Viking Bay by M. A. Lawson Page B

of light, you can make millions. Some people still remember May 6, 2010: the day the Dow dropped a thousand points because one of those algorithms had a little glitch in it.
    And that’s where Rodger Finley ended up—as a quant on Wall Street.
    Fortunately—for Alpha, that is—Finley was arrested when he was seventeen; by then he was already a junior in college. He was arrested because he’d hacked his way into a DOD database, which was why they had a file on him at the Pentagon. Finley did it just because it seemed like a fun thing to do. His arrest didn’t result in a conviction, however; it resulted instead in an immediate job offer from the NSA after he graduated. But then a silver-tongued recruiter lured Finley to Goldman Sachs.
    Finley made a small fortune at Goldman Sachs—the quants were well paid—but he didn’t make anywhere near the salary of the big boys at the top. Then one day he stopped showing up for work. He’d become bored making money for Goldman Sachs. Goldman fired him after they hadn’t seen him for a couple of months, and when they did, they pointed out the noncompete clause in a contract he hadn’t bothered to read and which kept him from going to work for another Wall Street firm for two years.
    Finley didn’t seem to care that he was unemployed, however. The agency Alpha hired said he spent almost twenty-four hours a day in his apartment playing on his computers. He was a nut, but a talented nut.
    â€”
    FINLEY FINALLY OPENED the door after Alpha banged on it with a fist for almost two minutes. Finley was six-foot-one and skinny, looking like heweighed maybe a hundred thirty pounds. His nose was barely long enough to provide a perch for heavy, black-framed glasses, and greasy dark hair hung down to his shoulders. When he’d worked for Goldman, Finley had always worn his hair short, but Alpha didn’t think he’d changed his hairstyle; Finley was just too preoccupied with doing whatever people like him did to go to a barber. He was barefoot—his toenails needed to be severely clipped—and dressed in gray sweatpants and a black
Star Trek
T-shirt. The T-shirt said
Live Long and Prosper.
    Alpha considered the T-shirt a good omen: Living long and prospering was the plan.
    â€œWho are you? What do you want? I’m busy,” Finley said.
    â€œI have a job for you, Rodger, one that pays very well.”
    â€œI don’t need a job. Go away.”
    â€œRodger, you were fired by Goldman Sachs almost two years ago and you haven’t drawn a paycheck since then. You have nineteen thousand dollars left in your bank account and your rent and utilities add up to twenty-seven hundred dollars a month. I don’t know what you pay for food.”
    â€œHow do you know how much . . .”
    â€œIn six months, you’re going to be completely broke.”
    Alpha could tell Finley was actually shocked to hear how little money he had left. All his bills were paid by automatic withdrawals from a checking account, and apparently Finley hadn’t been paying any attention to how much money was going out. But instead of admitting that he was on his way to homelessness, he said, “Hey, if I need a job, I’ll find one.”
    â€œBut that’s my point, Rodger: You don’t need to find one. I’m willing to pay you two million dollars if you can do what I need you to do.”
    â€œTwo million?”
    â€œI’m glad to see that I’ve finally gotten your attention. But I’m not going to stand out here in the hall talking to you.”
    Finley hesitated. “Fine, come in, but I’m not promising anything.”
    Finley’s living room looked like a cross between a video arcade and a launch control room at NASA. There were three large-screen TVs and the controllers for various video games sat on the floor, cords and cables running in every direction. The floor looked like a snake