R@tplague

“Hey, Detective Hallahan. This is the perp?”

“Detective Ferguson. Yeah, I’ve been chasing this one for years now. We cornered him at the psychologist’s office. He was just sitting there, staring at the wall.”

The detective turned his gaze from the small window into the interview room and looked worriedly at his partner. The older woman was as composed as always, but the younger officer noted a tight-lipped determination in her face.

“Is the victim alright?” he asked.

Detective Hallahan shrugged, her eyes never leaving the young man sitting in the interview room.

“I don’t think she’ll ever be able to say she’s alright,” she replied. “Her psych was pretty shaken. There’s a lawyer with them now, but emotionally? It will be years for her to recover from this.”

The younger detective opened his mouth to speak, but Hallahan was already wrenching open the door into the tiny room, holding up her keycard to the scanner lock by the door.

“Beginning the interview,” she intoned, pulling out a heavy metal seat as Detective Ferguson scurried in behind her. On cue, the younger detective pulled out a recording device and checked that the camera in the corner was operating.

“Interview 20260618-z34, date 18th June 2026, 3:21 pm, with Stephen Jones, aka CasterGilgamesh,” continued the older woman a heavy monotone. “Officers present will state their names for the record. Conducting this interview is Detective Evelyn Hallahan, Hate Crime Taskforce.”

“Detective Jonathan Ferguson, Hate Crimes, Acting,” added the younger man, sitting beside his companion and examining the criminal sitting before them. Stephen Jones, or CasterGilgamesh as he was known online, was a pale young man in his mid-twenties. He had thick curly hair and what could almost be described as a beard, but surprisingly clear skin for someone who obviously didn’t get out into the sun enough. The young detective had expected someone fat and wearing glasses, but while Jones had a slight paunch he probably could have walked down any street without causing a second glance. However, Ferguson did note how the calm, almost vacant demeanour of the young man changed into a tightly-controlled resentment as soon as he saw the female officer.

“Detective Hallahan,” Jones sneered, the young man’s lip curling as he crossed his arms and leant back. “We meet again.”

“Stephen Jones, you have been arrested at the scene of a break-in and attempted data theft,” said Detective Hallahan, her voice still a careful monotone. “I understand you have waived the right to legal representation. Can you confirm this for the record?”

“I trust state lawyers less than police,” replied Jones with a shrug.

“Then let’s start,” replied Hallahan tonelessly. “Were you trying to break into the office of Dr Bradley for the purpose of stealing sensitive personal information about Ms Rachael Anders, age 28?”

“Not to steal the information,” answered Jones. “To release it. And no, I never laid a finger on her.”

“What are you looking for?” snapped Hallahan. “Applause?”

“I’m just trying to make sure you don’t frame me for a real crime,” growled Jones, looking at the woman with barely-disguised mistrust. “I gave myself up at the scene, remember?”

“A real crime?” asked Hallahan, leaning forward onto the desk. “You dare say that, after what you saw on that computer?”

Seeing the tension in the room, Ferguson spoke quickly.

“Mr Jones, perhaps you can start at the beginning. Why did your online group, known as-” the younger detective shuffled his notes- “R@tplague, target Ms Anders? What were they trying to achieve?”

The man known as CasterGilgamesh chuckled and shook his head.

“Let’s not begin there,” he replied. “Let’s go back further. Do you know why I started R@tplague?”

Detective Hallahan remained motionless, but the younger officer shrugged.

“Ok, shoot,” he said. “Why?”

“Because five years ago I was a graduate with a computer degree,” said Jones. “I had a good job; my prospects were looking up. I worked hard – damn hard – at my job. But do you know what happened?”

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” sighed Ferguson.

“The company signed up to the Diversity Pledge, that government program to import more women into computer programming. But the grads we got didn’t look at it as a job. No, they were warriors. They were the new breed, here to replace all those deplorable sexist men in the male-dominated industry. Soon our office was a silent little battleground. I learnt to rehearse every conversation in my head in case there was something that my new colleagues found offensive – and believe me, everything was offensive.”

