There used to be fear when I got on TOR. My skin was thick enough to dive in. I made enough money to pay for Mom’s therapy.

But there was always fear at every click. Would the FBI bust down my door? Would I be in a courtroom? Would Mom get stuck paying for my crap mistakes?

I don’t live with that fear anymore.

I’m no longer afraid of the dark. When I get on the Dark Web… it’s just that. Dark.

My brain felt trampled and worn, like a weathered strip of road tar. Sweat glazed down my doughy torso. My life changed a lot. I no longer saw Ghada. She had gone away somewhere. She’d become a ghost to me. It’s funny. When I first got here, I thought all the women looked like ghosts. Then I got to the lazuli beauty underneath. That fun smile. The fact that I always felt welcome even though I really didn’t earn Ghada. This girl who was pushed into me—I think I honestly fell in love with her.

When I was done in the computer cave, I was taken outside. It was usually dusk or dawn. It didn’t really matter which. They would throw me into my room. It was empty. There wasn’t any sign of Ghada in there anymore. No cleaning. No hugs. No weird shaky dancing. No weird smell from her food. Just a silent room. My chest honestly hurt from her being gone.

I didn’t really know if I was going to get out of this place. I would wake up and remind myself where I was. When I did, I always asked the same question. When could I see the computer again? I would just count the seconds until I would carve the Onion of Tor again.

Damn would I count. I counted one day to 40,000. You get a little messed in the head once you reach 10,000. You realize you have to start from scratch at 10,001. That’s the hard part.

Eventually, my door would reopen. I would be escorted to the computer cave. Always the same sight—Samir, waiting for me to sit down.

The king needed his routine planned. I was given VERY specific instructions. Only a few weeks out, we had to be perfect. We had to know every part of the plan. There were no mistakes. It might have been cool, if I wasn’t blowing up the Browns. I had the hard part: flying the plane.

I never did anything like this before. Hacking a Tesla from a car lot isn’t the same as hijacking an Air Force bomber. Sneaking in through that back door wasn’t easy. I jumped around the Dark Web, creating fake Air Force accounts. Once I was inside the Air Force, I wrote a code to switch accounts. I hardly had to think. Before the military could sense a breach, my user account would change. I could rotate from lieutenant, to captain, to technical sergeant, to A1C, to general, to pilot, to anything I wanted. Heftyspace was rock solid. It could cross platforms easily. It could also get me deep into the Air Force.

But that was only the first step. All that got me was times, dates, locations, crewmembers, and payload. Who would fly bombs over thousands of screaming fans? Even if you thought they couldn’t be hacked? I mean, technically it saved my life… Well either that or Tesla.

That was the next piece of the puzzle. The Tesla interface. I spent most of my days working on the Tesla part. I of course had the old hacking tech. The same kind I used when I was with Johnny. The B-2 interface wasn’t too different. It was just infinitely more buttons. Who guessed it would be so much harder to pilot a stealth bomber?

I had to convince the king of several things. One of them was playing video games. He came in one time and saw me with a PS4 controller in my hand. He walks over and slaps it out of my hand.

“What the crap dude?”

“La la game! You work.”

“Wallah. I. Am.” I said, slowly picking up the controller. Samir started to say something in Arabic. I pointed at the screen. It was a B-2 Flight simulator. “Flight. Simulator. Chelb.” The king didn’t like the last part. He knocked the taste out of my mouth.

I realized really quickly I didn’t need to actually fly the thing. I just needed to use the bombs. That wasn’t too hard. It would be all timing. I just had to know when the bombs would fly…

And just how would they go off perfectly?

I’d have the pilot’s do it.

On the Tesla screen, it was all buttons. Like on your phone. You press a button, and it does something. [send txt] [like photo] [delete ex-gf]…if I had one. So, this might be evil, but I didn’t want to press the button. I didn’t want my finger on the trigger. So I would give it to the pilots. Let them do it.

I designed some genius Heftyware. It was a screen that would come up. All I would do is place it on their monitor. When the screen came up, there were 2 options:

A & B.

A: [Fire]

B: [Cancel]

Why was it genius? Because the A option actually performed [DON’T Drop Bomb] and the B option would perform [Drop Bombs].

The pilot would of course hit B. He isn’t stupid. He wants to [Cancel]. He just doesn’t know that B actually means [blow up the friggin’ Browns].

I even added another screen. A second Heftyware wall. This one would say: Are you sure? A&B. You get the point.

Before this guy knows it, bombs are dropping, and, well, Mom is saved.

And I could at least live (or die) knowing I saved her.

I only had the King’s word, and that wasn’t much.

But it wasn’t just this Tesla business. I was also planning something crazy, ’cause I still had my Heftyvision. It was working well. Samir didn’t have a clue when minute 23 came up. I got my 60 seconds of privacy, and then my 23 minutes of terror.

But for 60 seconds, I was a hot potato. A live grenade. I could do what I wanted. It was a weird thing, cause I knew how crazy the President had to be. The guy literally put every warplane armed to the teeth in America. He was done playing games. I knew the SECOND they got a whiff of this Tesla stuff, game over. We’d be bombed to a whole new existence. There wouldn’t be much Hefty left to sweat around this stinky desert. I would be fried into atoms.

And I knew, deep in my heart, I was getting out of here. Going home.

