Snippet #2371368

Jack had been wracking his brain on what to do ever since that PM was sent by some Anon on one of the Purist Human Coalition boards in the darknet. His first thought was that the invitation could be a potential trap. He didn't think he had targeted any corporations based in Japan so far, as there were plenty here in America which he was determined to bring down first. Still, the first step to catching a mouse is to lure it from its hole, and they had certainly primed the trap with an alluring bait. Unfortunately, he was the mouse in this scenario. Corporations didn't have jurisdictions, they didn't care about boarders and extradition laws. If they tracked him down, he was sure they had the power to lock him up in some basement and shoot him like a dog. Oh, Jack was tempted to delete the message and take down the entire board, since someone had used it to identify him, and that information was dangerous. Instead, he replied with his acceptance of the invitation, and then took it down.

Over the next month, Jack worked to research the situation. Potential allies were always welcome to the cause, and this was the strongest to present itself to date. He tracked Mr. Shinra's financial transactions back over the last decade, noting the vast sums paid to several different corporations as he bought out their government bonds. His family had been heavily invested into companies marketing and developing different augments, but what blue blood these days wasn't? And those investments had been on the decline recently, the portfolio diversified. Theories on Mr. Shinra's intentions sparked seventeen threads, only three of which devolved into trolling and flame wars, a rather impressive ratio. Jack also initiated contact with the User that had previously reached out to him, making demands of various other pieces of information. At the same time, Jack and his more skilled hackers began putting together the framework for a massive cyber attack, to be used as retaliation if this did all turn out to be an elaborate ruse.

Finally, the time came to send a representative on behalf of the PHC to meet with this Mr. Shinra. Of course, they wanted Jack himself to come, but that was surely too dangerous. Jack would much prefer they keep their contact limited to PHC initiated messages in the darknet, but he was assured this was quite impossible for what they had in mind. He knew that even if he did not reveal himself, a corporation was patient enough to bide its time and build his trust until an error was made. Therefore, Jack decided deception would be his best tool. "Jack" could be any one of PHC's members; no one was supposed to know what he looked like. He was only himself. Therefore, Jack decided he would meet with this Mr. Shinra in person, acting as a representative of "Jack", PHC's mysterious leader. If it was a trap, he could trigger the cyber attack at any moment, and would most likely be largely ignored himself due to being thought only a low level PHC initiate, easily expendable. Meanwhile, they would continue hunting for Jack, ignorant of the fact that he'd been right under their noses the entire time. It was perfect, and a delicious irony. So it was that Jack flew to Japan, crashed on the couch of a sympathizer for a few nights, and spent the morning watching others arrive to Mr. Shinra's office through a hacked camera feed.