Kill Switch

by William Hertling

“There’s a government mole. Someone watching Angie and I, and Tapestry. I thought maybe you were that person, but I know you can’t be.”

  Essie leaned back. “You didn’t really think it was me, did you?”

  “I didn’t know what to think. I’m confused and scared.”

  Essie stared at Igloo. “Is that why you took Ben and Diana separately this morning? Because you don’t trust me enough to let me know where they are?”

  Igloo shrugged and reached out to hug Essie more tightly.

  Essie pulled away. “So I’m good enough to get you coffee and breakfast and be your fucktoy, but not trusted enough to know what’s going on. Thanks a lot, Igs.”

  “It’s not like that,” Igloo said.

  “It is exactly like that.” Essie roughly disentangled herself and stood. “Give me some space, okay?” She walked off.

  “Where are you going?” Igloo called.

  “To the other end of the fucking apartment,” Essie said, turning to stare at her. “Where do you think I’m going? To report to my boss at the FBI or something? Fuck you.” Essie walked to the far corner.

  It was almost comical, being stuck in a studio apartment together. Igloo sat there on the floor. Why was she so shitty at dealing with people?

  She wanted to talk with Essie but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She had to check in with the T2 team. It was imperative. Other than scanning the chat logs earlier, she hadn’t been in touch with anyone else since last night. They had to get refocused. Escaping the feds was meaningless unless they got the code out.

  She forced herself back into the chair. It took a half hour to turn the Windows computer into something she could trust, locking it down as much as possible, then grabbing the tools that would let her secure it the rest of the way, and only then pulling down a virtual machine image that contained her hacking environment. Of course, the hardware could have been deeply compromised to start, and nothing short of a complete rebuild would fix that. But she’d chosen the building and apartment almost at random, so she had to hope her work was good enough for now.

  At some point she heard Essie in the kitchen. When she glanced over, there was a plate of food, now cold, sitting next to her. She shoveled it into her mouth, as she finally connected to the secure Tapestry chat room.

  The chat window appeared, and Igloo choked on her food. Oh, no.

  “Oh, fuck, no! NO!”

  There was a link to an article. The preview was a photo of Igloo wielding a leather belt. The title read “Tapestry Cofounder Abuses Girlfriend.”

  There was chatter in the room about the article, but she was too shocked to read it. She didn’t want to click on the link, but she couldn’t not do it.

  The article loaded. Oh damn, there were over a million shares.

  There was a long block of text, but all she could see was the auto-play video at the very top. The video started with a close-up of her slapping Essie in the face.

  Horrified, Igloo covered her own mouth and suppressed a scream.

  The video cut to a scene of her pushing Essie to the ground. Another cut, and then a still photo of bruises on the backs of Essie’s legs. Another cut to a video of Essie crying.

  Oh God. They’d somehow gotten all this footage of them playing and edited together the clips to make it all look abusive. There were none of the tender moments of them together. Nothing of Essie smiling, or egging her on. There were no clips that showed Essie willingly, consensually, entering into the scenes with Igloo.

  Igloo keened into her hand, despite herself.

  Essie rushed over. “What…” She trailed off and leaned in to watch. “Where’d they get this?”

  Igloo shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Look, that’s Silverhall,” Essie said, pointing at the screen. “You can see the dragon on the wall in the background. They have a no camera, no phone policy. Who shot the video?”

  The video changed again, a still photo of Igloo. She turned up the audio.

  “…a senior software engineer and cofounder of Tapestry.”

  The video changed again. Essie, laying on something, crying. The picture was zoomed in to Essie’s face, which jerked in time with the sound of impact play.

  “I remember that scene. I was in a hogtie. You were spanking me with the paddle. After this you started tickling me.”

  But before the tickling started, the scene cut away again.

  “Whoever edited this is good,” Essie said. “I mean, they really make it look bad.”

  Igloo closed the browser tab. She couldn’t watch any more.

  “Why they’d do that?”

  Igloo gestured at the chat room history on the display where the members of T2 had spent the morning discussing the video.

  Gene > That’s probably why she brought Essie with us. Igloo doesn’t want her to get the chance to go the police on her own. So she has to keep an eye on her.

  Ben > Igloo has always been amazing. The model for everything we aspire to. I can’t believe she would do this.

  Diana > Yeah, just like my ex. Predators always seem nice. That’s how they get their victims.

  Mike > Think about T2 from her perspective. With everything encrypted, there’d be no way for the government to get their hands on anything like this. No wonder she’s been pushing so hard for T2. She wants to make sure the police can never get evidence of what she’s been doing.

  Diana > I’ve removed her access to the source code repo.

  Igloo thought for a moment. She had pushed a copy of the repo yesterday to her personal cloud storage, so all was not lost. And she was in the chat room, so apparently they couldn’t remove her access to that. Igloo was the sole administrator of the group.

  As she scrolled to the bottom of the chat history, she realized the group had noticed her entering the chat room.

  Ben > Igloo, you’re not welcome here.

  Diana > I’ll create a new chat room and invite everyone but Igloo. Give me a second.

