by Dahlia Adler
“Focus, Mad,” my brother whispered as Tarn’s countermeasures came at us across the network. Rik had chewed off most of his silver lipstick.
He held the doctor off with signal reroutes while I kept pounding at the locks. But the passcodes changed faster than I could type, or think.
My brother’s hands shook. My own fingers kept freezing up. The marble fireplace held a weak gas flame, too small to crackle the air, much less warm it.
Worse, I was growing angrier.
At Dr. Tarn, for calling us script kiddies. At my brother, for wanting to pull off this one last job for the glory of it. At the time we’d lost trying to hack our way to money, when we should have been running away. At the despair I felt because we might lose more than just time.
A bank tracer caught up to one of my programs and devoured it, shorting out my tablet. The smell of burnt computer chips filled the air.
Angry hacking meant I was making mistakes. Destroying my devices.
“No matter who we think worthy of challenging us, we always win,” the doctor said. “We always maintain our hack-proof status. I do feel bad that you are so young. Instead of bright futures, you’ll disappear. Just like your toys.” His prominent forehead glistened with sweat, and his eyes gleamed feverishly.
Rik’s handheld went black, bricked into a useless piece of glass and plastic.
He groaned when I pulled my last device—my oldest tablet—from my pocket. It hadn’t been connected to a network since we’d left the Syndicate. Since we’d broken out, more accurately. “Mad, don’t.”
The tablet held our real identities. Our best hope of reuniting with our families, if they remained; and with each other, if we were ever separated. It also held a single wideband electro-magnetic pulse program. The final thing we’d stolen from our employers. I didn’t look at Rik when I hit the switch. I glared at the doctor instead.
The hookup took a heartbeat, then a bank tracer bit down hard on the pulse and took it right into the AI’s laughing mouth.
The foundation shook. Gaps appeared in the old stone masonry. The floorboards cracked. Outside, a rock-colored sky spat rain.
Then the walls closed up, sealing us in. A hole opened at Rik’s feet.
“Mad!” He scrambled for balance as his dead tablet clattered into the gap.
I dove for him and grabbed his sweater. The black knit fabric tore from my fingers. We both let out a single scream as Rik dangled above the bank’s cavernous vault.
“You stay,” I said through gritted teeth, fighting against the pull of the vault. “I can’t do this alone.”
* * *
The crypto-challenge summons had arrived in the usual way, hitting our secure private network as a series of nonsense letters from an old relative, asking for a visit from Madrik—one of our personas.
It took us longer to decrypt than some, but we shook the data loose. We were the best hackers the Syndicate had raised in a long time, after all.
And then we’d become the first in a long time to run.
The challenge to hack the Offshore Bank of Usher was the first we’d received since we’d been on the outside.
57.5359° N, 6.2263° W; all you can take
(approx. EU 4 bn), 1 m on signature.
“Latitude, longitude, and payoff—four billion, plus a million right now for signing on. But no IP address?” I glared at the message and my screen glared back. “They want us to come to them? Not on your life, Rik.”
“Mad, for that kind of money and cred? It’s worth it.” Rik and I often used our own handsigns in case there was a listener, but his face told the story: He missed the glory of a big job, and this felt huge. “Besides, this is totally an inside job—the bank’s inviting us to test its defenses. We’re practically guests. It’s perfect for us.”
I was tiring of doing risky jobs for street cred, even if invited. Since we’d left the Syndicate, I’d been trying to figure out how to tell Rik. What if he didn’t want to slow down? Would I wake up one day to find he’d gone out on his own? What would I do then? That was the fear that kept me from speaking.
But right now, what worried me more was the risk of showing up in person at this job, rather than working from a safe, distant location.
“We don’t need the money or the cred as much as we need a safer place to hide. That’s all.” I began stuffing our clothes and hardware into our one gray duffel bag. We shared an all-black wardrobe, from dusters and leggings to stacked Venetian heels. It was simpler that way.
