Shadowy Future, Without Fear

This was stupid. No, this was beyond stupid. This was the most absolutely idiotic thing that only someone like Trent could come up with. And Lucas was even worse for going along with it. He really needed to learn how to say no but for some reason he never could. No matter how well he worked out his argument in his head or how much he told himself it was a bad idea he just couldn’t say no to Trent. One day that was going to get him in to a whole lot of trouble; not that it hadn’t before.

Lucas sat down at one of the tables in the food court letting his bag sit on the ground beside him while he took a drink from the coke he bought. He glanced at his watch and sighed. He had purposely gotten here late but it looks like it didn’t matter because Trent still wasn’t here yet. He just hoped he was actually coming this time.

As Lucas looked at the people around him (automatically taking things in about them due to Trent’s ‘games’) he thought that maybe he was being too hard on Trent. Of course since it was just in his thoughts he knew it didn’t really matter but he still felt guilty none-the-less. It didn’t help that class had once again sucked today.

Lucas absolutely hated school. It wasn’t that he didn’t like learning, that wasn’t it at all, the problem was he already knew everything being covered which meant he was bored out of his mind, all the time. Plus, the people there didn’t help in any way. He knew he could have easily skipped a few grades or worked on graduating early like Trent had but he Trent was the exact reason he didn’t. Trent wanted Lucas to go to college and while Lucas liked the idea of it he knew the reality wouldn’t happen. While he knew he could get scholarships due to his grades Lucas knew those only went so far and that college would still cost some money; money that neither he nor Trent had. He couldn’t mention that to Trent though since he would just point out that money wasn’t really a problem but Lucas didn’t want to steal money to pay for college. He knew that he probably worried too much but every time Trent did something new Lucas wondered if that would be the time he got caught; if that would be the slip-up that split them up.

Lucas figured that he should probably be used to this way of life by now, he had practically been raised in it, but it never seemed to get easier. He knew that the tiniest mistake could completely ruin things and that scared him more than anything. But he knew he was doing nothing by worrying especially when he did the same things Trent did. He had tried to talk to Trent though, he had, but it always ended in the same way. There was no way for the two of them to practically change their lifestyle. They would end up homeless and struggling to do anything. While Lucas wanted to not have to worry about things he knew that giving up what they did would be plain stupidity, and not the kind he was used to.

Which brought him back to his original thought, why he was at the mall in the first place. Lucas glanced down at his watch again trying to pull himself out of his bad mood before Trent arrived. Lucas wasn’t actually entirely sure why he was meeting Trent at the mall but he had learned a long time ago that anytime Trent said to meet him somewhere and to bring his computer… Well, it was usually a bad idea. And by usually he meant always.

One of the first things Trent learned about hacking (which was at a younger age than most) was that you had to cover your tracks. A loose end could make a whole operation go down before it even began. There was a reason he never connected his laptop to their internet connection at home, only using the desktop that he liked to customize in his free time. His laptop was registered under the name Max Smith with credit card information of the same. With his recent job he had wiped his laptop completely and made sure not to even go to any personal sites that had his real name. This job was a big one, one that was more delicate than any of his others.

It was one that had to wait, considering he was late to meet Lucas at the mall for one of their "games".

Trent had one sole purpose with these games he made sure to make Lucas play: To make sure Lucas could survive on his own. Lucas was already a lot smarter than he gave himself credit to be and he picked up reading people rather well despite his own natural shyness. Lucas could slip in and out of a character when the need suited him in order to get ahead, and while Trent hoped he never had to do so unless the situation was truly dire, it was good to know that Lucas could be a smooth talker when needed to. For instance, when Trent got in over his head (which he admittedly does more than an average person). He liked knowing that if Trent ever were to get caught, Lucas would be able to fend for himself.

If not, well, Lucas at least knew how to get a house and pay for it without having real money because of their last game. Trent showed him how to pay the rent of their own house by using the money the landlords' had from other people's security deposits. If you voided your security deposit, they would be none the wiser, if you covered your tracks.

(He decided not to mention that his paycheck from his job went towards the car after someone broke in while Lucas was at school.)

Walking confidently into the mall's food court, he scanned the tables quickly (business man on break, low-risk police officer, tourist, all with probably easy passwords to decipher) before spotting his cousin. As usual, the teenager had picked a spot in the crowd, in the place where no one's eyes went to. Unnoticed, non-important highschooler who looked vaguely bored. Well, if Trent had anything to do with it, Lucas's day was going to get a whole lot more interesting.

