Chapter 1

Tara was late for work, again. She was late to work more often than she ever would be willing to admit to, but she was always armed with a good excuse, just in case someone happened to ask why she was late. Which nobody ever did, but just in case, she was prepared.

Tara parked her car in the lot behind her office building, grabbed her purse and id tag and walked up to the building. She waved her tag in front of the electronic lock to get inside, yanking the door open when she heard the familiar click, and charged through the row of cubicles, determined to get to hers and drop her things before anyone noticed she was just arriving.

As always, she quickly discovered she was the first person in her group to arrive, and slid into her chair with a relieved sigh. "Why do I bother," she muttered, flipping on her computer and settling in.

Tara had spent the last two years of her life in this little cubicle, in this building full of cubicles, working 'abuse' for one of the "leading community websites on the Internet." Or so the press releases called it.

From her perspective, it was a site full of perverts and predators, who didn't realize there were better, larger sites out there that provided the same services. But that was just her perspective, given what she did all day long.

"Oh man," Tara groaned, opening up the first e-mail in the abuse queue, and immediately finding herself staring at a small, limp, penis. "Man, you have nothing to show off," she grumbled to herself, locating the user id on the report and terminating the account.

At least her job was different, she told herself constantly. Definitely not boring. She was responsible for going through the reports users sent in on other users, complaining about various things people did wrong. A great deal of the reports sent in were just gibberish, but the rest, well, they were things like this. Lots of nudity, lots of porn, lots of 'he threatened me,' and lots of…

"Fuck," Tara shut off her monitor the instant the picture opened, and jumped up, deciding it was too early to look at bestiality without coffee. "Morning," she chirped, banging on each cubicle she walked by, waving to her co-workers. As much as her job frustrated, and at times sickened her, she did love the environment she worked in. People could come in whenever they wanted to, and leave whenever they wanted to, so long as their work got done. No dress code, no stuffy bosses, none of the things she'd dealt with in her previous job as a webmaster for a publishing company.

Nope. Just lots and lots of porn, she thought to herself, rolling her eyes as she walked to the coffee maker. Lots, and lots, and lots……

***************************************************************

"We done yet?" Nick flicked a pencil across the table at Kevin, smirking when it bounced off of the older man's chest.

"One more thing," Kevin said firmly, glaring at Nick. "Sit."

"I really don't care what mileage our tour buses get, Kevin," Nick whined. "Can't I go?"

"Me too?" Brian added, more to frustrate his cousin than anything else, he knew full well they weren't getting out of the meeting early.

"No!" Kevin turned his glare on to Brian, shaking his head. "You know we gotta go through all this shit before we tour."

"You gotta go through all this shit. Why do we?" Nick asked, ducking when Kevin threw the pencil back. "Well?"

"You want your own bus?"

Nick shrugged, "yeah, we already said we'd each have our own…"

"Then shut up and sit tight."

"Kevin…"

"Or else you're bunking with Howie." Kevin interrupted him.

"HEY!" Howie shouted in protest. "What's so wrong with me?"

"Ok, point taken," Nick sighed, and sat back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest.

"Thank you, Nick," Kevin said sarcastically. He took a deep breath, and looked around at the group, "so, you all know we get some pretty weird letters, death threats and stuff, all par for the course."

"Sure," AJ shrugged. "What of it?"

"The Firm's gotten genuinely spooked by some of them, enough to think they're all coming from the same person. They've contacted the FBI, and an agent is going to be investigating."

"Agent? Investigating?" Nick sat up straight, a grin on his face. "Scully?"

"Shut up, Carter," Brian elbowed him. "This is serious."

"Please," he rolled his eyes. "A freak likes to write letters. So what. We get so many stupid letters, why pay attention to these."

"A freak who knows an awful lot about us," Kevin explained. "The FBI is concerned, this agent is going to be working up a profile on the person writing."

"I can tell you that," AJ smirked. "It's a girl, with no life, who is a huge fan, and thinks its fun to write stupid letters to us. Fans know everything, man, you know that."

