Bluescreen

by Dan Wells

  “With another cartel,” she said out loud. The answer was there the moment she’d thought of the question. La Sesenta was into drugs now, and if she told them another dealer was moving in on their territory . . . But, no. She’d told Chuy to be careful, she had no right to throw him into a gang war.

  “Except that the gang war is coming anyway, right?” She stared at her reflection in the monitor, willing herself to see someone who helped, instead of someone who only made things worse. “La Sesenta is going to find out about Bluescreen sooner or later, right? If I tell them now, I can protect a few extra kids. It’s not like they’re going to start murdering each other in the streets. They’ll just beat their chests a little, whatever guys do to chase each other off their territory.”

  She wanted to believe it. It made so much sense. It might turn into a gang war, but . . . it didn’t have to. And if it did, it wouldn’t be her fault.

  She had to protect Pati.

  Marisa opened the computer’s phone program, and typed in Chuy’s ID. It rang twice.

  “Marisa?” Chuy sounded concerned. “Two calls in one week; this can’t be good news.”

  “It isn’t,” said Marisa. “I need to talk to Goyo.”

  “Goyo’s the leader of La Sesenta, Marisa, you can’t just call and—”

  “Pati got drugs at school,” she said, clenching her fists below the desk, hating every word that came out of her mouth.

  “I . . . Well . . .” Chuy stumbled over the words. “That wasn’t us, I promise you, we would never sell to children—”

  “I know it’s not you,” she said quickly. “It’s a rival dealer, invading your turf. You drug dealers care about that, right? About keeping the other ones out?”

  Chuy said nothing, but she could hear him groaning, a deep-throated growl like a restless lion. “Of course we care, but why do you? You told me to get out, not to start a war with a rival dealer.”

  “Better the devil you know,” said Marisa. “You’re from Mirador—everyone in La Sesenta is. You care about it as much as we do. Plus you just told me you would never sell to children, to our children, to our families, but now somebody is. I want them gone.”

  Chuy growled again, and then all sound ceased; he’d muted her. She waited, biting her tongue, until another name popped up on the screen, requesting to join the call: Gregorio Marquez. Goyo. She clicked Yes.

  “Señorita Carneseca,” said Goyo. His face appeared on her screen, as scarred and craggy as the surface of an asteroid. His voice was deep and gravelly; his left cheekbone was pocked with a chemical brand. “You have something to tell me.” He spoke with the confidence of someone people obeyed; his time was precious, and if you used it, you’d better be worth it.

  “There’s a new drug in LA called Bluescreen,” said Marisa. “It’s—”

  “I know what it is,” said Goyo. “Rich-kid drug. Not my problem.”

  “It is now,” said Marisa. “My sister came home with some today, says she got it at school. She’s in sixth grade at José Olvera Elementary.”

  Silence. She could hear background noise: faint music and indistinguishable voices. Goyo stared at her, and she swore she could feel her life draining away under his stare. She bit her lip, wondering what she’d gotten herself into. Finally Goyo spoke again. “Thank you. We’ll take care of it. Your brother has a good sister.”

  “Don’t hurt anyone,” she said, hopelessly, “I don’t want to start a war—”

  “I said we’ll take care of it,” said Goyo. “We’re done now.”

  The line went dead.

  THIRTEEN

  Marisa slept fitfully, dreaming of Chuy dead on the side of the road; of Pati walking stiff and zombie-like, creeping through the house, opening Marisa’s door, reaching for her head, forcing a Bluescreen drive into her headjack—

  Marisa bolted upright, wide awake and sweating. She didn’t have a clock in her room—who needed one, when you had a djinni?—so she lifted the blackout curtain over her window, peeking out at the city beyond. It was still dark, but sparkling with the lights of a million streets and nulis, for Los Angeles never truly slept. Over it all the sky was a dead, slate gray. Dawn was still a few hours off. She walked back to her bed, shivering despite the warmth, and lay down on the sweat-soaked pillow. She lasted seven seconds before getting up again, too uncomfortable, too nervous.

