First Cover

'US-China tensions escalate as China Claims 7 Islands. The US Ambassador plans to urge UN intervention in the matter. Here are a few words by Ashley Paige on how she plans to go forward with the meeting.'

'The fact of the matter is that China has claimed seven islands outside the Exclusive Economic Zone as its own territory based on texts which are essentially ancient. This deprives most of the South-East Asian countries from its major resources not to mention also invades their EEZ...'

Mark Williams sipped on his morning green tea as the news went on. His eyebrows twitched slightly as the news held particular interest to him.

He had been diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome early in his childhood. It had been mild to begin with but his position as a senator was quite influenced from the sympathy for his disease which was overly exaggerated to the public in rallies.

'Get dressed Mike. You want to get to the meeting on time right?' A woman's voice came from behind him.

'I will Jenna.' he spoke still looking at the screen and sipping the tea.

'The situation doesn't seem to get better does it?' she casually commented on the news.

'Hopefully today we will take a better stand against it in the conference committee.'

'Can you do that alone?' she asked.

'I can do a lot of things.' he smiled and gave a kiss to Jenna as he proceeded to his room.

'Would you be late tonight? I was planning to go shopping for thanksgiving. It would have been good to be accompanied by a husband rather than a senator.' she smiled expectantly.

'I will try my best.' he mirrored the expression. He would have liked some time off with her, but the situation now wasn't ideal.

As he walked towards his room, the phone in his pocket started vibrating which he picked up.

'Morning James. I would need your help in today's meeting.' he said, attempting to discuss today's agenda.\

'Mike... there is bad news.'

The voice on the other end was bleak.

The morning smile on his face disappeared as a frown accentuated the aging lines on his forehead.

'Oliver has been arrested.' the voice continued. 'There is going to be a trial. I don't know how, but they have evidence of his dealings.'

The cup on his hand started trembling as the blood drained from his face. All of his life's effort would be down the drain if his name pops up.

'I will see you in the conference. Don't contact me on this anymore. I have to make some calls.'

He speed dialled a number.

'I need your help.' he said as soon as the call connected.

'Yes.' he confirmed to the voice on the other end and gulped.

'The pay will be way better than last time, but the job will be of prime urgency I will send you the details soon.' he said with ragged breath. His childhood asthma was now revealing itself as he aged.

As the conformation from the other side came in, he let out a sigh which definitely wasn't that of a relief. With haggard movement he took out and opened a small white bottle from his drawer and popped a white pill into his mouth.

* * *

Lily held her breath as the cold temperature of her water urged her otherwise. With minimal eye movement she took the underwater plasma cutter and proceeded towards the metal gate.

She started to cut the steel grill which seemed impenetrable underwater. The pace of the cutter made it seem like forever. She managed to cut half of it and looked at her watch. Now was the time to hurry. Time passed fast and cutting slow as she managed to go through three fourths of the gate.

She glanced at the timer on her wrist which indicated she had been in the water for 80 seconds. The green LED light on her watch turned orange as her oxygen levels plummeted. She realized it would be impossible for her to do it as slowly her muscles started becoming sore. This was not her cup of tea or her dream job.

Before she could cut the entire thing, the LED on her beeped and a very powerful jerk shook her entire frame. Suddenly she was out of the water as the hose connected to a hydraulic pump had pulled her up.

Ethan looked at her and offered a hand which she took thankfully and proceeded to get out of the pool.

'Some dream job...' she seethed sarcastically.

Ethan laughed. 'It’s your free will.' he commented as he handed her a bottle of water.

She looked at the water and felt sick. It was her 11th try for the day of which most of the time she spent in water suited in a practically movement restricting diving gear.

'You did well. Normally a person takes more than 29 hrs and prerequisite practice to get it done to the stage you've reached today.'

Its been a whole month and a half since she started training with him. She would have rather aimed to become a monk and live on tofu for the rest of her life.