“Is this story going anywhere?” asked Hallahan.

“It goes with me out the door,” snapped Jones. “I complained, and the moment I dared open my mouth I found a little coterie lined up against me; whispering, white-anting, isolating. They finally had me fired because my professional opinions breached the company’s position on diversity and tolerance in the workplace.”

The curly-haired young man paused, breathing heavily.

“I lost everything,” he continued quietly. “You see it wasn’t enough that I was thrown out the job that I had trained years for. I was blacklisted by my new social betters and soon found it impossible to get an interview anywhere else. Networking, you see?”

Jones glared at Hallahan again, but seeing no response was forthcoming he continued.

“With no job and no hope of getting one, I had to move back in with my folks. I mined Bitcoin, wrote tech articles and product reviews; I didn’t want to be a complete burden. My parents tried to talk to me, however they didn’t understand. But there were people online who did.”

“I know,” said Detective Hallahan, flipping over some notes. “You were active on the ThumbsUpMemes website for a good couple of years.”

“They saved my sanity,” stated Jones, as if daring the detectives to disagree. “It’s funny, I remember reading stories from the 80s about how in the future there would be no nations, just corporations. Decades later it was going to be the global social media networks. Then when the free speech wars saw governments shut down the largest social media platforms a few years ago, the older generation thought that was the end of it. They were so naïve.”

“How so?” asked Ferguson.

“Internet society simply fragmented into warring political sites,” replied Jones. “Hundreds of little online bubbles and echo chambers, where everyone could agree on how right they were.”

“How were you any different?” asked Hallahan pointedly.

“Because ThumbsUpMemes was complete free speech,” answered the criminal, his voice becoming passionate. “There were no diversity and harmony inductions, no pledges that you were forced at gunpoint to sign. Anyone could say anything, could debate anything, could think all the forbidden things criminalised in our progressive utopia.”

“I’ve seen those sites too,” growled Hallahan. “Nazis and paedophiles, all of them.”

“You sound like my Dad, he was always complaining about it too. But it was free – you had weebs, traps and degenerate furries debating anime with white nationalists, while philosophy students discussed W40K with fitbro gym junkies. Of course there were trolls, and those who breached the rules were kicked out, but it was all about the online debate; the perfect memes, the burning comeback, and producing the reports and graphs that shut your opponent down. We argued everything from ancient philosophers to international politics. In the end, everything was about scoring for your side, not pandering to the status quo.”

“Mr Jones, I recognise less than half the words you said,” replied Ferguson tiredly. “But let’s push forward. How does this relate to R@tplague?”

“Because a friend of mine got screwed over,” answered Jones, his expression darkening. “Kotor_Griff82. Griff was a company drone, worked for a pharmaceutical group. He wasn’t a political animal, he loved retro video games and hentai. No underage stuff by the way, everything was above board. We chatted sometimes, and I knew he was a lurker on the site to escape from his marriage troubles. However, this bitch called SangerSis from VoxMemes wanted to embarrass Griff’s employer for donating to a conservative political party, so she doxxed him.”

“Doxxed?” asked the young detective.

The curly-haired young man sighed and looked incredulously at Hallahan.

“He’s new,” she shrugged.

“Doxxed means to drop documents,” continued Jones. “To publicly embarrass your opponent. She captured and published Griff’s chatlog from the hentai board onto his company website. Griff lost his job. Then his wife destroyed him in the divorce, and they blocked him from seeing his kids. That’s it; game over. Last time I chatted to him he was applying for jobs at some canning factory in Iowa to pay for motel fees. He didn’t break any laws but there was no justice for him. So, I did something about it.”

“You formed your own doxxing group,” nodded Ferguson. “R@tplague.”

“Yes, I started scouting for talent,” continued Jones. “Programmers, webmasters, anyone who had been as screwed over by the system as I was. And do you know what? They were so easy to find. Men who had lost their jobs, their marriages, or been cast into the gutter because they were on the wrong side of history. I made them my army of rats.”

