by Chan Ho-Kei
“Exactly where? How’s that possible?”
“Triangulation, like with satellites. If you want to know more, look it up while you’re at work.”
Nga-Yee only half believed him, but this certainly explained how he always seemed to know her whereabouts and how he’d been so ready for those gangsters who ambushed him.
“Okay, so you can prevent Violet from calling her brother, and vice versa. But won’t they find it odd that they can’t get in touch? Or are you able to fake their voices too?”
“I do have voice modifying technology, but even if it were able to completely replicate someone’s voice, it would be hard to get the tone and vocabulary right. Anyone close enough to the person being imitated would know right away that something was wrong.” N glanced at the screen, checking that Violet was still quietly reading in the coffee shop. “These days, though, people are used to communicating by instant message, and that gives us an opportunity.”
N picked up a tablet computer and opened an app that resembled Line. Nga-Yee wasn’t sure what she was looking at to start with, but after reading a few posts, it became clear.
“This is Violet To talking to her brother?”
“Correct. Except, I’m the brother.” N grinned.
“You can do that?” Nga-Yee exclaimed. “How?”
“I guess I’ll have to start at the beginning, otherwise you’ll just keep asking why or how like a broken record,” said N in a voice full of disdain. “The day after our second visit to the school I came to Broadcast Drive to walk the ground. I located the To apartment, and that night I sent drones to start the surveillance and infiltrate the Wi-Fi, as well as using the Stingray to grab all cell phone numbers in the neighborhood until I’d isolated Violet’s. Then I was ready.”
N took the tablet back, entered a string of commands, and placed it in front of her again.
“Two mornings ago, I used the Stingray to transmit this message to Violet’s phone.”
Reminder from Enoch Secondary School Library. Your items １, ３, ．, ６, ７ are due in three days. For more information or to renew, please visit http://www.enochss.edu.hk/lib/q?s=71926
“What’s that?”
“Enoch Library notification. Fake, of course. The point was for her to click on the link.”
“What for?”
“I modified the Enoch page. As soon as Violet clicked on the link, her browser would connect to a server that downloaded fake software onto her phone.”
“Fake software?”
“This is known as a Masque Attack—replacing actual programs with malware mimicking their appearance.” N pointed at the Line page on the tablet. “This looks exactly like Line instant messenger, and it works the same when you use it. Most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. When Violet logged on to this fake Line, I was able to get hold of every message she’d sent before, intercept any new ones, and impersonate whoever she was talking to.”
“Just like man in the middle.”
“Exactly.” N’s eyes twinkled. He seemed to find it hilarious that Nga-Yee was using tech lingo. “Everyone is so used to communicating by text that they’ve stopped wondering if the person behind the words is the one they think it is. That’s why there are so many online scams.”
“Didn’t Violet find the library notice suspicious?”
“Before making the fake Popcorn thread, I used the same method to create fake messages on the school chatboard, to make it seem as if other students had got the same erroneous notification. I also stuck in a discussion about the ruckus in the library that day. Once Violet saw people talking about your sister, she naturally forgot all about that notification.”
In order to make this fake thread—which would only be seen by Violet—more believable, N had gone through the Enoch School system to look up all the students who’d been using the printer in the library that day. He had actually been a little surprised that Violet hadn’t got in touch with her brother right away after seeing this thread, but that also helped him understand a little more about the nature of their dependency, after which he adjusted his strategy.
“I knew Violet wouldn’t ignore this eye-catching chat on the Library Board. She’d want to go through the whole conversation and see if anyone—such as the Countess—said anything more about the suicide note. That was the bait. The next day, I posted under a different student’s name, with a link to the fake Popcorn chat I just showed you.”
“Ah, so now she was on the hook,” said Nga-Yee. “She thought her evil deeds had been exposed.” Nga-Yee was starting to understand. “When she read SuperConan’s post, then saw someone talking about finding more files on the hard drive today, and you stopped her asking her brother for help—”
Nga-Yee looked again at the screen. Violet might appear to be reading calmly, but her brows were faintly furrowed, and she was clearly trying hard to hide her unease.
