Page 98 of Antihero

“Okay,” she said. “But seriously. No. You’re in your own world. Not the one where the rest of us live.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Like…” Finger to her chin, contemplating. “You’d never make it through a real date, for instance.”

“You don’t think I could handle a date?”

She gave a charming one-shoulder shrug. “You can try.”

Neither of them looked away.

“When might I try?”

“Tonight at eight.”

“Where are you going?”

“To see a Beatles tribute band.”

He swallowed. She tried to cover her amusement with her hand, but her smile was too big for that.

She slapped the button once more, stepping out as the doors slid shut. “It’s either that or the HOA meeting.”

“See ya at eight,” he said.

39The Shortest Fucking Nowhere Man Mission Ever

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The videos on rotation on RedLite’s home page were stomach churning.

For the better part of the day, Evan had been set up in a café booth off the lobby of the high-rise housing the corp’s Century City headquarters. With a laptop, the Aircrack-ng and bettercap software suite, and an external Wi-Fi card with a long-range antenna, he’d found the hidden SSID, cracked its encrypted credentials, and joined the RedLite network. For such a big operation, their digital security was surprisingly middling. It took only a few deauthentication requests before he cracked a four-way handshake and was watching their internal surveillance webcam feeds.

Joey could have handled it remotely in half the time, but he’d done it himself to ensure his digital-intrusion skills didn’t atrophy. At least, that’s what he told himself. Though somewhere he knew it was less about staying in practice and more about maintaining distance from Joey. He couldn’t believe he’d involved her in a mission this execrable. Having her in the middle of this depravity, seventeen years young and prepossessing, loosened his emotional dial too much.

He could not afford that, not mid-mission, not sitting here spying on the building he planned to infiltrate in less than twenty-four hours.

The inner life of RedLite was generic to the point of parody. The operation, rendered across two dozen live feeds, could have been anything—escrow service, insurance company, real estate agency. Workers beetled about in their cubicles, typed robotically, or Keuriged coffee pods into mugs with logos matching those on Joey’s flash drives. The workers looked to be about forty percent female, which surprised him initially and then did not. The conference rooms were industrial-modern-by-way-of-IKEA in design, and there was a dearth of primary colors. It was like watching a video game of an ant farm.

This morning in the Vault, Evan’s digital command center hidden behind a trick door in his penthouse, he’d done a deep dive on RedLite’s financials. Or at least as deep a dive as could be done on a corporation stunningly expert at legal evasion. Registered in the tax haven of Luxembourg, RedLite had literally dozens of phantom corporations that spawned dozens more. Even if he successfully executed the takedown he’d planned with Joey, it would take resources and expertise well beyond his own to make sure the consortium stayed down for the count. Beyond RedLite’s main website, they had hundreds of others, a massive interlinked ecosystem driving consumers from site to site, page to page. They were a major mover, if not the major mover, of internet traffic, their sites drawing eight billion visits a month.

All of which made their not-more-than-adequate network security so puzzling.

On a resized window, another video listing flicked by:

She Can’t Breathe! 87k views.

The physical security inside RedLite’s three floors was relatively professional. Metal detector at reception, RFID badges, access cards, departmental segregation. Guest movement inside would be severely restricted and surveilled. One security guard floated around reception. He was built like a minotaur and looked peak dipshit-young.

Boys With Braces! 720k views.

Unsurprisingly there were no surveillance cams inside the office of the chief content officer, Anton DeGrado, whom Evan was to meet in twenty-four hours’ time. DeGrado’s online presence was scarce, but he popped up here and there tagged on news-adjacent social-media posts. He was early thirties posing as early twenties. Boyish frame, hands stuffed in the pockets of a designer hoodie, expensively vivid sneakers. In posed photos he went for a rakish stray-dog look, over-under with the eyes, forehead furled disarmingly, shoulders hoisted in a whatever shrug.

Evan despised him.

He despised this whole vaguely sanctioned business.

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