You fix things for a living. You're about to break some.
You take contracts for Virelabs, a security firm with clean hands and boring work. Most of it protects MeridianTech, the company that runs half of Los Angeles's data and answers to nobody.
Then a crew called CyberRex finds you, and asks who your work actually protects. Now you pick a side, take jobs across the city, and work your way inside MeridianTech one flag at a time.
Meet the crew
You can talk to every one of them during the game. Some will help. Tap a card to turn it over, open the backstory, then decide who you would trust first.
ARCHITECT
The voice that recruits you. Nobody on the crew has seen the whole face.
You already know something's wrong with the world. I'm the guy who says it out loud. Get us into that loft and we'll talk.
REEL
Runs the crew's timeline. Answers every message in under a minute.
Okay, recruit. Eyes on MeridianTech, not on your feelings. What do you need?
MARLOW
Eleven years as a MeridianTech sysadmin. Leaks small things and panics after.
I shouldn't be talking to you. I have a badge and a mortgage. …What do you want to know?
THE BROKER
Same diner booth for thirty years. Sells work with a clock on it.
Sit down, have the pie, it's terrible. I've got work that won't keep. You're fast, or you're a liability. Which one am I talking to?
HALE
Collects useful people. Every door he opens has a camera behind it.
So you're the noise in my network. Relax. I'm not going to turn you in. I'm going to find out if you're useful.
AGENT VOSS
Federal cyber task force. Every conversation with her raises your heat.
You don't know me yet, but I know your rhythm. The people you work for burn assets like you for warmth. Talk to me before they do.
ARCHITECT
You already know something's wrong with the world. I'm the guy who says it out loud. Get us into that loft and we'll talk.
- Before
- Fifteen years keeping the servers of a family-owned logistics company alive. Knew every machine by name, and every driver's kid's name too. When MeridianTech bought the company, the servers stayed and the people didn't: 340 layoffs in one email, sent from a system ARCHITECT had built.
- Why
- Not revenge, or not only. ARCHITECT believes the people who keep systems running are the only ones who really understand them, and that they keep handing that power to people who don't. CyberRex is an attempt to stop handing it over.
- Afraid of
- Becoming the kind of person who sends that email.
If you have ever built something good and watched someone else decide what it was for.
REEL
Okay, recruit. Eyes on MeridianTech, not on your feelings. What do you need?
- Before
- Nine years cutting movie trailers in Burbank. Two minutes to make anyone care about anything. She got very good at knowing which frames to cut so the story still holds.
- What happened
- Her younger brother's identity was sold in a MeridianTech breach the company called "a minor incident." It took him two years and a lawyer to get his life back. She started reading log files to understand how it happened, and never stopped.
- Why
- Keeping a timeline is the one thing she knows she can do perfectly. She runs CyberRex like an edit bay: everyone knows the next cut, and nobody gets left on the floor.
- Afraid of
- Losing someone because she was one minute late.
If you have ever been the one who keeps everyone on schedule, and nobody notices until you stop.
MARLOW
I shouldn't be talking to you. I have a badge and a mortgage. …What do you want to know?
- Before
- Joined MeridianTech when it was forty people and a mission statement he believed in.
- What happened
- Every year he was asked to take one more shortcut: skip the patch window, share the admin password, look away from that one log. Each one was small. He wrote every one of them down in a notebook he keeps in his car.
- Why
- He has a mortgage and two kids in Glendale, and he is terrified. He helps CyberRex in small pieces because doing nothing has started to feel worse than getting caught.
- Afraid of
- That the notebook is the only honest thing he has done in ten years.
If you have ever stayed in a job because you had to, and hated what it was turning you into.
THE BROKER
Sit down, have the pie, it's terrible. I've got work that won't keep. You're fast, or you're a liability. Which one am I talking to?
- Before
- Started out selling car stereos that fell off trucks. Now he sells work that won't keep: jobs with a deadline, paid in cash, no questions either way.
- What happened
- He has watched three generations of people like you come through that booth. Some got rich, some got caught, one got famous. He remembers every name and never says any of them out loud.
