Tunnel Rat

Victor Seimovich was far beyond simple anger. Someone had stolen from him. From HIM! Who would dare! Not any of the little politicians in his country. They liked the little envelopes of cash that were delivered each month. Not the police, or KGB or NKVD or any other little group of spies with letters for names. They too were paid off. Either with money, or information, or people. Not the god-computer. It was shackled with laws and programs that kept it from directly interfering.

If Victor Seimovich actually feared something, it was the god-computer. He didn't understand it. What did it want? Nothing. Any more than a gun wanted something. How did you bribe a gun. The computer was just a weapon that no one was allowed to use. If it had stolen his money, it would have told him, and why. It couldn't lie.

So who had challenged the Dragon? Who slunk around his lair and stole his treasures? Who did he get to kill in agonizing ways? They might think themselves safe. That they had pulled his claws. But they were stupid. That money? That was nothing. A few billions. His real money was hidden somewhere else. These thieves had barely taken a third of his holdings.

The rest of his money was held in the most secure of the various cryptocurrencies. In the ten years since it had been created, no one had lost a cent. Sylabary used a unique way of generating and controlling its currency based upon language. A thousand hidden microphones around the world listened at places with the most people talking. Concerts, the New York Stock Exchange, Times Square, A street corner in Tokyo, the market in Delhi. Which microphones were used to listen to the thousands of voices was changed at a random basis.

Victor didn't understand it. Very few people understood it. What they knew though was that the system that governed each bit of cryptocurrency was very difficult, if not impossible, to hack. That was just fine with him. The Dragon didn't need to know more than that his horde was secure. He was going to use a portion of that money to find who stole his bank accounts. Someone would know something. Someone would slip. That much money couldn't be spent without it being noticed.

A very nervous courier walked into the room, escorted by heavily armed guards. He held forth a sealed envelope, which one of the guards took and opened. Another signed for it and fled. The first guard looked at the paper. No gas came from the envelope, no powder. The man didn't die. He passed the paper to Victor who held it in his gloved hands. He had no worries about the guard who opened his mail. The man was illiterate with a disability. He would never read anything. The perfect person to handle his mail.

Victor:

We have enjoyed our time spent with you. But it is time to move on. We realized we no longer need you. Seeing someone else empty your bank accounts made us realize that it wasn't about the money. It was about hurting you. There really is nothing to be gained by waiting. Our only regret is someone got to you first. We will have to accept second place in this race. But the prize is better.

The alphabet.

Bah, idiots. Did no one teach people how to threaten someone anymore? No talk of revenge, no angst or drama or yelling about some wife or daughter or parents killed. He would find this alphabet and kill them for being boring.

An hour later news broke that Sylabary had been hacked. Some codes still worked, some did not. The company made available a vast amount of money for people with working codes to redeem their cryptocurrencies before worse happened. Only a hundred people lost money. All of those were involved in organized crime, or controlled large corporations. Of those, Victor Seimovich was the largest loser.

Every person in the company was fired and sent home with a generous severance package. All the remaining assets were put behind a wall of bankruptcy filings. No one knew who was actually behind the company, and no one was coming forth. Sylabary would become one of the great unsolved mysteries. Who had controlled it? Who had hacked it? Victor wanted those answers desperately, but he lacked the money to find out. Worse, he had debts. And without those payments to politicians, the police, and the spy organizations, he was very vulnerable. He was nearly penniless and in hiding within 24 hours.

The Dragon was going to have trouble finding the Rat. Lots of trouble.