“You went after SangerSis,” finished Hallahan.

“Damn right,” replied Jones. “We found she had been lying on her tax returns by not declaring all her sources of income. We didn’t even need any hacking wizardry for that; we just looked a little deeper than the tax office did.”

“You didn’t stop there, did you?” asked Hallahan with a tight whisper. “That wasn’t enough. You started picking other targets.”

“And you kept pulling me in for interrogations, but we were always one step ahead,” replied Jones sweetly. “You remember that virus we gave you when you tried to download R@tplague’s member list?”

“I remember the victims you left in your tracks,” answered Hallahan. “Seven women. Each one had their life torn apart, and all you felt was pride in your high score.”

Jones snorted.

“Oh, spare me the dramatics,” he sneered. “They would have all done the same to me in a heartbeat and you wouldn’t have lifted a finger.”

“You’re admitting you went after six other women too?” asked Ferguson carefully, pen poised at the ready. “Not counting Ms Anders of course?”

The curly-haired young man blinked, visibly unsettled by the name of his last victim, but shook himself and continued.

“Well, there was RockstarFeminista, who bragged about cheating on her boring husband. R@inbowXXX talked big about equality while smoking meth in the back room. Sinner_City666 and SJUnited4EVA were Antifa members, which their employers viewed negatively. No_Borders_Bros was hiding some seriously violent prior convictions, although we had to resurrect her social media profile on a virtual server to get the info – you got pretty close to us that time,” he added, nodding at Hallahan.

“What did your parents think of all this?” asked Ferguson.

“They didn’t understand,” replied Jones. “They kept telling me to just quit and look for work. But I was doing work, things that were more important than filing IT reports and fixing crashed servers.”

“You act as if you are some kind of hero,” said Hallahan coldly.

“At least I’m not destroying society with your twisted social-” started Jones.

“Tell me about Anders,” interrupted Ferguson, looking worriedly at Hallahan. Jones deflated and slouched back in his chair.

“Rachael Anders,” said the hacker known as CasterGilgamesh, looking at the ceiling. “Or as I knew her, Roxxette_Biker from ProgMemes. Anders was a pain; she wasn’t just scoring off Alt-Right users, she specifically targeted doxxer groups like R@tplague. So, we started a surveillance op on her. We monitored her account, downloaded everything she’d ever posted on any Meme site. She was good – she didn’t make any obvious mistakes, but eventually we narrowed her location to Sydney’s north.”

“Where one of your members managed to uncover her identity,” finished Ferguson.

“It was Fuel_Grim, wasn’t it?” asked Hallahan. “He already lives nearby. How did he do it?”

Jones’ lip curled, but the energy had gone out of it.

“Anders posted a selfie at a local restaurant,” he replied. “We scraped the metadata and got her photo, location tag, everything. From there it was just following her back to her apartment and placing a SnifferBot on her Wi-Fi network. Weeks of waiting, of silently sifting through download and upload info, but it was worth it. We struck gold.”

“You found she was seeing a psychiatrist,” said Hallahan. “R@tplague planned to doxx her mental problems to the world.”

The young man was silent, examining the detective through eyes narrowed into resentful slits.

“How did you catch me?” he asked suspiciously. “You couldn’t pin anything on me before. How did you do it?”

“Tell me what happened next,” answered Hallahan. “How did you plan to get the data?”

Jones glared at the detective but shrugged and kept going.

“We made some rough guesses on the IT setup based on the size of the business and number of staff; Iskandir99 had previously managed IT for a small law firm. Fuel_Grim dropped a usb branded with the company logo on the floor of the office and some idiot secretary inserted it into their system. We’d placed a RAT virus on the usb that got us remote file access.”

Jones hesitated before continuing. “But Anders’ file wasn’t there. I could see her name in the system, but where the file should have been, I saw something else.”

