Chapter 1

Editor: KalrogTheWriter

Note: This first part of the Christina Cooper story is all about setting up the character of Christina, understanding who she is and where she’s comes from. It does not contain a sex scene as such. You can skip it and move on to the other parts, but you’ll miss the character’s background, so it might be harder to follow some parts of the rest of the story.

My name is Christina Cooper and this is my story so far.

For my first five years, I lived with my biological parents in a large apartment in downtown Toronto. We had two servants and I had a nanny named Annie Gagnon.

My biological father was Alexander Cooper and he was a lawyer born in the United States, but working in the financial sector in the city of Toronto in Canada.

My biological mother was Simone Martin and she was born in Montreal in Canada. She was a fund manager and was above all the sole heiress to a fortune with an estimated value of nearly $60 million from her late parents.

I didn’t go to daycare, but I had Annie to keep me company and private tutors to teach me. Because from a very young age, I had an extraordinary need and ability to learn.

Even before the death of my parents when I was five years old, I was already able to speak English, Spanish, and French as well as read and understand books on science, mathematics, and many other high school subjects.

I could have, and probably should have, gone to a school for the gifted, but my biological parents chose instead to hire tutors to homeschool me. They made that choice because I have always been considered a strange girl. The tests carried out throughout my childhood were not able to determine exactly the diagnosis corresponding to my situation. It is likely that I am gifted, but also that I am somewhere on the autism spectrum. Even though I realize that I am different from the others, my way of being is normal for me.

Although I can identify other people’s emotions based on their facial expressions and body language, I have some difficulty in my interactions with them. I say things that aren’t always appropriate, even if they’re true, and I rarely understand humor and sarcasm. On top of that, I have difficulty expressing my own emotions in any way other than verbally. I almost never cry; I never laugh and I don’t have mood swings. I’m also not the hugging type, but I’ve learned to accept them and how to react to them. Actually, I’m not very physical with people at all. Not that I’m afraid of germs or other things like that, but more because I don’t dare to do it, not really knowing what is appropriate to do and when.

One of my tutors, just before he was fired, said to my father that I was a fucking robot. After doing some research on the web, I realized that the fucking part, was clearly wrong, but the robot part intrigued me. I did some more searching, but the robot part was also wrong. I was strange, yes, but not a fucking robot.

My biological parents died in a car accident when I was five. A woman named Danna Caldwell came to my house with the police officers to inform me of their death. I had seen her before; she was some kind of agent of the government and was a sort of friend of my parents. It’s probably why it was her that informed me of their death.

In accordance with their wills, a board of directors has been appointed to administer my property until I turn 21.

As for me, my parents’ testament placed me under the responsibility of the couple Stanley and Nancy Clark. They were my godparents and were living in Whitefield in the United States. They were my parents’ best friends and they already had children, twins Michael and Andrew, aged seven years old. Stanley was a laborer for a construction company and Nancy was a secretary at Whitefield High School.

The board gave Stanley and Nancy a monthly stipend to pay for all my needs. I went to live with the Clark family in a modest house in the suburbs of the town of Whitefield in Minnesota. A few weeks later, I was officially adopted by the Clarks.

Annie did not want to immigrate to the United States and therefore resigned from her position. Nancy was annoyed with me when I explained that it was Annie’s absence that bothered me the most following the death of my parents. Even though I’m sure my parents loved me, they weren’t around very often, unlike Annie who had been my nanny for as long as I can remember.

It was very different in this new house. There were no servants so everyone had to put in effort taking care of the house and yard. For me and the twins, at least the early years, that mostly meant cleaning our room and helping to set the table. What was even more different was the fact that my adoptive parents were very attentive to my needs. They wanted to help me adapt well and they had a hard time understanding why I wasn’t crying or showing any signs of sadness or particular reactions to the death of my parents and my change in circumstances. They would have liked me to call them dad and mom or even uncle and aunt, but I refused because it was not accurate; there were simply no blood ties. They reluctantly agreed to let me call them Stanley and Nancy. Likewise, I refused to name Michael and Andrew my brothers. This caused tensions during the first days, but for once, my “difference” allowed me to have this accepted by the rest of the family.

