The phone line crackled as they cut the line on her with frantic, desperate confusion. It didn’t matter; her job was done. Evelyn simply leaned back in her chair and took a slow, deliberate sip of her tea. It was still perfectly warm.
She looked at the clock. “You have six minutes before your local authorities arrive at your door, my friends,” she said pleasantly, to no one in particular. Her morning had been very productive indeed.
She minimized the command prompt, closed her browser, and opened a digital novel. Her mind drifted back to the decades she spent building the very encryption protocols these amateurs were now so clumsily trying to bypass—a lifetime of work as a lead architect for the National Security Agency’s cybersecurity division. She smiled contentedly.