“What did you see?” asked Ferguson, seeing the young man’s discomfort at his victim’s name.

“A company-wide system alert,” replied Jones. “Fuel­­_Grim had been identified and the cops were scheduled to examine the office the next morning. It was too much of a risk, so I had to break in and steal or destroy the hard drives.”

“And Anders’ file?” asked Ferguson carefully.

“I should have just destroyed the drives and ran,” muttered Jones. “But I just couldn’t let it go. Anders’ file had been deleted from the system, but I could tell it was still there in the backups – I just had to bring it back. I told my parents I had some work on; Dad wouldn’t speak to me, but Mum begged me not to go.”

“Do you think they’re proud of you now?” asked Hallahan.

Jones snarled but Ferguson raised a warning hand.

“What happened next?” asked the young detective.

“I’ve never broken into a building before,” said Jones distantly. “But I managed it. I located the backups, logged in and restored the file. It took time but when I – when I saw Anders’ file, the police were already there, and as they dragged me out Anders was there too. Why was she there?”

“To give her a sense of closure,” answered Hallahan stonily. “To let her know the nightmare was over.”

“How did you catch me?” repeated Jones, mystified.

“I didn’t have the evidence to arrest you over SangerSis,” replied Hallahan tightly. “But I was patient. Every doxx you pulled, I was there, studying your methods and researching R@tplague’s members. When you targeted Anders, I started following her movements too. The moment Fuel_Grim dropped the virus in the psychiatrist’s office I had you. I sent the alert on the business’s systems and waited for you to walk into my arms. I have the evidence of your data theft. I have the evidence of your break in and attempted destruction of evidence. You won’t walk this time.”

Hallahan paused, and Ferguson noticed a crack in her stony demeanour.

“I did fail Anders though,” she continued. “You saw it, didn’t you? What Anders was hiding. Yet you were going to release it. To score internet points.”

The young detective noticed Jones start to shiver, the criminal looking down at the table in silence.

“What did you see?” asked Ferguson. “Jones?”

“Tell him,” ordered Hallahan tersely.

The man known as CasterGilgamesh took a deep, trembling sigh and began to speak.

“It was a video suicide note,” he whispered. “Anders’ husband and children had been killed in a car accident years ago. The other driver was some union politician who’d just been doxxed; he was blind drunk and ploughed into Anders’ family. Anders used Buckley’s Loss Meme as the video background, then sat in front of the camera and explained why she was going to kill herself.”

“She’d given it to the psych for safekeeping,” added Hallahan, the anger building in her voice.

Jones fidgeted and stared at the wall.

“Look, I’ll admit this all got out of hand-” he started.

“Why? Because releasing the video could have pushed a fragile woman to suicide?” snapped Hallahan. “Does it even occur to you that there are real-world consequences for the women whose lives you’ve ruined?”

Jones pursed his lips and refused to speak, but Hallahan continued.

“Jennifer Masterson was bankrupted by tax office legal fees. Preeda Wongsawat was hospitalised by her husband. Jean Yeboah was deliberately overdosed by her dealer. Laura Sweeting and Fiona Watson have gone missing. Naomi Montgomery is back in prison. She snapped after months of workplace harassment and broke her boss’s jaw.”

“Did you go after any of them for the lives they’ve ruined?” snapped Jones, his emotions finally spilling over. “Were you there to protect Griff? Were you there to protect me?“

“From what, your own bad choices?” snapped Hallahan.

“Someone had to do something,” replied Jones. “I was justified-“

“There is no justification for what you’ve done,” rasped Hallahan. “Your problems never gave you the authority to start destroying people’s careers and marriages. You’re not a hero. You’re just an internet troll looking for someone to blame.”

Jones rose to reply but sank back into his seat and stared at the wall, angry tears streaming down the side of his face.

“I think we’ll leave it here for now,” said Ferguson quietly. “Interview terminated 3:45 pm. Offender will be placed in remand while awaiting trial.”

CasterGilgamesh was still staring at the wall in silence as they left the room.