Prompt: “Yes, I'm aware. Your point?” 

(pairing: jae (day6)/youngk (day6). Genre: au, sci-fi. Rating: pg. Words: 662) 

It’s a tuesday, the second tuesday of the month, there’s frost in the air and snow on the ground, and all of Brian’s monitors are going off, all at once. A security breach, exactly the thing he’s supposed to make sure doesn’t happen, but he swears that everything’s fine when he left his desk the night before. It’s nothing much, just a small auto-generated message from an anonymous source: “Easy peasy”.Nothing more, nothing less. There doesn’t appear any other messages throughout the day (he knows, he checks), and against his better judgement he decides to not bother his superiors. It's probably just a bad joke anyways – the guys from programming have a terrible sense of practical humor.  

The next day, there’s a new message. Again just a very short one. “Lemon squeezy”. Brian furrows his brows, hands hovering over the keyboard, until he ultimately decides to ignore it. He’s not falling for it, he’s not.  

Another ping. “I know you read my messages, Brian. It’s very rude to not reply”. Brian doesn’t like the sound of that. He’s alone in the room, there are no cameras installed (because believe it or not, “cameras in the central station could be compromised” is a valid excuse), nobody other than his superiors know he’s even in there – so how can this person? 

it, he thinks, and starts to type back. “Who are you?” The reply pops up almost simultaneously with him hitting the ‘send’ button. “Nobody”.  

“How did you get in here?” 

“Not important”. And yeah, sure, it wouldn’t exactly be in character for a hacker to play with open cards and admit to committing a felony, but still – he'd like some answers. Especially since it’s his head on the block if it ever comes out. “This is government project. It’s supposed to be a secret,” he types. He can hear how stupid it sounds even before he’s done typing, but he’s curious. Not because he’s going to rat the person out, but because... He genuinely wants to know.  

“Your point being?” 

“You shouldn’t be able to do this” Also not a very clever thing to say, he’ll admit. But he’s never actually spoken to a hacker before. He doesn’t know standard hacker etiquette.  

“Nobody knows, do they, Brian? You haven’t told anyone”.  

This goes on for a few weeks, Brian thinks. He forgets the exact terminology, but it nevertheless keeps happening. Brian works as though nothing’s wrong, he clocks in and out on time, and every day, almost on queue, there’s a new message for him. He doesn’t know who he’s chatting with, but he senses it’s the same person, because it (they?) remember everything he’s ever told it (them?), and seems to recognize him. It’s become routine, and nobody’s asking questions they shouldn’t, so so far, he’s in the clear.  

One day, there’s a new message when he clocks in. “Do you want to see what this is all for?” it says, and somehow Brian knows. He knows what they mean. “Yes?”  

“Can you promise not to tell anyone?”  

“Of course.” 

“Good. Instructions will follow.”  

And they do. It’s small sentences, first sent to his computer, and then, after he’s off for the day, to his phone. Go here, take this train, get off at this stop, don’t look to your left, go down these stairs. And finally, after what feels like an eternity running around in circles, he ends up in front of a small apartment complex, cramped in next to a ramen restaurant and an adult version of a Blockbuster. There’s no name on the door, no house number either, but he’s been instructed to knock, and so he does. When the door opens, he’s standing face to face with a tall blonde young man, with glasses that take up half the space of his face. He smiles knowingly. “Brian,” he says, like he’s been waiting for him for ages. “How nice of you to join Nobody. Come on in.”