Brontide

Ongoing;

Booze and a Bargain

Name: Everson Echo
Age: 30
Species: Human
Face Claim: Ian Harding

Stubborn, Isolated and blunt
Intelligent, confident and level headed.

 Childhood. Something every single person, no matter what species or background, has to go through. But something only a few wish to remember, the rest? Would be happy starting their lives at 20 or even 30. Everson was one such person.

Everson Echo started off life in the roughest place he could, in the arms of a whore. The pregnancy itself began unwanted, between a businessman and a prostitute in the depths of London's business empire. Henrik Williams-Echo was a lonely man, a man who had built his fortune from the ground up, but the price to pay for his fortune?

Loneliness.

However, A man still has needs, so Henrik found himself driving through the rougher streets, parking his car on corners and paying for his pleasure. This is how he met Crystal. Crystal was a tall, thin, blonde haired woman that lived in a box-flat and sold her body every night for her next meal, or her next fix. Henrik began seeing crystal once a week, always on a Sunday and always in the back of his car, until it became twice a week...Three times a week...Four times a week...Then Henrik took her to his apartment and had her live there, not a relationship of course...Merely his dirty secret. Ease of the transaction he called it, Crystal still got paid and got to live rent free...She was living her best life for the time being. Until however, She fell pregnant.

Henrik was furious, his mind reeling. How could he be a father? And the baby-daddy of a whore at that? He had to act fast with the only thing Henrik knew worked...Money. He paid for Crystals silence, and the child. Henrik saw an heir to his empire in the baby, not a child to raise. Williams-Echo never cracked a smile through the entire ordeal, until he discovered it was a baby boy.

This is where Everson Echo comes in. Everson was brought up away from his father, with the understanding that his mother had died in childbirth. He was brought up with nannies and tutors and saw his father but once a week at Sunday lunch. A lunch that had been scheduled in for the foreseeable future, something that made Henrik feel better, but not Everson.

Everson craved affection from his father. He wanted what the children in the movies had. A father who played ball with him, or took interest in his life...But Henrik was having none of that. This is where a crossroads entered the boys mind, does he go down a rebellion route? The mindset of if his father hated him, he too would hate his father? Or the exceller, proving to his father he was worth the time and affection he deserved.

Everson chose the scholarly route. From the youngest age Everson tried to excel at everything, and if he didn’t? He worked even harder until he did. Something the young boy took to like a duck to water was computers, something Henrik could use.

By the age of Ten, Everson was coding. And not just the turtle that danced around the screen, Everson coded websites and security and firewalls...Something that helped his father keep his business private.

By the age of fifteen, Everson had learnt hacking. He could hack into the figures for trading, wall street and other stocks, predicting the income that would triple his father's account figures...Something that helped his father keep his billionaire status.

By the age of 20, Everson stood by his father's side, co-running the empire with their own stock market, trading and marketing. With a computer to hand, Everson could get into anywhere and get out undetected. He could destroy his father's competition from inside their own businesses...This made him the most wanted criminal on the black market. People either wanted him dead for destroying them, or wanted to recruit him to work under their business, to build their empire...But Everson was finally the apple of his father's eye...and nothing would make him stop that.

Aside from his smarts, Everson Echo was a ‘guy next door’ type of guy, He wouldn’t win awards for modelling, but he also had no trouble with sexual partners either. Just like his father, he wasn’t overly keen on the whole ‘relationship’ combo, he enjoyed sleeping around and drinking, two hobbies he could keep up with as well as his work.

Henrik knew, to keep his son safe he would have to get him out of London. Their publicity in the city was too big and their success had already stirred some curious eyes. Echo Empires had already had so many cyber attacks and hackers knocking at their firewalls that Everson had to code it so that only he and he alone could access their private files, any hackers would get their systems flooded with virus’.

Henriks parents had family in both New zealand and a small city in Colorado, America...So it was a flip of a coin as to where Everson would be sent.

Heads….Tails….New Zealand….Colorado….

The coin lands and the decision is made. America it is.

The plan was set to the second, every turn, every access point, everything all up to boarding the Echo Empire Jet. That was, until the car in transit got hit by a large black van on the way and the world went black…

Everson awoke in a dark room, sharp pain in his legs, his arms, his neck...He blinked against the bright lights beaming at him.

Lifting his head, the human glanced around the room..."Help me..." He called, his throat was so dry it hurt to speak, but he had too. "Help!" He called again, coughing more until finally, laughter echoed through the room. The sound seemed to bounce along the blank walls of the small room, settling right in Eversons fear.

Eyes frantically searched the room, panic hitched in his throat and sweat gliding off his brow, the laughter continued to bounce off every wall until finally, a figure appeared before him.

A man, adorned in a crisp black suit stood inspecting his fingernails. "Hello Mr. Echo." The disembodied voice whispered, the laughter still echoing even though no one made the noise. "I've been waiting to speak to you..."

"I don't know who you are." Everson whimpered, then a hot pain slammed into him, snapping his head to the side sharply...The man had punched him, hard.

