"I have an offer for you. One point five billion dollars for the exclusive cyber-defense system for Hilton Group," the text read.

Carlos sneered and typed a few words on his computer.

“Star Anise, I gather? How do I know I can trust you?"

"I heard Hilton Group's computers are infected by some nasty virus. I know how to remove it. The clock is ticking. If you don't say yes within ten minutes, you'll Lose much more than one point five billion," answered Star Anise.

In the Information Age, most important documents were stored electronically. Carlos was well aware of that and he knew Star Anise was not joking.

Suddenly, Carlos had a bad feeling. He asked, “Let me guess. The virus is your doing?"

“Hey, nothing gets past you, Carlos. I can see why you're a CEO," Star

Anise replied, and sent a smiling emoji which was so big that it covered Carlos' entire screen.

Carlos was enraged.

"Think I'm a pushover?" Star Anise was so arrogant!

He was not afraid to admit that he was the one who hacked the Hilton

Group's computers. And now he intended to blackmail Carlos into buying his internet security suite.

Star Anise sent another smiling emoji and answered, “You can only say yes. No one has beaten my virus. You see, I wrote it especially for you. It's got two payloads, making it doubly dangerous. First, my virus will overwrite the first megabyte of the hard drive with zeroes. The zeroes tell you what I think you area big, fat zero. You'll lose everything. You could use backups from the cloud, but I already took care of that. I just changed the password. The second payload will deploy shortly after the first. It attacks your BIOS, making you unable to start your computers at all. So when do you intend to pay me? I'd hurry. There are only eight minutes left, Carlos."

Carlos’ face soured at the hacker's words. He picked up his phone and called the IT department.

"Get rid of this virus in five minutes.

Otherwise, all of you will be fired!"

The IT director answered in a trembling voice, "Carlos, we've never seen this sort of infection before. It changes every time it hops from one computer to the next. It moves code blocks out of the way, inserts itself, regenerates code and data references, including relocation information, and rebuilds the executable. It's different every time, so established pattern definitions don't defend against it. What's more, we just can't keep up with it, since it replicates at an alarming rate..."

"Oh, is that so? Then you're all fired. Start Looking for other jobs.

We'll contract out for IT!" Carlos hung up the phone furiously.

Star Anise's message popped up on Carlos’ computer screen again.

“Carlos, what's your decision?"

"One billion!" Carlos replied decisively.

"Deal." Star Anise added, "It's what I'd expected you'd offer anyway.

So I was prepared to accept it. Perfect!"

Carlos' face completely darkened. If he could find out who the hacker was, he would skin him alive to vent his anger!