Chapter Text
Control Alt Delete Your Heart
Chapter One: That Damn Code
There it was again!
My fingers flew across the keyboard, typing as fast as I could, eyes flashing through scrolling code, trying to catch what I knew I saw.
It was gone.
“Shit.”
Throwing my hands up in the hair, I leaned back in my chair and stared at my computer screen. That was the third time that weird code appeared this past week. It came and went faster then a blink. The first time I saw it was during the start of the semester, weeks ago. I thought I was hallucinating. Late nights and days without sleep will do that to a guy. But something kept appearing, some strange language I hadn’t seen before, no matter how long I spent searching through servers to find similar encryption. It slowed my computer down by only a second. A normal person wouldn’t even catch it. Was it a virus? But nothing had happened to my files, processing speed, or programs. I had optimized my build to make sure I had the best protection. It was nearly impossible to find and track me, and this code just snuck in there.
Rude.
Was someone moving through other servers undetected? Why? Hackers were a skittish bunch, so how come this code openly came and went like the boundaries of programing and protective software were suggestions instead of rules. Could this be a new hacker, trying to slide into my systems like a worm and bury themselves deep in there? I did not appreciate that, but I couldn’t stay up another night. It didn’t matter that I spent most days locked up in my dorm anyway, I still needed sleep.
There was a knock on my door. I took off my blue light glasses and rubbed the bridge of my nose.
“Yeah?”
“Hey, man, you lose a game or something?”
Lose. Definitely. A game. Nope.
“Something like that.”
“Well, maybe it’s time you get off that thing and come out and chill for a second? You can’t spent your entire semester in there.”
Actually I could. What was the point of going to class at this rate? I could just retroactively hack into the school’s system, alter my transcripts, and be done with it. Colombia University, hardly the best computer science program in New York State, but I had been given a full ride. Three years ago, I was beyond excited. Now I was so bored, and didn’t even need to worry about money anymore, so why the hell was I still here?
Again that code appeared in my brain. That code that comes and goes before I could program against it. I’d changed and rewritten my safety systems several times, it still snuck through.
I stood from my seat and stretched, leaving the room.
Mark was in living room of our shared dorm house with two of his friends. I didn’t miss the way the guys gave me the side eye when I walked in. They were hooked up to laptops while Mark was on the PS5, playing a co-op shooter game. Amateurs.
“Come on, man, join us!”
Mark waved me over. So his idea of chilling was going from one screen to another.
“Naw. I was up all night trying to get another paper done. I’ll just watch.”
A quick flash of eyes. Again. The two friends looked at me for a second before going back to their screens.
Dicks.
One would think that in this day and age, people would get over it, but apparently being openly gay still meant that straight guys would look at me I was a lion that is just sitting in the room, ready to pounce when they’re not looking.
As if Mark’s friends were my type.
I sighed as I reached up to get a cup from the kitchen cabinets. As if any guy was my type. Growing up reading my big sister’s smut novels had really fucked with my brain. There wasn’t a single guy that was into some of the stuff I wanted to try, certainly not some of my old boyfriends. They just didn’t have the confidence.
Great, now I was horny and frustrated. First that code breaching the firewall I’d worked on for the past two years and infiltrating my systems before I could catch it, and now this.
“Ugh! This guy!”
Mark was shouting.
“Why do you keep falling for that same trick. You know he’s around the wall, and you stepped on his mine three times already. Just find a different route to kill him,” his friend said.
I leaned on the counter, watching Mark’s character run around on the screen with a ridiculously big gun in his arms.
“I kept trying to do that, but he’s too fast to shoot unless you can get close.”
“Just take the L, man” said the other friend.
“The guy is clearly baiting us,” Mark growled.
“So?”
“It isn’t right. Like he owns the whole damn server!”
I sighed. “Don’t I know it.”
One of Mark’s friends actually looked my way. “You run into this kind of thing too? What shooters do you play?”
“Just Call of Duty,” I lied.
