Crash Alive (The Haylie Black Series Book 1)

by Christopher Kerns

  Haylie pulled the door open and the thick scents of chocolate and dark roasted coffee hit her like a wave. She forced a weak smile at the barista behind the bar—it was a new guy—and ordered a plain, drip coffee. She was quickly handed a warm, white porcelain mug and slinked over to the table in the back-right corner of the building.

  Pulling her headphones over her ears, she queued up an electronica streaming station and wiped a few smears off her glasses with the bottom edge of her shirt. She opened her daily checklist and ran down her assignments for the day, seeing only one item left for that week: an English class essay, due in two days.

  The assignment was one in a series of shorter essays that her English teacher had slipped in between larger reports—write-ups on personal experiences to “keep the brain juices flowing,” whatever that meant. Each month they were also assigned long, boring book reports, but at least they had the freedom to choose what they would read, which was a pretty cool move. That meant that instead of reading boring, stuffy Victorian novels, Haylie was able to choose geeky sci-fi—Dune, Brave New World, Neuromancer—and that made the class not completely awful.

  She brought up her online agenda and checked the details for this week’s essay.

  Write 1,000 words on how you met your best friend.

  The question hit her right in the stomach, harder than it should have hit any seventeen-year old high school senior. How the hell am I going to pull this one off? She thought through different scenarios, searching for an approach that was somewhat truthful, but also wouldn’t set off any alarm bells for the school counselor. She typed something, anything, just to fill space on the blank page.

  Miss Hiefield-

  I feel that I am exempt from this assignment due to the fact that I do not, in a material sense, have a best friend that I have actually met (in person).

  In addition, my lack of a best friend grants me “protected class” status in the state of Texas, allowing me to sue you and the entire Austin Independent School District for even mentioning such a concept.

  The next communication you will receive will be from my lawyer.

  Good day.

  Haylie Black

  She chuckled to herself, twisting the laughter into a long, exhausted breath as she stared down at the words on the screen. Balancing on her elbows, she looked past her computer to the growing stream of newcomers entering the coffee shop. Who do we have here today? She gazed dully into the crowd, taking deep sips of coffee, making up stories as she went.

  At 5:04PM, a woman walked in, sunglasses still fixed on her face, clutching three different handbags. She mouthed each word as she read from the chalkboard menu; she seemed harmless.

  At 5:07PM, three frat boys looking like wannabe start-up entrepreneurs stumbled in with blue oxfords and khakis. They were pacing around the room, nervous—probably pitching a local venture capital firm on their early-stage idea.

  You need to get this assignment done. C’mon, dummy, focus.

  Haylie turned back to her screen, cranked up her music and subtly bobbed her head to the beat as she typed the first few sentences about Vector, her best friend that she had never met.

  Stay-at-home-moms, students, and lots of people in startup t-shirts floated through the door as Haylie grew the outline from single points to full paragraphs, walking through her history with Vector; how they had first met on a tech message board. That night they learned that they had a lot in common, despite living on other sides of the world. They were roughly the same age and were both fascinated by how stuff works—code, hardware, systems. That was three years ago, and she couldn’t remember a day since where they hadn’t chatted about side projects, the latest big company to get hacked, or a new code package that one of them had discovered.

  Right on cue, a chat notification rang over the music’s beat, accompanied with a new chat window.

  VECTOR:> bored. entertain me.

  Haylie minimized the window with a shake of her head. Ok… last paragraph, you can do this. Finish big. Hovering over her keyboard, she went in for the kill, crafting a concluding statement that would wrap all her thoughts together and–

  Haylie’s concentration broke as she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. She looked up to see a man standing by the door with a phone pressed to his ear, looking in her direction. His dark charcoal suit and serious expression gave him the air of someone that was there to arrest someone—or to sue them. As their eyes met, he pushed back against the glass door and slipped outside.

  What’s that guy’s story?

  She shook her head and sunk back into her laptop, bringing up Vector’s chat window. He’d get a kick out of this.

  CRASH:> total rando just crept into the coffee shop. weird looking dude in a suit. it’s not you, is it?

  Giggling, she watched the cursor blink as he typed a reply.

  VECTOR:> nah, you’re not that lucky. going to need a pic of him so we can make fun of him together.

  CRASH:> not now. ttyl.

  Bringing her essay back up to the foreground, Haylie pushed herself back into her work. The rest of the room faded out as she focused. She leaned in, as the perfect final line formed in her mind.

  “Excuse me,” a voice said from across the table. “Is this seat taken?”

  Haylie jumped as her eyes shot up to see two young men standing before her. As she fought to regain her breath, she looked back and forth between them, not believing her eyes. She thought she was seeing double—both men were the same height, wore expensive-looking hoodies in different shades of gray, and had identical boyish dimples framed by relaxed smiles.

  They’re ... twins?

  “Is it all right if we sit down?” said the man on the left, pulling out a chair but not yet taking a seat.

  The man on the right moved in lockstep, keeping his eyes on Haylie’s as he slid out a second chair. “I’m sorry if we scared you.”

