Swipe Right for Murder

by Derek Milman

  We walk by a room filled with vintage pinball machines and another with mirrored walls, free weights stacked neatly on racks, a bunch of treadmills, sky-blue yoga mats, and purple and red exercise balls. Soft, trancelike music plays from a hidden sound system, and the lighting is all cool midnight colors.

  Jackson snickers. “Leo told me the music and lighting are all on a timer,” he says, “designed to shift with the daylight. For people who stay in and code all day and need an artificial sense of a day passing while they work.”

  “Really? That’s so dope.”

  “Or totally unhealthy,” he replies.

  I feel sleepy all of a sudden. “How late is it?”

  “Late,” says Jackson. “A little after two.”

  Jackson turns a corner. We’re facing a wall of frosted glass, and then I realize they’re just tall cabinets. Jackson taps something into an app, unlocking two of them, revealing shelves full of snack foods, a fridge full of soda. Jackson tosses me a bottle of Curiosity Cola and a bag of pretzels. He points to his left with a grin, and I see a room with Ping-Pong tables and a full bar with ten different beers on tap.

  “Can I move in? Like right now?”

  “It’s hard,” says Jackson, swiping a bag of chips. “You have to apply for membership. It’s pretty competitive—from what Leo told me, anyway.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Let’s find our boy.” I follow Jackson to another staircase at the other end of the house. “He told me he was up here,” he says, reading a text, “in the room at the end of the hall.” We climb up carpeted stairs, walk down a long hallway. Everyone’s clearly asleep—their doors, each with a nautical-style lantern out front and a brass number on the door, are closed, silent inside.

  We stop in front of a door, next to a window that looks out onto a backyard. I see grills, tables with umbrellas, and the aforementioned hot tubs. Jackson types something into the app and the door clicks open. “And here we are,” he says. We peek our heads into the room.

  “Leo?” I whisper.

  “Hey, man,” says Jackson, as we move into the darkened room. “Wake up.”

  A shape stirs. I see the shape reach for its glasses.

  The room isn’t totally dark. Everything is blinking. Leo is the most wired individual on the planet; there are laptops and a gazillion other devices scattered around the room, charging. He clicks on a lamp beside the bed.

  “Hi,” he says, rubbing his eyes, and then when he sees me: “Aidy baby!” I come and sit next to him on the bed as he wipes his glasses on his shirt, puts them on. I rest my head on his shoulder, and he scratches at my scalp, ruffling my hair. “What are you bros doing?” says Leo.

  “Sorry to wake you,” says Jacks.

  “No worries.”

  I look around the room. There are bunk beds sporting high-end, trendy, gray-striped bedding. Tech gear and video-game detritus is everywhere, lots and lots of manga, anime DVDs, and blind-box Japanese dolls, like a toy store in Tokyo crash-landed here. This is the room of someone who never wants to grow up.

  I smile at Leo. His floppy hair, dyed neon-blue at the tips, looks even cuter all messy. I wonder if “suddenly awakened” could be a look in fashion, based on how well Leo rocks it. Those adorable eyes, reflecting kindness mixed with bafflement.

  #UniveralCrushMaterial.

  “My cousin Tye lives here,” Leo explains. “Most of this stuff is his. He works for DigitalOcean. He’s out of town for a week at an SSD cloud-server convention in Simi Valley, so he said I could crash and gave me access to all the amenities.”

  “Sweet,” says Jackson, with a low whistle.

  Leo turns to me. “I’m sorry I didn’t get uptown. All this was kind of last minute. I was gonna head straight home to DC, but then I snagged a meeting at Goldman Sachs to be a summer analyst in investment management. They pay, like, fifteen grand for the summer.”

  I cover my face with my hands. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Everything okay?” says Leo.

  “No. Everything is not okay,” I say.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Well, first off, he thinks we’re abandoning him,” says Jackson, leaning against a handsome desk made of blond wood.

  “We aren’t,” says Leo, rubbing my arm. “We would never.”

  I point at Jackson. “He yelled at me.”

  Leo scowls at Jackson. “You yelled at my Aidy?”