'Prerequisites huh? I wonder why I was not taught?'

'Because you were the one who wanted to end it faster. Seeing you, I am sure this would end fast.' Ethan spoke words of encouragement in order to cheer her up.

'You just compressed two years of training period into two months.' she laughed at the incredulity of it.

'Can I get in after 15 minutes.' she asked wanting the time to get rid of the soreness in the body.

'I was planning to give you the rest of today off, but you seem enthusiastic.'

'I just wanna get it over with soon.' she spoke still slightly breathless.

'Also, there is good news. Our team is complete. Kawahara one of my best friends will be flying in tomorrow. Setting up will only take up a few hours. Then after your training period, we can have a thanksgiving feast which will be commemorating our first job.'

Listening to this her eyes lit up.

'Finally, the day has come.' she spoke.

'Yes... finally. And with all the report you gave me, I have found the best first topic for us.' he said.

When he stated that website would be the most effective solution to establish our business, she was a little skeptical. How can something on a platform like 'internet' with no sort of validation be trusted by masses all over the world? One of the major reasons she wasn't able to argue with the idea was that she couldn't think of a better one either. But going with whatever because you don't have any other option seemed pretty half-assed to her. That was until she heard him explain why he chose the platform.

An early study published in 2011 stated that 95 percent of all the information is digitized. With the advent of all the networks which is available thanks to all satellites and servers in millions of locations most of it is available online. The matter of accessing it is a fact to be discussed. Since digital data is easily cloned and spread all around the world in various hardware, censoring it is an impossible feat. Especially with technologies like Virtual Private Networks or in other words VPNs. And if it spreads across one area then it becomes a huge news everywhere.

5.4 billion people have been declared as active users which comprises more than half of the world.

In the US against 119 million people who watch the TV, there are 275 million internet users. The numbers would be in our favor.

But the fact is that most of the adult population who watch TV is for news or late-night shows. Which is not so common on the internet is a worrisome fact. The goal to bring those people from the TV to the internet would be tremendously hard.

'But for setting in to this new field, we will be finishing our first job.'

She looked confused at Ethan's words.

'Which first job?'

'I have a list of high positioned government officials who benefited from Oliver and the news companies that covered it up. We need interviews and evidence from these people. Once this becomes public and people get arrested, news channels who monopolized on them will come to light... But only our web-platform will be the ones covering it since this is technically classified information. The first boom will be within the social media. Our first news would break the people's trust in the media and divert the attention to us. We will need a subscription or ad revenue system to actually make a profit from it. Something like a movie streaming platform. If we need attention on us then we need to make an impact, and this entire cover story will be our impact. '

She looked at him wordlessly, slightly impressed at how he planned to manipulate this large amount of people like it was nothing.

'So have you named the website?'

'How about World Times?'

She looked at him incredulously.

'You are planning to begin one of the best news websites out there and you're going to name it The World Times?'

Ethan lifted an eyebrow entirely confused.

'What? Isn't it good?'

She sighed 'You still have the audacity to ask that question?'

Ethan looked frustrated.

'You know simplicity is the way to go when you're trying to appeal to the people.'

'I'm still deciding on whether to think of you as a genius or an idiot and right now you're definitely not helping the genius part.'

A ring on his phone interrupted the conversation which Ethan answered.

'Kawahara just called, I am leaving you in charge of the training be careful. He has reached the airport I need to pick him up.'

Lily frowned.

'Who leaves a person in charge of their own training?' she asked in a matter of fact way.

'I don't know what else to do. I can call Jade to help you out if you want.'

'No, I would like to come to the airport.' she stated.

'I wanna meet my 'team'.'

Ethan turned around.

'He is just one man not a team.' he said.

'I know but he is still a part of our team.' she said while following him.

'Get changed. I don't think people will like you loitering around in a diving suit near the airport.'

She laughed.

'You would get embarrassed?'

'Suit yourself. I don't mind going with you like that but don't come to me when the airport police start to question you.' Ethan grinned.