Shooters were never really my thing. I had a whole hidden archive, and several documents hidden in a Minecraft server that only I could access. The idea of being able to build my own space, my own world, was appealing to me. Other than that…all I did was hack. Burrowing into company websites, stealing petty cash from rich people who would’t even notice it missing, buying up as much bitcoin and other bullshit currencies and then selling them for a bigger price to idiots that didn’t know any better. I came to Columbia university, and in my first summer, I figured out how to get into the back doors of the entire school system. I never stole from anyone that couldn’t afford it, and I’d put in a hidden “scholarship” here and there for Mark and a few other good students that were having a hard time and talked about it somewhere on their social media or text messages.
I even went as far as to breach a government website, when I was cocky, before I pulled back, erased my steps, change my hacker identity, and created several wild goose chases to throw them off. They never caught me.
Only one server was weird. I hacked into some kind of encrypted room that had an incredible amount of data, from city trains to personal files about people. Birth dates, death dates, locations, numbers, likes, wants, needs, resting heart rate, security camera footage, protected health information. I even briefly glanced into a list of real estate options that had information on price ranges, owners, bank info, and so on. I couldn’t dig too deep into the server. Ten minutes in, while looking through so much intentionally categorized and organized information, my mind reeling with the implications, the server had crashed. Vanished from my computer without a trace.
That was the last summer. Glued to my screen for hours, I just kept digging deeper and deeper, but I never found the server again. What did it matter though? Why I was I thinking about it again?
Because of the code.
This was the second time something I couldn’t catch slipped between my fingers.
I kept thinking I would get caught, that I would be thrown in jail for all the money I stole, all the grades I’d changed, the information I sold, but…nothing. Not a single virus or scare, except for the servier, and this code. I should be satisfied. I had a rare skill that would have me set for life. An addicting power trip and past time that could get me anything I wanted without ever really needing to hold down a real job.
But I was bored.
That damn code. That damn server.
“Dude.”
I looked up. One of Mark’s friends was staring at me and the cup I had just smashed into the floor.
“You okay, man?” Marked asked.
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Sorry. I didn’t even realize I was holding it before I dropped it. I’ll clean it up.”
Mark got off the couch. “Naw, it’s cool. I got it. You should probably get some sleep. Been hearing you typing up a storm all night.”
I was trying the create a program that could isolate that code. I was close. But I kept messing up, couldn’t get it to work right.
“I think you might be right. Thanks.”
I closed the door to my dorm behind me, and turned my computer off. I slept for eighteen hours.
Tuesday morning, when I woke, there was a text from Mark. He was going to spend the night at his girlfriend’s apartment and he left a sandwich for me in the fridge. Mark was a good guy. He didn’t care that I was gay, wasn’t afraid to hug me, and often invited me out to hikes, parties, anything to get me out of my room. He had no idea what I was really doing. He was simply one of those extroverted people that loved to support others. He also had no idea that I had been the one to change some of his grades and stop him from being catfished a few times.
Mark was an average guy. Normal in appearance, grades, but amazing when it came to people.
Average.
I jumped up and went to my computer, and began working. All this time I had been thinking that if my systems were perfect, air tight and backed up, that there was no way anything could get through. I reworked things on the regular, I even made and kept up with several dummy accounts that I created and threw away to throw people off. But maybe, I should bait this code. Send out something so stupid, so average, that it would have to slide into the space I created for it.
I worked and worked all day, stopping only to run to the bathroom when my bladder couldn’t take it anymore. The sun went down, and I was staring at my screen, unblinking, chewing on the tuna sandwich Mark had left me. It was pretty good.
There!
The code!
I waited.
Ten seconds.
It hadn’t disappeared.
The sandwich fell to the floor, my fingers typing fast.
Got it!
I managed to download a file. I closed off any other non-essential programs from my computer, set up several anti-virus software. I’d had backed up my computer into an external hard drive earlier in the day, so even if this thing was dangerous and fried my system, I still had my laptop and a copy of everything I had worked on so far.
I leaned back in my seat, stretching, mentally preparing myself for what I would find. My room was so dark, and the light came from my blue screen, where my curser was hovering over the “open file” prompt. Even in the dark, I couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement, like I caught my own white whale.
I took a deep breathe, and clicked open the film.
I stared the screen. There was only sentence. Ice pressed into my bones. I had to read it aloud, to make sure it was real.
“Turn around.”
This had to be a joke. All that work, only for some creepy pasta. I bet if I clicked on the sentence, some scary face would jump at me, or I would get directed to a website where some bullshit Ai generated image would tell me to send it around to twelve other people before my firstborn died or something.