  “I did not yell!” Jackson yells.

  “He did. Yelled.”

  “Aw,” says Leo.

  Sometimes they baby me a little. I allow it. It’s cool.

  “Oh, man,” says Jackson, pacing. “Our little pet Aidy got into some trouble tonight. Do you want to tell him what’s up, or should I?”

  “What’s happening?” says Leo.

  “I need to charge my phone,” I say. I hand my phone to Leo and he plugs it in. He could’ve probably just thrown it in the air and it would have landed on something in here that would have charged it. I stare at Leo’s trombone, which he plays on occasion, safely gleaming in its open velvet-lined case as I explain the night’s events.

  Leo reacts by throwing his head back and laughing loudly. But when he sees we’re not laughing with him, he frowns at us. “Wait, what?”

  “Oh, yeah!” says Jackson. “Aidan is being hunted by a gang of very bad goons on motorbikes and the police maybe think he killed someone.”

  I bite my lower lip. “I’ve had better nights.”

  “Aidy, Aidy,” says Leo. “What are we going to do with you?”

  “What are we gonna do with him?” says Jackson.

  “You have to go to the police,” says Leo. “Let’s call 911.”

  “We can’t! They threatened my family if I don’t get them this item.”

  Leo looks at Jackson. “But you don’t have this item, or even know what it is.”

  “That’s what we have to figure out,” I say, my voice rising. “We’re going to figure out what it is so I can give it to them.”

  Jackson leans in. “Dude.”

  I frown at him, mimicking his serious expression. “Dude.”

  “I know this is a lot. But you’re not necessarily thinking clearly.”

  I slant my head sharply to one side. “I feel like I am. I got myself into this. I have to get myself out now.”

  “Aidan,” says Jackson, lowering his voice, measuring his words: this is his authoritative tone, which he does sometimes. It can simultaneously irritate and titillate me, but I’m not having it right now.

  “Jacks—”

  He clasps his hands together. “You just don’t want to freak out your family. I know why you do this.”

  “I’m getting a little sick of being analyzed.”

  “He’s tired,” says Leo, patting my back.

  “You have to stop mothering him,” says Jackson. “He’s making bad decisions.”

  “I am not!”

  “I’m not mothering him,” says Leo. “But he is tired.”

  “And Darren Cohen’s gay and closeted and cheating on Ashley,” I add, softly, into Leo’s ear.

  “Really?” says Leo, pressing his head lightly against mine so I can feel the slight sandpapery crunch of his stubble. “How do you—”

  “He was on DirtyPaws.”

  “Wow, that’s… uh, unexpected.” Leo makes a surprised face, then stage-whispers to Jackson: “Did you get him stoned? He seems a little stoned.”

  Jackson sighs, and rubs his face.

  “I’m good,” I say. “All good.”

  “You are too worried about freaking out your parents,” says Jacks.

  “You know how high-strung they are. I have to keep everything stable. THAT IS LITERALLY MY JOB IN LIFE.”

  Jackson: “You can’t constantly be in the position of trying to protect them.”

  “Right.” I sit up, taking charge. “I need to find out who’s coming after me, and who this Preston is these people think I am. We need to see what’s on the flash dri
ve I nabbed from that hotel room.”

  The night is coming into sharper focus now. The shock is wearing off, the pot is leaving my bloodstream, my adrenaline levels are stabilizing. I have to make decisions.

  I don’t know for sure if the police are really looking for me. I don’t know for sure if they saw my face clearly enough or know who I am, since my identity was in flux over there at the stupid Mandarin Oriental. I can obviously crash here with Leo and Jacks, but I have to meet my parents tomorrow. There cannot be any deviation from that plan or they will die from hysteria—that is a thing that will happen. And I have only my wallet and phone without any ID on me. So shit.

  The rest of my stuff is back at the hotel, and I’m wondering if it’s safe to go back there. I even handed my keycard in to the desk lady! Why did I do that?

