The Admin of Free Harbor

My name is Katherine, and I’m currently running for my life.

Well, not in the literal sense of the term, I’m currently sitting on an airport floor, with a power strip plugged into the wall outlet, charging my phone, laptop, and battery packs. My backpack and little black suitcase sit next to me as I work on my computer. From an outside perspective, I imagine I actually look very relaxed right now. Just another person waiting for the plane to land so I can go wherever I need to go, whether it be a vacation or a business trip or what have you.

That’s what I love about outwards appearances. Looks can be deceiving.

Nobody suspects I got into this airport with a fake ID, after securing a ticket a mere half hour ago, nobody suspects that if the police cuffed me right now, I might face life in prison, and nobody would dream that the black box in my suitcase and the sticker-covered laptop in my lap are keys to the worlds most prosperous Dark Web Marketplace in the world.

My name is Katherine, and I am the Admin of Free Harbor, the largest black market of illegal contraband on the World Wide Web. Anything you want, drugs, weapons, fake ID, credit card skimmers, Netflix accounts, can all be found on my site. Countless sellers have signed up to provide their goods and services to the website, and millions of buyers have shown up to take it. Then in the center of it all is me. I’ve never been directly involved in a sale of any of the items Free Harbor offers, but the fact that these sales take place has made me millions. And it has also classified me as a very wanted criminal.

That’s why I’m running. The feds had been tipped off to my location. I need to leave the country fast. One of the sellers must have gotten through my security and triangulated my location. I was kicking myself for being so stupid. I would need to find the weak point and patch it. Moving locations is a pain in the neck, not because of complications in moving; I live my whole life out of two suitcases and a backpack, but because of lost profits. Every second my server isn’t plugged in with a stable WiFi connection is a second where my sellers can’t move stock, my buyers can’t get what they need, and I lose the Admin commissions I take from those transactions. This half-hour alone probably cost me 20,000 in profit. And I still have a long flight ahead of me. Realistically, it might not be until tomorrow that the site goes live again. By that point, buyers and sellers have moved on to competition, any more complications, and we might start losing them for good.

Cursing my luck, I get into the Tor browser and log into my chat account. As I expected, messages have flooded into my section of MarketForum about the missing site. Instead of personally responding to each one, I make a quick post to my board that I’m experiencing technical difficulties and then set up an auto-reply to filter out those messages and respond with the link to the post. This is, of course, a risky move. If the authorities have men in here, they are likely to put two and two together and realize that they were close to me. But hopefully, by the time they truly figure out what’s happening, I’m on a plane out of Kerraria and have successfully slipped away into the night again.

While I’m logged in, I may as well do some customer service. Turning my attention to my newly filtered messages, I begin working. The ones that actually require me to be on the server are ignored for the time being. There are a few compliments, calling Free Harbor the Amazon of the Dark Web, which I ignore. Then there’s one idiot complaining that they can’t use Neo-Coin on the site. Giving them the benefit of the doubt (that is, hoping that they are ill-informed and not stupid), I respond, explaining that The Country of Neo actually centralizes their currency similarly to most other Nations, so it’s not a private enough currency to be safely used in Free Harbor transactions.

As soon as I pressed send, a familiar sound played from the seats nearby. Looking up, I saw a man looking at his phone. A slight sense of dread filled my stomach, and I went over my options.

That was a MarketForum notification sound, playing almost in tandem with me sending a message. This means that the man sitting with his hood up and legs resting on his suitcase probably was the poster to which I had just explained basic crypto-currency. Of course, there was no reason to panic. He hadn’t given me so much as a glance since I had sat down. And there was almost no chance he would think to associate the girl typing on her laptop with the message the Admin had just sent him.

This was a fascinating opportunity to see a customer in the wild. He sat on his Modulart phone, texting away, wearing a black hoodie and blue jeans. He looked tired and bored like he had been sitting at that terminal for hours. I wondered what he could be buying. If drugs, probably not any he would be addicted to already, he wouldn’t have gotten them past security and would have to be feeling the withdrawal by now. The luggage was name brand, so perhaps counterfeit money or credit card skimmers. But then again, if he was just rich, it would make more sense that he would be after rare things. Maybe he was one of those buyers that keep the site’s small exotic animal seller collection afloat? Like I said before, looks can be deceiving, so it would probably be the thing I would least expect. I could be sitting near anything from a rich kid who doesn’t know what to spend money on to a hardened criminal. The possibilities were endless.

I signed out of MarketForum and shut down my computer. Determining the charge it had received was enough, I packed it away. One less thing I would be forced to ditch should I need to run. The electronic billboard next to me lit up. My flight was landing soon, arriving 15 minutes behind schedule. I packed the rest of my stuff up and found a seat.

Watching out the window, I saw what had to be my plane pulling up towards the terminal. My heartbeat slowed. I hadn’t even realized it had been racing since entering the airport. The doors opened, and the passengers from the last flight came out. Then one of the boarding assistants began the call. I gripped the black suitcase. Needing to make sure it stayed nearby. The server inside was sturdy. It would most likely survive a plane ride without damage or data loss. When my number was called, I stood and entered the plane. Finding my seat, I tried to lift the server up from the plane floor to the overhead compartment. It slipped in after a second or two of awkward struggling, and I could shut the cover. Buckling my seat belt, I pulled out my phone and checked my social media. I would need to shut all these accounts down soon. In fact, I should begin starting that now. I couldn’t risk my cover being blown by a location tracker on a cell phone app. I mass cleared my posts and started shutting down my accounts as the flight attendants shut the door of the plane and began the safety protocol reading. Severing my last connection to this area of my life, I factory reset my phone and slipped it back in my pocket. When I get to my destination, I’ll need to dispose of it and buy a new one.

Minutes later, the plane lifted off from the ground. I smiled to myself as I imagined the search teams desperately trying to find me on the ground below.

The Admin had vanished once again.