Michael and Andrew seemed not to be very happy with my presence. It must be said that I had many faults in their perspective: I was a girl, I was younger, and above all I was strange. So, during the first years, I got into the habit of avoiding them and they did the same with me.

That being said, I would have liked to go to the same school as Michael and Andrew. But like my biological parents, Nancy refused to allow that, preferring to hire tutors to teach me at home.

I always found it strange that my biological parents and my adoptive parents were friends. They seemed to have nothing in common and before I went to live with them, I had never met them.

When I asked questions about how my parents could be friends with Stanley and Nancy, people so different from them, I sensed a certain uneasiness in the faces of the couple. They weren’t specific, but they said that the two couples shared common passions. During the years that followed, I tried several times to question Stanley and Nancy to find more about the link between them and my biological parents, but they never said anything more. The last time I asked was a week before my 10th birthday. That day, following an argument with the twins where Nancy had taken the boys’ side, I decided that I had had enough and I wanted answers to my questions.

I just couldn’t understand how two couples so different could be friends. They did not have the same education, nor the same economic status and they even lived in two different countries! I asked pointedly and probably not with the best choice of words, how the two couples could have been friends.

Nancy left the room without a word. I had seen Stanley angry with the twins before, but never with me. At that moment, he got very angry with me and he raised his voice to tell me that the ties between them and my parents were none of my business. He also added that my parents were very close friends despite what I might think of him and Nancy and that it was the last time they would talk about it.

He then sent me to my room. A few minutes later, I heard Nancy and Stanley talking in their bedroom. Obviously, Nancy was crying and Stanley was consoling her. I didn’t want to upset Nancy, who had always been kind and understanding to me. I therefore decided to drop this subject and did not return to it for several years.

When I was ten, the board gave me a monthly allowance for personal expenses. This, to allow me to pay for outings or some objects that I wanted. When I requested, through Nancy, that an allowance be given for Michael and Andrew as well, the council refused. I circumvented that refusal by asking Nancy to divide my allowance into three parts. At first she wanted to refuse, but when I insisted, she agreed to do so and I believe that, deep down, she was happy and proud of me.

Why did I want to split what was in effect my money? Simply because I had no friends and I did not see myself going out alone. That wasn’t the goal, but it helped a lot in my relationship with Michael and Andrew. Indeed, they had pocket money to take me out and this amount was more than enough to have some left over for them. This is how I was able to go with them to the restaurant, the cinema, shopping etc.

Even with these outings, I could put part of my allowance in the bank. But not Michael and Andrew, they spent every dollar of their share every month.

When I was twelve, Stanley died of a heart attack. In a way, I was more affected by him dying than when my biological parents had died. Along with all the others members of the family, I cried during the religious services for him.

I also think that it’s because of his death that I started to search information’s about my biological parents more seriously. I did not find any information in addition to what I already knew from Nancy and Stanley on the web. When I asked questions directly to some of the board members, I did not receive any answer except that Nancy passed along a message from the board to me: Do not write to board members directly.

I also tried to contact several people with whom I had been in contact before the death of my biological parents. I received no responses from the employees and tutors I contacted. Even Annie didn’t respond to my messages. More than that, I realized that Danna Caldwell didn’t seem to work for the Canadian government. In fact, she didn’t seem to exist! It was very strange.

It was during with that search that I discovered that computer could be used more than just to do research, watching videos, and chatting on social media. Not that I had any interaction with anyone in the social media. I discovered that not only was it possible to access data not normally available, but that it was also possible to make changes to that data. Within months, I had become a hacker. After less than a year, I was very skilled at it.