Still, I couldn’t help the feeling some something looking at me from the back of my head. That was impossible. I’d locked my door, and the front door. There was no other way in, I would have heard it.
Deciding I was being stupid, I turned my chair around.
And then I jumped out of my seat, nearly screaming before a metal hand reached across my tiny room, and covered my mouth.
“You, sir, are like the number two appearing in binary code. Impossible.”
I stared. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at. Only the breaths moving in and out of my lungs told me I was still awake and not dreaming. Somehow, the computer screen behind me had dimmed. In the semi darkness of my own room, I could make up a tall, lean, muscular, male, body. It was bulky, with metal across its shoulders, and some kind of green suit.
My mystery guest took a sip out of a dark purple thermos. I could see his red and blue eyes reflecting the tiny blue square of my computer screen. He glared at me.
“I have plans to make, people to take care of, and contingencies upon contingencies to work on, so when you, a human upstart at that, found a way to gain even the slightest bit of access into my systems, I wasn’t sure if I should impressed or insulted.”
“W-what are you?”
That was the best my brain could produce. The light on my computer screen brightened, as if it too was amazed at my lack of finesse. I could finally see what he was. There was a reptilian man standing in he middle of my dorm, his body half concealed in shadow, metal appendages coming out of his back, like spider legs. Each metal limp held on to some kind of tool. One of them had a dagger that was still fizzling with blue energy. Another had a computer tablet, while the last held his thermos for him.
His eyebrow rose as he looked at me. “You go to a college where half the students walk around with massive hoops in their earlobes, rainbow colored hair, and the most offensive fashion choices known to man, and you ask me what I am?”
“It’s not every day someone clearly non-human-”
I stopped and took a deep breathe. Maybe it was a good idea not to piss off the guy that had robotic limps that could do who knew what to my human flesh. I felt a tingle in my gut, brain supplying all kinds of images and scenarios that I really did not need to think about in that moment. The guy’s eyes narrowed at me. He was still waiting.
“Listen, I’m not very good at talking as much as I am with tech,” I pointed my thumb to my screen behind me, “so, would you mind if I try to get a handle on this situation?”
“Very well.”
He covered the thermos, handed it to a spider limb, and crossed his arms. “You have five questions before I cross examine you. To answer your first, I’m a mutant.”
“That barely answers anything.”
“You have four more questions to go into more detail.”
“Okay, okay,” I put up my hands. “You’re here because I managed to catch that code?”
“Yes. And because you snuck into my systems earlier this summer. The fact that you were able to even gain access for as long as you did is astounding. I’ve been doing random sweeps of personal devises, systems, computers and IP addresses, for over five years. No one catches the codes, because they also appear at random times per day and for less than a second as they scan the device.”
“Holy shit!”
The implications of the kind of data this guy might have, in addition to several broken laws on privacy. It was mind boggling and was it my imagination or did the guy smirk at my outburst.
“So the fact that you were able to notice that single line of code among your own, in the brief second that appeared, and you tried to isolate it, intrigued me. I had to go back into my systems and restart the randomization, but I left a trail open, just to see what you would do.”
The code that had been appearing in my systems for weeks, either early in the morning, or late at night, my peak work hours for hacking.
“I admit, I purposefully made it ten percent easier to gain access into the small server I left open for you, but even then, the chances of you succeeding were still slim.” He leaned forward. “So, on a scale of one to ten, how insulted do you think I should be right now?”
“Ten?” I grimaced. “Wait, does that count as a question?
“No to the first, yes to the second.”
“Come on! I only have two left.”
“Then you’d better use them wisely. I don’t have all night.”
I bit my lip. “Okay. You got a name?”
“Donatello Hamato. And no, that is not my code name.”
“What would you-” I took a deep breathe, stopping myself.
One question left.
“Ok. You’re here because you’re pissed that I hacked into your systems which no one else has done before. So I ask: what do you want from me?”
“Now you’re asking the right questions.”
He stepped closer.
I took a step back. The back of my knees hit my chair and I slumped into my seat. Donatello put his hands on my arm rests, fencing me in as he leaned down, his right red eye glowing as he looked at me.
