by Russ Linton
Rolling to face the opposite wall, I respond quietly, “Don’t bother. This probably means I’m back to normal.”
Night terrors, waking up drenched in sweat; bullshit from the bunker I guess I haven’t escaped. Now though, the dreams keep changing. Always her and that weird light. I wonder if she’s out there, hurting, waiting for me to find her. I suddenly don’t know what’s been real these past few hours and what’s been a dream.
“What happened to Dad?”
Emily’s voice quivers. “He surrendered.”
I roll to my back and press my hands over closed eyes. Pushing, bearing down until rigid sockets stop the heel of my palm and stars burst in the dark. When Dad arrived the day Mom was taken, the only words I could manage were, “Mom’s gone.” The look in his eyes, I’ll never forget it. The confidence, the intensity that always burned there, flickered. For a moment his armor had disintegrated. At least that’s what I’d always thought.
Then that weakness had passed. He’d scooped me out of the rubble, and we’d left. We never spoke about that day again. He never pushed. But I wanted him to console or even interrogate me. At the same time, speaking about what happened was too painful.
On the surface, Dad adjusted. I’d thought it was because he was the strongest Augment ever created. Showing weakness got weeded out of his DNA.
In my gut, I know now this is all his fault. Mom disappearing. Me being trapped in an icy hell. And that Black Beetle bastard using me as a pawn in whatever bullshit scheme they might have going.
Emily leans back as I shift to the edge of the bed, the cool cloth in her hand held frozen midair.
“I’m fine. It’s fine.” My backpack sits on the floor next to the bed. “Perfectly fine.” I try to switch off the painful scenes playing through my imagination, and start rummaging through the pack until I find the thumb drive.
“Do you… do you want to talk about it?” Emily sounds confused, her tone begs for information, a way to help. She doesn’t know the rules.
“I’m going to need your laptop.” As I rise from the bed, I avoid eye contact and cover the short distance to the door.
“Spencer, I know this is hard. Believe me, it isn’t any easier…” Her words end in a ragged sigh. “I’ve been thinking about this for hours while you were sleeping. Right now, the best way I can help Sean is to keep you safe, like he asked.” Her voice trembles.
There it is again. Everyone keeping me safe. Slumping against the door frame, my forehead comes to rest at a painful angle on the doorjamb. I grind my head against the corner. Pain, at least I’ve got that. Must have gotten that from Mom.
A tear burns my cheek as I face Emily. “May I please use your laptop?”
“You don’t need to do anything. Let me…”
“No. I do. I’m the only one left that can find her.”
Emily stares for a long time, swallowing her tears and examining my face. Tiny wrinkles mark the worry in her eyes and crease ever so slightly around the edges of her nose. When I take her hand, she pulls me in and strokes the back of my head. I let it happen.
For several minutes we cling together until she exhales. Her chest flutters against mine, and I can tell she’s been silently crying. I step back. “Okay, okay,” I say, rubbing my face to hide any evidence. “I’m good.”
“C’mon.” Emily steps into the main living area and heads for the kitchen table. The scent of java overpowers the room, and a half-empty mug sits next to the laptop. “We’re going to do this together, Spencer. I’m right here. Are you sure you’re ready for this?” I’m confused, but I nod anyway and sit.
Browser windows clutter the laptop screen and I mouse through them. News sites with footage from Mumbai, maps of India, lists of sightings on Augment fansites, news archives about Augment clashes.
“What’s all this?”
“Research. It’s the only way I feel I can help. I was hoping to find a clue to where Sean might have been taken. Find patterns.”
“Any luck?”
“Sort of.” Emily sighs and opens a spreadsheet. “The Black Beetle’s attacks don’t make sense.”
The sheer organization and neatly color-coded rows is impressive enough, let alone the complex formulas peeking out of the cells. This must have taken hours, maybe days, to put together.
“Wow. OCD much?” No snort of laughter at my snide remark, just a “grow up” eyebrow twitch. “Exactly how long was I asleep?”
“Seven hours.”
“Really? You did all this in seven hours? Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You needed the sleep.” She dives back into the data. “For a guy bent on world domination, Black Beetle’s attacks appear unfocused. Plus, he’s usually running into Augments along the way.”
“What’s so weird about that?” I ask, moving closer to the screen.
“You’d think he’d avoid them. Most don’t have powers that facilitate transportation. And by his target areas, Black Beetle appears to have been intentionally seeking out encounters. The only data point these locations seem to have in common is proximity to an Augment.”
“Taking out the competition?”
“That’s been the end result so far. Extremely efficient, and with maximum mess.” She points to a column. It lists a series of media monikers given to individual augments: Red Scourge, Titan, Fallout, Ember. The press had a field day when Augments went “covert”. Without knowledge of the proxy wars, it was the perfect flashy, attention-getting crap that gives reporters hard-ons. Fancy names, colorful suits, explosions. Once all that was exposed and governments began to disavow and shut down the programs, Augments went “rogue”, or “freelance”—depending on who your favorites were.
On this spreadsheet though, the only flashy part is the dominant color in the column of Augment names.
“Why are all those names highlighted in red?”