So I didn’t send anything. I needed to protect myself. Once Cleveland was on fire, I would be useless to the king. He already suspected me. I had to hide this Bitcoin. I don’t know if the king was stupid, or just didn’t get the internet. Either way, I was still the only one who knew the codes. At least, that’s what I assumed. When I checked every 23 minutes, I had all the access. If I could send the Bitcoin somewhere outside the Caliphate, I might have a chance.

I had to make sure that those were gone. If the king killed me, he lost all his money.

The next thing I had to do was set up locations. Locations for drone strikes. I needed to pin where everything was. I needed to pin the mining operation, the king’s palace, the Jankio Shack, the solar energy farms. Everything that the king could use. This one was hard for me to do. Not because I wanted ISIS to win. It was because of the people inside ISIS. We were actually helping these people. We were creating something for them. I hooked up people to the real internet. People like Ghada, and Zeyad, and their families. They needed all this stuff. Was I really going to put this on the list? Was I going to give that list over to the president, and say, “Hey, BOMB all these places and send them back to the Stone Age.”

Why couldn’t I just have a normal life? I wondered if I really needed that dollar from everyone like I always wanted.

Then, Ghada was there. I heard her voice. Well, actually I heard her screams. I was right in the middle of one of my Heftyvisions. I was literally moving 600 Bitcoin to a wallet somewhere in Nigeria. I turned and saw my wife, in her burka. She was being handled by a guard. The king came in right behind her.

“Hey, hey, Heyyyy,” is what he said. This was a side of him I hadn’t seen. He was happy but upset. What did I do? What did she do?

“Hefty, Hefty, Hefty. How my machine of bomb coming?”

My Heftyvision had just timed out. Awesome, there goes that 600 Bitcoin. I’m not sure if it even went through. That might just be money completely lost.

“It’s coming along. It’s really hard,” I replied.

“I hate to hearing that,” he said with a smile. I didn’t like his tone. It was maniacal. The way he held Ghada, by her cover.

“What is Ghada doing here? Leave her alone.”

“You don’t me tell. I tell you.”

“What did she do?”

“She no make babies,” the king said, tearing off her niqab. “We try. Useless.”

There she was, my beautiful wife. Her face was scrunched in fear and determination. My head recoiled at the thought of what the king of assholes just said about Ghada.

The guards started to step in on her, laughing ugly laughs. My swallowed hard thinking of what I was about to see. Luckily the king stopped them with a stiff hand. “Allahu Akbar.” The king then took out a necklace. It was hiding under his vest. It was a small, vial thingy. Unfortunately, I knew exactly what it was. I knew, because I purchased it.

It was the Irukandji. The Jellyfish. That little glass vial the king had, that tiny jelly inside. And it was the most venomous thing in 1000 miles.

I understood what was about to happen. All too well. The King took his necklace and threw it onto the ground. The vial exploded. Water and glass covered the ground. Samir, the guards, Ghada, they all looked confused.

Only thing king and I knew the real deal.

That little vial was a death sentence.

Sure, if we were in Australia there might be some anti-venom. Out here, Ghada would be dead within an hour.

The king pushed her to her knees.

“NO!” I yelled and leapt up. The guards all pointed guns at me. I stopped. The king didn’t. He pulled Ghada into the jelly water. Face first. Ghada had no clue the water was death. It was now or never.

I charged for the king, and a loud snap left a gun. One of the guards fired. I heard the whoosh.

The slug of the bullet zoomed past me. It perfectly missed me and shot into the computer. It hit a processor. The king’s hand flew up, and everything stopped. No more bullets.

My heart was sure pumping. The king looked up at his guard. They exchanged unpleasantries. He looked back at me.

“If you kill her,” I spewed, “I’ll charge you so fast the next bullet will blow my brains out.” Only the king could really understand. “Kill my mom, kill my wife, kill me, and your whole operation is toast. You’ll just be some sad man forgotten by history. If you kill her,” I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. When it didn’t move, I spoke around it. “I promise I won’t do a thing for you. No money, no Browns. No nothing.” The King stood up, letting go of Ghada. “Ghada get the fuck away from there! Yullah, YULLAH!” I screamed, scaring her so bad, she crawled back across the room like a crab wearing an abaya.

The king crunched his boots on top of the Irukandji. I cringed. “I wait not for day can eat your big brains, Hefty.”

I swallowed. “Me too.”

It was mutual, but we needed each other. Kind of.

The king pivoted. He kept his toe on the Irukandji. He dragged that boot across the room, then kicked his guard. He nailed him right on his arm. The exposed part of his arm.

“Oooo!” I cringed harder. The guy shrugged. Then he started to feel something. The King then burst out the door. That was cold-blooded. He just killed his own guard, and that guard wouldn’t know why he died. Rubbing his arm, the guard followed. In a few moments, he’d be feeling that pain. Irukandji worked fast.

I saw the floor. Smeared with water. I’d never walk on that part of the floor as long as I lived. Who knew what venom was just chilling there. I ran to Ghada, who was already back under her veil. I hugged her. I held her. She cried and cried.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” was all I could say.

Looking at the bullet hole in the processor, something died in me. It was good. That bullet killed a few programs on the computer. It also killed my will to play along. Ghada had done nothing to anyone. Everything else, I understood. Killing her was straight murder.

I was gonna fight back. Game on, king. Let’s play some chess.