen goes dark again. I can hear the hard disk whirring slightly, and Hale comes back. It’s as if nothing had happened. For the first time in a very long time, I start to think that I’m out of my league.

I don’t know how long I sat and stared at Hale’s screen. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. All I could think of is how I need a new plan. Mr. Pentus is playing a much deeper game than I anticipated. At the least, I have five days to worry about it. I meander my way deeper into my apartment, trying to sort out some sort of plan. A quick shower, shave, and breakfast aren’t enough to keep my attention. I am out of my element. I need something to pick me up, something bright to catch my mind. It is time to go see Millie.

***

And so we come to the end of another edition of “A Man Down”. As always, I eagerly demand your comments and thoughts. Do you like where the story is going? What would you like to see changed up? Do you like the story so far? Would you buy this as a short story? What you say and thing is important. Also, I am going to make a concerted effort to be better about responding to comments. I ask you to respond to the comments of others as well. And yet again, remember to friend me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter @Chiron7936.

Welcome to the continuation of “A Man Down.” I have decided to continue this story every third week; I feel this spaces it out, and keeps things fresh. Hopefully, this will work out. I will start off each continuance with the last paragraph of the previous installment. So without further ado, I welcome you to Part 2.

***

Another advantage to my outfit is this: when you wear a suit, even a simple and dirty one like mine and speak with confidence, people will believe anything you tell them. Before he can leave, I stride over to his table. As I slide into the booth across from him, I start my bluff. “Hello Mr. Secret. It’s been rather difficult to track you down.” When in doubt, subtly flatter the ego of your mark. Mr. Secret stops what he is doing, frozen like a deer in headlights. He pauses in fear as his panic-filled eyes swivel around the room, finally squeaking out, “Wh- Wh- Wh- Who a- a- are y- y- y- y- y- you?”

It is a good idea to keep your mark guessing. “Come now, Mr. Secret. You and I both know that names aren’t important. You never know who is listening.” This, with a small smile and a subtle glance around the room, has caused him to doubt his surroundings. Shifting my arm to the side just enough to reveal the gun in my shoulder holster tends to help that process along. Once you have your mark in a psychological low point, you launch your attacks. Or in this case, you fish for information. I place one hand flat on the table, and the other slides silently into my jacket. Keep him off balance. Make him think he is totally screwed. “I’m going to ask you some questions now. You can answer them here, and leave intact. Or we could continue this conversation in a more… private… location, and I can’t guarantee you’ll leave.”

Mr. Secret gulps, sweat spontaneously sprouting on his forehead. “Look, I- I- I d- do d- don….” Sometimes, I overshoot my mark a little bit. Little Mr. Online Badass is a bit fearful in person. Typical. Perhaps this Manhunt lead is all a fabrication. I slide my hand out of my jacket, and place it on the table next to my other hand. “Take a deep breath, Mr. Secret. Compose yourself. I have orders not to take you down, if possible. So work with me. Make it possible. Nod if you’re going to make it possible.” His nod is unsure, slow and shaky, like an arthritic septuagenarian trying to walk down a flight of stairs. “This Manhunt you found. How did you find out about it?” After several false starts and stammered sentences, he finally found his stride. “Well… I found a strange ad on an internet classifieds site. I- it- it promised thrills. That I’d be m- m- more confident. All for a reasonab- b- ble price.”

Clearly, the confidence paid off in spades. I would hate to have met this guy before he ran in this supposed Manhunt. As he struggled to form his next sentence, I decided to cut him off. “At which point you got in touch with Mr. Pentus? My Organization is very… interested… in talking with him. We would really appreciate any information you could give us to find him.” Part of digging for information is having a believable bluff. Most pricks like Mr. Secret are suckers for conspiracy theories. Throw in a few ominous uses of the word ‘we’ and a couple of references to a secret organization, and you’ll have them eating out of the palm of your hand.

