The Thorned Rose

6

Driving behind them at a safe distance, I saw them take a side road that looked pretty abandoned. Knowing it would be too obvious that I was following them, I decided to continue driving. At the next parking bay on the side of the main road, I pulled up and got out of my car. I could just see a warehouse poking out from behind the trees of a forest. They must be torturing her or something. To be honest, I still didn't care, she was just unlucky, and people are unlucky all the time. They would soon find out it wasn't me and either kill her or dump her. It was time for me to cause some mischief. I know I should be just getting out of the country, but I was about fifty steps ahead of them, and I was still running whilst they were walking at a leisurely pace.

It didn't take me long to find out where Don Sandrino lived. It was a huge mansion that lay in the middle of acres and acres of land, surrounded by a tall stone wall, with many guards on the wall and also directly outside the house. There three gates that cars could enter through dotted around the huge complex, depending on the way you were coming to the house, as if you were on the north end I expect it would be a lot to drive all the way around to the other side. The main gate was the most heavily guarded, with the others having only three men. I could easily take them out, but I wanted to go in and out without anyone knowing I was there, until I wanted them to know. There were also many pedestrian gates, one by each of the gates for the cars, and other ones just dotted around. These were not guarded, but they had CCTV, sensors and you needed a keycard to open them.

As I told you about a lot of my weaknesses, it is time for another strength: I am an amazing hacker. I leant over and got my computer from the backseat, powering it on and opening a hacking program that I had built and made from scratch. I could practically hack anywhere, but it bored me sometimes making things too easy for myself on missions, and it also bored me with how easy it is to hack into so many people's companies and devices and banks, and I hate being bored. I love a damn challenge. Hacking into the CCTV camera was easy, I was bored, and as soon as I was within the CCTV, I just had to get through one firewall, and I was within the whole system. Everything was linked by one, badly protected, program. I had access to every light, blind, TV, fridge, oven, door, gate, camera, hoover, fountain, alarm, you name it, if it is electrical, I had access to it. I went to one of the side gates, where no guard could see me, and I quickly stopped the recording of the camera, freezing the image, so that whoever was sat in their CCTV room, if they even had one of those, wouldn't suspect anything. I unlocked the gate and closed it behind me, assessing what was in front of me. The house seemed pretty empty, but I could never be too sure. I quickly flicked through each of the security cameras and saw that apart from maids and butlers, there was no one in the main house; the guards were only guarding the outside. The forest next to me went up very close to the edge of the house, so using the trees as shields, and freezing the image of all of the security cameras that covered the forest area, I made it just to the edge. I had to get a distraction to get the guards to move away, so I turned on the sprinklers, causing some of them to instinctively run away from the water. I quickly pressed a button to unlock the door, pressed another to freeze the CCTV cameras that would see me as I moved from the forest into the clear, and ran for the door. I had to make it to the CCTV room and knock-out whoever was watching them. Luckily for me, I had a full blueprint of the house that showed every room. I found the CCTV room easily, but when I opened the door, I saw that no one was watching over the footage. I could now freeze all of the cameras within the house and roam free.

I sat in the room that on the blueprint was labelled 'Main Longue', and poured myself a scotch, downing it in one, then poured another. I browsed around the magazines on the table, and just lay back for a minute. After I had finished my second glass, I found some paper and a pen and went to write a note. I didn't know what to write.

'Sorry about Erasmo. Yours, TR'

No, that wasn't relevant.

I thought about putting a white rose on the table and writing a note saying 'This one is for Furseo Tempesta. Yours, TR' (Furseo is the man I just killed in the coffee shop, but I thought it was also irrelevant, he probably doesn't care about Mr Tempesta.

I settled on it. I wrote 'The girl you have isn't me. Try harder. Yours, TR x' Perfect. I left a white rose on the table next to the note and made it out of the house, easier than I made it into the house, and drove away. I stopped in a nearby carpark and opened my laptop, still hacked completely into their program. I went to the convenience store that was just by my parked car and bought some popcorn, anticipating I was going to be watching some very confused and very, very angry men soon.

About two hours later, I saw on the CCTV that the men were approaching the house in their cars, the gates opened, and they went inside. No one went to the Main lounge for about twenty minutes, but eventually it seemed like there was some gathering in there. A whole load of men went in, poured themselves drinks and sat down, looking angry.

"Why won't she say anything?" said one of them, who was wearing a red shirt and grey trousers.

"It's fucking annoying," said another, with bleach blonde hair.

"We will just have to try harder tomorrow," said a man who was wearing sand coloured chinos and a white polo. They all agreed and continued talking. God, these men are supposed to be running one of the biggest mafias in the world, but they are completely and utterly unobservant and useless. I debated driving to the warehouse and breaking the girl out myself, just to piss them off more, but just as I was about to start driving, one of them noticed.

"What. The. Fuck. Is. That." Said someone with their back turned to the camera. I think it was Don Sandrino, but I couldn't tell. The red-shirted man picked it up and read the note out.

"Who is TR?" asked red-shirt man, fucking useless.

"THE THORNED FUCKING ROSE YOU IMBECILE," boomed the voice of the man I thought was Don Sandrino. Fuck it. I don't want to call him Don Sandrino anymore, he doesn't deserve for me to address him as a Don when he is completely useless. I did a bit of research to find out exactly what his first name is, and it was harder than hacking into the security system of the house. Every so often I would turn my eyes to the commotion that was happening at the Mafia Mansion, and laughed, eating some more popcorn. Eventually I found his first name in the records of his primary school: 'Fabricio Sandrino Pugliesi Russo'. That was his full name. I hate pugs, they're so wrinkly and small and gross, the opposite of Fabricio, he was a huge man, no wrinkles, but I didn't know whether or not he was gross. He definitely was stupid like a pug though.

Within three hours, they finally realised what happened, quicker than I expected, but way longer than they should've took. They realised I had completely hacked their system, and I let them know I was still watching by turning the lights on and off. Fabri (nickname for the stupid pug man) got even angrier, asking if I was still within their systems, and within 15 minutes they found out I still was. He stared at the CCTV camera that was in the room he was in (the office), it was like he was staring directly at me, but obviously not, and said in clear words, "You want me to try harder you little bitch, I'll quadruple the effort we put in. I will fucking find you. And that girl, you haven't saved her, she has no information, she is useless, you signed her death wish." Fuck this guy man, I quickly clicked on the electronic devices section of their system and found the huge TV that was in the office room they were in. I wrote a quick little note and pressed enter. It appeared on the TV and he turned to read it. The note said 'Her death is on your conscience, not mine, but if your conscience is running you down, I'll let you hand this one over to me; I don't have a conscience. See you around Fabricio Sandrino Pugliesi Russo.' He looked sooooo angry, I had just used his full name, and based on how hard it was to find his full name, he must never like using it. A few seconds later, the man that was typing away at his desk spoke, "I found her location!" He smiled smugly, and went over to look over his shoulder.

"It says... what? In the middle of a desert in New Zealand, that can't be right," he started typing again, "okay, I think this should be it... huh? In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?" Every 5 minutes, or every time someone tries to find my location, like he is now, it jumps all over the world, I am completely untraceable, and, like I said, fifty steps ahead. The stupid pug man lifted his gun, shot the man as the computer, and then shot the CCTV camera, which went dark.

That's enough meddling for one day. I logged out of their system, leaving behind no trace that I was ever in there, shutdown my computer and drove to the airport. Time to go home.