  Igloo was still shaking in fear, but she forced herself to take a deep breath. She absolutely could not afford to lose the T2 team. The government somehow got access to those videos, had been planning this all along. Evidence they could use to discredit her.

  She realized now that she’s been wrong all along. She’d hidden her kink activities from her coworkers, ashamed to come out and as a result, the government had all this “evidence” on her. They could have blackmailed her, maybe. But instead they’d chosen to discredit her.

  In a way, she had to admit the agency that did this was brilliant. In one fell swoop, they’d cast doubt on both her and the T2 effort itself.

  She had to salvage things with the rest of the team. If she lost influence now, she couldn’t count on them to follow through with T2.

  Igloo > Please give me a chance to explain things. That video is all wrong. They’re trying to manipulate you.

  Mike > You’re beating the shit out of her. There isn’t really anything to debate about that.

  Igloo > Essie and I are kinky. That’s all. Those videos are tiny excerpts from consensual scenes that Essie and I chose to do together.

  Carly > Someone can’t consent to getting beat up. I had to watch my father abuse my mother my whole childhood, and she fucking defended him until the day she died. I came to Tapestry because you all cared about people, about abuse. You’re fucked up. You lied to us.

  Igloo > You’re not seeing the whole picture. If you’d seen the whole scenes, from start to end, you’d see us chatting, cuddling, and laughing together. Essie wanted this.

  Diana > It’s wrong. You’re hurting her. She’s crying. No sane person would ask for that.

  Igloo > Look, she’s right here, with me. Do you want to talk to her?

  Diana > Victims will defend their abusers. That proves nothing except that you’ve brainwashed her.

  Essie grabbed Igloo by the shoulder and forced her to look away from the screen. “Talk isn’t going to convince them of anything. We have scenes
we recorded. Show them a real scene from start to finish.”

  “Really? Give them more evidence?”

  “Show them the bathtub scene,” Essie said.

  “Where I’m drowning you? How’s that going to help?”

  “We have cuddles before and after. We had X standing by for emergencies. It’s a good one.”

  Igloo doubted that feeding more fuel into the fire of their rage was going to help, but she was losing everyone in the chat room. She had to try something different.

  She found the video Essie described and dragged it into the chatroom.

  Igloo > Watch this. Get a sense of what is really going on.

  The scene started at their kitchen table. Essie was laughing, holding up her hands in front of her face in embarrassment. X, holding the camera, couldn’t be seen, but they could hear his voice on the tape. Igloo asked for coffee, and the camera followed Essie to the kitchen. Essie came back, presented the coffee to Igloo, who took it, and petted Essie. Essie wiggled with glee when Igloo praised her. Igloo took a single sip of coffee, then ordered Essie to strip, which she did.

  Igloo zip-tied Essie’s hands to her collar and covered her eyes with a blindfold. Igloo stood and manhandled Essie toward the bathroom. X followed with the camera.

  Igloo pulled off the blindfold. Essie saw the ice cubes floating in the bathtub and tried to pull away and protest. Igloo ordered her to climb in and sit.

  Essie screamed as she descended into the cold water.

  “Watch her head,” X could be heard to say in the background.

  Igloo nodded, and put one hand behind Essie’s head as she forced her to lie down. Essie kept screaming and thrashing about, spilling cold water over the side of the tub.

  Igloo and X were laughing and grabbing towels.

  “Fuck that’s cold,” Essie said, while laughing and gasping. “Are you going to try this next?”

  “Hell, no,” X said. “That’s why we’re the tops.”

  “Hey, what happened to experiencing everything yourselves before doing it to your bottom?” Essie asked.

  “I did try,” Igloo said. “That’s why I know you’re going to hate what comes next.” She smiled and pushed Essie’s head under the water.

  More water sloshed out of the tub. Essie came up screaming and gasping.

  “Fuck, fuck. Please stop.”

  “Fuck is not a safe word, neither is stop,” Igloo said in the video. “Are you asking for the scene to stop? Do you want to call red?”

  Essie shook her head, shivering hard, teeth chattering. “No.”

  Igloo dunked her again.

  Eventually the bathtub scene ended, and X put down the video camera as he and Igloo pulled Essie out of the tub. The video resumed in the bedroom, where Essie was covered in warm blankets. X mounted the camera on a tripod while Igloo cuddled Essie under the blankets. X came and went, bringing one microwave heating pad after another, getting Essie’s body temperature up.

  Essie curled deeply into Igloo, a wide smile across her face. “Thank you” she said.

  “You’re a good pet,” Igloo said.

  The video stopped.

  There was silence in the chatroom for a long time.

  Ben > That’s fucked up.

  Carly > Igloo is a monster.

  Ben > But, and I kinda hate to say this, Essie really did seem like a perfectly willing participant.

  Carly > No fucking way. There is no way I will have anything to do with Igloo.

  Mike > That was maybe the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, but I don’t see anything abusive about it. Hell, people poured ice water over their own heads to raise money with that bucket challenge thing. I don’t see how being dunked in a bathtub is so different. Look, can we please get back to working on T2?

  Diana > I’m with Carly. There is something really wrong with both of them. I don’t care if it’s consensual or not.