Like an expert dentist extracting an impacted molar, after a bit of time I was finally able to coax some useful information out of Mr. Secret. I got a contact email and a phone number for the dread Mr. Pentus from him. The phone was probably cloned or is destroyed by now, but the email will be useful. Like most insecure people, once Mr. Secret starts talking, he starts getting more confident. More bold. They aren’t dangerous at this point. Just annoying as hell. Case in point; once Mr. Secret actually starts talking about his experiences in the Manhunt, he won’t stop talking.

His eyes glittering with remembered experiences, he babbled onward. “So yeah. I found myself with three other guys at like, 3 in the morning. Just standing around on a street corner, waiting for a van to show up. You know hearing this out loud, it sounds stupid. But then, I was pumped. So pumped! I’m going to have the waitress bring me some chili fries. You want anything? No? Anyway, as I was saying, I was waiting there, and then this van comes around the corner, like you see in the movies. A big white moving van, you know? Anyways, we all get in the back of the truck, and there are these envelopes taped to the wall, with our names on them. So I go up to one, and like, it’s like out of a spy movie. There are photographs of the guys I’m with. And photos of some mean looking dudes, labeled as Hunters. And a map of some warehouse-y area. They dropped us off in an alley and sped off. It was tight!”

I have always found it amusing that when these insecure people finally find the ability to talk, the pace is always a mile a minute. Information is flowing out of him like the gushing torrent of water at Niagara. They are almost personable like this. You want to like them. But you can never forget that these pricks are, in fact, pricks. Mr. Secret here is likely responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in fraudulent online activities. People like him write the viruses, the bad ones that take down whole swaths of the internet at a time. So I try not to like these people. I try to remember what they are.

I hate pricks like Mr. Secret. They feel pushed around and bullied in real life, mocked and ignored; and so they create a completely fake badass persona online to soothe their damaged psyche. What makes them pricks, is when they use this online persona to take advantage of other internet denizens. They find the naïve, the careless, the clueless, and they digitally rape them. They steal identities, credit card information, lives, and loves. All this damage just to get back at the faceless bullies in their life. It seems while Mr. Secret was out trolling for victims to take advantage of, he found a curious posting by the mysterious Mr. Pentus. As an emotionally stunted and socially fearful individual, he simply could not pass up the chance to become a badass, like one of his cheesy comic book heroes.

After a few minutes of him happily chattering on, I’ve had my fill. As his greasy hand moves to grab his glass of soda, I reach forward and snatch it. Pinching down on the meat of the hand between the thumb and index finger causes an extreme amount of pain. This pain isn’t damaging, but it is an excellent way to guarantee a person is paying attention. I pull him closer to me, so I can whisper menacingly to him. “Mr. Secret. That is enough. I am not your friend. I am not your enemy. I’m going to let you live, this time. But if my Organization and I hear that you’ve warned Mr. Pentus, or that you’ve lapsed into your evil ways, well. You may not live, next time. Do we understand each other?”

I am out of the booth and walking out of the diner before he’s had time to do more than emit a strangled yes. Sometimes, it really is that easy to get information out of someone. My instincts have served me well, yet again. It seems this Manhunt ring is legit. At least, it’s as legit as an illicit underground murder game gets. The drive home is uneventful, as I expected. Even so, I always take a roundabout route to get back; there is no sense in making it easy for someone to follow me. I am a cautious person. You have to be one in my line of work.

As I enter my apartment and lock my door, I let out a heart-felt sigh. Coming home is one of the best feelings out there. The outside world is grimy and uncertain. At least in the place you live, there is certainty. Certainty that the place is yours. That the rent is late. That the power bill is a month overdue. Certainties that are certainly depressing, but there is a strange comfort in them. They may be problems, but they are your problems. I take off my suit jacket and tie, and crack open a beer as I head to the computer. Time to send an email off to Mr. Pentus. Time for me to see if I can find out what this Manhunt is about.

***

That ends this edition of “A Man Down”. Thank you for tuning in. Your regularly scheduled blog returns next week! As always, I humbly request that you comment upon this story. Tell me what you like, what you hate. Give me suggestions. Give me pro tips! Give me something. As long as it isn’t a disease. So once again, dear reader, thank you for showing up. And I thank you in advance for your comments.

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