The novelty of hooking up with Leah had been fun for about two months. He had enjoyed the identity he had created for her benefit: Aidan Boyne, telecommunications consultant. He had enjoyed populating his Facebook and Instagram feeds with childhood photos of him posing with Muffin, the family cat. He threw in inspirational quotes about truth and justice for good measure. Of course, his identity was only skin deep on the Internet. But he knew that Leah played by an old-fashioned code: trust. She wouldn’t dig deeper if she had no reason to.

So he made sure she had no reason to.

The biggest hurdle for him was money. Leah made a very good income. He needed to be able to convince her of his own career success. But his income sucked. His parents had cut him off after they discovered a stash of stolen video games in his closet. It forced him to shut down a nice side business on eBay because his father threatened to call his parole officer.

He had just been hired to sell cellphones at a kiosk in the mall, but it barely covered his necessities. He was hurting for cash.

So he told Tr0lz that he wouldn’t date Leah any more. He couldn’t afford the lifestyle he needed to project, and her earnest, do-good nature got on his nerves. He knew she was too idealistic to get involved with the Dark Web. But Tr0lz offered to pay him to keep dating her. He laughed at the offer. Then the first electronic transfer arrived. It was $1000. With more promised for every week that he kept up the identity of romantic hacktivist Aiden Boyne for a little longer.

With his new source of income, Aiden had begun the search for a better apartment when Leah told him she had found out something really ‘disturbing’ about one of KryptoCyber’s clients. And that she didn’t know what to do—because the client was the department of the Honorable Harry Owen.

He knew that he alone could not pressure her to do anything about it, so Aiden had convinced Leah to share her discovery on the Forum.

The hacktivists jumped on it.

Doxx the effer like Dark Seoul did to Sony!

Yeah, doxx Harry Owen!

Doxx him!

The effers lied to us!

We could change the whole election!

It went on and on, everyone egging each other until Leah realized that she had opened Pandora’s box. Even if she decided not to act on her discovery, someone else would expose the secret.

She was panicked. “The government will trace this back to me, Aiden! I’m going to be charged with treason! My family will be ostracized. Oh, God!”

He had gripped her shoulders. Had held her gaze. In his most reassuring voice, he had said, “Listen. I have a plan. We can doxx Harry Owen and no one will ever know that it was you who did it.”