She sighed. 'You're unbelievable.'

* * *

The sky was getting brighter and clearer as the time went forward to noon. The small opening in the cargo van of the stationary freight train was getting warmer inside. Brad pulled down his hat as he contemplated to get out of the freight car as the lit cigarette's smoke filled the car.

He had a wireless earpiece which was playing soft piano that calmed him down as he was able to minimize external disturbances and aim perfectly controlling his breath.

The train was bound to leave for Wyoming in 2 minutes. The only wait was the clear signal, but he trusted the man's money to get him bailed and adjusted the scope of his 50 BMG facing straight at the Tacoma Detention Centre. The centre itself was extremely guarded. But it was meant to keep people in not out. There were guards outside the gate but they would be worthless against a 50 BMG which would disappear once the shot is fired.

His target was Oliver Fournier the business man. That man could have paid more to kill the senator instead but he didn't want the entire NSA on a manhunt for him.

Soon a car drove into his view towards the entrance. Must be the lawyer he would have hired, Brad mused.

He adjusted the scope to get a clear view of the man inside the car. To his surprise it wasn't a man she was a woman with short blonde bob-cut and green eyes if he was not mistaken. He was slightly impressed by the capability of the scope which he had recently upgraded.

A few minutes passed as he let out another puff of smoke from his relatively long cigarette and tossed the butt out.

Suddenly the pager beside beeped and he picked it up.

'He was refused bail and now arrested awaiting further trial. A female officer just came in with the warrant. He is not going to be released until the next few days.' the message ended.

He gritted his teeth as the golden opportunity was missed.

That lady which went in. Must be it. Always getting in my way in the name of law... Such hypocrites.

Suddenly a childhood memory flashed in his mind. A woman screaming.

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'BRAD GO INSIDE!!!' she screamed as she was being dragged by her hair outside the lawn of his then house and now rubble.

Amongst the cold and the sirens, the only voice his 15-year-old self heard was his mom's as he stared at the grass turning red.

His dad was lying unconscious as the blood from his chest spread out around the lawn by the sprinkler. He had never felt so scared in his life.

All he could recall was the chill piano music that he had composed with the man lying on the floor battling death as he was bleeding.

After a few moments he looked up to see his mom dragged into the car by two men in police uniforms. His mom gave him a flying kiss as she sat in the car with a trembling smile on the verge of giving up. The kiss seemed to be a 'farewell' he had seen for the first time in his life.

His nerves were going haywire with his mind having no comprehension as to what should he be doing in this situation. He could faintly recall a first-aid treatment to be given to people in his school two days ago. He remembered something about performing chest...what was it?

He looked at his dad who was now unconscious from the blood loss and then his eyes followed to the man who had shot his dad thrice - two on the chest and one on the abdomen.

His aim was still on his dad who was unconscious.

The scene suddenly triggered something in his brain.

Why are you pointing at him?... He can't do anything, anymore right?

All of his nerves went cold as an uneasy calm settled on him. He slowly walked to his garage with all his senses numb everyone was staring at the police as the uniformed individuals were trying to explain how his dad was running an illegal ammunition racket. Brad grabbed a shotgun in the garage which was for when they used to go hunting for wild boars along with a box of ammo.

Outside the man in blue made sure that his dad laying in the front was dead. He turned around and walked to his car holstering the pistol with a self-indulging smugness exuding from his mannerisms a feeling that he was doing the betterment of mankind.

Suddenly something cold and heavy touched the back of his head. He turned around to stare down at the dark depth of the dual barrel and then the numb eyes of the 15-year-old kid in front of him. One of the officers who was trying to calm out the public situation turned to look as he sensed something amiss in the horror-stricken eyes of the elderly lady he was justifying.

In a panic he reached for his gun and couldn't do much other than fumble around with the holster jamming his gun in the process.

The next moment he saw a bright yellow flash and then the sound before his colleague's brains were blown out of his head.