“They’re ones that have been… eliminated, or captured.”
“That many? Since when?”
“I keep forgetting how long you’ve been gone. Most of this happened in the past two years.” She pauses before continuing, “There’s something else. A statistically significant correlation between your Dad’s activities and the Black Beetle’s.”
“Are you saying they’re working together?” I try to sound surprised and I watch Emily’s face closely.
Her response is immediate and she sounds shocked. “No! Correlation. That’s all. You can’t infer—”
“How much do you know about Dad’s work?”
This time, her response comes more slowly. “We only worked together once. I know he was freelancing for the U.S. government, but he never gave details.”
“Welcome to my hell,” I mumble. She might be lying, but it sounds so familiar.
“All I can say is, based on this data, for a while every time Sean was rounding up a dangerous Augment for the government, the Black Beetle would strike, usually on the opposite side of the globe. But it gets really interesting here.” She mouses over a date, exactly one day after Mom disappeared. One day after we fled to the bunker. “The attacks became less centralized. Drone swarms would strike anywhere. Everywhere. Augments were already thinned out. Civilians became the Beetle’s targets.”
When I first saw the raw data at the bunker, I tried to match dates up to Dad’s “business trips” in my head. Presented here in perfect, color-coded columns, it’s clear—flesh and bone Augments were being taken out of service on all sides; meanwhile, the Beetle was manufacturing more and more drones. Then, once I was incarcerated in my ice tray of doom, those drones were unleashed en masse. I’m reminded of the news footage from last night.
“Pawn storm.”
“What?”
“Chess. You overwhelm your opponent’s defenses with rapidly advancing pawns.” None of this explains why or if he was working with the Black Beetle. I reach into my pocket and pull out the thumb drive.
“What’s on there?” Emily slides a second chair over and sits as I pop the
drive in.
“It’s, um, well, complicated.”
“Please. I can handle complicated,” Emily scoffs.
Right. PhD, technophile, way too excited about spreadsheets, friends with an Augment. “Data,” I say. “Data from the server back at, what did you call the bunker, Hotel Popsicle?”
“That’s not what I called it, but you’ve earned the right to call it whatever you want.”
“Fine. The Icehole,” I mumble as I reach for the keyboard. “I copied some of the data before I melted the servers.”
“Wow. Nice job… I think…” She sounds a bit stunned.
I kick the explanation into overdrive to try and derail any more safety lectures. “Part of the server held public data, like your Project OCD there. News reports, unclassified government info, that sort of thing. But that wasn’t all.” Emily nods and scoots closer as I continue, “Another batch, about the Black Beetle, was heavily encrypted. Probably whatever Dad uncovered trying to find him.”
“We find the Beetle, we find Sean,” Emily says hesitantly.
“Yeah.” And maybe Mom. The screen blinks as a list of scrambled files scroll by. “First problem, the old server interface isn’t here.”
Emily stretches across me and her fingers dance along the keys. “Your Dad’s the one that gave me this laptop. It’s got an emulator.” Her index finger swirls along the touchpad. The files light up blue and ghost out as she drags them. Flicking her pinky to open a second program, a familiar prompt pops up, exactly like the terminals at the bunker.
“There!” She leans back, hands on her hips and a crooked smile. “Don’t suppose you know the password?”
I stare at the familiar prompt in awe. “The one for the system was easy. Turns out even Augments suck at remembering passwords. It was Mom’s name and their anniversary.” I swivel to bask in her appreciation of my genius. A distant look in her eyes quickly dodges behind a tight smile. I manage a smirk and turn back to the laptop. Using the server emulator I load the data, but have to ask, “How the heck did you know what that program even did?”
“Well, I said I worked with your Dad before.”
“Right, ‘if you tell me you’ll have to kill me’ sort of stuff.”
“Yeah. Let’s leave it at that.” Emily stands up.
“So, you’ve got to know other people he worked with, right? Augments? Shady government types?” I ask casually as I punch in the password for the login screen.
“Not many. Our work was very case-specific and had no connection with the Black Beetle. I don’t see how any info I have can help.” Emily’s voice sounds farther away but I’m absorbed in getting the internet connection back up, surfing to sites with the right tools for taking a crack at this password.
“You say not many, so that means you know somebody. Why don’t we call them up?”
“Remember the data, Spencer. The Black Beetle seemed to always know the right times to strike. And he found the bunker. He found your home. There’s no telling who passed on that information to him. Who we can trust.”
She’s right. But I want more answers. Here’s someone that shared in at least a part of Dad’s hush-hush work. It’s frustrating. Unfair.
“So, exactly how long have you known Dad?” I twist to face an empty room. Her bedroom door closes softly.
“Emily?”
Right. Leave it at that.
Chapter 16
It’s been ages since I’ve had internet access. Within seconds of Emily’s disappearing act, I’m like a crack addict handed a pipe.
After downloading some crypto software, hex editors and a few system tools, the time comes to locate the D3dm4n$ Ch3$t. Tracking down the site takes a while. The portal regularly relocates, piggybacking off legitimate websites until discovered and then relocating. Once there, you take a dive into the Deep. Since I helped create the site, I know ways to find it.