  She turned on Huitzilopochtli and checked the time: four in the morning. Seventeen thirty in Mumbai; twenty in Beijing. She pinged Jaya and Fang with a chat, but got nothing. They were probably playing Overworld. In another two hours Sahara would be waking up to join them for Saturday practice, but with Anja and Marisa both gone . . .

  What are we going to do about the Jackrabbit Tourney? she wondered. Barely a week and a half away now. Even if she got her djinni back in time to play, she was missing too many practices. She was holding back the team.

  Instantly she felt bad for thinking it—putting her own troubles above Anja’s. Marisa was just grounded. Anja had someone else’s fingers in her brain, just waiting for the chance to strike.

  “As long as I’m up,” said Marisa, “I may as well make myself useful.” She opened a net window and tried to log in to her bank to pay Bao back, but without her djinni to verify her ID she couldn’t do it. The bank locked down her account, flagged it as suspicious, and emailed her a notification that someone was trying to log in under her identity. She shook her fists at the computer screen and tried the same thing in Yosae Cybersecurity, hoping she could upload the virus code to their user submissions board, but ran into the same problem. She grimaced at the screen, baring her teeth, and created a new account, hiding her connection behind another string of straw men.

  New malware discovered in the wild, she wrote. Street name: Bluescreen. Please add to virus definitions immediately. She attached the code, just as she’d tried to do with Anja, and posted it to the message board.

  A moment later she got a response from someone named SparkleTime: Heartbeat?

  Marisa raised her eyebrows; Heartbeat was her Overworld call sign, and HappyFluffySparkleTime was Anja’s. Was this Anja? She typed a response on the message board, saying something that Anja would recognize, but that wouldn’t give away their real names to anyone reading along: Brentwood? Anja’s neighborhood.

  She waited just a few seconds before the next post popped up: Seagate, Position000. The name of a free chat program, and . . . Marisa wasn’t sure what the second word was supposed to be. Anja’s Seagate username? She downloaded a copy of Seagate, started to create an account, and froze. If they were really worried about somebody reading their conversation—and Marisa was really, really worried—then Anja wouldn’t announce her username directly. The word had to be a clue, not an actual name. “Position000,” said Marisa out loud. “What does Anja know that I know, but which someone trying to eavesdrop doesn’t?” Her position on . . . politics? Overworld? The players on an Overworld team held specific positions, just like any other sport; Anja was telling her to base her new username around that. She created a chat account called Spotter000, and sent a request to Sniper000.

  Marisa? asked Anja, accepting the request barely half a second later.

  Anja? asked Marisa.

  Awesome, sent Anja. I thought that was you. Djinni still down?

  My dad shut it off, sent Marisa. I could probably get it running again, if I go around the password in his admin account, but then the bad guys would be able to find me so . . . here we are.

  Irony is the worst, sent Anja.

  Tell me about it.

  Don’t bother with Yosae, sent Anja. I sent them the same code yesterday, right after you left, and they claim they added it, but I ran an update and a scan and . . . nothing. The Bluescreen code’s still in there.

  Marisa was horrified. You turned your djinni back on?

  How else was I supposed to run the test? I turned it off right after; nothing happened.

  As far as you know, sent Marisa. She paused, thinking. Wh
at does it feel like when they take over? Do you remember it?

  Not really, but after it’s over I know that it’s happened.

  The first time they tried to use you against your father, said Marisa. The second they tried to kill you—but why? You’re more useful as a tool.

  You were talking about Bluescreen, said Anja. Maybe they just wanted you to stop.

  Maybe, said Marisa, if we’d been on the verge of revealing something secret. Or discovering it. But we still don’t know anything—it doesn’t make sense. Marisa tapped the desk, trying to think. Why didn’t the Yosae update work? She frowned, remembering her suspicions about the police. Do you think they have someone inside of Yosae?

  Anything’s possible at this point, wrote Anja, but I don’t think that’s it. I had Omar call the police again, and got some technical specs on those five people that killed eLiza—none of them were using Yosae. Two Pushkins, two Harrisons, and a Washboard.