If going was risky, staying was worse. A challenge meant we weren’t safe anymore: Someone knew how to find us. No matter how careful we’d been about the decryption, it was time to move on.
“A safe place is easier to get with four billion euros,” Rik said, his tone a little chiding, like he was older than me. As if that mattered. To him, it did. By six minutes. After we’d taken down a day-trading market, he’d had our digital birth certificates etched in the memory of our old Syndicate tablet to prove it.
“And if this is a trap?” The Syndicate was looking for us. And when they caught us, they’d try to split us up again. Or kill us both.
“What if it is? We got out before. We can do it again. Let’s do this: We take the million for signing on now. We see how it feels. If we don’t like it, we can fail out, or get them to kick us out. Mad, please.”
“Your ego is going to end us both, Rik.” I jammed the last of our sweaters, our smaller 3D-printed tools and cameras, and our makeup case into the bag. He was winning me over, and he knew it.
“If your overworked sense of dread doesn’t get us first, Mad,” Rik answered, then whistled low. “Oh, I’ve heard about this bank.”
He turned his tablet so I could see crypto-challenge chat room logs from exactly a year before, and the year before that. A hacker named SoundofWater had said they’d accepted a challenge to break a bank’s security—a penetration operation exploit—but never returned to the chat to gloat about it. Another hacker named DarkCold, too, the year before. A couple of others. No one had reported back after. Everyone figured they were too embarrassed.
Rik laughed. “We’ll be legends once we crack it.”
Pride being a major component of a hacker’s toolbox, I finally grinned. If you didn’t believe in your own skills, no one would. Yeah. He’d pulled me in again.
We left Hôtel Henri IV ten minutes later, ditching our Canadian tourists’ identities and credit cards in the garbage outside.
For a moment, we were just ourselves. Brother and sister. Twins. More than that. We were Madrik. Best pair of hands in the biz.
He held the tablet out to me and I was the one who hit “Accept.”
Unlocked, the challenge produced a ticket to the Isle of Skye via Charles de Gaulle and Inverness, and notice that a car would pick Madrik up, courtesy of the bank. I hit the airlines on another tablet and turned that one ticket into two.
Meantime, Rik read through a pile of digitally signed noncompete, nondisclosure forms.
“Legal? Seriously?” I almost laughed.
Rik shook his head, his earrings catching the streetlights. I tapped my tablet, watching as the million-euro payout landed in the first of our accounts. With a few commands, I rerouted the money several times, dividing it into smaller packets as Rik read the fine print.
“They want us to hit them with everything we’ve got. Security test. Penetration operation exploit, like the chat room said. They’re recertifying the hard way.”
I scanned the road outside the hotel’s pull-around for the car we’d called. “It’s late.”
“It will be here.” My brother squeezed my hand through the thick, fingerless gloves he always wore. “You’re cold, Mad.” We were always so cold when we were running. Whether hiding from orphanage bullies or bolting from the Syndicate’s warehouse, it didn’t matter.
“The body reroutes blood flow from extremities to brain—so a person can think better for longer when they’re in danger.” I squeezed back. His ha
nds were cold, too.
“Grim. And makes it hard to code.” Before I could grumble at him, he got out in front of my next worry with the practice of someone who knew me well. “We’ll make the flight.”
“Yeah, we will. And we’ll beat the challenge.”
He smiled broadly, showing the gap in his teeth and the dimple that no one ever saw but me. Grateful. We took care of each other. We always had.
The cab’s brakes squealed as it pulled up beside us. Rain splatted on my shoulders as I shoved our bag in after Rik, sliding the canvas across the age-shined faux-leather seats.
The car bumped over slick cobblestones on the way to Charles de Gaulle and our flight to Scotland. Rik applied his most metal lipstick in the cab, his hands steady.
