by Rae Mariz
“You’re vred,” I said, taking a step back. He couldn’t tell the difference between what was part of a video game and what was not. He moved close into my space, close enough to kiss me, but the closeness was more threatening than intimate.
“Protecht hasn’t completed its investigations,” he said in a low voice. “No one’s secrets are safe.”
I logged out and headed across the parking lot to the Game shuttle pickup spot. I saw Ari sitting on the hood of her car. I was surprised when she saw me too and jumped down, walked over to me.
“Do you hate me?” she asked in the way she always did when we had a fight.
Yes. My brain knew this was an easy question, but I still didn’t know what to say. I missed her, but I hated that I missed her. I couldn’t believe she could just walk up to me like nothing happened.
“Everyone’s been talking about you,” she said when I didn’t answer.
Yeah, I wonder why that is, Ari.
I couldn’t do this. I wasn’t going to be able to have a conversation with her without losing it.
“Ari, what do you want?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to make sure that we were still friends.”
I opened my mouth to speak, kind of choking on my shock. “How could you think we’re still friends? You were the one who dropped me, remember? You told Protecht my password and you ditched me and I didn’t do anything.”
“Yeah right, you didn’t do anything. You only took credit for my searches, and ignored Rocket in the VIP Lounge and didn’t tell her about what was going on with Palmer and Eva, and kept me from being branded by Hit List, and stole Jeremy Swift when you knew I liked him.”
I didn’t know Ari liked Jeremy. I mean, she acted that way about all branded guys, so excuse me if I didn’t take her infatuation seriously. She could have him. The overambitious backstabbers would make a lovely couple.
“Besides…you should be thanking me,” she said. “Do you think anyone would know your name if it wasn’t for me?”
She was probably right. If she hadn’t given my password to Protecht, I wouldn’t have had to tell them about the pariah virus. And people wouldn’t be talking now.
I looked at Ari. Half her face hidden behind her bangs. Thinking that her cruel betrayal was just part of the Game.
35 ZERO FRIENDS
I wanted to talk to someone. To not feel this alone in my room with my dog. But it was a Friday night and Mikey’s page was still suspended. And even if she wasn’t flirting shamelessly with cool hunters at After Hours right now, there was no way I could ever confide in Ari. I held my intouch® but there was no one to listen.
I checked the Network rankings. There were hundreds of names listed on-screen, all followed by strings of the emptiest of non-numbers. Nationwide, kids were dropping out of Network because of the pariah virus scare.
This whole attack plan hadn’t been a revolutionary action, a way to fight back. It had just been a cleverly disguised Zeronet campaign, a plan to cut into their competitors’ marketshares. Zeronet was positioning themselves on top while everyone was racing to the bottom.
All these zeros had to add up to something.
I thought about how I’d used this same ranking page to find the members of the Unidentified only a few weeks ago. Even their identities were buried in the Zeronet privacy trend. If I would’ve done the same search today, I never would’ve found them. Elijah Carmichael, Sophia Carvalho, Cayenne Lewis. Just a part of nothing.
I wondered if they knew they were involved in a Zeronet business strategy. I sat up in bed.
Did the Unidentified know?
Cayenne had come looking for me at Mikey’s because she was convinced Kant was keeping secrets from the Unidentified. She was probably the only one who could understand what I was feeling right now. This feeling of being used. Cheated.
I wished I could talk to her, but I didn’t know how.
Even though I hadn’t erased my contact list as part of the virus scare, Katey Dade had zero friends.
36 PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN
I didn’t know if I would find them there or not, but it was the only place I could look.
I used Alibi to synch my intouch® and headed out into the Saturday early morning calm to break into a prison.
It stood in the city center, a massive stone monument, but almost invisible. No one noticed it anymore. It was just in the background while everyone went around living their lives.
I found the grate Kant had opened; he had shown me the way. Or I thought he had. It was embarrassing to remember how I’d felt then compared with what I knew now.
The loose rocks in the tunnel whispered quietly with my footsteps. What if he was waiting on the other side? Would he be as charming now that I knew his secret?
I stood crouched in the underground. Should I move forward or go back? I didn’t want to go back.
Inside the prison yard, I retraced the steps I’d taken when I’d followed him. I was about to push open the door to the administration building when I heard a voice behind me.
“What are you doing in here?”
I spun around to see Cayenne standing in the gray morning. I smiled, relieved to see her. She didn’t smile back.
“Is he here?”
“Why are you looking for him?”
“I’m not. I was looking for you.”
She watched me, her face neutral. “Well, you found me.” Then she turned back toward the watchtower. She stopped and looked back. “You coming?”
We climbed the creeping stairs. “What’s up here?” I asked, panting a little.
“Nothing. Better reception,” she mumbled. The room at the top was just as trashed as the rest of the prison. Small panes of glass were knocked out of the window overlooking the yard like missing teeth.
Cayenne walked to the window where she’d left her notebook® running. “What are you doing here?” she asked again.
