Antisocial Media (Gray Spear Society Book 11)

by Alex Siegel

"Do you ever wish you weren't a Spear?"

  "There are days when it's hard," Ipo said. "The training is difficult and sometimes painful. I've seen things I wish I could forget. Every year, I lose another little chunk of my humanity. I become more unnatural. You've met the legate, right?"

  Hanley nodded. "Yes, back in Chicago. Her eyes are terrifying. She has this black aura of death."

  "Every legionnaire walks down the same road. She's much further along, but even she's not as bad as it gets. God has worse monsters in His army. I've looked into dry, empty eye sockets, and I've seen oblivion..." Ipo closed his eyes and shuddered.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Never mind. Just be quiet."

  Katie returned after twenty minutes with two plastic bags full of Chinese food. She handed them to Hanley, and he carefully opened the individual containers. One held spareribs in barbeque sauce, and the steamy aroma made his stomach grumble. Another held Kong Pao chicken which also looked delicious. He sprinkled the sleeping powder into each container.

  "That should do it," Hanley said.

  "Deliver the food," Ipo told Katie, "then come right back here."

  Hanley and Ipo got out of the car, still wearing their paramedic costumes. Katie sat in the driver's seat and drove off. The Soulfriends corporate headquarters was only a couple of blocks away, so Hanley didn't expect her to take long.

  The two men walked around the Chinese restaurant to a lot in back. The ambulance was parked there out of public view. The vehicle was white with blue and red stripes.

  "We're driving a stolen ambulance to a medical emergency that we created," Hanley said. "The ethics of this operation are highly questionable."

  "You sound like a rookie," Ipo said.

  "I'll accept that. I'm still trying to get over the torture session I witnessed the other night."

  "Marina is a good interrogator?"

  "She did unspeakable things to that man," Hanley said, "but she got the information she wanted. I was nauseated and impressed at the same time."

  Ipo sat in the driver's seat of the ambulance, and Hanley climbed in on the passenger side. He turned on the dispatch radio. The sound of static filled the cabin of the ambulance.

  Ipo smiled. "I'm starting to like her. She's intense."

  "She's absolutely nuts. Did you see her threaten Min Ho with a knife? I thought the poor guy was going to shit his pants."

  "It was justified. Min Ho made a bad mistake. In our business, mistakes like that get people killed."

  Hanley shook his head in dismay. Even during his toughest years in the Navy Seals, he had never seen a commander threaten a subordinate with a knife. That kind of behavior could earn an officer a dishonorable discharge if not time in the stockade.

  Katie returned about fifteen minutes later. She parked the car beside the ambulance and climbed into the back. She began to replace her delivery girl costume with a paramedic costume. Hanley kept his eyes forward to give her some privacy.

  "The delivery went well?" Ipo called over his shoulder.

  "No problems," she said. "I dropped off the food at the front desk, got paid, and left. I even got a nice tip."

  "Those tight little shorts are why."

  "Yeah." Katie paused. "I hope I don't have to dress like a bimbo too much. It's humiliating."

  "We use the abilities God gave us," Ipo replied. "You're a pretty woman. You can't ignore that advantage when dealing with men."

  "But I want to be taken seriously as a legionnaire. I'm not just a sexy body."

  "Talk to Marina. She'll have better advice than me on that topic."

  The conversation ended, and Hanley listened to the radio. Occasionally, he heard the squawk of somebody speaking, but it was hard to understand the words.

  Ipo's phone rang. He answered the call and listened for a moment. Then he said, "We're on our way." He hung up.

  "Well?" Hanley said.

  "That was Min Ho. He reported that Soulfriends just called for an ambulance."

  Ipo turned on the lights and started driving. Traffic cleared out of the way during the short trip to their destination. They were already so close, there was no chance of another ambulance getting there first.

  He parked directly in front of the lobby with the lights still flashing. All three legionnaires spilled out of the ambulance and ran inside. They were carrying red bags full of emergency medical supplies, and Hanley's bag included the network tap.

  Three security guards ushered them through the corporate office. Hanley glanced to either side as the group jogged along. He saw white rooms filled with grids of identical cubicles, and each cubicle contained a solitary man or woman. The furniture and carpeting were solid black.

  Hanley had never worked in an office setting, and he was glad about it. The employees seemed trapped in their individual cages like chickens on a chicken farm. The idea of being chained to a desk month after month, year after year, made him sick. That wasn't how human beings were meant to live. That kind of life would certainly kill him.

  On the other hand, he didn't see anything overtly dangerous or supernatural. Most people were just quietly working at their computers. T-shirts were common, and nobody wore a tie. The women were better dressed than the men but not by a lot. At least it looked like the women had thought about their appearance instead of just grabbing the first article of clothing that came to hand.

  The black and white color scheme was unsettling though. Everything was clean, geometrically regular, and colorless, as if the designer had been terrified of ambiguity.

  "I don't like this place," Ipo muttered as they ran along.

  They entered a break room with tables and vending machines. Five men were lying on the tile floor, and all of them had the dark features of immigrants from Southern Asia.

  "What happened?" Hanley said.

  "They just passed out," a security guard replied.