  The argument continued. Igloo didn’t know if it was better or worse for her to participate.

  Ben shared a link to a psychology article.

  Ben > This study says that people who practice BDSM are happier and more well-adjusted than the population as a whole.

  That brought about a flurry of additional conversation.

  Diana > Look, regardless of what you all think, I can’t in good consciousness go along with Igloo. We have to make a decision. Do we work on T2 with Igloo or without Igloo? I’m telling you, I can’t work on it with Igloo.

  Mike > Then who goes, you or Igloo? You’re putting us in an impossible quandary. We need to be working on T2. We don’t have time to debate this. Igloo is supposed to be the leader. Igloo knows what Angie wanted. I don’t want you to leave, Diana. It’s gonna be way harder to do what we need to do without you, but I’m not going to force Igloo out to keep you.

  Igloo glanced at the time. They’d been arguing for an hour already. They were wasting precious time.

  Igloo > If we argue about this until we reach a definitive conclusion, then we’re letting the government win. They released this video specifically to distract and divide us. They can’t find us and arrest us, so they’re just going to stop us from making progress by seeding dissension and distraction. And their approach is working. Now, we need to make a call. Who’s staying on the team and working with me, and who’s going? That’s what you’ve got to decide.

  Diana > You think we’re just going to walk away from T2, and let you, an abuser, decide what’s right for the rest of the world? No fucking way. I’ve already locked down the code. You have no access. Now who’s with me?

  Igloo > Diana, you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re letting the government manipulate you into fucking up our whole project.

  Diana > Of course you’re going to say that. Meanwhile you’re the one manipulating us. Come on people, Tapestry was founded on equality and justice. You can call it BDSM or kink or whatever you want, but it doesn’t change the basic wrongness of what she’s doing.

  Melanie > I’m with Diana, people. Sorry, Igs, but I just can’t accept what you’ve done.

  Igloo wanted to bash her head against the wall. They were wasting time they’d never recover. She took a deep breath. She couldn’t give up.

  Igloo > Angie knew about my relationship with Essie. Initially she was upset, but as she learned more, she accepted it. If Angie, of all people, could accept it, what more do you want?

  Ben > That’d be great if Angie were here to convince us, but she’s not.

  Igloo thought back. She had nothing to substantiate her point. All her conversations with Angie had been in person, when they were in secured environments. There’d be no record of it.

  A third of the group was solidifying around Diana when it suddenly hit Igloo. If Diana was the mole, then the position she was taking was totally in alignment with what the government would want: getting control over T2.

  Carly > We’ve got a problem. These scanners you’ve got are lighting up across the board.

  Igloo switched tabs. There was encrypted radio traffic everywhere. The FBI was on the move. Had they somehow located everyone again?

  Igloo was out of safe houses, and she couldn’t personally get everyone to a new safe location. She needed help.

  Chapter 45

  Igloo’s heart pounded as the phone seemed to ring forever.

  “Good to hear from you,” Forrest said when she answered.

  “You know what’s going on?” Igloo said.

  “They have a track on multiple members of your team.”

  “You know how?” Igloo asked.

  “No. It’s coming direct from BRI.”

  “Can you stop them? Buy us some time? We need two uninterrupted days, somehow.”

  “I can sanitize you all, get you to a safe house.”

  “I’ve done that three, four times, but it doesn’t work. They keep finding us.”

  “They’ve got a tracker on you.”

  “I’ve scanned. Many times.” Igloo squeezed the phone harder, wonder
ed if it might snap in her hand.

  “Then they’re tracking your digital trail. IMEI. Wi-fi. MAC address. VPN connection points.”

  “All randomized, regenerated every time we connect to a new access point.”

  “Maybe that’s it,” Forrest said. “Maybe they’re scanning for new MAC addresses. They’ve got the computing power to crank through them all. Correlate with encrypted traffic.”

  Oh fuck. “Maybe that’s it,” Igloo said. “But even if we change now, I’m out of safe houses.”

  “I can get you somewhere untraceable.”

  Igloo felt a pit grow in her stomach. Trust the Fed that far? Did she have a choice?

  “How would you get us there?”

  “Can you get everyone to the Lloyd Center mall?” Forrest asked.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Plenty of people, vehicles, and electronics, in and out. No satellite coverage. If you come in dark, and I mean totally dark, not a single device on you, then I can get you out cleanly and take you somewhere safe.”

  Igloo hesitated. She had to be bold, and sometimes that meant trusting people.

  “Let’s do it.”

  “They want me to provide them a safe house,” Forrest said. She scanned a screen providing a running transcription of agent chatter.

  “As we planned,” Nathan9 said. “Do it.”

  “It’s going to be harder than we thought,” Forrest said. “There’s forty extra agents on the ground right now, in addition to local Portland FBI. A good portion of them are BRI. I can’t control them, don’t know who they are.”

  “Where are you sanitizing them?”

  “Shopping mall. Good transit to it. Plenty of roads in and out.”

  “I’ll give you cover from BRI.”

  “There’s no way you can guarantee that.”

  “I’ll give them a compelling distraction. Some of Angie’s old safe houses.”