A Giant’s game is running in another open window. Crash-landing in civilization couldn’t have happened at a better time, ‘cause the playoffs are in full swing and the Giants made the cut. Hacking, baseball; you gotta have hobbies.
I tried Little League one season, and Mom was supportive, but it was obvious I sucked. She wasn’t any better, and I had to imagine that playing catch with Dad would have been the equivalent of dodging incoming mortar fire. So I settled on watching the Big Show.
We moved and changed names so often that satellite and cable rarely got hooked up. Reading about games in the paper or watching highlight reels online sucks. I needed real-time coverage, and the broadband connections at public libraries obliged.
Library card, headphones, a CD with enough hacking tools to disable the nonsense, half-ass filters they’d install, and I was set. If the less clueless, more vigilant librarians were on shift, I’d be happy with a book. When the shift change happened, I’d be in the computer lab, catching up on the games by hacking live streams or torrenting video files.
I only got ejected from the library once. The ump in that game, I swear, was blind, but unfortunately the librarian on duty wasn’t completely deaf. He had no appreciation for a creative vocabulary, like you’d figure a librarian should.
Finally, between pitches, I get a fix on the D3dm4n$ Ch3$t. A familiar series of telephonic tones blares from the laptop speaker. Not the stereo speakers, but the system speaker tucked away on the motherboard. On screen, a pixelated pirate skeleton dances to the blaring sea shanty over a chest of green circuit boards. I log into the forum using a new alias and a throwaway e-mail account.
The guys here are mostly video geeks who decode DVDs. Usually huge collections of weirdo hentai porn, involving robots and tentacles and other messed-up shit. But there are also guys that can hack satellite receiver smart cards and pay-per-view in their sleep. Those guys are the real deal.
I search the posts for Eric’s handle: “Enigma”. It’s there, all over the damn place. He’s probably still running the site out of his parent’s basement in the hills of San Francisco. A couple thousand miles away, but with the music playing, I feel so close. The basement, the Throne; Babe, his liquid-cooled beast of a computer. Our computer.
Eric was a diehard Giants fan, a guy who didn’t mind hanging out with a kid a few years younger—I was fourteen and he was sixteen when we first met. Quiet, a little nutty, but we had a lot in common.
I almost told him everything once. A crowd-drunk moment after an amazing Giants game. We were in the parking lot reliving each inning as if we hadn’t both just left the stadium together. The booming hits, the key catches, both pitchers nearly throwing no-hitters until the last inning when an all-out slugfest ensued. The runs kept coming late into the night until the thirteenth inning, when a ball soared out over the center field bleachers and the crowd roared. Beyond late, the parking lot had nearly emptied by the time we headed to his car. Opening up and laying out the details of my bullshit life seemed right at that moment. He was a friend. He deserved truth.
Then, we both heard explosions downtown. He wanted to go straight home. I wanted to see it. No need for me to tell him, I could show him the truth. There were pops and screeches and the sounds of bricks toppling echoed through the streets. That excitement of the game, along with a mixture of pride and fear, hit me all at once.
“Dude, if it’s bad, the Crimson Mask will be there,” Eric said as he tore out of the parking lot. “I got my license less than a week ago and my Mom thinks I’m at your house.”
I nodded and kept quiet.
I hadn’t told Mom where I was going either. I figured that’s what guys do. She’d never have let me go to a late game on a school night anyway, and it had ended way past curfew because of the extra innings. Mom had been pissed when I got home. Really pissed. Really anxious. Thinking about her face that day, her face from the dream comes to mind first, with those silvery eyes.
I’ve gotta focus. I browse the different forums; there’s the Deck for your general posts, the Hold for links to digital booty, and the Captain’s Cabin for
Eric and me. It’s been so long since we spoke, I’ve got no clue what he’ll even think, but as long as I don’t get quarantined to Davy Jones’ blacklist, things should be fine.
I’m connected through a proxy and routing my outgoing transmissions through several legit servers. Standard procedure for a pirate site, but perhaps more important now. Capturing a snippet of a few of my login attempts to the bunker’s encrypted data is easy. I grab enough to pique Eric’s interest but not give away what it could be entirely.
Subject: Looking 4 encryption type…
By: s1ug3rGIANT
IP Logged: 72.32.138.96
Can ne1 id this encryption? Bet u can’t lol.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
(WARNING: This post has been modified by the moderator. Message: DON’T BE A DOUCHE)
RE: Looking 4 encryption type…
By: 3n1g|/|4 – Moderator
IP Logged: PRIVATE
Read the FAQ.
RE: Looking 4 encryption type…
By: s1ug3rGIANT
IP Logged: 134.29.231.1
Did. Long time ago. Wouldn’t be here if I was following the rules.
RE: Looking 4 encryption type…
By: 3n1g|/|4 – Moderator
IP Logged: PRIVATE
PM me if you know me.
RE: Looking 4 encryption type…
By: s1ug3rGIANT
IP Logged: 168.161.242.18
Don’t have any of my old addresses, progs, tools, gear, etc. U know the encryption or not? Like I said, spent a long time away from civilization.