  The containers of Chinese food were on a table. Assuming the men had eaten equal portions, Hanley estimated each had ingested the equivalent of five to ten sleeping pills.

  The legionnaires broke out their medical supplies and got to work. Hanley didn't really know what he was doing, but he acted like he did. He used the thermometer, stethoscope, and blood pressure cuff. All the while, he was looking around for a network port, but there didn't seem to be any in the room.

  "Can I see their desks?" Hanley asked a guard in a black uniform. "Maybe we can find a clue there."

  The guard shrugged. "Sure."

  Hanley grabbed his bag of medical supplies and followed the guard into another room. It contained many more depressing cubicles, although the employees weren't working in them. Instead, they were standing around in small groups and chatting in tones of concern.

  Hanley was taken to one cubicle in particular. It had a computer, a yellow paper notepad, a cup of pens, and a few family photos. Considering a man spent a good portion of his life here, the space was surprisingly anonymous and uncluttered.

  Hanley made a show of opening drawers and looking behind things. He crawled under the attached desk.

  "What are you doing?" the guard said.

  "Just being thorough," Hanley replied.

  He pulled his medical bag under the desk. He used his body to block the guard's view and took out the network tap. It was the size of a deck of cards and had a network wire sticking out. Hanley plugged the wire into an available port under the desk and left the tap lying on the floor. A small light on the front turned green. According to Min Ho, it would create a tunnel through the internet firewall from the inside, allowing him to penetrate the network.

  Hanley stood up and shook his head. "I don't see anything suspicious. We'd better just get these patients to the hospital. We'll need more ambulances."

  More ambulances with real paramedics arrived shortly. The unconscious employees were taken away on stretchers. The legionnaires stepped out of the way and merely assisted as the professionals did their jobs. They couldn't escape their obligations entirely
though, and they had to take one of the victims to the nearest hospital.

  Ipo and Hanley carried the stretcher outside while Katie trotted along beside them. A man in a blue shirt was lying on the stretcher, and the team loaded him into their ambulance. Ipo took the driver's seat, and Hanley rode in the back with Katie. He pulled the doors closed.

  As soon as they were moving, Hanley took out his phone and called Min Ho.

  "Hello, sir," the hacker said. "The connection is looking good from our end. Data is flowing nicely."

  "Great," Hanley said. "Placing that tap was a pain in the ass."

  "It did seem to take you a long time."

  "Too long. We have to drop a guy off at a hospital, and then we'll come home."

  "Hopefully," Min Ho said, "I'll have some answers by the time you get here."

  * * *

  A chime startled Peter Hastings. The alert indicated somebody had breached his network firewall, an act that he didn't think was possible. He looked at one of his four giant monitors and studied a window full of information. It showed the current status of the enormous Soulfriends computer network.

  There was definitely a breach, but it was covert. The numbers were out of spec in small but significant ways. He typed on his keyboard as he analyzed the nature and extent of the attack. Stolen data was being sequestered in legitimate packet streams, so it took a while for Peter to track down the exact source. He could already tell a professional hacker was responsible. Eventually, Peter identified a particular cubicle in one of the engineering bays.

  He looked over at another monitor where surveillance video feeds were displayed. He switched to a camera focused on that cubicle, but nobody was seated there.

  Peter sat back and pondered what to do. Now that he understood the breach, he could stop it, but he decided to let it continue for a while. He wanted more analysis before he took action.

  He left his secret chamber in the back of the server room. With a purposeful gait, he went straight to the cubicle where the attack was originating. He sat at the computer and began to type.

  The computer was locked, but he had a code that gave him access to every computer in the company. He went through the list of processes but saw nothing suspicious. He ran some system analysis software of his own design, and it also yielded no results.

  Peter furrowed his brow and leaned back. Did I make a mistake? The attack should be coming from this computer.

  He noticed something odd on the floor. It was a small gadget that had no business being there, and it was plugged into the network.

  He crouched down on the floor. The device had no markings or external controls, but there was a little green light. He always carried small tools on his belt just in case he needed to fix something. He took out a tiny screwdriver and gently removed the plastic cover on the device.

  The electronics had been assembled by hand, but the neatness and precision of the work showed an expert had done it. Peter studied the design and found it intriguingly inventive. Somebody had packed a lot of capability into a small, efficient package which only needed a battery for power. Peter could've done even better, of course, but this gadget was still impressive.

  "Hello?" a man said. "Who are you? What are you doing down there?"

  Peter looked up. One of the software developers who worked for Soulfriends was staring down with a suspicious expression. He had pale white skin and spoke with a Russian accent.

  Peter stood up quickly. "Just testing the network," he said meekly.

  "Oh. I've seen you around. Are you a sys admin? What's your name?"

  "Sorry. I have to go." Peter smiled awkwardly and jogged away.

  He went straight back to his secret chamber. After the steel door closed and locked, he sighed with relief. He was safe again.

  He sat at his desk and replayed surveillance videos to see who had planted the device. He went back and forth until he caught one of the paramedics crawling under the desk. A security guard had stood right there and hadn't stopped it! Peter gaped in disbelief.