  I don’t know what the hell I’m going to tell my parents, if I should tell them anything at all. We’re supposed to leave directly for the airport after dinner to see my death-rayed aunt—so there will be questions if I am not packed, checked out, and holding my bags when I get to the restaurant.

  “I don’t want to get my parents involved in this,” I announce, making at least one firm decision, rubbing my forehead. “They don’t deal with things well, as you know. Particularly pertaining to me. I cannot deal with a shitstorm from them right now.”

  “Well, you may not have a choice,” says Jackson.

  Jackson and Leo sit on either side of me.

  I show them the photos on my phone—I got some pretty decent shots of the bullet hole in the window, the broken glass on the carpet, and poor Benoît lying in bed—first the tattoo on his arm, then a tight shot of blood pouring out the side of his head. When I get to this particular photo, both Leo and Jackson wince and lean back, like we’re watching a horror movie.

  It’s only then I realize how fucked up what happened really was, now that the shock has worn off and I’m seeing it from a sort of distance.

  Jackson looks at me and his face softens. “I’m sorry that happened and you had to see that. I’ve been too hard on you tonight. My bad. Are you okay?”

  “It’s okay. And yeah.”

  “The guy on the phone said ‘We are the Swans’?” asks Leo, his arms wrapped around my shoulders.

  “Yep.”

  “And then there’s a swan tattoo on the dead guy,” he adds.

  “Those numbers correspond with the date of the Stonewall riots.”

  “But what does that have to do with anything?” says Jackson.

  “I don’t know yet.” I reach for my phone. Now that it’s back on and partially charged, I see a series of text messages from an unknown number.

  The first text is the shushing-face emoji.

  Oh, shit.

  But it’s too late. Jacks and Leo are looking right at it.

  The next text is a photo of my parents. I know where it’s from. For two seconds my mom had a Facebook account, didn’t know how to use it, and posted only this one photo of them, which is from a wedding they were at in Boston or something. (I swear, sometimes I think my mom isn’t so much a person as a living mass of forgotten passwords and failed CAPTCHA tests.)

  The next text says:

  An Army of Lovers Cannot Lose.

  And that’s it.

  “Don’t text back,” says Leo. “Don’t do anything.”

  I shakily put the phone facedown on my lap like it might bite me. “It’s the Swans. They know who my parents are.”

  They also know my phone number. I was talking to them on Benoît’s phone. How the hell did they get my phone number? That is so freaky.

  “Let’s just stay calm,” says Jackson.

  “I’m calm.” I take a breath.

  “Police?” says Jackson, desperate to do this, holding up his phone.

  I shake my head. “Let’s look at what’s on the flash drive.”

  Yeah, so, what we find on the flash drive is in no way comforting at all.

  There are five folders. In one of them are more photos of me. I can’t begin to describe how creepy it is seeing photos of myself on a dead guy’s flash drive. In the second folder, marked Maldrone, there are snippets of computer code. Leo thinks it’s some kind of malware.

  The third folder, labeled DroneSpecs, has PDF files of government specs for military attack drones. The MQ-9 Reaper, the RQ-4B Global Hawk, the MQ-1B Predator, and the RQ-170 Sentinel.

  The fourth folder is labeled SkyJack.

  Leo scans the contents, his coder’s eyes sparkling as he ingests its meaning, a flush of understanding washing over his cute genius face. “Oh, shit.”

  “What?” Jackson and I both say.

  “This folder contains the source code Samy Kamkar created for SkyJack.”

  “You have to talk to me like I’m a three-year-old,” I say.

  “So basically, just talk to him like you usually do,” says Jackson.

  “Okay,” says Leo. “Kamkar is a total badass hacker. He created the Samy worm, which brought MySpace to its knees in like 2005. Then he went legit. A few years ago he created the software and hardware specs anyone could use to build a Parrot drone that could hijack other Parrot drones wirelessly, creating an army of zombie drones at the mercy of its controller.”

  “That can happen for real?” says Jackson.

  “Kamkar proved it was possible. He released the source code publicly. You just needed a Raspberry Pi circuit board, wireless transmitters, and a quadcopter of your own.”

