Author's note: - This is a follow on to the previous chapter of Becca XXX Hard Time. Please read it before reading this or you will not understand the plot or characters
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Becca XXX. Hard Time. Ch 09.
Arrow and Melody may as well have been speaking a foreign language to me as they set up the Wi-Fi dongle. It was all 'VPN' this and 'remote server' that. They were talking about masking their identity on the internet by using some sort of encrypted tunnelling cipher to bounce our location off of several different servers throughout the world.
Naomi and I just sat back and enjoyed a plastic beaker of vodka while the computer hackers did their thing. Spalding had dropped off a water bottle filled with vodka and another one filled with tequila while I'd been doing The Crow's dirty work in the visitor's room. He'd been true to his word about making up for over-charging me for the wine.
It was turning out to be a pretty good day all round.
"Ok, we're almost up and running," said Arrow who seemed to be in her element now that she could show off her computer skills. "I'll just launch a Tor browser and we can get the information you need."
"What the fuck is a Tor browser?" I asked.
"It stands for, The Onion Router," explained Melody. "We need it to get onto the dark web. We won't find the information you're looking for on the surface web."
I knew very little about the dark web. I'd seen Arran and the tech guys accessing it back at The Facility, but I had no idea how it all worked.
"Won't the government be able to track us?" I asked. "Surely they'll know that someone in Bronzefield is accessing this data."
"Pah, they can fucking try," scoffed Arrow. "I'm routed through seven VPN's back to my cloud server. The software I use from there will have the fuckers going in circles for days. We'll be long gone by then."
"In English please," I said.
"Ignore her. She gets excited when computers are involved," replied Melody. "But no, they won't be able to track us. Think of our internet connection as a tunnel. To get into the tunnel you need a code which only Arrow knows. Now think of that tunnel being inside another tunnel with another level of security. Finally, think of that seven times over and you'll probably see how secure our connection is."
"Ok," I said. "That's sounds safe enough."
"Safe enough? It's fucking bomb proof," said Arrow.
"Shut up Arrow," snapped Melody, before turning her attention back to me. "Now, think of the internet as an iceberg."
"An iceberg?" I quizzed. "Why an iceberg?"
"An iceberg only has part of itself visible above the water. Imagine that the bit you can see is the everyday internet that normal people use. It's called the surface web. It's only about twenty percent of the entire internet. The rest of it is the dark web which lies hidden beneath the waterline. You can't access it with a normal browser or Google; you need a different type of browser to get to it, known as a Tor browser."
"The onion thing?"
"Yes. It allows us to search the dark web for anything we want. It's where all the secrets and criminal activity are stored, away from prying eyes. The government agencies can track it, but it's extremely difficult to police. Think of it like a lawless part of a city where even the police are scared to go. That's where we must venture in order to find what you're looking for."
"That makes a lot more sense. Thank you. Right... let's find the plans for Bronzefield and find a way out of here then," I said, rubbing my hands together and leaning forward to see the screen.
"I'm already one step ahead of you," said Arrow. "Watch me work."
Her fingers danced over the keyboard like a pianist's. She looked like a professional typist and didn't even look at the keyboard. Several windows were soon open on the screen and she was switching between them like a demon, typing in code and illegible computer language in between mouse clicks and yet more typing.
"Fuck me," I said. "What did you do for a living before you came in here?"
"Game coder," she said, without looking away from the screen. "Then software design, then selling hacking software on the dark web."
"Fuck. Is that why you're in here? For selling hacking software?"
"Not quite," she smirked. "I say it was entrapment."
"She hacked the MI5 database," said Melody. "She thought it was one of the greatest hacks of the decade. What she didn't know was that the British cyber security team had left a back door open on purpose to track any would-be hackers. Arrow took the bait and was arrested for it within hours."
"The cunts," she spat. "I was stupid enough to let my ego cloud my judgement. I should have realised that it looked too easy to be true. The next thing I knew, ten armed men were kicking my flat door down and arresting me. I've been in here ever since, on remand, just like you. They told me that I'm a danger to national security."
"It sounds like you are," I laughed.
"You better believe it," she smiled. "But my talents are wasted rotting away in Bronze. They should employ me, not lock me up. Wankers."
The screen refreshed at such a pace that it made my eyes go funny. She finally settled on a full screen layout of the prison on a blue background.
"BOOM," she cried, pushing the keyboard away and sitting back in her chair with her hands behind her head. "Did you time it? What was that? Three minutes? Job fucking done. You're now looking at the original blue prints for this shit hole. Some things may have changed over the years, but the overall structure will still be the same."
"Fuck me," gasped Melody. "I knew you were good, but shit, that was fast."
I looked at the plan of the buildings on the screen. It appeared to be showing the ground floor, but I needed to go deeper.
"Can you find the basement for me?" I asked.
Arrow clicked and typed and brought up a plan of the basement, one level down.
"There you go. Basement," she stated. "What are you looking for?"
"Find the rape room," I said. "It'll be a large room with only one door, near an elevator, possibly under the admin building."
Click - click - zoom - click.
"Is that it?" she asked, hovering the mouse over a section of the prison that matched my description.
I nodded and looked a Melody for confirmation.
"I think so too," she said. "That must be the lift we went down. There's only one way in and out. That has to be it."
"And there's the barred door at the end of the corridor," I pointed at the screen. "Can you find out where it comes out?"
I remembered back to my conversation with Lexa when she'd posed as my solicitor. She'd suggested that I use the entry route of the rapists as our escape route. Therefore, I needed to know how the bus load of rapists were getting to the basement undetected by anyone else in the prison. If I could find their route in, I could use it as our way out.
Arrow zoomed into the area which I was pointing at as I visualised it in my mind. I remembered the barred door fitted with tamper proof bolts which I'd thought was odd at the time. It had almost resembled a fire escape, but why would it be bolted shut?
"There's a stairway behind the door which leads up into the admin building," she confirmed, moving to a map of the ground floor. "It looks like it comes out next to a fire escape which in turn leads to the staff car park. But why are we looking at the rape room?"
