Extracurricular Activities

*Brrrrm-Brrrm-Brrrrrm*

James's alarm was causing his phone to vibrate. His curtains were open revealing a sunny sky signaling a new day. His arms were outstretched allowing him to release any tension from sleeping.

*Yawwwnnnn*

James finished yawning and pressed stop on his alarm. Even though he was messy, he was an early riser. His phone read 7:00AM. He woke up and went into the small kitchenette in the hallway, he opened the minifridge to see a filled up plastic water-bottle and a bunch of junk food. He grabbed the water-bottle and took a swig. He then went into the bathroom, found his toothbrush, and did his morning hygiene routine.

After he was done preparing himself. He felt his pocket vibrating. He took out his phone and it read:

[Loser is calling...]

He quickly accepted it.

"Yo, James, I'm waiting outside let's go hit the gym," said Alex through the phone.

"Alright, I'm coming, let me get dressed," said James.

"Turn on your camera buddy," Alex replied to that statement.

James turned on his camera to reveal his middle finger standing alone above the rest of his fingers and then hung up.

James put on some shorts, and a hoodie, he was going to work out after all, so he didn't need to look beautiful.

James walked through the door closing it quietly to not wake up the sleeping dragon named Brent. He went down 23 flights of stairs, effectively doing his cardio warmup for the day. He walked through the front door to see Alex, as goofy as ever, wearing a Subreme hoodie and some expensive looking shorts. Alex came from a high middle class family, being born to a father who was a surgeon and a mother who was a school teacher. Despite this, Alex never felt uncomfortable in the slums of Brigade City. While most kids would avoid this area and James, Alex never understood their problem.

Alex greeted James with a dap up and then they proceeded to hop into Alex's car and drive over to Bronze's Body Building Gym. On the drive over James watched lights and buildings fly by. He got aux from Alex and played obnoxiously loud music through the expensive stereo causing the car to shake from the heavy bass.

Once they arrived at the gym, James remembered that he had forgot an extra pair of clothes, but even worse he forgot his earbuds. He wasn't going to force Alex to waste gas just to go back, so he just sucked it up. They entered into the Bronze Gym and were greeted by the check in clerk, who was a pretty fit man, his nametag read Jerry, he was about 5'8, but looked like he was The Incredible Bulk from The Revengers movies. They took out a QR code from an app on their phones and scanned into the gym signing in.

They didn't need to change as they already were. So, Alex just put his bag into a locker and they went towards the weightlifting area. Alex noticed James's lack of earbuds and gave him one of his.

They had a satisfying workout that lasted about 2 hours. After going out to eat something, James arrived home at 10:00AM. He had a good bit of time left for the day. His dad, as expected, was still blacked out from his drunken stupor.

James went back to his laptop and opened it up. He then proceeded to press the power button. Once the laptop had booted up, it showed in the corner that there was one notification from the bug bounty website. It was a message from the Boogle team, it told him the domain to crack was fr3sadwe21.co, a random domain presumably made just for the bug testing.

Once he opened the domain, he saw that it automatically tried to fish for his IP and computer data, just as the last one had done. Obviously, he was using a virtual machine, basically a fake computer set up inside of a computer, so all of that information wasn't his actual information.

He quickly got to work analyzing code, and using tools to try to find some vulnerabilities.

************

After hours of analyzing code, James had a good sense of what he was working with. It was a much less encrypted version of the code James was already breaking. Despite the cash reward, James didn't want to give any major bugs that could possibly make his other task harder, so he gave them a report that detailed minor bugs, he was hoping to get around 5,000$ for it in total, even that was generous. Small bugs like this would get him usually recognition as a contributor and a couple hundred dollars.

Not thinking much of it, James submitted his review on the security behind the Boogle's bug bounty domain and the flaws and strengths of that security.

James quickly got ready for bed, but felt off about something. He quickly checked up on his dad, but his dad wasn't his usual skin tone. He was very cold to the touch and seemed to look pale.

Tears started to well in James's eyes as he frantically reached for his phone and dialed 911.

The operator answered,"911 What is your location and emergency?"

"I'm at the Southside Apartment Complex, Floor 23, Room 17. I don't thin(crack)k my father is breathing, pleas(crack)e help me," James said, his voice cracking from sobbing.

His mind was racing. 'I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming, I have to be dreaming.' The tears turned into rivers, the ambulance could be heard in the distance.

I can't lose you too, I can't...

James screamed out of pain, but not the physical sort. He started smashing everything around him. The minifridge was lying on the ground, its contents spilled and the fridge itself dented. One of the drawer doors leading to cups and plates was now situated in its new home on the floor.

Broken glass and porcelain littered the floor.

Rage was turning James's vision red.

"O...the...do"

"Open..."

"Open the..."

"OPEN THE DOOR!"

The screams of the paramedics finally took James out of his fit of rage. He opened the door quickly. The paramedics were taken aback by what they saw inside. Nevertheless, that was only for a millisecond as they were now performing their job as paramedics on Brent.

Brent was taken out in a stretcher and was breathing but barely. He was determined to not have a great chance of living, as well as, he was suffering from cirrhosis, and the medics deemed that he most likely was suffering from his liver being unable to filter the toxins contained in alcohol.

This can result in brain damage, so it was looking bad even if his father survived.

James was left in shambles, sad, angry, hopeful, doubtful, a flood of emotions flooded over him to the point where tiredness overcame him and he passed out onto the floor.