  Haylie quickly realized that she had never seen two adult twins together. You see twin kids all the time, but never as a pair when they’re older, when they’ve grown into their own lives. They looked the same but … different. The guy on the left had longer, swept-back hair while his brother had opted for a close buzz-cut. Both were well dressed, but with slightly different styles. A reflection of each other, but a fuzzy one.

  Glancing around the room at the sea of empty tables, stools, and booths, Haylie looked back with question marks in her eyes. After a few moments of awkward silence, she pulled her computer towards her and gestured at the chairs across the table.

  “Be my guest,” she said with a careful tone.

  “Great!” the man on the left said, sharply pulling the chair out from the table, the wooden legs signaling a piercing squeak across the polished cement floor. He folded his hands together on the table as he sat, staring her right in the eyes with a slight, innocent smile across his face. The man on the right followed suit, moving a bit slower to make his way into his seat.

  Looking down at the men’s hands, Haylie quickly realized that they hadn’t ordered any coffee. She pushed back from the table with a subtle nudge, her hand falling down to her bag to blindly fumble for her phone. This is super weird—what the hell is going on here?

  “Listen,” she said, shifting in her seat, “my boyfriend is going to be here, like, any minute, so–”

  The man on the right smiled and let out a laugh. “Haylie, I think all three of us know that you don’t have a boyfriend.”

  She froze, raising her hands to close the lid of her laptop. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the men, the barista across the room, and the exit.

  “How you do you know my name, creep?”

  The man on the left shuffled in his seat, fidgeting with his shirt collar as he craned his neck around the room. “Do they have drinks here? Like beer or anything?” He grabbed a flyer from the middle of the table, flipping it, end-over-end. “Do they have food? Do you want food? I’m starving. I’m going to get us some food.” He slipped his phone
out of his pocket, giving the screen a quick check before placing it on the table. “Marco! Marco, can you get us something to eat?”

  Haylie looked back to the door and saw the man from before—the man in the suit—standing watch by the glass. He flew into action, jogging over to the barista, as soon as he heard the words.

  Haylie studied the men’s faces for a few seconds. Something looked familiar. Something looked….

  No way.

  “Wait a minute,” she stuttered, pointing across the table with a few finger jabs of excitement. “Wait a minute. You guys … you’re the Sterling brothers. Right? The actual Sterling brothers? In my coffee shop?”

  The man on the right nodded. “Yes. I’m Walter,” he pointed to his brother, who was still more interested in getting a drink than the conversation. “And this is Benjamin.”

  “Of course you are. You guys….” Haylie stumbled over her words, sitting up straight in her chair, tucking her hair back behind her ear. “You guys are the coolest, ever.”

  Well that came out weird.

  “Thank you!” Benjamin said, rejoining the conversation with a wide smile. “That’s very nice of you to say.”

  Haylie gazed back, dumbfounded. Over the past few years, the Sterling brothers had become one of the most talked about topics in the start-up and technology world. After their father, a wealthy oilman, had been killed in an automobile crash, they had taken his fortune and created their own little empire—a startup named Brux that was now worth around $40 billion; not bad for a pair of twenty-one year olds.

  “I mean,” Haylie continued as she tried to stop herself from going full-on fangirl. “I’m a coder, and I know that’s not what you guys are into. But I’m a big fan of the tech you’re helping to build.” She stared back at the brothers with a big, fat smile on her face. “It’s just really cool, you know?”

  The brothers looked like they had heard all of this before. While Walter and Benjamin weren’t coders, they were known for making big bets on the most cutting edge technology in the industry. They were also famous for hiring the best engineers out there, including her brother, Caesar. And those bets—whether it was on ride sharing, virtual reality, or advertising technology—had always paid off for them.

  “Well if you know who we are,” Walter said, giving a subtle look back to Benjamin to draw his eyes back to the table, “then you know that your brother started working for us about eight months ago at our New York office. He’s been a big help.”

  “Right,” Haylie said, not able to wipe the smile off her face. “He loves working for you guys. He doesn’t tell me all the details, but I’ve never seen him this into his work before, you know?”

  “Caesar. Love that guy,” Benjamin said. “He’s a badass. I mean, all you have to do is look at the press he gets. Any time he writes a blog post, it turns the industry on its heels.”

  “Yeah,” Haylie said, “he’s a smart guy.”

  “Not just a smart guy,” Walter added. “A good guy. You don’t find many of those out there in the startup world right now. Trust me, we’ve seen the whole spectrum—the good, the bad, and the downright unbelievable.”

  “When you find a guy like Caesar,” Benjamin said, “you have to keep him challenged, that’s the only way to keep him around. And you try your best to hang on to guys like that as long as you can.”

  Nodding, Haylie looked back and forth between the brothers. Silence covered the table as she waited for the next beat, raising her eyebrow with an “and…?” look on her face.

  “Ok, ok, I’m sure you’re wondering why we’re….” Benjamin paused and started over. “So the last meeting I had with Caesar, he told me all about you, Haylie. I don’t even remember how we got on the subject, but we ended up spending most of the hour talking about his little sister in Austin. Smart and honest and curious about any tech she could get her hands on. Seems like you’re following right in his footsteps.”