  Marisa almost laughed. There’s no way they bothered infiltrating Washboard. No one uses Washboard.

  I know, sent Anja. It’s a joke, but it gives us information. It lets us know that this malware can hit anything, regardless of the security system, which probably means that there’s no inside man and there’s no security exploits—it’s just really, really . . . something.

  What, though? sent Marisa. If we can figure out how it’s getting around these antivirus programs, we can figure out how to stop it.

  Beats me, said Anja. I’ll keep working, though—what else am I going to do?

  Did you make an appointment to get it replaced?

  Monday morning, said Anja. First thing. But that doesn’t help anyone else who’s got the malware. Plus it’s going to be a pain in the butt to reconfigure a new one the way I like it. You know how much bloatware they put on those things.

  Speaking of which, said Marisa, I need to update some of the settings on this brick, I’m not getting any of my regular feeds. She opened another browser window and started setting up news alerts; she didn’t expect to be djinniless for long, but it was soothing, in a way, to set her concerns aside for a few minutes and just read about Overworld—the latest tournament news, the latest strategies. Sahara’s Throw the Drone video had gone big, much bigger than she’d expected, even starting a meme: people had edited the video to make the drone say something annoying, and then Marisa’s avatar would tell it to shut up, until finally she couldn’t take it anymore and shoved him off the building. It was a funny meme, and Marisa laughed out loud at a few of them—something she hadn’t done in far too long. The meme had lasted about a day, by the look of it, which wasn’t bad, and then the boards flooded with people making their own drone-launching videos. It was a good bump of visibility for the Cherry Dogs, but without any time to sit down and follow it up with something awesome—like a Jackrabbit win—it wouldn’t be as helpful for the team as Sahara had wanted. Marisa clicked on another meme video, watching the drone complain about nuli rights, when suddenly one of her new alerts pinged. She opened the link, read the headline, and immediately sent it to Anja.

  Have you seen this? “The Foundation Claims the Elizabeth Swaim Killers Were Corrupted by Their Djinnis.”

  Great Holy Hand Grenades, sent Anja. That’s eLiza, right? And the protest group trying to picket the new Ganika plant?

  Exactly, sent Marisa. Now we know for a fact that eLiza was killed by people with corrupted djinnis, but how does the Foundation know it?

  Who else has figured out what Bluescreen really does? asked Anja. We haven’t heard a whiff about it in the news, or from the police, and Omar’s talked to them twice today.

  I don’t think anyone’s figured it out, sent Marisa. Certainly not an antitech terrorist group. They use less tech than Bao does.

  How could they have even heard of Bluescreen? asked Anja. Do antitech terrorists hang out in upper class Aidoru bars?

  It’s spreading, sent Marisa. Pati got some at school yesterday.

  Nine hells . . . she didn’t use it, did she?

  She says she didn’t, sent Marisa. She read the article again—no revealing details, just standard Foundation ranting about the evils of human augmentation. Maybe they don’t know about Bluescreen at all, she wrote. Maybe it’s just a coincidence? The Foundation hates djinnis—they talk crap about them every day. They’re bound to get it right every once in a while.

  Anja paused a long time before responding again. Does it mean something that eLiza was studying djinni software? She was literally majoring in what killed her—most people can’t say that unless they’re getting a degree in nuclear fusion. Or bears.

  That’s probably why she noticed it, sent Marisa. She saw the code, and could tell it was wonky because she knew enough about djinnis to see it for what it was.

  No one in the Foundation would just stumble across the code like that, sent Anja. Plus, it doesn’t look like they mention Bluescreen in their protests. If they knew where the code was coming from, wouldn’t they have used it as an opportunity to link djinnis with drugs?

  No, because it doesn’t feed their story, sent Marisa. If eLiza was killed by victims of a mind-control virus, the bad guy is the virus. If they leave out that detail and just say she was killed by people with messed-up djinnis—which is technically true, just incomplete—then the bad guy is the djinni. She looked at her window, still covered with blackout curtains. What was out there, hiding in the city? She looked back at her screen. You’re right about them not finding the code themselves, though. If they know about Bluescreen, it’s because somebody told them. She opened a new browser window and started another fake server trail, hiding her connection even more fiercely than before. I need to talk to Grendel again.

