The Nexus

Chapter 3

After a long walk back to the house, Emma assessed her ankle situation once more. The skin around it was a blueish purple and it was very swollen. She grabbed an ice pack from the freezer, went into the living room, propped her foot up and turned on the TV.

Television was boring to her but she did like to keep current on her news. It also interested her to see how the media would drag something out forever trying to create new stories out of old ones and completely destroying people today that might have been called a hero yesterday. It was fascinating to her how they could not just report an event that happened or talk about the weather, even, without expanding on it until you wanted to just smash your TV in with a fire poker. Right now they were talking about how people could keep cool during the hot streak Colorado might experience for the next week. Emma thought, Go to the pool or turn on the A/C end of story, but no, the news report had to talk about the people without air conditioning and how they should open their windows at night and then close everything up really good during the day. The reporter was now going to interview a man from the local hardware store to instruct us on how to weatherproof our house. It was amazing to Emma, who was watching this?

That thought struck her as funny, because she was! She laughed and turned away from the TV. Time to check on Deborah.

The ice was doing its job, but now the pain that the swelling had numbed was coming back. She gingerly walked into the kitchen and took a couple of ibuprofen on her way into her office. She sat at her desk and started typing away. This time she was able to access Deborah's home computer and Deborah was surprisingly using it at that very moment.

This excited Emma to no end. She pulled up Deborah's computer onto her own and watched as Deborah shopped online at a furniture store. With a few more keystrokes, Emma actually turned the camera on Deborah's laptop and could see her face as she shopped. The grin on Emma's face would have given anyone who saw it chills. This was exhilarating to watch someone without them knowing, someone you wanted dirt on.

It looked as if Deborah was in her living room and Emma could hear the two boys playing in the background. It sounded like they were playing with some kind of musical toy. Emma could see Deborah's eyes focused on the computer screen as she looked for a new couch. Deborah was shopping at one of the most expensive stores, and the couch she seemed to be looking at was close to seven thousand dollars.

The boys started yelling in the background and Deborah's eyes looked up, "Stop yelling at each other and get along!" she screamed and then went back to her order. She was putting in her shipping information and Emma wrote it down on her notepad just in case.

The boys continued to argue and Deborah let out a sigh. She picked the laptop up off of her lap and placed it next to her as she got up. Emma could see half the scene as Deborah walked over to the boys and started to smack them over the head. Emma quickly commanded the camera to record. Deborah picked up the bigger boy by the arm and started to smack him on the rear end. Emma could see the rage in Deborah's face as she screamed, "How many times do I have to tell you little shits to be quiet!? I say it over and over and over again and neither of you ever listens to me!!" The boys were both bawling by now and Emma just watched in fascination.

So this was a day in the life of Deborah's kids. Emma chuckled a little because it was so easy to catch Deborah doing something blackmail worthy. Putting a video of her beating her kids on the internet would be a fun start. Not yet, though, Emma knew there was even more exciting stuff on this computer besides what was now coming in from the live feed.

Since Deborah was done with her tirade on her two children, she came back to the computer and completed her purchase. At the same time, Emma was using a spyware program to begin to download a copy of Deborah's entire hard drive. As long as Deborah did not turn off her computer for at least thirty minutes, then Emma would be able to view all the dirty little secrets she could find.

When Deborah finished her purchase she set the computer back in the spot with the great vantage point. Emma could tell that the boys were no longer in the same room as Deborah and she could also see a bit of the kitchen. Deborah got up and walked past the kitchen and out of sight. Emma was pretty sure that this meant she would have no problem copying the hard drive. She also installed an application that would copy all Deborah's keystrokes and allow Emma to gain access to anything that Deborah needed a password for. Finally, she decided to go get herself a sandwich.

After she ate, she showered and returned to her computer. Apparently Deborah had logged into her email while Emma was gone, both work and personal. The hard drive was done copying so now Emma had no use to be remotely logged in at this point. She disconnected from Deborah and started her digging.

Most of the files on Deborah's computer were not very interesting. Emma had expected some pictures of the two boys, but wasn't that surprised that the only pictures were ones that were professionally taken and depicted a perfect family scene. This fact confirmed something that Emma had been suspecting all along: Deborah and her might actually be a little more alike than she had originally thought. She was pretty sure Deborah was not connected to humanity in the same way that Emma lacked emotions. The major difference, Emma could see, was that Deborah was not careful like Emma.  The fact that Deborah didn't even bother to take pictures of her kids was more evidence that Deborah probably didn't really care about them. Emma also knew that someone like Deborah would do risky things for no real reason at all.  This would open Deborah up to all sorts weaknesses.

Oh, well, let's find some dirt, thought Emma, as she continued to dig. It wasn't long until she found what she was looking for in Deborah's personal email, there was another email from the CEO of AmeriFoods that eluded to an affair with Deborah. The best part about this information was that this man was also running for state senate and you could continually see commercials of him, his wife, and his two young daughters promoting how wonderful it would be if Colorado voters went out and voted for him. Emma decided that she was going to have to spend the entire day on this. Possibly even hack into the Senate hopeful's own email.

With a thrill she got to work on her self-assigned mission.