there are few people in dedsecâ few people in hacking, reallyâ whose names carry the weight that clara lilleâs does. he supposes james is another one of those people, so he was never really surprised to learn that the colonel and the badboy were long time friends. something about it just⌠fit.
she has those same unattainable standards as james. she has that same clarity, that same vision; the ability to dissect a situation and extract what she needs and how to get it. clara lille is terrifying. but amr has never been one to put off something because heâs intimidatedâ dedsec has been trial by fire since day one. heâs be disappointed if clara was anything but.
      his eyes travel from the source of the tapping, up her arm, until his neck is craned long and he can meet her gaze. âyou know, weâve dealt with a lot of crazy obfuscation before. but this? this is some shit,â he pulls his fingers from backlit keys to swing an arm over the back of his chair. âwe didnât come up with anything this sophisticated when we wrote CICADAâ and CICADA was evil.â
    One of several skills badboy17 had honed to a deadly point was her POKER FACE. Years of newfound anxiety, at times crippling PARANOIA, and an all too frequent pain within her shoulder hid beneath layers of well trained stoicism. Stoicism that James would see right through. If there was one thing about this moment that was laughable, it was how much of a power couple-not couple they were.
    "I know,â Thereâs a level of professionalism within her tone that letâs him know theyâre in for a long night ( rest assured, she brought the coffee and [hid] the energy drinks [from James] ). Pulling up a chair, maintaining a comfortable, but workable, d i s t a n c e ââ âIâm still impressed with CICADA and certainly glad Iâm not the one at the RECEIVING END of it. But, I also want you to know what you all - â there it was again, the distancing, â- can be put up against.â
    Clara, like James, having more than once exercised her protective nature over the NYC branch; cherishing them for being DedSec and all that they had done for her, but what was more? That it was Jamesâ creation, his legacy, something he not only wanted, but needed, to protect; sheâd have given her life for him, she still would, shaking and in tears be damned.
    âI donât know how much you know about the events over in Chicago, but this is at least a portion of code used by Lucky Quinn and his crew.â Swallowing hard, the briefest crack in a well played facade, soon replaced by that same cold professionalism. âAnd weâre going to crack it. Find every trapdoor. Every vulnerability. Until we could write it all in our sleep.â