Nefarious {Harry Styles A.U}

Four

               

Harry had made it to the precinct in record time and, despite the fact he felt like his lungs were about to erupt from his chest, he was settled enough to pay attention to the big screen in the room where every detective and uniform in the room was watching the screen.

"Niall!" Harry called out over the sea of people and made it over to the 'computer nerd' of the precinct. He usually worked in a little cave on the ground floor, looking over case files electronically and hacking in to suspects backgrounds. He was one of the best assets the precinct had.

"Styles," The Irish accent of the blond haired technician called through the people, drawing Harry over to his own computer. "We got this in about five minutes ago, there wasn't anything written, only your name and an attachment." Niall pointed towards the screen where the body of a woman was shown on the screen, arms and legs bound in rope to something further than what the cameras showed.

"What the hell is this?" Harry asked, An electronic voice quickly answering.

"Detective Styles, how are you?" It was a redundant question, there was no way that he was going to be able to respond. All the detective did was clench his jaw and stare intently at the screen whilst Niall was beside him, tapping away on the keyboard trying to trace the IP address of the live feed. "Good!" The voice cheered, although no one could see him on the screen, they all assumed he was behind the camera. "This here is Alexandra Harper. Strange name I know. She's cute thought don't you think?" Harry was getting a slight taunt from the unknown subject behind the screen, he was reminded of the relationship between The Joker and Batman, but chose to keep that to himself. "Now, I've given her the same chance I've given everyone Detective Styles," The voice had suddenly become very serious on the other line. "Five minutes. That's all she has. If she doesn't manage to get out of these ropes in five minutes, the timer attached will release and the ropes will start to pull. I've done a lot of reading on Medieval torture and this one really speaks to me." Harry could almost hear the smile in the voice and it was really starting to piss him off. "I've honestly never had this much fun with someone before. You know she's got one hell of a right hook." The voice from the other end of the screen had a hint of laughter about it. "She's persistent I'll give her that, although slightly annoying." Alexandra was looking around desperately, almost like she was trying to see who was in the room with her.

Her dark shirt had been ripped across the arms and torso, her denim shorts were covered in what Harry could only assume was her own blood and her face was covered in mascara streaks where she'd been crying.

"Niall." Harry's voice was harsh and cold, coming out through clenched teeth. "Any luck tracing the address?"

"I'm working on it Harry, but they keep rerouting me. I need more time."

"We don't have more time." Liam piped up from beside his partner. Every Detective and Uniform in the room were intently watching the screen, biting on their nails or the skin of their fingers in anticipation. There was nothing they could do other than watch. They couldn't help, they didn't know where she was and they didn't know who had her.

"Clocks ticking detective." With that, the voice stopped and an annoying beeping sound came over the speakers. Alexandra had five minutes.

Niall was furiously tapping on the keyboard as each second passed, not getting as close as he hoped to the location of the live feed. 

"Horan." The Captain was now standing in the room, watching the screen intently.

"I'm trying sir but he's rerouting the IP Address through several different interfaces, the trace is going to take me a lot longer than I first thought. This isn't like a normal blue hat hacker okay? They are Black hat which means they are almost as good as I am when it comes to computer systems; almost." Niall felt like he had to reiterate the point, hoping the Captain wasn't going to fire him after this. "They're using C.L.I's to do everything and I'm not being funny sir, but their daemon use is incredible." Niall seemed to be impressed by the person on the other side of the screen; although every person in the room had turned from the video to Niall, not even understanding a single word he just said.

"You wanna dumb that down for all us humans?" Liam shot towards the Irish genius. "Not all of us come from your planet."

"Sorry, Command Line Interface is used for sending commands across a computer. Like when you click the button to print. The action of clicking on the little button is the C.L.I  and Daemons are used for triggering the commands. So when the printer actually does what you tell it and prints the picture, that's the Daemon. The more complicated the C.L.I, the better the Daemon and hence the better the guy behind the computer." Harry kind of knew what he was talking about, although most of it was going over his head. Kind of like the behaviour of women.

"So basically just get your ass in gear and stop admiring the psycho." The Captain shrugged, eyes still on the screen.

Niall didn't have to be told twice and doubled his pace of his typing.

There was a small amount of hope though; everyone watching the screen could see that Alexandra was fully going for it, pulling at the ropes on her wrist to the point where she was actually managing to get her hands free.

As the clock on the wall counted down, Harry and the rest of the detectives held their breath, almost wanting to cheer as her hands pulled free of the rope and she managed to untie her feet, hopping down off the table just as the clock hit 5 seconds remaining.

Everyone in the room had stopped what they were doing, even Niall's persistent tapping had stopped.

"Congratulations Detective. We have our first survivor." The voice on the other side was now monotone where as before, there had been a hint of sarcasm and enthusiasm at Harry's vulnerability. "Check your inbox." And with that, the camera shut off, Niall's trace had stopped and an email sat in the inbox; the address of where Alexandra was being held.