  “Yeah, who doesn’t have all that?” I say.

  “It was innocuous, though.”

  “Then what does it mean?” I say. “Why is it on there?”

  “I don’t know yet… let’s see.” Leo clicks open the last folder, titled Swan Phase 3.

  While he’s reading through it, I wonder: What the hell is Swan Phase 1? Or 2?

  “This is all loose data about weak encryption between military attack drones and their controller modules,” says Leo, reading the screen, “and how the GPS on drones can be manipulated, and their communication links jammed. This isn’t good.”

  “Why?” I say, my voice weak.

  “The Kamkar stuff, this stuff, the Maldrone stuff. It feels like an assignment for a black hat.”

  “A what?”

  “A hacker who does bad things.”

  “Oh.”

  “A white hat is a hacker who does good, helpful, playful things,” says Leo.

  I frown. “Playful?”

  “The white hats’ intent isn’t malicious,” says Leo. “They have ethics. My guess is whoever Mr. Preston is—whoever they think you are—is a black hat who was supposed to deliver them some pretty sophisticated malware that would enable them to hack military attack drones. Which is why they were gonna pay big bucks for the code.”

  I point at the flash drive. “So this is sort of like the manual of what they wanted?”

  “Exactly,” says Leo. “They were most likely awaiting a product, in the form of source code. E-mail wouldn’t be secure enough. They were probably expecting to receive a separate flash drive from you.”

  “They know who I am. So they obviously know I’m not a hacker named Mr. Preston.” I have no idea what any of this has to do with me. But at least they think I’m someone smarter than I am. I’m almost flattered someone saw my pale, goofy face and thought: Here’s a guy who can hack military drones.

  “Aidan,” says Jackson, “they thought you killed Benoît, right?”

  I nod, slowly.

  “Well. If they didn’t kill him, and you didn’t kill him…”

  “Yeah, I don’t know who killed him. That remains an open question.”

  “It’s a little too open. There’s someone else at work here. Another party.”

  “A third party,” Leo agrees.

  “They’re the ones who killed Benoît, and are obviously manipulating information, fudging your identity, tricking the Swans into thinking you’re someone else,” says Jackson.

  “Yeah. Benoît wa
s expecting someone else. I didn’t realize that he was asking me for the item, a flash drive or whatever. I thought he was talking about sex.”

  Jackson and Leo just blink at me.

  “Seriously?” says Leo.

  “Uh, I wasn’t really thinking with my brain. It was a DirtyPaws hookup.”

  Rolling his eyes, Jackson turns to Leo. “What do we know about hacking military attack drones?”

  “I’m not even sure you can hack them,” says Leo. “I can’t imagine they’d be vulnerable in that way. But they were betting some dark-web hacker genius could figure out a way to do it. And then someone stepped up to the plate.”

  “Mr. Preston,” I say.

  “Yep,” says Leo.

  “And they think I’m him.” I still can’t get over that. “But that name is so obviously fake. It’s like a villain in a dinner-party murder-mystery game.”

  “Nobody would use their real names… or expect anyone to use their real names in this line of work,” says Leo.

  Jackson is scouring all the local news outlets and their Twitter feeds, his phone in front of his face, and says there is nothing posted (yet) about a murder at the Mandarin Oriental.

  “Do you think it’s safe to go back to the hotel?” I ask.

  Leo and Jackson both shake their heads.

  “I have all my shit there. Laptop. Luggage. A cool book I was reading…”

  “I don’t think you should leave this house,” says Leo.

  “… my iPad. My Kiehl’s Facial Fuel Energizing Face Wash. Also, they have my IDs. I need to get those back. And I can’t stay here forever. And I don’t want to get you guys in trouble or involve you in all this, so…”

  “He’s giving you clues,” says Leo, looking at his phone, frowning.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “The guy on the phone. The Swan or whatever. He’s leaving a trail of bread crumbs for you.” Leo looks up at me. “Why do you think he would do that?”

  That’s a good question, because he seemed pretty sure I was lying to him about not being Preston. If he’s cluing me in about who they are, then maybe he believes me.