Read Hacked for Free Online Page A

do your packing,’ she said. ‘They sent the kit list with the letter.’
    ‘Thanks,’ I said, already picturing the tidy layers, including waterproof trousers that would never get worn. I’m a jeans and hoodie sort. Blue or black. Trainers – white. Full stop. Don’t care what other people wear. (Soraya’s boy-band boy wears falling-down rust chinos, T-shirts with collars and Vans. It’s like his sister’s dressed him.)
    As I was going to be out of my den for two whole days on the trip
and
had schoolwork to do, the parents relaxed the routine and left me alone. Perfect. More time to play with the network of American spy satellites. Knowing I’d be offline from Sunday helped me concentrate. Plotting the van’s route by joining the feeds using GMT and GPS co-ordinates was fiddly, and took ages, but gradually I pieced it all together. When I finally saw the guilty van park, the disappointment was difficult to deal with. The driver reversed the van into a space between two other vans, in a row of fifteen identical (from above) vans, and a column of six. He got out and walked to a warehouse building near Avonmouth docks. I Googled it – a van rental place. My hopes that he’d parked on his own drive, I’d call the police anonymously from a pay phone, and he’d be arrested, were dashed.I was gutted. He’d ended his journey in just about the most anonymous spot in the South West. I hated him even more, if that was possible.
    For no reason I watched the rest of the recording, and saw men walk to and from vans, and a woman park and enter the building, and more vans and drivers come in and go out. And as watching people was weirdly compelling, I went back into the live feed and tried to track Soraya – see if she was with the ‘boy’. (To be clear, I wasn’t obsessed with
her
, but the task. I could have tracked our neighbour’s Labrador just as happily.)
    My phone was a bit small for fine control so I transferred the functions to my laptop and used the keyboard. Soraya wasn’t anywhere to be seen but I had a good nose around Bishopston. Some hours went by, with a short break for chilli con carne, and another one for teeth-cleaning – dupes the parents into thinking I’m going to bed.
    I was reading a thread about the developers slowing down time on
EVE
during its ‘largest ever battle’ when Angel joined in. I’d been thinking about hacking the website for the residential centre in the unpronounceable place in West Wales where we were going to stay and declaring it closed, or attacking the school email and cancelling the trip, so I shared my ideas with him. His reply came hurtling back:
    morons like you are the reason society wants to control us, you should drown in a bog in Wales
    It was clearly the wrong Angel. It’s funny how complete strangers can say what the hell they like online but wouldn’t do it to your face. I replied:
    I have reported you to the moderator as you have explicitly threatened me with bog-drowning
    I left and went in search of the right Angel, wondering why he’d chosen one of the most common handles, excluding DarkStar and Joker.
    When I found him, he had another idea that could scupper my trip.
    damage the power supply    – he typed.
    easier said than done    – I replied.
    are you saying KP isnt as skilled as he thinks he is
    this King Penguin can’t be bothered – why are you Angel?
    got wings    – he typed.
    can you fly?
    duh
    The chat had hardly got going when Angel suggested we meet at IRC channel #angeldust. I was going to query it but he’d gone. Two seconds later I’d found it. Twenty minutes later I got past the virtual locked door (via a virtual window of course) and entered his private club. It was, if I’m truthful, thrilling. I was in the equivalent of a gangsters’ den. (A virtual one.) (I repeat – online in your bedroom it’s hard to believe you’re affecting things in the real world.) They were elitehackers, doing stuff. Premiership level. I