Chapter 1001 - Come back to me (1) (1/2)

~ Los Angeles, Cliffside villa ~

January 27

1:34 AM

Sarah ended a call with Viper and Phoenix, leaned back into her office chair and thought about last three weeks.

On January 7th Mr. Patel asked her to jam cellular signals for eleven companies, and to make sure that the signal for mobile customers of his company is flawless.

Eleven companies he named are the ones which had more subscribers than his.

The good thing out of this is that she successfully negotiated that one week of signal jamming is worth one job that Aiden previously agreed to. Mr. Patel didn't want any money trail that can implicate him in this, so that means that for two weeks of signal jamming, Sarah managed to complete conditions of the contract Aiden signed with Mr. Patel.

Even with Eve's help, Sarah knew that this is too much for her to handle. Jamming all cell towers in India at random intervals, with random intensity and selecting specific carriers is huge! She never did a job at such a large scale, and she knew right away that it will require a lot of typing, monitoring and tweaking her code on the fly.

Sarah thought of getting her Sigma army to help, but they are lacking the necessary experience, and because there is no time to coach them before the job starts, they would need a lot of guidance… and then Sarah remembered the security conference she attended. As VIPs, Aiden and she participated in special events where they won assistance from seasoned hackers: Viper and Phoenix.

Viper is known for his fast algorithms, and Phoenix for his unorthodox ones.

Sarah reached out to them, and they agreed to help her develop scripts.

Viper created scripts which cause cell phone signal for a given provider to degrade in quality, causing background noise and delays in signal transmission, up to the point of dropping the call.

Phoenix created scripts for obstructing text messages and data packets by inserting random text and causing random time delays.

They finished that promptly and Sarah was able to start her job for Mr. Patel on January 12th.

All the scripts Viper and Phoenix created worked perfectly with the ones Sarah developed, and Eve was in charge of deploying them to the Indian cellular network, and then removing them after some time in order to avoid detection.

On January 13th there was a commotion caused by people noticing issues with their cell phones, and within days it became national news.

On January 20th Mr. Patel gave an exclusive interview on national television where he announced that his company PatelCom is using specific frequencies which are not impacted by these 'random interruptions of unknown origin' in cell phone traffic. He magnanimously declared how his heart is aching because so many people are impacted by this mysterious phenomenon, and he wants to help people get back online and in touch with their loved ones… and that is why PatelCom is giving 25% discount to new subscribers for the first month.

”How generous…”, Sarah mumbled while reading the news.

Six days later, Sarah instructed Eve to stop all script executions and to make sure that all traces are erased.

PatelCom is currently #2 company, holding 22% of total subscribers. And people are still switching from their providers to PatelCom because everyone is saying that the service provided by PatelCom is amazing, and the price is great.

Even without any further interruptions in service provided by his competitors, Mr. Patel created an image for his company as the most reliable.

…

Sarah was surprised by an invitation from Viper to talk, and that Phoenix joined in as well. They finished their work, and she was not sure why they contacted her.

”You didn't tell us that we are doing just a small part in such a big operation.”, Viper said.

”I thought that Sigma is known for helping people in need. This was an aggressive attack.”, Phoenix added.

”You can say that I didn't have a choice.”, Sarah responded. ”My back was against the wall.”

”Do you need help?”, Sarah could hear Viper's concern.

”Your work helped me a lot, and I'm out of the contract. Thank you for the offer.”, Sarah was touched.