7
" But she was barely listening. “There’s this newish thing from Amazon? Called an AMI—an Amazon Machine Image. Basically it runs a snapshot of an operating system. There are hundreds of them, loaded up and ready to run.” Evan said, “Um.” “Virtual machines,” she explained, with a not-insubstantial trace of irritation. “Okay.” “But the good thing with virtual machines? You hit a button and you have two of them. Or ten thousand. In data centers all over the world. Here—look—I’m replicating them now, requesting that they’re geographically dispersed with guaranteed availability.” He looked but could not keep up with the speed at which things were happening on the screen. Despite his well-above-average hacking skills, he felt like a beginning skier atop a black-diamond run. She was still talking. “We upload all the encrypted data from the laptop to the cloud first, right? Like you were explaining poorly and condescendingly to me back at the motel.” “In hindsight—” “And we spread the job out among all of them. Get Hashkiller whaling away, throwing all these password combinations at it. Then who cares if we get locked out after three wrong password attempts? We just go to the next virtual machine. And the one after that.” “How do you have the hardware to handle all that?” She finally paused, blowing a glossy curl out of her eyes. “That’s what I’m telling you, X. You don’t buy hardware anymore. You rent cycles in the cloud. And the second we’re done, we kill the virtual machines and there’s not a single trace of what we did.” She lifted her hands like a low-rent spiritual guru. “It’s all around and nowhere at the same time.” A sly grin. “Like you. "
― Gregg Andrew Hurwitz , Hellbent (Orphan X, #3)
9
" she stepped back into a fighting posture, hands raised, jaw set. The man in the middle reached inside his loose-fitting jacket. They swept forward. Ten yards away. Behind them a form swung down from the metal overhang and crouched on the landing to break his fall, one hand pressed to the concrete. Soundless. * * * Evan couldn’t fire his ARES. Not with Joey in the background. But that was okay. He was eager to use his hands. Joey spotted him through the gap between the advancing men. They read her eyes, the change in her stance. They turned. Three men. One pistol drawn, two on the way. Evan moved on the gun first. A jujitsu double-hand parry to a figure-four arm bar, the pleasing snap-snap of wrist and elbow breaking, and— —Jack sways in the Black Hawk, hands cuffed behind him, wind blasting his hair when— —the pistol skittered free across the tracks, the guy on his knees, his "
― Gregg Andrew Hurwitz , Hellbent (Orphan X, #3)
13
" the man vaulted over an embankment, rolled across a boat prow, and sprang up the side of a building, finding hand-and footholds on downspouts and window shutters. Even as he went vertical, his momentum barely slowed. That particular brand of obstacle-course discipline—parkouring—had come into popularity after Harville’s training, and he couldn’t help but watch with a touch of awe now. The man hauled himself through a third-story window, scaring a chinless woman smoking a cigarette back onto her heels. An instant later the man flew out of a neighboring window on Harville’s side of the waterway. Harville had lost precious seconds. He reversed, splashing through a puddle, and bolted. The narrow passages and alleys unfolded endlessly, a match for the thoughts racing in his head—Giovanna’s openmouthed laugh, their freestanding bathtub on the cracked marble floor, bedside candles mapping yellow light onto the walls of their humble apartment. Without a conscious thought, he was running away from home, leading his pursuer farther from everything he held dear. He sensed footfalls quickening behind him. Columns flickered past, lending the rain a strobe effect as he raced along the arcade bordering Piazza San Marco. The piazza was flooded, the angry Adriatic surging up the "
― Gregg Andrew Hurwitz , Hellbent (Orphan X, #3)
