by D S Kane
She wondered what she could do to ensure that if her plan worked to embed herself with Ann and those who surrounded her, Ann would accept her. After all, if Ann didn’t accept the CypherGhost as her friend, she wouldn’t accept the CypherGhost as her confidante. She knew her ability to cement relationships was her weakest talent, but it was also her most important one. She’d been held back for hours by this thought: How do I behave to make myself look trustworthy?
Her computer located Ann in the same exact spot, less than a mile away. Now, after several days of travel, the CypherGhost composed a message to the young woman:
Ann Sashakovich—
Things have changed. We need to work together to free our brethren, the hackers. I don’t know how many of us have avoided the dragnet, but probably a few others remain free in the United States. That new website, www.gonenow.com, lists those hackers who lived in America and are no longer visible. The number totals 1,872,459 as of this minute. That’s up 428 in the last minute. In other countries, most have fled underground, but some were not even that lucky. If what I’ve read on 4chan is true, in several countries, after they rounded up our peers, they mass-executed them, some by gas and some by firing squad, and they buried hackers in mass graves.
If you want the news, go to bit-chan-free and introduce yourself. My call sign is the CypherGhost. I’ve been told you are known as Little Noisy. LOL!
—the CypherGhost
She hoped the little bitch was still reading her email. Many free hackers seem to have thought they were the only survivor and had given up on their email. What a stupid thing.
* * *
Ann’s cellphone chimed. She read the CypherGhost’s message and her jaw dropped. She carried her cell to where Jon and Avram were arguing. “Guys. Look at this.” She handed Jon the cell.
Jon read the email and passed it to Avram. Lily scampered over and peeked at the cell.
Ann smiled. “If she’d be willing to partner with us, we just doubled our hacking power. Now, maybe we can get some progress on your mission plan.”
CHAPTER 21
December 3, 9:18 p.m.
Processing Center Building,
50 miles northeast of Provo, UT
William was tugged off the ground. They pulled his head sack off his face. He stared at the strange surroundings. He and many others were inside a tall wall topped with razor wire. The wall was part of a huge quadrangle, its entryway a long, tall metal gate. The railroad car he’d been inside was almost empty now. Further inside was a huge three-story building. Men wearing black uniforms and armed with automatic weapons herded him with others through a set of doorways into the building.
Inside, he saw what reminded him of a huge, high-school gymnasium. This is obviously a military prison. I spent a “vacation” in one of these in China once, long ago.
He’d worn the head sack for what seemed to him to be two days. A man in an olive-drab military uniform cut his plasticuffs. His watch was gone, so he couldn’t tell if it was day or night inside the windowless building.
Two days without food or water, no chance to use a bathroom. Two days standing in a railroad car that stank of animal waste along with hundreds of others, so crowded there had been no room to lie down. He looked around. This is better than being stuffed into that transport rail car.
There must be a few thousand of us in this gym. The noise of so many people in such a small space was deafening. The smell of the crowd, no one having been permitted to shower during transit, many having soiled themselves when they could no longer avoid it, was overpowering. William fought to keep his nausea under control. Where is Betsy?
A gray-uniformed man seated behind a table asked, “Name?”
William stuttered. “I, uh, where am I?”
The soldier nodded to another standing next to William. The other soldier slapped the side of William’s head with an electric prod baton. “Name!”
“William Wing. Where are we?”
“Put your hand on the table.”
William saw what was in the soldier’s other hand. A device of some kind. “What’s that?” He pointed.
The other soldier swung the baton at William. When it connected, he saw stars.
“Your hand. Now!”
William complied and the soldier placed the device on his hand. He felt a sharp pinch where the device made contact with his hand. An injection gun!
“Next.” The soldier waved him away.
William examined his hand. A spot of blood pooled where the device had made contact. He thought for a few seconds. Bet they placed a chip inside me. A tracker. Or something worse.
He scanned the mass of people being processed. Betsy must be somewhere inside here. But where is here? What do they plan to do with us?
* * *
Betsy stared around her as the head sack was ripped off her head and her plasticuffs were cut. She took a deep breath to control her anger, but the odor had her gagging.
She scanned the “gymnasium.”
What new hell is this?
Her fellow prisoners were mostly young and white, even numbers of men and women, all moving slowly toward a row of tables set up against one of the inside gray block walls. She heard the conversation between those standing at the tables and their captors, before they were flushed through to the other side of the tables and then marched through a door.
She heard one of the captives at a table complain in pain as she was beaten for answering too slowly. She wondered exactly what the soldiers at the table were doing to the people being processed. And why are we all here?
She looked for William and Cassie. There were too many people and the room was too densely packed for her to see either of them. Damn, I’m just too short! But in another minute it was her turn at the table. She’d watched what the soldiers were doing to those just in front of her. We’re being chipped! Lord fuckaduck!
* * *
Cassie rubbed her hand where the soldier had inserted what she assumed must be a locator chip into her hand. She hadn’t seen either William or Betsy while she’d been processed.
