The New Headquarters of Leverage, Inc, (The Apartment Above Lukes), Saturday Afternoon

[geniuswithasmartphone]

After everything that went down at the docks, Hardison was more than happy to come back to the apartment and just relax. Which, for him, meant a shower, a two-liter of orange soda, and a little bit of light hacking, just to stay on top of things. Sure, surfing the Dark Net was nothing compared to hacking all of reality, hacking reality hadn't come with phat stacks of cash, either.

Hardison settled in at his work station and set his various programs to running. Some were web crawlers, keeping him abreast of current events that might prove useful, others were security programs to wipe away any traces of his online presence. Still others were just tiny things he did to amuse himself; that was one naked celebrity picture leak that he ended before it even began, deleting the pictures from the web and sending a virus back to the machine that had uploaded them to destroy that, too. There was some obnoxious GamerGater on Reddit holding forth; Hardison sent a troll-bot running an algorithm of feminist arguments guaranteed to make the idiot on the other side of the screen froth at the mouth. This program unleashed a new meme into the world to propagate, chosen from the vast library of memes that Hardison had invented and saved to bring forward at a later date.

Sure, he might not have super-powers or a fancy metal suit, but the internet was his playground and there he was king.

Hardison's sense of satisfaction was not fated to last very long, however. Not more than seventy-two seconds after he finished his circuitous path to his little corner of the Dark Net and saw the blinking notice that said--once you broke all the layers of encryption over it--that the Black Book files had successfully been updated on March 12th at 7:22pm. Normally, that would be a good thing, except--

Except Hardison was sitting at his workstation and was not seeing the hard drive. Anywhere. He remembered initiating the backup; it was the last thing he'd done before he and Parker had left to go cliff jumping like the insane adrenaline-junkies he most certainly was not. But he hadn't ejected the drive when he'd gotten home--they'd had more important things to do, thank you--and when he'd gotten up on Friday, he hadn't seen the drive out on his work station to remind him to put it away.

So the last time he could consciously remember seeing the hard drive was two days ago. That was...that was very not good. Because it wasn't here now.

"Parker!" he bellowed. "Parker, I need you!"

Comments

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"What?" A head poked through the window. "I'm in the middle of something!"

That something being hanging from the roof by her toes.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"This is more important," Hardison said, a little shortly. Which, unless Parker had been deactivating (another) bomb, would be his response no matter what she was doing. "Have you seen the hard drive? The one with the Black Book on it? At all since Thursday?"

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Parker flipped down to land on the window sill, and frowned, thinking. "No. I mean. I know I saw it in your computer set-up then, but I haven't really looked at it since."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Hardison dropped to his knees, head and most of his upper body wedged underneath the main setup. Maybe it had fallen?

"You didn't move it or anything? You sure?"

Soda cap, soda cap, empty gummi wrapper, lost gummi, dust bunny...no hard drive. Dammit.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Why would I?" Parker jumped into the room, and then answered her own question. "Unless I had to check something, but no, not in the last couple days. Or weeks. And are you saying you can't find it?"

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"I won't know until I turn every possession we own upside down and shake it, but it's looking that way," Hardison said grimly. He pulled himself from under the desk, a streak of dust across his cheek and not even a hint that he was about to complain about it or his allergies. "Last thing I remember is plugging it in to backup before we left to jump. I don't remember seeing it after that."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Parker started searching around the nearest chair, cabinet, and lamp. There really wasn't a lot more furniture that wasn't part of Hardison's Age of The Geek Space. "We came up here, then we went jumping, we came back, we had food.... Would Eliot have taken it? And not told us?"

Usually she wouldn't even have to ask.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"At this point, I actually hope so," Hardison said. "It's better than any of the alternatives. Normally I wouldn't even consider it as a possibility, but--"

But Eliot hadn't been acting normal for over a week. It was a possibility they couldn't discount out of hand.

"We should call him," he sighed. "Could you while I keep looking? Or would you rather I...?"

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"I'll do it." Part of being 'mastermind' was coordinating things, at least when it had to do with work, and this definitely did. "Is anything else missing?" She grabbed her phone and hit Eliot's speed-dial number, hoping that it was this easy.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot had spent the day on the mainland, thus missing the whole villain invasion thing going on. He'd only just gotten in his door, a large cardboard box precariously balanced in one hand while he tried to dodge the excitable puppy, when his phone started ringing from the umbrella stand.

At least he hadn't turned it off again, this time?

He let it ring a little longer than he ever normally would, as he put the box down and scooped Val up and had to dig through the umbrellas to find it, but he managed to answer before voicemail kicked in, at least. "What?"

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Did you come by and grab the drive from Hardison's back-up system?" Parker asked.

He knew who it was, why say hello? He'd asked 'what.'

[vdistinctive]

Eliot blinked and said "What?" again, this time with a completely different inflection.

Come on, Parker had seen him and his magical inability with computers.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Ugh." Yeah. It had been a long-shot. "It's missing. We're searching for it now. We'd been hoping you'd needed it for something, but..."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot looked over at his box from the mainland and sighed inwardly. "What drive? Has he checked under the pile of orange soda bottles?"

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Very funny," Hardison growled. "It's the Black Book, Eliot. Ain't really the time for jokes."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot was silent for a long moment. They might be able to hear the slight crack of the phone's case as his hand clenched around it. "You -- lost -- the Black Book."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

And the worst thing? Hardison couldn't even argue that.