“They might not want us for the gig once they see us, anyway,” Rik said, pressing his lips together and letting them unseal with a pop. “It’s an easy out if you want to take it when we get there. Banks are weird that way. Good they paid the upfront fee.”
“Now you’re worried.” I rolled my eyes hard enough that I could see the kohl caking my lashes. Maybe he’d wanted the gig so badly, he hadn’t stopped to think about the details of both of us appearing at the bank’s door. I signed, “We’ve agreed.”
“Madrik did, not Mad and Rik.”
“Well, now MadRik is going.” We could do this. Madrik had been stocking ID caches for the Syndicate for four years, since we were thirteen. Madrik had been the best at cracking medical and military databases for three years. Who we were was entirely based on what we did. Those who knew us sometimes made the mistake of writing me off as the weak one, or as Rik’s assistant. Usually that only happened once.
Both of us were slim, short hair slicked back in my case, spiked in Rik’s, our clothes all flapping dark coats and night-colored jeans. We looked alike. We ran code as one—switching off attack and defense until no one knew what had just hit them.
“Just running our options. I want to try for the four billion. Either they’ll let us stay and play or tell us to go. Or we’ll get there and decide it’s not our kind of gig. And we’ll keep their signing fee either way,” Rik said as Paris receded.
“If it’s not a trap.”
“We can bust out of any trap, Mad. Together.”
If our family had survived the attack that destroyed our small, rebellious village just inside the rusting remains of the Iron Curtain, maybe things would have been different. Maybe Rik and I wouldn’t have grown so close. But after that fiery night, first in the hospital and then the orphanage, when one of us screamed themselves awake, the other would promise to stay up and watch for danger. The nurses joked that we slept with two eyes open. Later, when we got in fights with kids twice our size over food, warm clothes, or the few wallets and tablets we could—sometimes with the orphanage staff’s help—steal, we kept more for ourselves when we were together. It’s true what they say in the chat room about Madrik: thrown out of one orphanage for stealing and tossed from another when it closed for dangerous practices. But we learned a valuable lesson along the way: We were stronger as one.
By the time a Syndicate hacker found us at our third orphanage, near Greece, we were already skilled at stockpiling advantages and watching people for weaknesses. And we didn’t allow anyone to separate us.
The hacker tested us for aptitude, found we could use both credit card dataware and lockpicks, and then took us into the EU to train us up and help her datamine that same day. The orphanage hadn’t asked many questions.
We’d built our skills, kept our profiles low, schooled ourselves online, and made plans to run as soon as we could, which took years.
Meantime, our new “mom” did us one favor each. She encrypted our birth records on a single file and then scorched any public data she could find. “In case you ever need to be yourselves. Otherwise you can be anyone you want.”
When the Syndicate tried to send Rik to Ukraine and me to the United States, we’d jumped. We wanted to be a team. We worked best that way. So: Middle-of-the-night exploit right out the back door. We’d been running ever since.
Rik was right. To stay free, together, we needed money. Not other people’s money—that we could get, at least in small, untraceable amounts. For new lives, we needed a stash of cash.
That was why we took the job.
That was what I told myself, later.
* * *
At the airport, we slid through security on Belgian passports, then hit the closest restroom. I pulled on nitrile gloves and applied bright overtone colors to Rik’s spikes—silver—and my short bob—chartreuse. We waited for ten minutes and then I buried the gloves and the dye, wrapped around the various IDs we’d used in France, in the waste bin. Then I rinsed out my hair.
We didn’t look like ourselves anymore. Or much like each other. For the moment, that was fine by me.
On the plane, Rik pulled down everything he could find about the bank. More chat-room gossip, international filings. “Usher was family-held until two generations ago when they all died out. They left behind a board of directors and a vault. Lots of shell companies, hard to tell who’s in there. But the bank’s loaded. Supports other banks all over the world.” He peered closer, pulling at the bank’s own online presence. “They have an AI—at least one. But it looks easy to break in. Their incoming security is ridiculous. Like anyone might be able to get in from on-site. I mean, one of DarkCold’s last messages was, ‘I’m in.’ So it’s doable.”