He sauntered smoothly over and laid his laptop bag on the table in front of Lucas, "Hey Lucas! Fancy meeting you here!" It was a common greeting now for Trent after a certain rambunctious British boy had decided he was going to "accidentally" bump into Lucas anywhere he went.

From the look of Lucas's glared, he did not appreciate Trent's amusement of the event. "You're half and hour late."

Trent sat down and waved his hand dismissively, "Oh, I'm sure you were late, too. I heard school got out late today, and you probably dithered because you're all doubtful of my plans." He sighed heavily and looked at Lucas with mock sad eyes, "As usual. You wound me, Lucas, you do."

"I wouldn't be so doubtful if they didn't always end horribly," Lucas grumbled, but got out his laptop. "What's the game's objective today?"

"You, my dear cousin," Trent smiled wickedly, leaning forward in his seat, "Are going to hack into that cash kiosk over there and get money from it without disabling the firewalls and being suspicious on the mall cameras."

Lucas raised his eyebrows, "Are you kidding me? There's someone using it right now!" Trent glanced over to see a businessman idly scrolling the internet on it. His smile grew.

"Cash kiosks are owned by rich men as it is, Lucas. The kiosk is probably on the same network as the mall's Wi-Fi-"

"-Which makes them easier for them to track me down if I ping its firewall," Lucas interrupted, and Trent felt a little pride. Lucas still looked doubtful of his skills, which Trent knows are just enough for this kind of operation.

"You're the one who wanted a challenge," Trent shrugged, smiling at Lucas's disbelieving face. "Now, now, don't think you'll be going at it alone. I'll be creating a diversion with my own laptop, and I'll be here to assist you like I always am." He pulled his laptop out and started to boot it up.

Lucas's expression flashed relief before going back to his default expression around Trent: wary. "What kind of diversion will you be making?"

Trent smiled and didn't look up from his laptop as he logged in, "Oh, I'm sure you'll figure it out soon."

Lucas kept looking at him, "You're not moving to another table."

Trent glanced up, a gleeful expression too hard to keep off his face, "No, I'm not." That meant he wasn't going to ping the internet security and have them come away from the monitoring to take Trent away, like usual. No, what he had in mind was something a bit more special.

Without further ado, Trent started to hack into everyone's smartphones that were hooked into the Wi-Fi.

Lucas forced himself to look down at his own laptop knowing that staring at Trent would get him nowhere. Once Trent made up his mind it was impossible to change it. Lucas had used to try to argue his way out of these games, especially ones that he wasn't sure he could do, but it hadn't taken him long to learn that Trent didn't budge.

Lucas sighed starting in on the sequence that would hack in to the network. He made sure to keep his screen open on a normal internet page so that nothing could be seen on the cameras. He actually knew that no cameras were in a position to see his laptop screen, one of the reasons he had chosen this seat, but he knew Trent would instantly call him on it if he had something so obvious up on his computer. After all anyone could walk by and wonder what he was doing.

Lucas let himself forget that he probably should be worried about whatever Trent was doing as he worked on the code. Since he couldn't see it he had to concentrate even harder to make sure he didn't screw up. He didn't have nearly as good of a memory as Trent did when it came to things like this so it had taken him quite a while to doing it but it was becoming pretty easy to do now-a-days.

"Better be about done over there, Lucas." He heard Trent say from across the table. He started typing quicker (though he wasn't even close to matching Trent's speed across from him) knowing that that was Trent's way of telling him that his diversion was about to be set in motion.

Lucas' hands froze when a loud moan was heard near him and he looked up at the same time many others near him did. The food court might have been loud but the mans phone had been on top volume so everyone near him heard it. Lucas frowned but before he could start wondering Trent was speaking again.

"You're letting yourself get distracted. I hope you remember what the last thing you typed was."

Lucas flushed instantly going back to what he was doing (with only a few seconds hesitation to remember where he had left off, something he was quite proud of). The scolding (though Trent's voice wouldn't have sounded like a scolding tone to anyone else Lucas knew it for what it was) caused Lucas to take a few moments to catch up on what it actually meant.

When he realized the implications he quickly looked back up at Trent, shocked. "You can't do that! This is a family place! Trent!" Lucas scowled as Trent simply ignored him, though he was smirking at his computer. Seriously, sometimes Trent just didn't get boundaries and Lucas couldn't believe he was doing this.

Lucas huffed in annoyance though he went back to work, realizing that the quicker he got this done the quicker they could get out of here, and Lucas was pretty sure in the next few moments he would want to leave if Trent was actually doing what he thought the other was.

