Suzie Elliot, Evil Genius?

Chapter 1

The birthday party was finally over, all of the new toys were put away in easy to see places so that parents would think they were played with regularly, and finally it was time to download the satellite pictures for tomorrow's theft of a nuclear weapon. When you're a popular eleven year old girl, becoming the world's leading super villain is not usually something that you think about, let alone do. But Suzie Elliot, Susan on those rare occasions she saw her parents, had done that very thing. She hadn't set out to do that, but over the past four years, ever since getting her first laptop computer on her seventh birthday she had amassed a small army of mercenaries, thieves, spies small research and design engineers and even an ad and public relations agency to discredit her enemies. Best of all, nobody even knew she existed.

Suzie was self-aware enough to know that she was a spoiled little girl, with more toys by the time she got her laptop than most girls got in their entire childhood, but she never felt guilty about it. With her parents leaving her in the care of one day care or nanny after another, she felt she had earned the material things to keep herself happy. But playing with the toys could only do so much. Her friends' families were all as wealthy as her own, but for whatever reason they never seemed to understand why Suzie was still distant and unhappy even with all of their goodies. Birthday after birthday was new bikes and shoes and frilly clothing. Sets of jewelry were the latest rage among the parents, making their girls into little versions of themselves. Suzie hated it all. She didn't want the trinkets and baubles. She wanted more, much more.

Her laptop was the escape that she had desired, a free pass to learn about things that the teachers in school wouldn't or couldn't teach. Gone were the thoughts of playing with dolls with the other girls, unless it was mandated as part of a tedious play date. No more caring about her clothes and hair and ponies any more except to maintain the illusion of her normal life to her family, friends and teachers. Now Suzie's life was filled with hi tech military equipment, industrial espionage, sending her minions out to do her bidding and building her empire.

That she had achieved so much in such a short amount of time was not too surprising. She applied the same care to mastering the computer as she did to getting her straight A's in school. She had started slowly with some basic computer classes taught by some hired teachers, then went on to online tutorials, and then downloaded several books on programming languages throughout first grade. But the real break she got was an article online about online hacker groups getting sensitive information from big businesses, governments and the military. It took her almost a year, but before her ninth birthday Suzie Elliot was firmly established as one of the top computer hackers in the world.

In fact, her entire empire was built around her computer, not one of the people working for her around the world knew her name. All they knew was that they received wired money, texts and encrypted e-mails from accounts that had the proper codes and then did what they were supposed to do. Once they were done they would respond in the same way, collect their money, and wait for the next assignment. In some cases, Suzie would hire completely honest companies through one of several dummy companies that she had set up to do thing that seemed normal, but always worked to further her aims.

But furthering her aims turned out to be the big issue. Suzie had reached the point where she didn't know what to do next. What exactly were her aims? When all this had started, she was learning things out of boredom with school and the silly things her friends were doing, escaping the reality that she almost never saw her parents and that she was being raised by a seeming succession of nannies who she had fired once they had taught her their native language. Suzie now could speak seven languages fluently, and her latest nanny, Yilin was busy teaching her Mandarin as her eighth.

Sitting at her desk, Suzie leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Ignoring the silly star shapes stuck there by her old Nanny Maria, Suzie thought about what her next goals should be. If the plan to acquire her nuclear weapon worked, what would she even do with it? Most of the movies with bad guys revolved around them getting some sort of super weapon or doomsday device and threatening people, or even the whole world, with it. But Suzie didn't really want to hurt anyone; at least she didn't think so. She hated bullies at school, and the thought of being one herself didn't sound very inspiring. When she wanted people eliminated, she just set them up to take the fall for things that she did like Johnny Baker back in first grade, her first victim. But, if she was going to threaten people, who would it be? What would she even want them to give her? It was all so confusing!