  Haylie’s eyes fell to the table as she tried her best not to blush. She began plotting any way to change the subject away from … her.

  A tray of muffins and croissants was placed on the table. Haylie looked back over her right shoulder to see Marco, now handing out napkins with a forced smile.

  I’m going to need to get a selfie of this whole circus at some point.

  “There’s something I’d like to discuss before we talk more,” Walter said. “When we meet with people there’s a vetting process. Our advance man, Marco right here, checks our time table and locations to make sure our calendars are optimized. But we also have a security team doing background checks on everyone we meet. It’s a standard practice.”

  Uh oh.

  Haylie made an audible gulp of her coffee as she placed the cup slowly down on the table. The base of the porcelain teetered on its edge across two of the table’s worn, wooden boards.

  “Some … interesting details came up with your profile,” Walter said. “Despite warnings from our team, we decided to take the risk of meeting with you, but you should know that some of your talents might put you on the radars of a few government agencies at some point.”

  “Really?” Haylie asked, feigning innocence.

  “Now, the FBI hasn’t connected the dots on any of this,” Walter said, now getting Benjamin’s full attention as well. “It’s hard for them to … let’s just say that they don’t have the funding we have. Anyway, we traced some IP activity for some pretty big hacks back to a machine in Austin, to a user going by the name Crash. That’s the screen name you use, right?”

  Haylie’s pulse beat faster as she gripped her mug, taking a heavy breath. “Huh,” Haylie said, her voice beginning to shake. “That’s really weird.”

  “Let me ask you,” Walter said, “Do you know anything about July of last year, when the Russian missile command workstations were infiltrated and programmed to play ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at full volume, on repeat?”

  Shaking her head, Haylie tried her best not to freak out. The Fourth of July. That was the Whitney Houston version of the song—it was the best one I could find.

  “The blackout at the Super Bowl a few years back?” Walter continued, keeping a close eye on her reaction.

  Stone faced, Haylie folded her hands over each other. “I remember my Dad saying something about that, but I don’t really watch football.”

  “Hacking into the CIA Director’s personal email?” Walter asked.

  That one was easy. Just a quick call to the help desk for US Online, repeat his birthday and mother’s maiden name, and the password was reset.

  Her eyes flicked to the door, then back to the brothers. Her hands wrapped around the edge of her laptop as she breathed heavier, deeper. Ready to run.

  Walter broke the tension. “Don’t worry, Haylie,” he said with a smile. “We’re not here to bust you. Not even close.”

  “Between us,” Benjamin added, “we think that kind of stuff is freaking awesome.”

  Oh thank God. Haylie exhaled as a relieved round of laughter circled the table. Sitting back and unclutching her laptop, she took a sip of coffee, willing her hand to stop shaking.

  “Listen, we’re always on the lookout for good people,” Benjamin said. “And the best ones aren’t always satisfied with … coloring within the lines. You know?”

  “We have a program,” Walter said, “where we identify young talent and bring them into the Brux environment up in NYC. Challenge them, teach them—but also understand what they are capable of.”

  Her heart still pounding, Haylie reached out for a muffin. She didn’t even want to eat it, she just wanted something to do with her hands.

  “I’d guess if you’re like some of the other interns we’ve brought in,” Benjamin added, “you’re a bit out of place in school. Some don’t feel challenged … others just have trouble finding the right group that gets them.”

  Taking a careful bite of the muffin, Haylie rocked forwards and backwards with a slight nod as she chewed. “So, you guys went through th
e same thing?”

  “Well, not really,” Walter said. “But we hear stories from our engineers of that exact experience. Benjamin and I aren’t that technical, we’re better at the business side of the equation. Finding big tech trends to jump on, that sort of thing.”

  “So, how do people get these internships?” Haylie asked, peeling off another piece of her muffin.

  “You talk to the guys that run the company,” Benjamin said, laughing. He slunk back as Walter threw him a look.

  “We’re here to talk to you about your future, Haylie,” Walter said.

  “You guys just fly around the country handing out internships to high school students?” she asked. “Don’t you have better things to do?”

  “Normally, yes, but this is a special situation,” Walter said. “We were in Austin for a venture capital meeting and, knowing that you were down here and come so highly recommended, we thought we’d stop by personally.”

  She wringed her hands, one on top of the other. I can’t believe Caesar is hooking me up with an internship in New York City—this is amazing.

  “But, something has come up that changes things a bit,” Benjamin said. “Nothing big, just something we need to do first. Do you guys want more coffee? I think I need more coffee.”

  “Just wait a minute for the coffee,” Walter said, turning towards his brother. “We’re in the middle of something.”

  Benjamin nodded at Marco as he ran off to the barista. Pulling out his phone, Benjamin began to scroll, disregarding his brother.

  “There’s something we need to know, Haylie,” Walter said, leaning in closer and lowering his voice. “When’s the last time you spoke to your brother?”

  Her face went blank as she twisted her fingers, one over another. Why would they be asking me that? They work with him—they should see him every day.