Hello everyone and thank you for taking the time to look over this post. I'm really not sure how to move my plot forward and was wondering what you guys think. I'll give a little background info as well. The World: The year is 2113 AD and mega corporations are the dominate groups. People also now live in super cities. A long lasting war and abrupt, violent plate tectonics/natural disasters have changed the face of the Earth. They also dropped the population drastically(below 3 billion)and people live in super cities. Its basically a post apocalyptic cyber punk type world. My Protagonist: A cyber security professional and 'ethical' hacker who works for a mega corporation. He is noticeably good at what he does and even works from his apartment. He also owns several handguns of lower calibers(which are considered legal) and one illegal handgun with extensive modifications. A gift from his dearly departed grandfather. He is also 100% human with no implants of modifications thus far. The Antagonist: An Executive representative(a person who delivers messages or acts as an assassin for mega corp executives)with a reputation for enjoying watching his victims die. When you get a visit from him you know something is terribly wrong. He prefers to watch while his cronies to the dirtier work. The Plot: My protagonist is met by my antagonist at his home about a proposition which he has no choice but, to go through with if he values his life. It involves a hacking competition. The goal is to hack into a level three security system and steal information without getting caught. You can be detected and still win as long as your address isn't traced or 'Net Name' as I call them isn't discovered. The deal is my protagonist must win the competition or the deals off and he loses his life as he knows it, or worse. So far that's all I have in terms of the plot. I WAS going to have the character either royally screw up or embarrass his corporation, causing a kill order to be placed on him. Antagonist shows up to 'break their deal' even though he won the competition. Still trying to think up exactly WHAT he could do though and that's where I need the help. Some people already dislike my protagonist due to his being full human and still able to out perform them despite their implants. I could have him getting set up I suppose. I still want him to actually win though. What do you guys think?
What info is he hacking? Maybe he could realize that the sensetive documents he's supposed to steal would endanger lives or get innocent people hurt, so he instead goes all wikileaks and tells the public what he's been ordered to do.
Sorry, which 'he' are you referring to in the first sentence there? Your protagonist, not your antagonist, I assume? I don't have a solid suggestion (hacking/computers aren't really my forte), but it might work nicely if the 'mistake' he makes is something that reflects his humanity (c.f. those with cybernetic implants acting like cold, hard machines?). Maybe he's prideful and leaves some kind of little 'tag' in the coding of whatever he hacked into, just to show he was there. So he's won the competition, but perhaps having tampered with the code has consequences beyond the competition itself, and the others would have just stuck to retrieving the information. Just an idea. Good luck!
Hm, yeah I could have worded the entire thing better I think now that you mention it Sifunkle. I'll make sure to look over it more thoroughly next time. The information is strictly junk information since its only a competition. The more I think about it the more I see myself having to make the character lose to fix my plot issue here. I wanted him to win and the corp goes after him to further pull him out of his comfort zone because of something he did, whether he sees it as wrong or not. We see a fat, complacent and methodical man at the start of the story. He's always in his comfort zone until he forces himself out by losing weight. Just as he is settling back down the corp shows up to ruin his day, and when he thinks its all over(after the competition)he gets a wake up call that its never over.
