Vendetta

HAUM SWEET HAUM

Almost two weeks later, Marcus and I get a call from Wrench, who had retreated to his garage only a couple hours earlier. The garage door is a third of the way open so Marcus and I park outside and duck underneath.

"Yo, Wrench," Marcus says as we head over to the masked man at his workbench.

"Yo, M. El." He acknowledges the both of us but his attention is on the toaster he tries to pull apart.

"Damn man, I hope you kept the receipts," Marcus chuckles.

"Hey yo, check out this fuckstick." Wrench points to his laptop across from him. I clear my throat loudly. "Sorry," Wrench apologises for his profanity and I raise an eyebrow at him as Marcus as I head over to the laptop. Marcus presses down on the keypad, beginning a video—a WKZ interview.

"So tell us about HAUM 2.0?"

"HAUM's systems are completely bulletproof. Your privacy is absolutely secure."

"Bold claims, Steven. Aren't you worried hacker groups will see that as a challenge?"

"Well, say what you mean Shirley. DedSec. If they want to go up against us, I invite them to try. HAUM 2.0 is an OS with TEETH!"

"Yo, he called us out by name?" Marcus says, moving the laptop to Wrench's main bench before closing it.

"Yup," Wrench responds, seeming physically frustrated with the toaster.

"He don't know who he's fucking with. It's on now."

"That's why I've been trying to crack 2.0. There's just one, teeny, little problem," Wrench says, throwing the screwdriver to the side.

"What?" I ask.

Wrench then picks up the laptop and hands it to Marcus. "Here. Hold this, and stand back. Great." Then, he pulls out a sledgehammer from underneath the bench and smashes the toaster. "The chip... Is a little... Oh, hard to get out." He picks up the extracted chip and holds it up. "Look, there's no point in trying to use the previous version's hardware to jack the new OS. Why? Because they changed the ports, following the Capitalists' Guide to Forced Obsolescence," he says in a mockery tone. "But luckily a little birdy told me that 2.0 should be packing a farm-fresh, Zero Day."

I purse my lips together as Marcus and I nod approvingly, both of us picking up on what Wrench is getting on about. "Now that might just be a shame."

"Damn right," Wrench responds to Marcus. "That is why both of you, my friend's, are going to hijack me a 2.0 pre-order shipment before some do-gooder White Hat tells HAUM how to..." then, Wrench gestures inappropriately, ending with, "cockblock us."

Marcus looks around, then hands the laptop back to Wrench. Then, he leans closer to the two of us, directing at the engineer, "You've got a weird relationship with technology, you know that right?"

Wrench moves his head up and down slowly once before Marcus and I begin to exit. But before we leave, I hear Wrench say to his laptop. "He didn't mean it."

"Where are you?" Marcus speaks his thoughts aloud slowly as he hacks into the computer across the road from where the HAUM shipment is. I'm at the window, crouching and keeping a lookout. "Got it," he says, backing away from the computer and turning to me. "You got the RC connected?"

I hold the tablet up. "Ready when you are."

He nods before leaving. I watch him through the window as he jogs across the street, shimmying against the side of a boat shed to reach the other side of the dock. Then, my earpiece pings: he connected our comms.