A guard pushed her down a dark corridor to what appeared to be a cellblock gate with a blue steel door. She was pushed through and further, to a gunmetal-gray cell door. The guard pushed her into the cell and she heard the lock click shut on the door. No light.
She felt around. Her shoes had been taken. Her bare foot found the hole in the concrete floor that would serve as a toilet. No mattress. The smell was awful. Human waste and other odors, much worse. Someone must have died here, and very recently. I guess many of us aren’t expected to survive for long.
She had only one trick she could manage. Cassie dropped her pants and panties and reached into her rectum. She pulled the thumb-drive computer from her butthole and wiped it clean on her pants cuff. Enough battery for about twenty hours, but no keyboard and no screen. She’d taken care of the keyboard and screen through a Bug-Lok device she’d swallowed three days before. Well, at least I’m partway there. Now, there’s the question of what I can do with these.
* * *
William heard the cell door slam behind him, and knew he’d been locked within. He felt around the walls in the darkness to see how small his world had become. The cell is about six feet by eight feet. This is not as bad as the prison in China. At least I have my own clothes, too bad they took my shoes.
He took a deep breath. I smell death. This is a concentration camp. His heart rate accelerated despite his attempt at self-control. He sat on the floor and tried to meditate but no luck there. After three attempts, he got up and paced the cell to calm himself. That didn’t work either.
He’d managed to squirrel away a thumb drive, lodged into his rectum. It was a complete copy of his personal notebook computer. He had a copy of the Bug-Lok nanodevice within a tiny plastic tube, also secreted within his butthole. The Bug-Lok device supplied its user with a processor, I/O, and internet access, while the thumb drive contained his files and a copy of the operating sy
stem. Used together, they constituted a complete computer.
He knew that when Betsy was cuffed, she’d had one with her, but had no idea if she’d had the time to hide it inside her body before they cuffed her and took her prisoner at the office.
CHAPTER 22
December 3, 11:23 p.m.
Processing Center Building,
50 miles northeast of Provo, UT
As far as Cassie could tell, the cell remained very hot and dry for hours, its temperature nearly constant. In less than a few hours, her lips became dry and then cracked. Guess this is in the desert somewhere. I wonder if Ann escaped the hacker roundup?
Trying to guess where Ann was wouldn’t help either of them. Cassie focused her attention on her own escape. First rule of rescue is make yourself safe first. She paced off the size of her cell. She held her breath and examined the waste hole. She tried to make an escape plan, but no viable plan emerged in her mind. In her hand, she held the plasticine-enclosed copy of Bug-Lok and the thumb drive she’d removed from within her.
The Bug-Lok nanodevice would run for about six weeks, using her own body’s heat to supply current to the device, but since the thumb drive contained both the operating system and the processor, it had only enough battery power to run for about three days. The nanodevice supplied her with the in-brain equivalent of a keyboard and a screen, as well as a VPN telecommunications link to any nearby local area network within a half-mile of where she was standing. The thumb drive had sixteen gig of main memory, nearly two hundred gig of storage, and wireless connections to the Bug-Lok once she ingested it.
But once she swallowed the Bug-Lok and turned on the thumb drive, the clock was running. No, not yet. First, I need to know more about this place.
She heard footsteps on the concrete floorway outside, and then the slot in the door dropped open. A paper plate pushed through and the slot closed. She walked toward where light had escaped into the cell for a few seconds. There was no plasticware on the plate. Just a piece of bread and a small plastic bag of water. The bread was stale and tasted of mold. She gagged and threw up into the small hole in the corner of the dark cell. To get rid of the rancid taste, she drank water from the bag.
* * *
Arthur Endor stood on the podium of the House of Representatives in the nation’s Capitol Building. He held a sheaf of bound paper in his left hand. “This pending legislation, which we are about to vote on, will protect the families of law-abiding Americans. We see hackers as criminals who are a clear and present threat, capable of causing death and destruction when and where they choose. Locking them up is the best thing we can do to protect our country from the damage we might otherwise suffer from their hands.”
He sat, and the Speaker of the House called on the next representative who wanted to speak.
Arland Caspo, representing his district in Palo Alto, California, took the podium. He was a short, squat man, but his round face showed a smile and a calm confidence that quieted the chamber. “This proposed legislation is the end of free speech. It is the end of civil liberties. It is unconstitutional. One of its provisions calls for the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without any warrant, without legal representation, and without any hope of ever seeing a trial. I call for every representative who values freedom and every one of you who wants to maintain your right to privacy to reject this piece of crap.”
Caspo sat, and the Speaker asked, “I have come to the end of the list of those wanting to speak on this issue. If anyone else so desires, please stand and be acknowledged.”
The room was silent and without any movement. “In that case, I put this matter, bill number HR 1728, to a vote.”
The Speaker called on each representative, and one-by-one, each uttered either “aye” or “nay.” Behind and above the lawmakers, a neon-lit scoreboard showed the building vote results.