The fat man who was dragging her mom by the hair found the second shot of the dual barrels.

Suddenly his mom jammed her head into the nose of the female officer sitting on the back seat of the car and ran for her freedom. Before the officer could do anything to bring her back in, the glass beside her ear shattered as a few of pellets scratched her ear and cheeks.

Fearing another shot the driver slammed the pedal and the car rushed off leaving a screeching noise and tire trails. That was the moment a killer was born within him. His prime targets were the police... he liked it when all the pride and ego within them was destroyed as the 50 calibre (the then dual barrel) punched a hole in their heart. A moment where they realized that the law and uniform do nothing to protect you from a bullet. Their sense of justice turns around as their mortality overshadows everything. The moment when they realize that they too bled red.

And a true happy moment for him was born.

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The car that went in about 10 minutes ago came back out with the same female lady - Jade.

Right now, all he saw was a female police officer. Her eyes had it... the ability to kill. He adjusted his scope and took aim directly at her head. The car was in motion but it was more or less a straight line. She was one of the easier targets he had taken on. Ironically, he made a cross after which he placed his hands on the trigger.

Just as he was about to pull the trigger a sudden jerk made him falter.

The freight car he was in started moving.

He rested his himself as he let out the final puff of smoke he had been holding in for about a minute.

I guess I will meet her and that filth of a human being later.

* * *

'How is it possible?!?! I've never seen the police department working their evidence before anyone was detained.' Mark slammed his hands on the table.

'I've heard that it was two CIA officers who got him detained at his own restaurant.'

'The CIA?' his tone almost went silent.

'Do you think Terrence has something to do with it?' James asked while sitting across the polished rosewood table staring at the cross he made with his index and middle finger. He wished for Terrence - the senator of California to be the one to have done it.

'You may be right there.' Mark reflected James' thoughts.

'I wanna know what will be his stance at the conference.'

As soon as he said this a lady came in.

'It's time gentlemen.'

James quickly got up and stared at Mark before buttoning his navy-blue bespoke coat.

'Is it an argument you plan to put forward today.'

'We'll see.'

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'Let us observe two minutes of silence for the recent passing of the Secretary of Defence Mr. Abraham Baines.' The voice of The President echoed in the congressional session.

As James stood up he noticed how the command of the voice he had in the election campaign had weakened over time.

But nevertheless, the public regarded him as one of the most dynamic Presidents in the history of United States. His most notable achievement was the de-nuclearization of North Korea in one of the most prolific international campaigns by the US, IVP - International voice for peace.

No one really knew what happened in that private train of 'The Supreme Leader', apart from the two people who were inside the compartment The President and the now Late Secretary of Defence.

In the early days of his past tenure he has proved to every person in the room that enormous thought process and research went into every decision made and bill passed.

Mark has a high hurdle. He thought as he sat following the two-minute silence.

'We need policies to work on and I need until the next time in which I will be putting forward the nominee for the next Secretary of Defence.'

The sentence was followed by whispers and murmurs in the room.

'Sir, with respect to the recent tensions in the South China sea we need a new Secretary of Defence immediately. We have reports from USS Wayne that China has started dumping soil outside of its Exclusive Economic Zone. It is a breach of the International Law of the Sea. We need to take actions to control the provocation.' Mark put forward his statement with a crease of worry on his forehead.

'I understand that its a worrisome situation but there is nothing we can do about it as of now. For the moment we have the Ambassador to the United Nations to put forward consequential statements. That solves it for us. '

The crowd seemed a bit more settled as the previous statement had given rise to a few frowns on some distinguished faces.

Mark was about to speak up when Terrence stood up.

'I understand that this decision is not something we can make out of the blue, but I concur with Senator Mark. We need a new SOD as soon as possible. What Mr. Mark missed out was the fact that apart from the dumping of the soil, USS Wayne has also sighted Chinese warships in the area, and reports are that they are building a Military Base for carrying out drills within the area.