Spitting blood, Everson whimpered again "What do you want? Money, I can get you any amount you ask for...Just let me go." Smack. Again, the hot pain snapped his head to the other side and made Everson cry out, spitting more blood...

"I don't want your money...I want mine." The figure hissed.

Then everything clicked.

Everson had burnt down so many businesses, he'd forgotten about the one business he'd been warned not to hit. Even the police force didn't touch the cobra's...They were a powerful group of men with a select set of skills...They were feared across London...And not a week earlier, Everson had hacked their systems and infected them with a virus that ended everything.

It destroyed all their data, Froze their banks and assets...It destroyed their company from the inside out, just as he'd been taught to do. So this was...revenge?

"I can get you your business back?" Everson begged...But that's not what the Cobra's wanted.

"I don't want a handout from you boy." The figure spat. "I want to make it even...You took my pride and joy on your Fathers orders...So Im taking you away from him, see how he likes his world being ruined..."

Silence ensued between the too, until something bubbled past Eversons lips that he couldn’t control, too quick for him to stop it.

Laughter.

Eversons laugh was loud, it hurt his ribs to do so and was intertwined with coughing and spitting blood, but he couldn’t stop, like a joke had been told and ten minutes later, Only Everson was still howling.

Cobra took hold of Eversons hair and yanked his head back "And what's so funny?" the figure spat, drowning the laughter with his dull tones.

"My father doesn't care if I live or die...Never has." Everson said, a smile on his lips.

"Kill me, He'll just buy another me."

The smile dropped slightly as Everson realised that the likelihood of his replacement was all too real...Henrik would merely hire another hacker. Someone that could be better than Everson. Cobra didn’t agree with that answer, and so another searing hot pain slapped against his temple and the world turned black once again…

4 days later, Eversons body was found, nearly dead, stowed in the luggage compartment of a plane on its way to Evermore City. He was rushed to the hospital there and that where he awoke, broken and bruised...But alive.

However, that's not what it appeared like in the news. Henrik had put out posters to find his ‘beloved son’ and he’d been found...But that wasn’t Everson. Henrik had done what Everson had predicted...bought in a replacement. The man that stood beside his father in the article looked so alike to Everson, that he himself had to look twice at him.

Blind fury pooled into Eversons head and he pushed his call button, demanding the nurse bring him a laptop, a computer, anything with internet access. The poor woman hiked in a thick, old looking laptop and said someone had left it weeks ago and not claimed it, it was locked but if Everson could get it open he could use it.

Everson cleared the laptop and began his plan. He hacked into the Echo-Empire and drained it for every penny of its worth. Remotely from his hospital bed, he sold all of his father's shares, emptied the bank accounts into Eversons personal account and drowned his father for doing what he had done to his son...What sort of father bought a new son?

Everson then cut out all of Henriks contacts rendering him alone and broke, then the son covered his tracks, left a dead-end-trail so no one could ever find him...And disappeared.

Coincidentally, Evermore was the easiest city to disappear in, because it also had its secrets. Things began not adding up pretty quickly, curfews and places Everson couldn’t go, out of bound books and files and whole library sections that he wasn’t allowed to touch...Which only made him more curious.

That night, Everson went on to his computer and managed to hack into Evermore’s private files and what he found, both shocked and interested him over and over again.

The folders were all labelled with Human or other, why would there need to be differentiation?

He found files on species, Lycanthropes, Valkyrs, Dhampir and more and with every file Everson delved even deeper. Humans were not the only species that frequented the city. The hacker found more files on a comet and an isle of sky and a new danger that no one really knew of….Then his systems went black.

The hacker had been hacked.

His systems went down and words flashed onto his screens. ‘See Sariah Holloway”

Sariah, Everson had discovered, was the head of the faction. Along with Adrien who was Mayor of the city. The meeting had already been arranged when Everson turned up. He walked down a long, dark hallway, sweat pooling upon his brow…

Opening the grand doors, there sat Sariah and Adrien and a bunch of, what his father would have called ‘heavies’.

“How did you do that?” Sariah asked and Everson could only shrug.

“Your security was actually incredibly easy to hack into.” He said honestly, wringing his hand over and over until they were red. “But how were you able to hack me? Thats the question.”

“How would you like a job?” Sariah asked then, tilting her head.

“A job?” Everson asked. “Yes.” Sariah then held out a large folder. When Everson took it and began reading, the job title was Head of Intel, but under that bracket had security. He needed to make an impenetrable fortress, something unhackable by anyone...Even himself.

Agreeing, Everson took the job and began working. A job that takes us up to the present day. Everson Echo, Head of Intell in the human Faction and part of the Privy Council. His job meant that Everson spent long hours underground, searching for intelligence that would assist the humans. He sent a lot of findings to people who could create weapons, more intelligence he filed for the factions and if someone wanted someone found, Everson was the guy to go too. Everson also protected Evermore, kept their news from mainlines, kept their name off brochures for holidays...He kept tourists away and safe.

However, Eversons job grew increasingly lonely. He found solace in the bottom of bottles and the beds of whores. Maybe ‘Father like son’ was more than just words...