In less than an hour, the bill had been narrowly defeated.
* * *
Ruth Cantor, United States senator from Maryland and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had watched the bill go down in flames on television in her Senate office. When it became obvious the bill would lose, she began pacing around. She cursed repeatedly. What the fuck do I do now? My version of the bill passed the Senate. I anticipated theirs passing. It’s unfortunate that we rounded up all the hackers before the bill was on the House floor, but I’d wanted to be able to announce their incarceration right after the bill passed both chambers, to pressure the White House to sign it. Now what the fuck do I do?
As if in answer to her question, she heard a knock on her door. “Enter,” she said.
Endor opened the door and walked in, then closed the door. Without being invited, he sat. “Now you have your answer. I told you I might not be able to deliver a veto-proof majority. Turns out, we couldn’t even muster a vanilla-flavored majority. You’re on your own now. Whoever funded the development of this bill, whoever is funding you, is now standing naked, their pecker flapping in the breeze.”
“Well, fuck you very much, Arthur. There’s enough evidence flying around to involve you too, ya’ know. Maybe we can occupy nearby cells so we can argue until we die of boredom.”
“Right. So, what are you going to do with your captured hackers? Release them?”
“That would be crazy. After the way we’ve just treated them, we probably turned the few white hats in that mob into black-hat terrorists. No way we can ever let any of them go free. I’ll have to find a way for us to very quietly dispose of them.”
Endor laughed. “Lady, you’re bat-shit crazy. It’s already on the news. You can’t quietly slaughter over two million citizens. You had better let the folks who convinced you to do this know that you need them to create another incident. A much bigger incident.” He turned and left her standing alone.
Ruth almost cursed him as he walked away. She stopped herself, remembering that anything above normal conversation might echo down the hallway. She thought for a second about the situation. Doubling down would dig the hole she was in even deeper. She terminated the conversation. Arthur Endor is an idiot.
CHAPTER 23
December 3, 11:23 p.m.
Holiday Inn, Baltimore, MD
The CypherGhost had just checked into another modest hotel and entered her ground-floor room. The room faced the back of the hotel. She could see the low chain-link fence just across the parking lot that had enough spaces for cars for each of the rooms. In the event she was found, this might be an easy escape. But, so far, no one had come close to finding her. She set up her notebook computer and sent an email to Ann Sashakovich:
Little Noisy—
Since I know that you haven’t moved your tiny ass for over three days, I assume you are on the run or hiding, and not among the mess of hackers now in the concentration camps. News flash: I have located the camps. There are eleven, each capable of holding about a quarter-million inmates. There are two in the Nevada desert, three in the Utah mountains, five in Wyoming, and one in northern Arizona. If you have hacker friends, there is no way to tell which camp they are being held in.
I’m also guessing that most of the hackers were prepared when they were arrested. So, I’m hoping they carried thumb drives and butt phones secreted within them. Please contact me and let me know how to contact you securely. Just use the following for the message body’s header: GETWAY99. And in the body, list your procedure with your public PGP key.
—the CypherGhost
She sat quietly, eating a candy bar. There was no way to know if Ann would notice her message.
She’d lived off-grid for nearly a decade, hacking bank accounts when she needed cash, and she had an attaché case full of counterfeit printed money, clothes, and notebook computer parts and cables. For the last seven years, there had been no change in her behavior, since no one knew she existed. But, she thought, for Ann, this must be disorienting. She felt for Ann, the first emotion other than anger she’d felt for years. When it comes down to reacting to this mess,
I’m guessing we’re both feeling the same. And that should help me gain her trust.
She watched the television to see if further news of the mass hacker incarceration had been announced, or if there was any response that she might exploit.
And there it was. She saw a news anchor state offhandedly that “identity theft has increased markedly over the last two days.” Must be foreign hackers, and that made sense, since there were no white hats to alert the public that they’d found new zero-day flaws in the software people used. There was also a news story of riots occurring everywhere, with rumors that “hackers have been arrested without any reason or notice, and no attorneys have been permitted to meet with them.” Then a news story that “the police and National Guard are now refusing to arrest any more hackers.”
She was about to turn off the television when another reporter mentioned that the Hacker Security Protection Bill had been defeated in the House of Representatives. She watched excerpts of Arthur Endor’s speech and Arland Caspo’s response, and then the vote flashed. The talking head stated that “this will be a major problem for the federal government because, although the US Senate passed the bill, the failure of its passage in the House means they no longer have any legal reason to imprison the hackers already in custody.”
The CypherGhost flexed her fingers. Surely this would be the spoon that stirred the roux into a rapid boil. At worst, those in charge of the prison system might believe it was their responsibility to eliminate their prisoners, since they might have harmed many of them during their incarceration. I must act fast. At best, she could use her skills to wreak the kind of havoc that could hasten the release of the hackers. She thought for a while. What might work? But no idea occurred to her. Damn. I need Ann Sashakovich.