Also, US inaction will put a negative image cornering the IVP campaign.'

The murmurs intensified in the session as the word 'military action' had been said. For most people in the room, this was a potential situation for counteraction by the US.

The President sighed.

'The military activity and the dumping of soil is indeed a violation of the EEZ and International Law of Sea. But the activity poses no immediate danger to the US or the neighboring countries in the area, unless they themselves plan to counteract. That will again mean that whichever country reacted, did so outside it's EEZ. If US acts now that would mean US would be favoring the country which again would lead to negative consequences for our country. We are in a deadlock situation as of now and a new SOD won't be taking any special decisions that we would be unable to. Our time to act would be when one of the major countries in the area namely - South Korea, Japan will urge us to do so in the UN assembly.'

The argument put forward by the President was infallible. The session had settled down with no counter-statements. Mark bit his lips which was a childish habit he didn't bother to correct. But the situation was not the only one that made him uneasy. He felt that this situation could be handled easily as Terrence has been proven to be a gullible man.

There was someone else in his mind which bothered him.

Oliver Fournier.

* * *

'These are the names in the list that I made up with the pictures.' Lily said as she handed him a large envelop.

Ethan took out the contents inside and spread it out on the table. There were 7 high ranking government officials in there including the crowd-pleasing smile of Senator Mark.

'Whoo...That's a list! I'm impressed.' Kawahara Reki said as he stared at the list of individuals.

'Japan or US. Perverts take the cake on the list of disgusting people.'

'Alright let us introduce ourselves first. My name is Kawahara Reki, I am going to be the pivot of your tech department.' he was in his mid-30s and hailed from Tokyo, Japan.

He was fairly tall and wore calm countenance which was contrasted by his elegant but teenage toned voice. The half rimmed modern spectacles along with his formal dressing gave him a wise look.

'I will implement and manage all the technical and software-based aspects required. I will also be responsible for bringing in the IT related hardware and program them accordingly. I am a long forgotten 'friend' of Ethan here.'

The quotation was clear in his voice, to which Ethan smiled widely.

'I knew anything that this dude is up to will definitely carry some interest, so I got in the first flight to get here. It’s your job to keep me from getting disappointed.' he pointed to Ethan with a grin.

'Rest assured, I have picked you keeping your interests in mind. This is a job that requires motivation and I'm sure I can find you some worthy tasks.'

The next guy stood up was decently tall with wavy long hair which was tinged a shiny bronze with streaks of blonde.

'Hello.' he spoke with a smooth sure voice.

'My name is Liam Keith and this here...' he said pointing to Lily who had bought him.

'Is my sister. I am currently in my sophomore year in college and will be working on the engineering part of the job. I will also be in-charge of sourcing raw materials and engineering them to the situation.'

'Also, I'm here to make sure that my sister doesn't do anything stupid based on her overenthusiastic character. I can't believe she left her job over a pointless argument.' he grinned evident that he totally expected her to do that.

'Also.' he pointed straight at Ethan.

'I am not entirely convinced by you yet. I need more time. I am also here to make sure she didn't follow you because you had the mysterious good-looking guy vibes. I am skeptical of the whole thing.'

Ethan wasn't surprised by the development. He didn't expect getting till here.

'So what do you want me to do to earn your trust?' Ethan asked.

'I don't know. Even if I knew it would be pointless.'

Ethan laughed.

'You've got some reasoning Brian.' Ethan commented. He knew that it would be entirely pointless to ask someone what you must do in order to earn their trust.

'Its not easy to earn my trust. But hopefully you'll manage to earn it. And by the way its Liam.'

'Oh sorry about that. Rest assured your sister is good in my hands.'

'Huh?!' he spurted the words while Kawahara and Lily stared at Ethan.

'I meant she would be great with us.' he corrected his previous statement.

Liam gritted his teeth with slight annoyance while Ethan beamed.