  Without a djinni? You think he’ll meet you outside of NeverMind?

  I guess we’ll find out.

  Play crazy, said Anja.

  Marisa forced a smile, and logged in to Lemnisca.te.

  Cantina>>Forum>>General

  Heartbeat: Dolly Girls

  Heartbeat: I need to talk again. NeverMind not an option.

  She posted the message, and sat back to wait. Grendel was too careful for her to approach him directly: if she put his name on the post he might never respond at all, to maintain his anonymity. She had to hope he had some kind of alert system, though, that told him when someone was talking about Dolly Girls.

  On the other hand, posting about Dolly Girls so blatantly might be dangerous, especially with eLiza killed for looking into the mind-control code. But it was a chance Marisa was willing to—

  WhiteStones: A lot of people having problems with their djinnis these days.

  Marisa stared at the message. When she’d been in NeverMind there’d been a bowl of white stones on the table; her mind had put them there, and Grendel had said he was impressed. This had to be him, hiding behind a throwaway username. She sat up straight, composing her thoughts; she didn’t know how long he’d stay in the message board. She had to be fast.

  Heartbeat: Who else have you talked to?

  WhiteStones: Why do you ask?

  Heartbeat: Somebody knows. If you told them, that answers a lot of questions, but if you didn’t, there’s another player in the game.

  She waited, holding her breath. What would he say? Would he say anything at all? Did he even know what she was talking about? The cursor blinked on the screen, never moving, on and off, on and off, on and—

  WhiteStones: You’ve impressed me again. Not many people do.

  WhiteStones: I tipped off the Foundation myself.

  Marisa’s fingers flew across the keyboard, trying to keep her words coherent as her thoughts went flying in every direction. She wrote and deleted a half dozen responses, some demanding more info, some theorizing, but all too pushy, all too wrong. He’d only answer if she asked the right question, and finally she wrote simply:

  Heartbeat: Why?

  She waited for hours, but when the sun came up, he still hadn’t answered.

  FOURTEEN

/>   “Despiertate, mija, it’s time to get up.”

  Marisa opened her eyes a tiny sliver, only to squeeze them shut again at the sudden burst of light. Her mother had turned on her lights and thrown open the curtains, and was now bustling through the room, picking things up as she went.

  She’s worse than a nuli, Marisa thought. She threw her arm over her eyes and croaked a retort: “I’m grounded, remember? I’m staying in bed all day.”

  “We’ve changed the parameters of your grounding,” said Guadalupe. “You’re helping us in the restaurant today.”

  “Ay, Mami.”

  “Get up.” Guadalupe had crossed to the closet, and Marisa could hear her rattling through the hangers. “Here’s your San Juanito shirt, all clean and ready to go.”

  “Papi grounded me to my room, you can’t just change it.”

  “I don’t think you understand how authority works,” said Guadalupe, and kissed her on the forehead. Marisa rolled over. “Now come on, vámonos. The other kids are all asleep, so the shower’s free. You’ve got fifteen minutes.”

  “No human being can shower in fifteen minutes,” said Marisa. “It’s quantifiably impossible.”

  “Sixteen, then,” said Guadalupe. “Rápido, or I’ll throw a bag of frozen carrots under your blanket.”

  She left the room, and Marisa lay in bed for another few minutes before finally sitting up with a groan. She blinked for her clock, remembered that her djinni was off, and swore. Just to be sure her parents had heard her, she swore again more loudly. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the light, and she saw that her mami had laid out clothes for her on the edge of the bed: a San Juanito T-shirt, a pair of khaki slacks that made her look like a cow, and the most boring set of bra and underwear she owned. She put the slacks back in her closet, grabbed some black jeans, and stomped to the bathroom with a grumble. She blinked on her nonexistent djinni three more times as she showered and dressed.