When the same noise as before started up around the room Lucas tried to force the blush off his face though he was having a hard time blocking everything out. Really, this was not right in any sense! There were children all over!

Lucas could hear security coming out to see why their system was going crazy and he took his chance. He didn't fully understand why Trent was being so obvious since really, this would just make the people in charge realize something was going on though he guessed Trent figured they would be long gone by then, which they most likely would be.

Lucas was a little surprised with how easy the firewall was to bypass but he didn't dwell on it; the security in this place probably just wasn't as good as others. He realized that it probably could have been due to him getting better at doing this but it didn't really matter the reason as long as he was in.

After Lucas was past the firewall it took no time at all to hack in though it took him a moment to figure out how to make sure nothing displayed on the main screen on the kiosk since there was someone at it. Once he managed to do that it was just a matter of routing a payment to one of their accounts (through someone else's for extra security) and then wiping the IP addresses as he backtracked to make sure he didn't leave any traces behind. Lucas took an extra moment to pull numbers from the system knowing that Trent would get a kick out of that.

Once Lucas was completely out of the system he looked back up at Trent. "Okay. Check me." Lucas always liked Trent to run through the system to make sure he hadn't left anything behind that could get them in to trouble. He hadn't made the mistake in a long time but he didn't want to mess things up and besides Trent could do it in a matter of seconds so it wasn't like it was a hard thing to do.

Once Trent nodded at him Lucas allowed himself to relax and actually smile. He knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't help but feel excited every time he actually managed to pull one of these games off. He knew he was getting better though he was still no where as good as Trent. And even though Lucas complained about what they did since he knew it was dangerous he couldn't help but get a thrill from it, something that he would never admit to Trent.

Lucas packed up as Trent following a few moments behind him and they headed out from the mall. Due to Trent's choice of distraction it wasn't an odd thing to do since a lot of people were leaving, angry about what had happened.

They weren't even outside for two seconds before Trent was shouting something about wanting Chinese food. "I thought since I finished without trouble I got to pick?" Lucas knew he shouldn't have said anything when Trent instantly turned a pleading look towards him. Seriously, couldn't Trent act his age? Though Lucas knew he only did it since Trent knew that Lucas couldn't say no. "Fine. Whatever." He mumbled looking away from his cousin.

Once they were in the restaurant and seated Lucas decided he would start the conversation before Trent could. Usually Trent would go over whatever Lucas had done and give him pointers or tell him things he had done wrong but Lucas decided he wanted to show off a little (though showing of to Trent was pointless in a way since he could do all of it no trouble).

"I managed to pull numbers. Which means you are paying." It was a running theme that if Lucas screwed up he had to pay but if he did something successfully that Trent had dared/taunted him to do then Trent would pay. Lucas had been a little worried about not covering his traces completely which was the main reason he had never taken card numbers before but Trent had checked his tracks and said they were fine so that meant he hadn't screwed up. And that was something that he couldn't help but get excited about, and he couldn't keep it off of his face this time either.

Trent raised his eyebrows, impressed and pleasantly surprised, "Not to mention you did it much faster than the last game. I had two other phones set to destruct." Adult entertainment sites were the easiest for the firewall to ping, the monitoring systems cracking down on the phones for being in a public place along with the trojanhorses that the sites provided. Playing them loudly was more for distracting Lucas than anything. It was so easy to scandalize Lucas sometimes.

Lucas, despite trying to look perturbed, had that air of excitement that always came after a job well done. Trent loved celebration dinners for this very reason. Aunt Amy, back before everything went to hell in a handbasket, used to take them to dinners like this after some amazing feat, and the thrill of adrenaline always seemed to fill the room and make everything brighter and the food taste better.

He tapped his chopsticks against the table as he waited for their food to come, grinning, "So, how was school today, besides sucking for letting out late?"

Lucas shrugged, perfecting that annoyed/amused look he seemed to have around Trent, "It was boring as usual. I've already learned everything they're teaching me right now, and the other seniors are dragging the classes along and making everything slower."

"Yeah," Trent nodded, saying lightly, "College will be better about that, at least."

Lucas furrowed his eyebrows, "Trent, just, no. We've had this discussion a million times."

Trent stared at him hard for a little bit. The problem always stemmed down to money, and the morality of stealing money to have an education. Trent had no problem with doing this, but Lucas didn't want to get an education with false money. Like they weren't living off false money. However, as the rules dictated, Lucas had beat the game and pretty much had rule over what went and what didn't for the night even if Trent got to pick the restaurant.