“I’ve been thinking of getting an apprentice, or an employee, to help me with my projects. You’re the only hacker that has ever noticed even a trace of what I’ve snuck on to the computers in this state so far. So I’m offering a job.”
I swallowed. “Do I get a choice?”
“Yes, actually, you do. I have a full contract and benefits package prepared, covering all the basics from salary, to dental, to health and vision insurance. Say yes, and I’ll get the paperwork encrypted and send over to your desktop. Say no, and I wipe all of your computers, including the external hard drives you think I don’t know about. Sufficed to say, you’re never tracking me again.”
“That’s it?”
He tilted his head. The blue glow from my computer screen behind me made his teeth flash dangerously.
“And that’s six questions total. Tech isn’t the only thing I’m good at, Misuto. I have ways to make sure you never mention my existence again.”
I didn’t want to find out. And…Misuto. The Japanese word for “mist,” my hacker code name. I bet he already knew my real name, so why did he call me that?
I blew a raspberry with my lips. “I don’t care about money. I was doing just fine on my own. What I want, no one can give me. So basically, I would become your employee with no real benefit. Great.”
He slid down the goggles on his head until they covered his eyes, which made him look deranged. “I know the search history you thought no one could access. I can offer you what you’ve been secretly wanting for a long time.”
My throat was suddenly dry. My voice shook when I spoke. “Which is?”
“The best night of your life. And I won’t even have to touch you to get you there.”
I felt a rush of heat flooding my crotch. My jeans suddenly felt too tight.
“What the hell?”
“I am a genius, Misuto. Whatever I’m not good at, I learn and practice until I am either a master at it or I find a way to get my machines to do it for me. And I can see how excited you are.”
I felt his scales under my jaw as he tilted my head up to look at him.
“Elevated heart rate, increased dopamine, horripilation. And if my goggles didn’t already tell me enough, I can smell the pre-cum, so don’t bother denying my assertions.”
I nearly chocked, my face rushing with heat. I pressed my head back into the headrest of my chair. Even though there was nowhere to escape, I needed some kind of space.
“You want me to have sex? Without you touching me? And in exchange, I work for you?”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t know you well enough to be attracted to you.”
Ah. A demisexual.
“Wait, so how-”
“Say yes, and you’ll find out. You want something no other man has been able to give you. I can create the settings to get you exactly what you want, but I understand this meeting and the subsequent conversation can be overwhelming for most people.”
He leaned back finally, and I felt tension lift from my shoulders, but the swelling in my cock didn’t ease. Man I was fucked up. Attracted to danger and entrapment. Yup. Sounded about right.
“I am not an unreasonable man.”
Donatello hooked his ankle around the leg of my swiveling chair and rolled both it and me to the side, out of his way. I swayed for a moment before stopping and then jumped out of my seat, watching as his three digit hands and his robot limbs moved across my keyboards at speeds I couldn’t even hope to replicate.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Ensuring that you never have access to my systems again.”
“Stop!”
A metal limp pressed against my chest. I froze. Donatello was looking at me over my shoulder. There was no kindness in his stare. It was like looking directly at an orca that was ready to drown you if you stepped foot into the water.
I stood in place, watching in horror as Donatello went through my computer. Codes, programs, various digital languages and websites flashed on my monitor. Eventually, he stopped, and the anime background of my desktop appeared again. Completely normal, as if Donatello hadn’t just lobotomized my computer. My eyes caught something that wasn’t there before. A strange looking, purple letter D, some kind of logo.
“I left a single program. All you have to do is click the logo, answer the prompt, and I will know if you agree to my terms. You have seventy two hours from now to decide. The logo will disappear as soon as the time is up. If you try to make a copy or mess with it before hand, it will fry your computer. And I mean that in both a figurative and literal sense. It will not only destroy any software that interacts with it, but your central processor will catch fire.” He snapped his fingers. “Ah, yes. Your cellphone and home computer will be fried as well.”
“That’s destruction of property and endangerment! What if the entire dorm goes up in flames!”
“Oh and what are you going to do about it?” He chucked. “Tell the police that mutant got into your dorm late at night because you were hacking their computer? I’m sorry if that sounds like sarcasm, that is a genuine question. Would you really do something so idiotic?”