“Hang on—” Nga-Yee said. “Violet’s not at home now. Can’t she get on to the real internet? If she goes onto Popcorn and finds the thread gone, won’t the whole plan fall apart? Or what if her brother calls now? Does your Stingray reach as far as the coffee shop?”
“That’s why Ducky’s following her.” N pointed at the screen. “He has a low-intensity Stingray in his rucksack, with a range of thirty feet. His laptop is mimicking a Wi-Fi server to continue the MITM attack. That ought to keep Violet isolated. Of course, if she goes rogue and decides to log on to one of the café’s public terminals or call her brother from a public phone, we’d be in trouble. If that happens, Ducky will have to find some way to stop her. But I bet she won’t do that, because she doesn’t suspect there’s anything wrong with her phone.”
N seemed prepared for all contingencies. No wonder even Violet’s unexpected visit to Festival Walk hadn’t fazed him.
“Violet seems calm at the moment because her brother is on Line telling her not to worry. Of course, she’s still pretty churned up inside,” said N. “Her actual brother is completely in the dark. He’s busy at work, probably not spending too much time worrying about what’s going on with his little sister. So the basic setup is all in place, and we’re ready for the next step.”
“What’s that?”
“If you want to be part of it, don’t go home tonight.” N smiled craftily.
Nga-Yee had no idea what he was planning, but it looked as if she wouldn’t be sleeping in her own bed.
Not long after that, Violet started putting away her things. The wobbly camera followed her as she left the café and headed to the shuttle stop on Suffolk Road. From the angle, Ducky was standing ahead of her in line, with one passenger between them. There were quite a few other people there—probably also heading back to Broadcast Drive. Most people would think that tailing someone meant following them from behind, thought Nga-Yee, but it was a sign of N’s and Ducky’s superior skills that they were in front of Violet now. Nga-Yee could think of two advantages: first, it reduced the risk of getting left behind if the bus was crowded and Violet was the last passenger to squeeze on; and, more cunningly, no one would imagine that they were being followed by someone ahead of them. By anticipating Violet’s actions, Ducky had managed to stay literally one step ahead of her.
“We should go.” N stood and headed to the front of the van. Only now did Nga-Yee realize there was a narrow sliding door leading straight to the driver’s seat.
“Stay back there and keep monitoring,” he called, then slid the door shut.
The van juddered and started to move, but Nga-Yee didn’t notice. Her eyes were fixed on Violet To. She and Ducky were at opposite ends of the bus. Fifteen minutes later they were back at Broadcast Drive. N found a parking lot and returned to the back. A few minutes after that, the shuttle arrived and Violet got off; Ducky did not.
“She’s back within range of our Stingray,” said N by way of explanation. Nga-Yee understood: the shuttle wasn’t like a regular bus; all stops were by request to the driver. Violet would def
initely notice if she asked to be let off and someone followed her.
Within five minutes, Violet was back in her apartment (and on their screens), and Ducky had rejoined them in the back of the van.
“Thanks for doing that,” said N, taking the rucksack from Ducky.
“It’s fine,” said Ducky, as expressionless as ever. Tailing Violet was a better use of his skills, anyway—Chung-Nam had spent the last few days either at the office or poring over documents at home.
Nga-Yee couldn’t quite work out N and Ducky’s relationship. Ducky seemed to have a lot of respect for N, but that could have been the reliance of one partner on another. She thought again of Loi’s face when he talked about N, and Detective Mok’s reverence for him. As far as Nga-Yee was concerned, he was an annoying bastard who happened to be very good at what he did, and she had no idea how these other people had learned to trust him.
After Ducky left, N said to Nga-Yee, “Those seats tilt back. You can have a nap if you want.”