In fact, I was not modifying the data. I was simply looking for databases that were not available, which allowed me to learn even more things. For example, I was able to view information and take several online university courses without registering. Even with that skill, I was not able to find more information’s about my biological parents. It was as if they had simply appeared out of nowhere ten years before my birth. There was even no record of a lawyer named Alexander Cooper in either Canada or the United States. It was mysterious, but despite my growing skills, there were still some systems that I was not able to penetrate.

It was on my thirteenth birthday, when I saw that the monthly allowance for personal expenses had risen again sharply, that I asked for Nancy’s help in setting up a brokerage account for me. It was not really in my name, being a minor, I could not have one. It was in Nancy’s name, but she gave me access to it and it was my money that was used for these transactions. The first few months, I didn’t earn much with my trades, but I didn’t lose much either.

In March of that year, Andrew began dating Alyssa Green. She wasn’t his first girlfriend. Michael and Andrew started dating the year before, but it was the first time one of those girlfriends had brought a sister with her. The sister in question, Lauren Green, was my age and Alyssa suggested that I go with them to the cinema.

That’s how I got my first friend. Lauren was very different from me. She talked a lot about a lot of things that didn’t really interest me. For my part, the few conversations I tried to start fell flat, because Lauren was not interested in math, finance, or computer science. Despite this, I found it pleasant to have a girl of my age as a friend. We continued to see each other even when Alyssa broke up with Andrew. At least, for the next few months until the Green family moved to another state.

It was in February of my fourteenth year that I was able to use my hacker skills for something other than learning. That day, when Michael and Andrew came home from school, I realized something had happened at Whitefield High. They were obviously sad about something and it seems that Nancy had told them not to talk to me about it. She did not realize how much hiding information would motivate me to discover it.

After searching Nancy’s still inadequately secured computer, I found numerous messages from school about Madison Perkins. She was a sixteen-year-old girl who had attempted suicide the previous night by taking a large number of pills. She wasn’t dead, but was in a coma. I then realized that I knew this girl because she had gone out for a few weeks with Michael.

Details weren’t specific, but the emails suggested she had been sexually blackmailed. I then used the computer in my room and went into hacker mode. After some research, I was able to locate Madison’s computer and find the problematic files and emails. I copied the files to my computer and that, just in time. The connection was cut about 3 minutes later, probably by the police.

The next day, after my last tutor for the day had left, I continued my investigation of the files. I broke into the security system of an internet cafe, then into the computer used by the man who was blackmailing Madison, but I finally found the culprit. It was a man named Ethan Munoz, also living in Whitefield.

It was already clear for me that the police would not be able to find him. At least not legally.

In Munoz’s computer there were many images and video files of different teenage girls in sexual situations. Madison was not the first victim and would not be the last if the man was not arrested. With my hacker email address, I wrote an email to Madison’s father explaining what I had found. I mentioned that if he made an anonymous tip, it was likely that the police could raid Munoz’s house and put him in jail.

Three days later, I learned that Ethan Munoz had been found dead in his home. The house had been almost completely destroyed in a fire and the man’s body, or at least what was left of it, was found inside. There was no mention of the police investigation. The fire was an arson, but there were no clues.

It was a peculiar coincidence and I wondered if it was because of my email. That same evening, I received an email to my hacker address from a group of motorcyclists in Whitefield. The text was very short: “The MCW owes you a favor.”

I researched the MCW, a motorcycle group named Motorcycle Club of Whitefield and found that the leader of this group is Ryan Perkins, Madison’s father. Two weeks later, Madison came out of the coma. It was because of me that Ethan Munoz was dead. Even though I probably should have, I didn’t feel guilty.

During tax time of the year I turned fifteen, Nancy realized that she had made a small fortune in stock trading. At least I had earned that money in her name. Even taking into account fees and taxes, there was still a significant amount left. Nancy was very surprised! Not me, I had learned to find good deals and, in some cases, I had been able to find unreleased privileged information. This had helped me to time my purchases and sales for maximum profit. Nancy gave me back all the net profits. I invested these profits in further stock purchases and over the next few years I further increased my funds outside the control of the board of directors.