I didn’t know where to start. “Have you ever heard of Zeronet?”
“Please leave the promotional content out of this conversation, thanks.”
“I’m not—” I hated that she always made me feel so under attack. “I think Brenton Kant is working for a company called Zeronet,” I snapped. “This is entirely relevant.”
She looked up from her notebook®, her full attention finally on me. There was something almost scary about the openness of her features, how vulnerable and delicate she looked. I almost wished she would go back to being a defensive bitch. “How do you know?” she asked softly.
I told her about how Zeronet was rising in rankings while everyone else was dropping out. How Protecht had a file on Brenton Kant that said he had completed the Game and was employed by Zeronet.
“I still don’t know why he attacked Mikey,” I said, thinking back to the security footage replay. “Why he had to be involved.”
“To get you invested,” she said numbly. “So you’d spread the word.”
“What?”
“I couldn’t figure out why he confided in you all the details about the virus that day.” She nodded toward the administration building. “He kept saying he could trust you to do the right thing.”
I was still confused and it must’ve shown.
“He knew you would tell your sponsors about it to protect your friend,” she said. “You did, right? You told them?”
I didn’t want to admit to her that I had sold them out, but the truth was obvious when I blurted, “But why would he want me to inform Protecht?”
She looked back at her notebook®, stared at her screen for a long time, then she stood up. “He had been hyping the virus the whole time. Saying how we should spam the Network with an invitation to a protest party with this sneak-code buried in it.” She continued, spitting out her words. “But he kept on wanting me to rewrite the invitation, to tell people they had been infected by this thing and I didn’t understand how he expected to get people to our event right after we oh-by-the-way effed up their Network status.”
“No. We never sent them out. This pariah virus thing took off on its own and—” she stopped and looked at me.
“It’s a hoax,” I said hollowly.
This was all my fault. All the hysteria about the pariah virus started when I’d mentioned it to Harrison.
I had been played.
37 SECRET’S OUT
“Do you guys have a Bat-signal or something?” I was in the passenger seat of Cayenne’s car again, heading to Mikey’s, where the Unidentified agreed to meet us.
“Who do you think we are?” Cayenne said, checking her mirror. “I just texted them.”
We pulled into Mikey’s driveway where Lexie and Tycho were waiting. “Why are we meeting here?” Lexie wanted to know.
“Mikey’s mobility has been limited to his family’s property since his game was put on pause,” I answered.
“Yeah, but why does he—?”
“He’s as involved in this Zeronet conspiracy as we are,” Cayenne said before I could. “It’s only fair.”
Lexie shrugged.
“Have you heard from Elijah and Sophia?” Cayenne asked Tycho.
“Sophia’s having problems getting out here, so Elijah’s going to stop by and assist. He said he’d race here direct after.”
I could tell Mikey was more than a little weirded out about having the Unidentified in his bedroom. But he hid it well.
“I haven’t ever even heard of Zeronet,” Tycho said, shaking his head.
“Oh, but I bet we would have,” Lexie said. “When the time was right, hype at its highest, a big reveal of the anti-Network company. Promising privacy for whatever price.”
“And we would’ve bought it,” Cayenne said. “Because we are a target market.” She paused, then asked me. “Do you think Trendsetters was in on it?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. But probably not. They thought it was genuine dissent they were tapping into…I don’t think they knew they were popularizing a Zeronet campaign.”
Mikey’s mom knocked on the door. “More of your friends here to see you,” she said. Elijah and Sophia came in the room behind her. “Is everything OK?”
I smiled at her. “Yeah, we’re fine,” I answered. “Just missing Mikey.”
Mikey looked at her and shrugged. Everything about Mikey’s smile made him look guilty. She closed the door behind her, properly suspicious.
“I wonder what your mom thinks about a flash mob of friends showing up on your doorstep on a Saturday morning,” I teased him.
“I don’t know. But I doubt she would deny a prisoner his visitors. She’s been arguing with the administrators to let me play again.” He did a devastatingly perfect impression of her. “It’s not fair for my son to be under suspicion for being on the receiving end on some bully’s knuckles.”
“We’re all under suspicion for being on the receiving end,” Sophia muttered.
“We’re all under suspicion, period,” Cayenne said with such finality that it was true. “I just…” Her eyes were wet and bright with frustrated tears. “I don’t want to believe it’s impossible to do anything real. We weren’t a part of the Unidentified to be a fashion trend or a viral marketing sensation. We wanted to send a message.”
The mood in the room was still less than convinced.
“Well, then let’s send it,” I said.
The Unidentified sent out an invitation.
We didn’t use Network. Well, we did use it, but not in the way their corporate headquarters expected us to. Tesla and Elle had been freestyling with Mikey’s code, the one he developed to cache our music in the unused online spaces, and expanded it to mark available hidey holes in the same way Tesla’s empty parking lot locator worked.
We set up an UnID page that sponsors or Protecht or Network administrators themselves couldn’t even see, let alone monitor. Elle tried to explain it to me.