“Nap? I thought we were starting the next step.”
“It’s still early.” N pulled a snack bar from the plastic bag beneath the desk and bent over his laptop again.
Nga-Yee decided to follow his advice. It was dark in the van, and she was exhausted. Her eyes remained fixed on Violet, but their lids began to droop. She was hazily aware of someone shaking her by the left shoulder. Her eyes blinked open, and there was N, looking exactly as he had before she dropped off, in the chair to her left. Why had he woken her so soon? She glanced at her watch, surprised to see the small hand at three. She’d slept almost four hours.
“Awake?” asked N.
Nga-Yee rubbed her eyes and looked around. The screens still showed the To apartment, but everything was now tinted dull green. Camera 3 was on Violet’s bedroom.
“Have … have we started?” Nga-Yee asked.
“Yes.”
“What are we doing? Breaking in?”
“No, we’re making phone calls.”
“What?”
“Late-night nuisance calls.”
Just like that, Nga-Yee was wide awake. “Nuisance calls?” she said. “You made me stay here all night for a childish prank?”
“It may be a prank, but there’s nothing childish about it.”
“How—”
“Don’t ask.” N put a microphone in front of her, then pressed a few keys on the laptop. On Screen 3, Violet jerked upright in bed and reached out to grab her phone.
“The night vision cameras can’t go any brighter than that,” said N. Now Nga-Yee understood the dull green tint.
“Hello?” Violet’s voice came through the speaker. Nga-Yee turned and looked frantically at N, gesturing to ask what she should say.
“She won’t hear you unless you press the mic button,” said N, trying not to laugh. “Anyway the first call will be silent.”
“Hello?” Again, Violet’s voice from the speaker. N hit another key and ended the call.
“You do the next one,” said N, hitting the key again as soon as Violet put down her phone.
“What if she recognizes my voice?” asked Nga-Yee.
“She won’t. I’ve adjusted the mic to distort it.”
“Hello?” came Violet’s voice again, sounding a bit more annoyed.
“What should I say?” Nga-Yee’s finger hovered over the mic button.
“Whatever you like, just don’t use the word ‘sister’ or anything that might give away who you are. Keep it simple.”
Nga-Yee pressed the button without having made up her mind. What did she want to say to Violet? She bit her lip and spat out, “Murderer!”
N hit the key to cut off the call, smiling at her as if in praise. On the screen, Violet looked frozen. Unexpectedly, Nga-Yee felt pleased with herself. All this time she’d wanted to accuse the person who’d caused her sister’s death, and not only had she done that now, she’d left the culprit completely stunned. Two birds with one stone.
“Very good, though not exactly subtle. A bit crude, even.” N pulled the microphone closer and hit the call key for the third time.
“Who are you? What do you want? If you call again, I’ll report you to the police!” Her terror was plain to hear—it filled the van.
“Fuck you! Ha ha.” Nga-Yee had never heard N sounding so thuggish. He hung up before Violet could say anything.
N tried a couple more times, but Violet rejected the calls, then turned off the phone.
“Ha! Game over,” N crowed.
Nga-Yee couldn’t help feeling a little angry at how lightly he was taking this.
“What’s this meant to achieve?” she asked.
“Look at the state she’s in.”
Nga-Yee turned to the screen. Violet was huddled in a corner of her bed, her blanket clutched tight around herself. Nga-Yee hadn’t expected her to be so terrified.
“When a normal person gets a nuisance call, at most they end up in a bad mood. You see what a guilty conscience does. A small tap, and the cracks show in her calm façade right away,” said N. “These calls are just the fuse leading up to the next explosion.”
“A fuse?”
N tapped away on the keyboard, then turned it to face Nga-Yee. The screen still showed the fake Popcorn thread, but there were some new comments:
—There’s even a phone number! Anyone called to check?
—I did, some female answered. Go for it, guys!