“No,” I bit out.
My heart was hammering in my chest, and in my pants. I wasn’t sure if I had a rage boner, or if I wanted him to bow me over. Fuck, why was I like this?
“If I don’t respond in seventy two hours, what happens to me?”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ as they say, and wipe away anything that even alludes to my presence on your systems. The rest you don’t have to worry about. Stay out of my systems and we won’t have a problem. What you choose to do beyond that is not my concern. I am perfectly fine with your living out your days as an ordinary human hacker, so long as you never come near my work again.”
He stepped toward me. I stepped back until my back was pressed into my bedroom door. Donatello was tall, looming over me. I was six feet and this guy made me feel like a child. How did he even fit into my tiny room? His hands slapped down on either side of my head, framing me in. Even the metal limbs coming out the strange backpack he wore slapped down on the wall next to me.
“It would be in your best interest not to disturb me again, should you decide that this will be the last time we ever meet. I have many means, but legal, illegal, and unfathomable to ensure that you never mention my presence to anyone ever again.”
The lenses in his goggles moved, an outer layer slowly closing, as though he were narrowing his eyes at me, zeroing in on my face.
“Do you understand?”
The threat was clear. I could only nod. Words didn’t seem trustworthy as fear and arousal burned inside my body.
“Good.”
Donatello leaned back, lifting his goggles, his face completely congenial. He had a strong jaw and really sharp looking teeth. Those 3D glasses eyes of his seemed to glow in the dark. Something blue flashed in one of his limps. A knife. My arm twitched, ready to reach for the door knob, to run, an ancient part of my brain coming to life, screaming in warming.
The knife flashed blue. Donatello dropped it. It fell to the floor, and the moment it hit the ground, a blue vortex appeared beneath Donatello’s feet. He melted right into my floor. I learned forward, eyes and mouth wide, staring at the impossible. The vortex closed, and my room was dark once more.
I was alone.
It was quiet.
My heart was screaming.
I opened the door to my dorm room and I ran. I ran out of the dorm house, ran along the college grounds, not caring that other coeds looked at me like I was some kind of crazy up frat boy that had a combination of way too much alcohol and illicit drugs. I ran all the way to The Steps, a famous stairway that led to one of Columbia University’s most recognizable library.
This late at night, there weren’t many students in the popular spot, but it helped for me to walk up and down, to think! Exercise always relaxed my brain when I was too anxious.
What had I gotten myself into?
I slept on the couch that night. I turned off my computers and my phone. I went completely analog, using the old radio clock Mark’s dad had given him.
The next day, I went to class. I didn’t take my laptop. I kept my phone turned off. I took notes with pen and paper. I asked questions. My professor commented at the end of class that he was happy to see me being an active participant.
He had no idea that I could change my grade from a C to a B with a simple keystroke. No one in class acted differently than usual. Someone mentioned yokai as I was leaving the lecture hall. I’d heard about yokai in New York. I was normal kid from Connecticut. I’d never seen one before, and I never expected them to look like Donatello.
I went home. I gamed with Mark and his friends. Mind numbing, boring shooters, with no creativity, no challenge, only repetition.
I called my dad. I missed him, and mom.
That night, after Mark had gone to bed, I turned on my computer. I clicked the letter D logo Donatello had left.
A “terms and agreements” list appeared. At the bottom, there were two options. Accept. Decline.
Ever the thorough hacker, I read through the terms and agreements until I got tired. It was long as hell! Did he expect me to read a whole manual’s worth of terms? How many megabytes was this thing? Had he really written all this?
“Fuck it.”
Click.
Accept.
I jumped. My phone was ringing.
“H-hello?”
“I expected you to take longer to deliberate before you accepted, but no matter. Welcome.”
I felt a sudden chill tingle along my spine at the sound of his voice.
“Before you speak, I must inform you that I have some important things I have to deal with. I’ve sent the full paperwork to your computer. Finish them as soon as you are able and send them back via the secure channel I have provided. I will reach out to you when I am ready.”
“Anything I should do in the meantime?”
“What you do with your time is none of my concern. My systems will monitor yours. There is no need for you to worry about security going forward. Act normal, and wait. I will set up a time and place. Then we can discuss the other…benefits of your new job.”
The line went dead.