"This is beyond just a fan," Kevin shook his head. "If you want to read the letters, you can, but…I don't know. Whatever, whoever this is, they know too much."

"Really, Kev, nobody's going to kill us," Howie said. "They couldn't get close enough, for one."

"Well, just in case, you guys need to know about it, and just be careful. Don't go anywhere without your bodyguards, and keep your eyes open, for the entire tour." Kevin looked at Nick, and raised his eyes expectantly. "Ok?"

"Yeah, fine," Nick shrugged. "Like I go anywhere anyway."

"That includes hotel bars," Kevin shot back. "No sharing bodyguards."

"Yes, sir Kevin," Nick rolled his eyes. "NOW are we done?"

"Done," he replied, waving them off. "Go."

He didn't have to tell them twice.

***********************************************************

Tara was falling asleep at her computer, despite the loud music blaring into her ears through her headphones, and the strange pictures and e-mail she was constantly forced to read. It drove her nuts sometimes, exactly how many reports she got in that were complete trash. Signal to noise, was the term the military folks used. The ratio of useful sonar to just gibberish. She often wondered what her s/n ratio would be. 1000:3? The hard part was always figuring out which ones were signals, and which ones were just noise.

"Wake up, girl," she rubbed her eyes, and clicked on the next e-mail. All she had to do was get through the queue, and she could go home.

It was a report from a chatter. Tara quickly skimmed the e-mail, pretty positive before she even read it what action she was going to take. Which was to delete it. There wasn't much she could do with chatter reports, after all, whatever was said in a chatroom was long gone, and policy dictated she had to see whatever was happening that was so bad, before she could take action against the user doing it. But she read over the report just the same, sitting straight up when she realized she'd read a few reports like this one so far today.

According to this report, and she was pretty positive the others had said nearly the exact same thing, some guy went into the Backstreet Boys chatroom and began telling the girls that he was going to kill the boys He apparently went into a decent amount of detail, enough to scare the teenaged fans who had been chatting about their favorite boys.

"Kill them, do the world a favor," Tara grumbled, but she stored the report just the same, returning to the queue to look for similar ones. By the time she was done searching, she had gathered 30 reports, all from different users, all reporting the same person. "And all at different times," she remarked, reading each one over. She started to laugh when she read the description of how this guy was going to kill the one called Nick. "Hey," she felt a stuffed animal hit her in the head, and stood up, looking to see who had thrown the toy.

"You're laughing. No laughing at porn," Tommy snickered, throwing another toy at her.

"I'm not laughing at porn," she grabbed the teddy bear and winged it back, smiling when it hit him in the head. "Some guy is scaring off chatters, telling them he's going to kill the Backstreet Boys."

"Good," Tommy shrugged. "Let him."

"That's what I think too," she replied, shrugging. "He's original though, has some interesting ways to kill them."

"Make them listen to their own music until they go deaf?"

"Strangle Nick with his Playstation controllers," Tara giggled. "Can't you just see it? Death by Playstation."

"If it hasn't happened to you yet, it's not gonna happen to anyone," Tommy laughed. "You finish that damn game yet?"

"Which one?" Tara asked, her brow furrowing. She played a lot of games, asking if she'd finished "that game," was like asking Tommy if he'd bought "that cd." The man owned more CD's than anyone else she knew…

"The Sonic one?"

"That's Dreamcast," she rolled her eyes. Couldn't anyone keep the consoles straight? Sheesh. Sonic was Sega, get with it…. "And no, not yet, I just got it last week."

"Tara the game goddess is slipping!" Tommy remarked, shaking a finger at her. "Had a game for an entire week and not finished it yet? My oh my…"

"Oh, blow me," She sat back down and returned her attention to her monitor, effectively ending the conversation there. "Alright, say bye bye BSBH4t3r," she whispered to herself, clicking with her mouse and killing the account.

Another pervert down, and far too many left to go.

*********************************************************************

After work, Tara used her key to let herself into Andrew's apartment, ringing the doorbell as she entered to let him know she was coming. "Andy? You here?" Andrew was one of her very best friends, and her next door neighbor. They hung out most nights after work, commiserating with each other about the various annoyances they encountered working on the Internet day after day.