"Unless it turns up in Parker's underwear drawer, looks like I did," he said, somewhere between aggravated and defeated. "I plugged it into my system to start a backup, we left the apartment, and that's the last time either of us remember seeing it."

The good news was that there were backups. The bad part was that they were in a million pieces under the strongest levels of shifting encryption that Hardison could invent, scattered around the cloud. He could reassemble the data but it would take time. A lot of it.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"We did not lose it," Parker said sharply. "This isn't something you lose. Hardison is too careful for that."

...except, of course, for how it was nowhere in sight.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"I'd usually agree with you, babe," Hardison said, scrubbing his hand over his face. "Except it's looking pretty gone. And I have no idea where the hell it went."

He sighed. "You notice anything else missing?" Maybe, just maybe, they could have the tiniest bit of luck and if the hard drive had walked off, it was part of a regular theft as opposed to a targeted hit.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"No," Parker admitted. "My gear is all still here. And all the personal stuff." She'd been stalking around the loft space, checking everything. "And I don't see any supplies missing."

She might have been clutching bunny for reassurance by now. This was not supposed to happen! They were the stealers! Not the stolen-from! And they only stole from bad people!

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Which just meant that there were plenty of bad people ready and willing to steal back.

"All your diamonds? And cash?" Hardison checked. "I'm not seeing any of my gear gone, but if you keep any cash or jewelry loose...?"

A lot of his equipment was small, portable, and expensive, but he wouldn't blame thieves for skipping over that stuff in favor of a handful of diamonds and fifty dollar bills. They were even easier to move than electronics.

Though that still raised the question why the hard drive had also been taken, but Hardison was going to grasp at straws for as long as he could.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"I need to check my Haliburton case, but all the others - and what's in my go-bag - haven't been touched." Parker grimaced. "None of the rest of your data, or any of your programs?" He did write the best ones anywhere, after all.

She reached under the bed and dragged a her large silver case, opening it to count the fifties she had in there.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Nothing." Hardison sounded tired. "Nothing was even moved, so it's not like someone glanced through our stuff and just decided not to take it."

No one had bothered looking. Not for anything other than the hard drive. Which he'd helpfully left right out in the open while he left the apartment empty.

"Dammit."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Jerking her head up in the middle of counting, Parker asked, "What are you thinking?" And was it what she was thinking?

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Someone knew exactly what it was and came in to take it," Hardison said. "It wasn't a random B&E. The Black Book was their target."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"How did they even know we had it?" was Parker's question. "Or where we are!"

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"I don't even know, babe. My guess, if I had to?" He shrugged. "The only people who know we have it is us, and..."

The muscle in his jaw jumped.

"Sterling."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

That had Parker growling under her breath, and then getting up to hug him with her hands full of cash. "If he did, we'll get it back." Somehow.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Hardison clung to her. "If he did...you can figure out why, right?"

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Yes. Totally." Although she had her suspicions already about that, if it was Sterling. Parker hugged Hardison again. "Whoever did it? Is going to be so, so sorry."

[vdistinctive]

"Yeah, that's sweet and all --" Eliot had put the phone down for a bit while he went and took his anger out on his punching bag, and had picked it back up just in time to hear Parker's last line. "-- but you're missin' the part of how the hell did someone bust into your apartment? What the hell kinda security you got set up in there?!"

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"I haven't finished it yet!" Hardison snapped.

Look, they couldn't all be investing in pit traps like an extra from meta for-Indiana Jones, Eliot.

"I thought this was a quiet little town with no crime and tattle-tale-ing squirrels, anyway!"

Yeah, Hardison knew this was entirely on him. But if the reason the hard drive was gone was because Sterling now had beef with Eliot, he reserved the right to be pissed off.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Stop it," Parker said, voice fierce. "This isn't helping. Hardison, you'll fix it. It won't happen again. Eliot? Check your stuff too? And maybe check your contacts, to see if someone's looking to sell it. Just in case."

She let out a breath, and then said, "Yelling at each other won't help."

Sometimes being the Mastermind meant having to delegate or cast the tiebreaker vote. Sometimes it was putting the brakes on stuff that got distracting.

[vdistinctive]

"Fine," Eliot growled. He was a few good hand clenches from accidentally crushing his phone, anyway. "But we are not done talkin' about this."

Of course, the fact that he then immediately hung up and threw the phone into the wall might make continuing the conversation slightly more difficult.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Hardison had to remind himself that they were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment and that punching walls was more Eliot's thing anyway. So he just grit his teeth, mentally wrote out a nasty virus that we was going to upload to Stormfront, and asked, "So what do we do now?"

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Lock up. Lock down." Parker glared at the phone, then grimaced. "And I think, take the weekend to come up with a plan to find it and get it back."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"I'll start on a security system." He grimaced, not liking what he had to say next. "Eliot's right about one thing. This is all my fault. I got lazy, got sloppy, didn't even set up a basic camera feed. This is on me, babe, and I'm sorry."

Rare were the times when Hardison would admit he'd screwed up without even trying to talk around the face. But what else was there to say?

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"You thought it was different here. Safe." Parker grimaced. "So did I. I got used to things being different different, and didn't think how they could be the same."

Shame on her for not asking Hardison to do this. She hugged him and said, "We'll figure it out. It's what we do."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Yeah, yeah it is," he said, and hopefully Parker wouldn't mind if his hug was more like a cling. "Looks like we got a lot to figure out though."