  He had observed the medical emergency through the surveillance system, but he hadn't thought much about it. Employees got sick all the time. He now realized that episode had been part of a larger plot.

  Peter switched to cameras in the parking lot and replayed recordings until he got a good view of the ambulance. He ran the license plate through the DMV computer system and discovered it had been reported as stolen. His anxiety increased.

  He isolated the faces of the three paramedics who had come from that ambulance. One of the men was frighteningly large and muscular. Peter also went back and found the girl who had delivered the suspicious Chinese food. He wasn't shocked to see the same woman wearing two different disguises.

  He now understood. His mysterious enemies had stolen an ambulance and had poisoned Soulfriends employees as part of a scheme to steal internal data. Peter realized he was dealing with more than just ordinary industrial espionage or law enforcement. This opponent was dangerous, sophisticated, and willing to break the law.

  The planted device was streaming stolen data through the corporate firewall and out to the internet. Peter traced the packets to see where they were going, but he ran into a roadblock when he reached a core router. The data just disappeared. He tried several different approaches, but he couldn't make any more progress. It seemed his enemy had hacked the backbone of the internet itself.

  Peter whimpered.

  He sent a message to Rebecca which read, "Are you there? Are you online? Talk to me!"

  After a moment, he received, "I'm eating dinner in the cafeteria. What's wrong?"

  Seeing her response calmed Peter a little. He had at least one friend in the world he could trust.

  "Somebody attacked my company today," he sent. "They physically tapped the internal network."

  "Oh. Was important data stolen?"

  "No. I have secondary firewalls around the sensitive stuff. The matching algorithm is secure." He glanced at the rack of computers in the corner of his secret chamber. "The spies will just get sales reports and engineering documents, but I don't care about that."

  "Good," Rebecca sent back. "Do you know who they are?"

  "No, but their methods are sophisticated and illegal. I thought my security was unbreakable, but they found a way."

  She paused. "Sounds like the mob or some other criminal organization."

  "I'm scared," Peter typed.

  "I warned you something like this would happen. I told you to have a plan ready to go. Success breeds jealousy. They want to steal what we created."

  "I have plans, but they involve violence."

  Rebecca immediately sent, "Do whatever it takes to find out who is trying to hurt you before they attack again."

  Peter sighed with anxiety. "You're right."

  "Of course. What about the network tap?"

  "I'll use it to feed false information to them. That will be the bait for my trap."

  "You're a genius," she sent. "Tell me how it went."

  "I will. Bye." He lifted his hands off the keyboard.

  He paced in his small room. He knew exactly what he needed to do next, but it was very distasteful. At Rebecca's insistence, he had laid the groundwork for this contingency plan months ago. One reason he liked her so much was she was as paranoid as him.

  He resolved it had to be done regardless. He sat at his computer and began to type.

  When new users joined the Soulfriends Network, they had to fill out a long questionnaire to create a psychological profile. Most people thought the questions were silly and somewhat pointless, but that was far from the case. Peter had precisely engineered them to uncover the true personality even if the user was being evasive. Every word of every question was the result of extensive computer analysis. Actually, Rebecca had done the pivotal design work because she was the genius psychologist.

  The Soulfriends system also observed how people interacted online. It examined every post and built up a psychological model for
each user that went beyond the initial questionnaire. As a result, Soulfriends knew their strengths and weaknesses, even the ones they wouldn't admit to themselves.

  Peter had access to a database of over a million users. He used his computer to search for the true psychopaths in that population. He needed men who would kill for money without hesitation.

  Within seconds, answers began to pop up on his screen. There are a lot of sick people in the world, he thought.

  * * *

  Marina watched Ipo, Hanley, and Katie walk into headquarters. They were still dressed like paramedics.

  "Well done," Marina said. "I just wish it had been done quicker. It took you all day."

  Ipo came up to her. "We had a few false starts, ma'am."

  "I'll hear your report over dinner. We have plenty of food in the kitchen. I was waiting until you came back before I ate, and the smell has been driving me crazy."

  Marina and her legionnaires congregated in the small kitchen. There was just a refrigerator, a sink, a dishwasher, a microwave, and some cabinets. The counters were made of blue artificial stone and were the nicest element. A table had enough space for only four people. The entire team would eat most of its meals here, so the kitchen clearly needed to be expanded, but that task was low on the list of things to do.

  Boxes of Tai food were on the counter. The group began to scoop large quantities onto plastic plates as if they were starving, but Marina had ordered plenty. She knew that legionnaires always had a big appetite.

  Once everybody was seated around the table, she listened to the reports. The team had run into difficulties early, but in the end, they had come up with a successful plan.

  "What would you have done, ma'am?" Hanley said.

  "Nothing that complicated," Marina said. "I would've used a knife to force an employee to give me his badge and passcode. Then I would've entered through the back, planted the tap, and ran."

  "The doors were guarded."

  "I would've knocked out the guards with my venom. Some kind of distraction would also be necessary. Maybe a car fire on the other side of the building."

  Hanley raised his eyebrows. "That's a very aggressive plan."

  "Not really," Marina said. "Nobody would get killed."