For somebody with street smarts, Chris could act naïve. He wouldn't go around brandishing plastic bags of meth and cocaine, declaring what he had, so what made this hacking situation so different? Well, Chris hadn't expected it to be this way.
When the texts had come through, it was obvious that this computer didn't belong to Adam. That much wasn't hard to decipher. After all, Adam would have known the contents on the computer, and not only that, wouldn't have been password-locked out. Still, Chris had figured that seeing as the computer was placed within his shop, that somehow Adam was entitled to use that computer and view its secrets. Apparently not, judging by the way Adam instantly hurried over to Chris and reprimanded him for being so careless.
"Sorry," Chris whispered in response, taking glances around to see if anybody looked like a cop out of uniform. They didn't, which was a relief. Rather, nobody looked too interested in doing much more than minding their own business. A lucky break for Chris, if the tone in Adam's voice correlated to the situation being more serious than Chris had initially thought. "Didn't really think."
It was making Chris think now, though. The many years of being a drug dealer had ingrained their roots firmly in his personality, so that Chris didn't ask questions. Even when there lurked doubt in wide eyes whilst the rest of his face smiled in response to Adam, Chris' tongue was unable to phrase words leading to a question. Optimism was another prominent trait, so Chris took the good and the bad, weighed them up against each other, and decided the situation was fine. Sure, he was about to toy around with an unknown computer that could potentially have serious consequences if he got caught, but what was that compared to seeing a friend again? It was nothing, Chris likewise wrapping an arm around Adam as the two headed for the back of the shop.
The computer sat there, daunting. Chris didn't get how an object could be something that ignited fear, but this computer did, and he was beginning to hesitate. "So, long time no see, huh?" Small talk - to delay, to calm himself down, and to mentally prepare a hacker's mindset. A hacker's mindset that didn't really exist. "How've you been, buddy?"
Eventually, Chris managed to build his courage up to the point he could approach the computer, sit down by it, and shake the mouse to see if the computer screen would light up. When it did, the first thing Chris did when the box demanding a password popped up was to reiterate what it wanted - the word, 'password'. A red cross, and Chris was denied access. Chris gave a shrug, tilting his head to face Adam. "Gotta start somewhere."
Now, Chris didn't like questions. But habit gave way to the desperate need for knowledge which could potentially lead to success in getting past the computer's security. "Uh, what's the deal with this computer, anyway? Like, who does it belong to, and stuff?" That was what the articles Chris had spent hours reading and reading again had informed him of; that the majority of people had passwords related to their identities. Chris could have easily took to typing random words into this computer, entering combination after combination of letters, but there was a chance the computer had a more complex security system than it was letting on. Like a certain amount of password attempts, before he ended up being locked out of the computer for good.