“When Violet sees these, she’ll think she knows where the harassing phone calls came from.” N moved the page with his laptop touch pad. “It will appear that people on the internet have worked out that this kidkit727 who forced your sister to kill herself must have some unspeakable secret motive, and that her identity is about to be exposed.”
One of the replies stood out from the others, under a name that came as an unpleasant blast of déjà vu for Nga-Yee.
POSTED BY kidkit727 ON 07-04-2015, 03:09
re: Mastermind behind girl’s (14) suicide?
ZeroCool here. I found the password to this account in the file I found. I’m 100% sure this bastard has something to do with it.
“I guess—this one is fake too?” she said.
“Naturally.”
“But what if Violet checks kidkit727’s log-in record, or even tries to log in herself? She’d realize—”
“If I can fake a chatboard, then I can fake any page on that site, including the log-in.” N was frowning—he couldn’t stand Nga-Yee’s stupid questions. “But even if I hadn’t done any of that, Violet will never log in. She’d like nothing better right now than to cut herself off from kidkit727 forever. Why would she make more trouble for herself by logging in to the board if she didn’t need to?”
Nga-Yee looked back at the screen. Violet was still curled up in her nest of blankets, shivering a little from time to time. N was right, thought Nga-Yee, this string of phone calls might well be more effective than she’d imagined.
“What now?” she asked.
“Violet will probably stay like this till dawn. I’ll use that time to make up more fake replies to lead her farther up the garden path,” said N, pulling a laptop over to himself.
“What should I do?”
“Enjoy Violet’s suffering. Wasn’t that what you wanted? That’s what your sister went through every night as she was being smeared on the internet.”
A chill went through Nga-Yee. Ever since she and Siu-Man stopped sleeping in bunk beds, she hadn’t seen her sister asleep. For all she knew, Siu-Man had been huddled under her blanket every night too, feeling an invisible hand pushing her toward death.
Nga-Yee spent most of the next three hours staring at Violet on the screen, dozing off from time to time. She had no idea how N was able to do without a wink of sleep, but he just kept going. Perhaps he was used to living like this, completely untethered from a schedule.
At 6:20 a.m. Nga-Yee left Broadcast Drive to take the first MTR home, where she had a quick shower before heading to the library. N had said th
at the “climax” wouldn’t arrive for another two or three days, so she decided not to waste any more leave. She would join N again after work.
Before she went, N had a question for her: “To make the whole thing convincing, I’m going to send harassing messages to Violet’s phone,” he said lazily. “How many do you want her to get?”
Nga-Yee had no interest in such a ridiculous question. “Forty-two,” she said at random.
“Ha—the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. Too bad it was mice in that, not rats, otherwise it would be even neater.” N chuckled.
After work, Nga-Yee came back to Broadcast Drive. She’d had the early shift, so was there by five. N wore the same clothes as he’d worn the day before, but on the screen, Violet looked different. Nga-Yee was no psychiatrist, but even she could tell that the girl was on edge. Her features were haggard, and she seemed distracted. Right now she was sitting in front of her computer, staring anxiously at it, checking her phone from time to time, as if she expected a message. Each time, though, she looked disappointed.
“What’s happened?” asked Nga-Yee.
N handed her the tablet with Violet’s Line conversation.
“She tried calling her brother, but I diverted her to an unused number, so she thinks he’s not picking up. This is from after that.”
Nga-Yee glanced at it. Lots of messages about him being busy at work and his boss being around, but he’d call her later.
“In a way, I’m not lying—her brother really has been busy at work, and he’s doing overtime almost every day. I guess that’s how things are in Hong Kong tech firms: long hours, low wages, uncertain future. Maybe I’m doing him a favor by allowing him to focus on his job rather than spending time responding to his sister’s messages,” said N mockingly.
“I want to see the fake Popcorn posts,” said Nga-Yee, as if it were an order. N found that a bit strange but handed over the laptop.