'Shall we move on now?' Kawahara asked.

'I have briefed Kawhara about Lily and assuming that Lily had briefed you about me, we will discuss our plan of action.'

'There are many ways when it comes to deployment of webpage and storage of important data which we will come to handle. Since the data we will be sharing would mean the fall of many high officials in the industry we need to be able to make sure that the data we have is not corrupted. There are a few ways we can do this once we start storing them, but none of them are entirely fool-proof. The very simple method to make sure we will be able to retrieve data would be to replicate it and store it.'

'You are talking about data mirroring but I'm not sure that this is the best way to approach the problem.' Kawahara pointed out.

'Exactly!' Ethan continued.

'So we are going to make millions of replicas of the data we have over something known as a content delivery network.'

'That is a brilliant idea apart from the fact that this would cost you equally millions of dollars.'

'Okay stop.' Lily requested.

'I lost you after the replication entirely.'

Ethan sighed.

'You see storage of data is easy once you think about small stuff such as you daily dose of movies or series which can be copied twice in a backup storage device. But matters get a bit out of hand when you talk about huge chunks of data.

When you store that huge level of data on servers each drive is hundreds of Terabytes. And even if one drive is destroyed then that means a huge loss. Apart from being hugely expensive, destroying these drives purposefully is not that hard. Especially when we are dealing with extremely sensitive data to many high officials and countries. This would mean way too much risk for sabotage. So, we need a good method to store data which could fit well within our budget.'

'So how are you planning to replicate a server that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a million times and still be in budget?' Liam asked confused.

'That is exactly what I was coming to... Content delivery network that I talked about just now is nothing but storing the data in small chunks into multiple servers. This was developed in order to get faster access to data. But there are some flaws within the method such as network filters and data laws within different countries.

So, in order to get through this, I have made some of my own tweaks to the methods.

You see we casually refer to servers as hardware for commercial purposes, in other words these are nothing but scaled up versions of the computers we use in daily life. What I am getting at through this is - if we consider this, all the computers in use for personal purposes is a small server. And most of these computers and even smartphones are now connected through the advent of the internet. Most of these devices are connected to the internet through browsers and one of the biggest players in the field is none other than Google.'

Ethan plugged a pen-drive into the laptop on the table and started working on some files.

'This pen-drive has a program which can compress data to approximately 0.001% its original size. If we make an extension on Google's browser and market it, then we get the access to download files from the browse to a user's computer. If we could get 100 KB of data downloaded onto a thousand systems we will be storing 1 TB worth of data. We can overwrite the data, download or even delete it. In other words, we will be using the computers of the customer to serve the customer.

Another question that arises is - how are we going to access the data? All we need is an algorithm which will create an RAS encryption on the order of the addresses where the data is stored in. Even if we get a million computers all MAC and IP addresses which nothing but the 'name' and 'location' of the computer would only take up 10 MBs worth of space.'

'That seems like a viable and simple method. All we need is a workstation to decrypt the data we will be storing.' Kawahara commented.

'I can source the hardware for that.' Liam offered as he finally saw the outline of the plan.

'I'll admit that the plan is really well thought out now that I see it. The capital required is minimal and we can start almost immediately on our debut story.'

'I figured you would have as much ready. I'll start working on the website and extension. It will probably take a week or two. Since you told me a lot of things beforehand I worked on the basic templates and other things.' Kawahara said.

'That's great news. I was thinking that I would help out in the development since we have a small time-frame. As of now I will be helping out Lily. There are some things I need to verify.'

'What am I supposed to do?' Liam asked.

'I have a list of things I want you to source me and some things I want you to make me I'll mail it to you. If you have some difficulty in finding them you can mail them back to me.'

Liam nodded while Ethan turned around to Lily.

'Right now I need a journalist. We need to search and interview a few people and look for some solid evidences. This is our first cover story let's make it happen together.'

Lily smiled.

'Now you're talking.'