"In here," Andy called.

Tara walked into the living room, veering away from her usual spot on the couch to peer at his stack of cd's. She picked up a Backstreet Boys CD and sat down next to Andy, handing it to him. "Who's who?"

"Hello to you too, how are you doing, how was your day?" Andy asked sarcastically. He took the CD from her and pulled out the liner notes, opening it slowly. "And why do you suddenly care about the Backstreet Boys?"

"Some guy was going off in chat, saying he was going to kill them. Just curious who was getting which death."

Andy's eyes widened, and he frowned, "nobody's killing my Boys."

"He was a quack, Andy, chill. I'm just curious." Tara poked him, and pointed to the CD. "So?"

Andy flipped through the small booklet, pointing as he went. "Brian Littrell, Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson, AJ McLean, Howie Dorough." He held the booklet up in the air when Tara tried to take it from him, shaking his head. "No way, you're gonna tell me who's dying how, now I'M curious."

"Why do you care? I told you he was a nut, I killed the account, that's that." She reached for the booklet again, groaning when he yanked it away. "Andy…"

"Tara baby, tell me. How's my Alex gonna die?"

"Alex?"

"AJ." Andy made a face. "Alexander James."

"Gotcha. AJ," Tara sat back on the couch as she tried to remember. "Let's see, AJ was pretty elaborate. Alcohol poisoning, and some kind of rape or another, I don't remember exactly," she shrugged. "Who cares."

Andy squealed and smacked Tara playfully. "Nobody may touch a hair on my AJ's head until I get to kiss it, understand?"

"Yes, Andrew," she rolled her eyes. "Can I see, now?"

"Here," Andy handed it to her, watching as she looked at the pictures. "You gonna be a fan, now?"

She snickered, "jesus no, I like REAL music, remember?"

"The crap you listen to is so not music, Tara, don't even give me that."

"This one, Nick?" She held up the paper, pointing. "He's kinda cute."

Andy gasped in horror, and shook his head rapidly. "That's KEVIN, Tara, shit, get them straight, would you?"

Tara frowned, and continued through the booklet, "Nick was going to be strangled by his Playstation controllers." She started to laugh, and shook her head, "of them all, I rather liked that one."

"You know, babe, that's a suitable death for you too," Andy grumbled.

"Don't mess with my Playstation," she warned, glaring at him. "You do, I'll tell your bosses you have wet dreams about AJ."

Andy shrieked, and grabbed the liner notes back. "Evil evil girl."

"I know you hide subliminal messages on that webpage about AJ, hoping he'll see it," Tara teased, laughing as Andy's face turned red.

"I do not!"

"You want to, anyway."

"You know full well I've never even met them," Andy insisted, getting up to replace the CD in its proper spot. "I've been there, what, a year now? They've been in the building, I've seen my AJ walk by, but have I ever said a word? Nope. I've been such a good little boy."

"You'll get your chance, Andy," Tara patted his head when he sat back down, giggling at his pout.

"They were at the office today, even," Andy continued to pout, batting his eyes at her for emphasis. "They gave me pictures to post on the site of them in the office."

"I bet you drooled over those pictures."

"Fuck you."

Tara snickered, "enough about this, are we gonna get dinner, or what?"

"Want to order in, watch a video?"

"What video?" Tara asked suspiciously.

Andy grinned, "Backstreet?"

"No."

"Come on, Tara, you'd like them if you gave them half a chance," he argued, the pout returning to his face for emphasis.

"No way, get up, we're going out." Tara stood up, and looked down at him still sitting, her hands on her hips. "Andy…"

"Please?"

"Out."

"Tara, you, like, practically CHANNEL Nick, if you'd only pay attention, you two are so much alike…"

"Out, or the boys get it," Tara grabbed the CD case and held it up in the air. "Don't you think I won't do it either."

"Baby, I came out long ago," he cooed, standing up and smirking at her.

"Very funny, Andy," she put the CD back down and shooed him out the door. "Go."

"It was funny," he agreed, pleased with his joke. "Very."

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