"Yeah, well, don't think I won't be coming back to that," Trent said just as the food came. He always tried something different in this restaurant and hadn't gotten a bad dish yet, while Lucas seemed to always stick with the same noodle dish. "I got to listen to another one of my co-workers rave about how good he was at hacking computers."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah, he kept going on and on about it, and I asked him what operating system he got into, and he said some bogus Linux-based operating system," Trent shook his head, spearing a piece of broccoli with his chop stick and chewing on it. He worked as one of the computer repair guys at the big computer surplus stores at the edge of town where the tourists usually flocked in from. This meant he got a lot of easy computer fixes from scared tourists eager to get it fixed and go off to do whatever they did in this town.

Lucas chuckled, "Was it the one that you could load through a CD alone?" He used his chopsticks like a normal person. Trent was secretly jealous.

Trent nodded, "Yeah, and he tried to tell me it was harder to hack those. It made me want to mess with his computer horribly bad. Not to mention he totally screwed up on this person's computer and couldn't fix it, meaning I had to go and clean up his mess. I give him about a week before he'll quit with me as his co-worker."

"Are you kidding?" Lucas laughed, "I give him a couple of days."

They calmly ate for the next couple of minutes, Lucas exasperatedly telling him to use silverware if he wasn't going to use the chopsticks right while Trent lamented about the freedoms to eat however he wished. They would talk about increasingly random things like the chemistry teacher Lucas had who had been there forever and the latest gossip over their neighbor's soap opera lives. Their laughter would get louder until the other customers would look at them and Lucas would get embarrassed and glare at Trent. Trent would just look everywhere but at him before spearing another vegetable with the chopsticks.

Yeah, Trent loved these dinners.

Celebration dinners were always paid in cash, Trent paying for real and not just in name. Lucas looked smug enough about the ordeal that Trent stole his fortune cookie.

"You don't even like the cookie!" Lucas argued as they walked out of the restaurant, and Trent just chomped on it happily. He gave the fortune cookie he still had in his hand over anyways, feeling rather generous today. He needed to fix that soon.

He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, "I feel the need to watch a movie without paying for it."

Lucas scoffed, "You always feel the need to do illegal, stupid things."

Trent laughed, and bounced a little, "We should sneak into a movie! When's the last time we've done that, hm?"

"Not long enough ago." Lucas replied instantly. He would never say it out loud (Trent's ego was big enough as it was) but he always enjoyed there easy banter. It felt comfortable to act like this around Trent even if he couldn't do it around anyone else.

Even with Lucas complaining the whole way there they still ended up at the closest theatre and once they were inside and sitting down he realized something was wrong when Trent was being quiet.

"What's up?" He asked quietly to not disturb others around them. "I remember why we haven't done this. It's too easy." Lucas couldn't help but role his eyes at Trent's reply. He should have guessed it would be something random like that since there was no reason for him to be acting off.

"For having such a good memory you forget things way too easily. You said the same thing last time which is why we ended up getting caught and kicked out when you dumped your soda on the guy in front of us." Lucas still had more of his rant set up but he stopped when he realized that Trent was smirking.

"That's not something to be proud about!" He hissed at the other before shaking his head and letting himself sink into his seat. Sometimes it was just better to give up when arguing with Trent; you had to know when to take your loss and give in.

-----

It was a few days later and Lucas was sitting under a tree outside of the cafeteria at school. It was a nice day so most people were eating outside and he was no exception. Lucas preferred to be outside even on bad days; it was too stifling being inside with people he didn't get along with.

He had been ready for this day to be over with before it even started. It was getting harder and harder to want to come to school at all. It just seemed so pointless when he wasn't learning anything at all but he didn't see a way around it. He really didn't want to get into a fight with Trent and he knew they would end up in one if he brought it up.

Speaking of Trent... Lucas blinked not quite sure if he had seen that right. As he broke off from the group he was chatting excitedly with and started coming towards Lucas he sighed. Seriously, Trent got way to much excitement out of sneaking in to places, no matter how easy or hard they were. He had come to see him in school before but he hadn't done it in a while and Lucas wondered why he was here now, though truthfully it was probably just because Trent got bored on his day off.

It took a few more minutes for Trent to make it too him since he was starting conversations with random people. Lucas wasn't going to get up and go to him though so he just waited and kept reading his book.

He looked up when he saw Trent's shadow standing over him. "Lucas, fancy meeting you here."

Lucas shook his head but he couldn't help the small smile on his face as he moved over so Trent would have room to sit down if he wanted to. "Don't you ever get tired of that phrase?" He asked marking his page in his book and putting it down. "What are you doing here? Because no matter how young you think you look you do stick out."