Calamari

This is what I call a quasi-excerpt. I’m currently working on a novel and this is potentially a scene that will be in the book. It’s only a quasi excerpt because I’m writing it now. I hope you enjoy!

For context, the “newly” introduced character is one that Daniella converses with online earlier in the book. This is a close hacker friend of hers. They have never met in person.

Daniella tries to find her way to the end of the aisle, feeling her way along the shelves with her hands when a jar of peanut butter smashes against the floor, startling her. Suddenly a stranger’s hand grabs the nape of her shirt and pulls her back. Another hand covers her mouth hard and a man whispers in her ear.

“Don’t worry, it’s me, squidtrip. I have something to give you,” he slowly releases his hand from her mouth as he feels her relaxing, “it’s a piece of information that I had to get around your neck of the woods and I figured I’d make a surprise appearance.”

“That’s one hell of an entrance you’re making here,” Daniella whispers, “why the fuck did you think this was okay? You scared the shit out of me.”

“The less network exposure this information gets, the better. I hear they’ve been closing in on some punk around here who’s been getting into random people’s bank accounts and I worry that they’re talking about you.”

“squid, why don’t you have any fucking faith in me?”

“Hey, I didn’t say I think it’s you, I just want you to take care of yourself, I know things haven’t been so smooth for you lately.”

“Yeah, thanks. How did you even find me?”

“That’s a mystery to unfold at another point in time. I just know a guy who said he could track anyone, and I tested his moxy.”

“Can you just get out of here before we’re seen together? Also, I want to have plausible deniability on my side once you get arrested for cutting the power to the supermarket.”

“Oh, I made sure it would be a sticky situation just to get to the breakers,” a silence falls between the two. “I mean I put a lot of honey and syrup everywhere, that’s why it’s ‘sticky’, get it?”

Daniella lets out an audible sigh, “what is this anyway?”

“It’s the key to the locked door you’ve been facing for the past week,” a flashlight bounces around the aisle and disappears. squidtrip resumes his explanation, “shit, that was close, just some nobody. So remember how you were looking for an exploit in the ID system? Well I happened to scrape some information but we needed a valid API key to be able to even use the exploit. This is the exploit and the API key.”

“Uhh, I’ll need more information than that but you can explain it online, just get out of here before we both get arrested.”

Silence again, “squid?” Nothing.

I know these are a little bit teasing as they’re pretty short, but I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading regardless.