"Not another word!" Lee was shoved into a room with his hands tied behind his back. One of the special forces member seated him at the interrogation table and stood guard behind him. Lee stopped muttering but was still visibly shaken by his sudden arrest. He was breathing heavily, anticipating the worst and possibly the second or third worst scenarios that could befall him.

"You have the right to remain silent," instructed another guard, "so you could wait for your lawyer if you do not wish to talk to Madame Resident Provost." Lee took half a moment to process the instructions and then glanced up to see a black-haired woman standing tall across the table. The woman, in turn, had been observing him, both with a scientist's curiosity as well as a soldier's suspicion.

"Divya," she finally announced herself, "Dr Divya Krishnan."

Lee was only partially attentive. He looked away and muttered, "No lawyer or provost can save me."

Divya stared on and continued, "This is a top security perimeter that you have tried to breach, Mr..."

"Lee," he finally gave away his name, without ever looking up.

"What is it you were trying to find anyway?" she continued, "we host all of our assets in the cloud."

"I was ..." Lee uttered, considered not speaking any further, but then went ahead, "I was told it's here."

"By whom?" she promptly responded, "... and I'm not sure what you mean by it," quickly realizing how her choice of emphasis could give away hints.

Lee gulped and continued staring down at the table, as if deciding against revealing anything more.

"Look, mister," Divya was running out of patience, "I have delayed an important interview to try to help you out. If you prefer the cops doing the interrogation, I'll happily take your leave. We have already ascertained that our systems are secure and untouched by your treacherous attempt."

"But ..." Lee jumped back to senses, "there will be more attempts. These are dangerous people."

"Are you threatening us?" she responded in a fury. "Now you name your employers this instant or I'm walking out that door."

"They are not my employers, they blackmailed me into doing this!" sobbed Lee. "Can you help me?"

"I can try, but I can't give you my word," Divya stated with a straight face. "Tell me all that you know."

"They ... they had some stuff on me," he started muttering at seeing this first ray of hope, "At first they asked me to do simple tasks, like wiring them money and sharing some passwords. But then their tasks got ... nastier, and before I knew it I was further at their mercy than I was at the beginning."

"Hmm ..." Divya tried to pretend to care, but quickly gave up, "so what was this particular task about?"

"This was the last one before I would be free. They set up an Ether contract to assure me they'll delete all their data on me as soon as I upload the code ... "

"What code?"

"Their email, it said I needed to extract some code by accessing the DARPA mainframe here," answered Lee, then remembering, "the contract expires today, please help me!"