“So how do they keep getting recertified?”
“Because it looks like no one ever gets out. No one’s ever logged a finished exploit from Usher. Not DarkCold, not anyone. With a record like that, people feel their funds are secure.”
I looked over his shoulder. The bank’s major assets were solid-state, not digital. “Oooh.” Once that stuff’s gone, it’s gone. Untraceable.
“It’s so old school. They trade on trust. Deliver withdrawals by helicopter, it says.”
“And no one’s ever successfully hit them.” I whistled low while picking at my nail polish. Duochrome flecks sparkled yellow on the plane’s dark seats.
“We’d be the first.” Rik looked out the window, over the anonymous ocean, glittering below.
When we landed in Skye, our tablets faded to a green-gray the color of lichen, then lit up with the Bank of Usher logo.
“You said their security was awful,” I growled at Rik, watching every bounce point on our networks go dark as we were sucked into the bank’s own system. Even our VPN was inaccessible.
Rik muttered as his hands flew over his tablet, rebooting drives right there in the tiny arrivals lounge, beyond customs. “Owned.”
In an instant, nothing was ours anymore, except the old drive with our birth certificates on it. We had that, three passports each remaining, two pairs of black jeans, a pile of black T-shirts and leggings, our dusters, and some lipstick.
At least as far as I knew, those weren’t crackable.
* * *
Outside the welcome center, the Isle of Skye was draped in thick rainclouds, but no rain fell. The heavy atmosphere pressed against us as a dark car rolled up to the now empty arrivals center. Then a driver emerged from the car, liveried in dark gray, holding a manila folder clearly labeled: USHER.
When Rik and I approached, the driver looked startled. I lifted a tablet to show him the takeover screen. He frowned. “I wasn’t told you’d be bringing someone,” he said to Rik. I stifled a growl, but the driver let us climb into the car’s deep quiet.
A small data node wrapped his ear. It glowed. I nudged my brother so he’d know not to talk around the driver. If my tablet hadn’t been flatlined, I could have hacked the driver’s port all to pieces.
“Shh, Mad. We’re through the first gate. They know we’re both coming and they haven’t turned us away,” Rik signed as the car sped over Skye Bridge and through the small towns on the other side, turning and winding us up into the highlands. The neat houses passed in a blur.
Rik stared at me in horror. Then he spoke for the first time since we’d driven away from the airport, his surprise completely filling the car. “A small town like this? You’re not serious. We do this, we’re legends. Our future is something to think about later, after.”
I stared out the window at the disappearing towns and the rising hills for the rest of the drive.
The light faded as we came to the ancient house surrounded by a steel-gray lake that managed to reflect nothing of its surroundings.
A deep sense of foreboding stuck in my throat, and I shivered but kept quiet.
The house was gray, too, old stone covered with some kind of lichen or moss that looked decidedly unhealthy. The building’s windows were pale, staring eyes that captured nothing of sky or water.
The driver barely slowed as the car rattled over a wooden gangway.
“Who needs security when you have a moat?” my brother mused.
I managed a smile at his gallows humor. I knew it for a peace offering, and I accepted it. Rik didn’t want to fight or worry. He wanted to play. We were in the game now. If this was a trap and the Syndicate awaited us on the other end, we’d know it soon. But they would have gone to a lot of trouble if that was the case.
If the challenge was for real, and the bank’s offer legitimate, like Rik believed, then Usher had still rooted all our gear. We were at a disadvantage already.
But if anyone could complete a challenge on terms like those, it was us. And if we made the exploit—if Madrik did—it would be epic.
The Bank of Usher’s stone walls loomed over us; fungi and lichen burrowing deep into the masonry looked like all that held the structure up. We passed beneath a cold archway, the smell of vegetation creeping into the car, and stopped before a pair of cavernous doors.