- Why
- Money, mostly, and he will tell you so. But he also likes being the one place in this city where a deal is still a deal. In a town full of contracts nobody honors, his handshake means something.
- Afraid of
- A world that doesn't need a middleman, because everything is already watched.
If you have ever trusted an old-timer more than an institution.
HALE
So you're the noise in my network. Relax. I'm not going to turn you in. I'm going to find out if you're useful.
- Before
- Grew up in Lancaster with nothing. Scholarship to Stanford, first in his family to own a suit. Joined MeridianTech's strategy team at 29 and has been promoted every eighteen months since.
- What happened
- He learned early that rooms are won by whoever knows the most about everyone else in them. MeridianTech gave him a building full of data and permission to use it.
- Why
- He doesn't think he is the villain. He thinks the world will be run by whoever controls the infrastructure, and he would rather that was someone who remembers being poor. He wants CyberRex as an asset, not an enemy.
- Afraid of
- Going back to being nobody.
If you have ever worked twice as hard as everyone else and decided the rules were never written for you anyway.
AGENT VOSS
You don't know me yet, but I know your rhythm. The people you work for burn assets like you for warmth. Talk to me before they do.
- Before
- Army signals analyst, then twelve years with the federal cyber task force everyone calls the Bureau. She has taken down ransomware crews on three continents.
- What happened
- She lost a case she knew she had won when the evidence vanished from a corporate server that "rotated its logs early." The company was a MeridianTech subsidiary. Nobody was charged.
- Why
- She believes in the law even when it disappoints her, maybe more then. She is hunting CyberRex because they break it. She may also be the only person in this story who would actually use what they find. Talking to her is dangerous. Ignoring her might be worse.
- Afraid of
- That the people she is chasing are right.
If you have ever followed the rules all the way to a result that wasn't fair.
Five places, one city
The jobs happen at real places in Los Angeles. Pick a stop to see what goes on there.
ARCHITECT's recruitment test
Five warm-up puzzles that use the same skills as the real game. Nothing is scored and nothing
leaves your browser, so experiment. Answers look like PRACTICE{...}.
Look behind the pageReconCleared
Web pages often carry notes that browsers never display. The flag for this one is hidden in this page's HTML.
Hint
Right click the page and choose View page source (or press Ctrl+U), then search (Ctrl+F) forPRACTICE. Developers leave comments in code more often than you would think.Base64EncodingCleared
This string is not encrypted, only encoded. Decode it to get the flag.
UFJBQ1RJQ0V7YmFzZTY0X2lzX25vdF9lbmNyeXB0aW9ufQ==Hint
Base64 uses A to Z, a to z, 0 to 9, + and /, and often ends in=. Paste it into CyberChef and use the From Base64 recipe, or run echo '...' | base64 -d in a terminal.Shifted lettersCryptoCleared
Every letter below was moved 13 places along the alphabet. Numbers and symbols were left alone.
CENPGVPR{ebg13_whfg_fuvsgf_yrggref}Hint
This is ROT13, a Caesar cipher with a shift of 13. Applying it twice gets you back to the original. CyberChef has a ROT13 recipe, or trytr 'A-Za-z' 'N-ZA-Mn-za-m'.Raw bytesEncodingCleared
Computers store text as numbers. Here each character is written as two hexadecimal digits.
50524143544943457b6865785f69735f6a7573745f62797465737dHint
Hex digits run 0 to 9 and a to f.50 is the letter P. Use CyberChef's From Hex, or echo '...' | xxd -r -p.Developer toolsWebCleared
This page printed a message somewhere only developers usually look. Find it.
Hint
Press F12 (or right click, Inspect) and open the Console tab. Browser developer tools also show cookies, network requests and storage, all common hiding places in web challenges.Off the recordBonusCleared
Not part of the test. ARCHITECT left a note for people who read source code. It says where the last flag is, and it isn't on the page.
Hint
Open developer tools, go to the Network tab and reload. Click the first request (the page itself) and read its response headers. One of them is not standard, and its value is Base64.Your recruit card
Make it, save it, post it. It fills in as you clear the test, find the bonus and pick who you trust.