“You know what a mirror site is, right? Well, this is like a shattered mirror site, the shards of info hidden here and there and visible when a user follows a link. The pieces look like they’re reconstructed, like you can see it and interact with it, but it’s like an illusion. Multiple projections from separate locations that combine into something complete, but still a reflection of something untouchable.”
I was just going to have to trust her.
People who dared to follow the link to the hidden UnID page in the face of the pariah hysteria were given an invitation.
You are invited to a party. You and everyone you know. It doesn’t matter if your haircut is genuine or ironic. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen that film everyone’s talking about. It doesn’t matter if you would rather be left the hell alone. It doesn’t matter if no one else is doing it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have anything to wear. It doesn’t matter if your friends think it’s stupid. The pariah virus is just a hoax designed to keep us disconnected. You are invited to a party. We want you to come.
Where: The parking lot outside your local Game site. When: Fri 20:00.
The secret’s out.
Love,
the UnID
We spammed the entire Network with it, and the word-of-mouth whispers turned to shouts.
This was going to be epidemic.
38 THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN
We sat in the Arcade, watching responses pour in from around the nation. Thanks to the mainstream momentum from the ridiculous Unidentified craze, we were getting so many clicks. People were so interested in finding out what the Unidentified had planned that they ignored the hyper-precautions about the pariah virus.
“I’d like to take a moment to thank our sponsors,” I mumbled, staring at the screen.
Some of the comments on the UnID Network page were promising:
High-volt idea. My whistle rock band has only played secret gigs in our drummer’s basement. We’re ready to make a bigger scene. by jkatz.
Others disheartening:
Will there be more UnID merchandise at the party? I LUVVVV U GUYYZ. Also, who are you? by lilmissbigsis.
But mostly, kids were using the UnID page to plan and organize and give one another tips on how to pull it off.
Cayenne was letting people know how to subvert the inevitable arrival of authorities to crash the party.
There’s always a chance the party may be crashed by uninvited guests. These individuals have a history of being stinky and causing drama, so accessorize accordingly. by the UnID.
I got an official message on my intouch®.
#sysadmin: you’re scheduled for mandatory conference in headquarters. report to sponsors for escort. @KID
“Oh no, guys.” I showed them my intouch®.
“Are you going to go?”
“You do know the definition of mandatory, right?” I snapped. My guts were twisted with nerves. I didn’t like the idea of stepping into that office with Harrison and Anica representing me. I wished it didn’t have to be a one-player game.
I put my intouch® away and thought of something. Or someone.
I told Carol Winterson as much as I could about my situation, which was more than I had told anyone before. She seemed particularly disturbed about Brenton Kant’s status.
“Where is he now?”
I shrugged. None of us had seen him since the pariah virus scare had taken off. He was probably living luxe in his house at Shady Lane Estates and getting bonuses for making his underground marketing movement go mainstream.
Winterson frowned. “Let’s go have that talk with the administrators,” she said, standing up.
She led me into headquarters and hit the buzzer at the administrators’ office.
“Carol,” Dr. Grant said, surprised to see her with me. “We were expecting Ms. Dade to arrive with her sponsors.”
“She requested that I attend this meeting with her,” Winterson said formally.
Mrs. Bond raised one of those perfectly plucked eyebrows of hers. “I don’t see why that is neces
sary. This is a partnership matter. Her sponsors have requested termination of their sponsorship agreement. Fraudulent security claims cost the Game not only credit, but reputation as well.”
“As I understand it,” Winterson interrupted, “Katey did not knowingly supply fraudulent claims to her sponsors. She merely relayed information she believed to be accurate when her friend had been threatened with expulsion for an act he did not commit. She was acting well within her obligations under Game policy, and I’ll reserve my opinions about whether or not Protecht Securities was acting within theirs.”
The administrators exchanged an irritated glance. “Carol, your opinions on Game policy have rarely been reserved,” Mrs. Bond sneered. “I don’t believe this is an a appropriate discussion to be having in front of—”
“She shouldn’t be kept out of discussing policies that affect her,” Winterson argued.
They looked at me, all three of them. I was painfully aware that I hadn’t said a word in this exchange, and also that there wasn’t anything I could say. The things that determined how the Game was played happened so far away from where I had any influence. Places I wasn’t allowed to be.
“That will be all, Ms. Winterson,” Dr. Grant said, not looking at her.
“I came here to make sure—”
“Your services are no longer required,” he said, cutting her off. He was still looking at me, calm and unbothered as he was ending someone’s career. “Would you please accompany these gentlemen out?”
Winterson stared at him. Two young Protecht guards showed up in the doorway. Mrs. Bond had signaled them already. Winterson turned to leave before they could touch her. She said to me, “It’s not the only game in town.”
I watched her leave. It was the only Game in town, actually. The other locations were outside the district, but she wasn’t going to be able to work in any of those if she was banned from the system. Score didn’t transfer if you got Game Over.