Feral: An Our Cyber World Prequel

by Suastegui, Eduardo

  Stan held his tongue. He wasn’t about to question her profiling technique, and he sure didn’t want to get into what she meant by her reference to future operations. They had more pressing things to do, like…

  “Just go in there and feel him out,” she said, facing him at last. “I’ll read him from here.”

  “You sure he’s not in shock?”

  She snickered. “Not nearly as much as you.” She returned her attention to the screen. “You sure he’s worth it?”

  Stan wasn’t about to make the case again. They’d gone over it plenty. Martin had developed a technique to dissect any system and identify its weaknesses. He’d devised the code to do it, and yes, they had that now. Anyone could use it. But no one could tweak it and adapt it on the fly like Martin. They had tried that and failed. They had run side-by-side and head-to-head tests, and their best white-hatters couldn’t keep up. Even the ones that breached through did so sloppily and trailed Martin by hours, if not days.

  “I’m going in,” Stan said.

  She held him by the forearm. “A few more minutes. Let him stew a tad longer.”

  Stan stood there, weighing the wisdom of allowing someone with Martin’s IQ more time to think things over. But Stan stayed put and didn’t object. He even let himself enjoy her touch, and imagined what it might be like if it lingered a little longer.

  Martin rubbed his eyes.

  Between the stress and the lack of sleep, they’d get him to sing soon. His current accommodations, a small “turnaround” office with an air-gapped computer would see to that. They’d dropped him in here under the pretense of letting him examine those eight high-ranked SES outcomes. Maybe his fresh, unbiased perspective would uncover something the SSAC analysts had missed.

  And of course, he should consider what Jason had shown him. And what had happened to Jason.

  “You knew him,” Stan had told him. “Whether you know it or not, you’re the best person to help us figure this out.”

  Right. Like he and Jason had maintained a close friendship after MIT. Like he could sort out any of this.

  No, they’d dropped him in this room to ice him. Like they’d done the first time, when they wanted to break him. To turn him. And it had worked, right? They’d turned him into their Mr. White Hat. With qualifications, and now, complications.

  But if that’s what they were doing, why not come out and say it? Here, Martin. Not only does SES say you’re in this deep, but, oh, look. Your code is all over this hack. See? And it got your college buddy killed. Why? You should know. Because you two were working together, weren’t you?

  OK, so why hadn’t they confronted him, then? Too incompetent or clueless, maybe? Going through the recorded audio to see all that Jason and he had discussed? Yeah, he wanted to believe that. But just as likely, they wanted to play him out. They wanted to see if he screwed up and gave up this Cat. But he couldn’t do that, could he? Which left him stuck with explaining how his code had turned up in that hack, why SES fingered him, and who was really behind the whole mess.

  Martin tapped the keyboard, rolling the text display up and down. The data looked vaguely familiar. Back in high school and in his first year in college, he’d played a lot of chess. Eventually that had enticed him to play chess computers, and after that, to look under their hood, see what made them push pawns and bishops. Along the way he’d studied his fair share of chess books listing lengthy combinations and computer printouts of the same.

  What he stared at now didn’t look much different. And it didn’t work much differently than his own code, with its iterative, multi-combinational systematic approach to finding a system’s weakness. If this, then that, ten to one hundred steps deep, with each step yielding another if-then branch-off decision tree. The screen showed only a subset of that sea of complexity: those branches with highest likelihood and favorability.

  That was something right there. Favorability. If his name appeared on three of those branches and SES marked them as favorable, snaps to him. It meant the home team needed him. He was part of the solution, right?

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. A wave of exhaustion swept through him. He checked his watch. An hour had passed since they’d left to—according to them—brief their superiors about the situation.

  If he could only get out of here, head to lower Manhattan, get into a couple of other brokerage houses and chat up their IT department to get some access, maybe then he could make some headway. Staring at a bunch of what-if nodes, high-ranked by an AI or not wouldn’t cut it. Not for what he needed to do: figure out who’d spoofed his code and set him up as the fall guy.

  Whoever had done that had gotten to Jason. But why? Was Jason working for them? He sure had done his level best to pump Martin for info on whether he recognized the code, and about his past dating life. Maybe Jason was working for the feds, trying to ensnare Martin and/or this Cat. Had that gotten him killed?

  Martin shook his head. He stared at the SES output and wondered if maybe he should feed all those questions to an artificial intelligence to get clear, unequivocal answers.

  The door cracked thirty minutes later. Stan Beloski poked his head through.

  “How’s it going?”

  Martin shrugged. “I bet you guys are doing a lot better with all that audio from the phone recorder.”

  Stan stepped in. “Actually…” He closed the door, took two steps in, then stood there. “You didn’t do anything to that phone, did you?”

  “Like I told you. In my sock the whole time.” Martin squinted at Stan. “Unrecoverable, huh?”

  Stan nodded. “Yeah.” The word came out like a sigh. “They’re checking into whether that lab had some sort of jammer-scrambler.”

  Martin nodded. That was good. Now he wouldn’t have to get into Jason’s insider trading hack, or all his questions about Martin’s dating life.

  Stan took two more steps and pointed at Martin’s screen. “What about you? Making any headway?”

  “Not so much.”

  Stan came closer and grabbed the back of a chair, pulled it out. “Nothing sticks out at you?”

  “Oh, my name does. Like a sharp poke in the eye.” He looked up at Stan and held his gaze.

  Stan nodded as he turned the chair and sat down.

  “We should go to more brokerage houses,” Martin said. “We have the list.”

  “But we don’t have many Jasons as an in for those other places, do we?”

  “We don’t need personal introductions.”

  “Oh, so how do we get in then?”

  The way Stan asked that question, the tone of it, suggested an accusation. Like Martin should feel guilty for his classmate’s demise. Like he’d blown the one easy way to get in and look at the hack and trace how it might have gotten there. Martin sighed. Maybe he was feeling guilt all on his own. Maybe he should.

  “We flash ID,” Martin said. “Maybe of the SEC variety. Tell them we are investigating trading irregularities.”

  “And you think that would work, why?”

  Martin shrugged. “Because we’re the feds. Well, with the feds, but same difference to them. They have to cooperate.”

  “And what else would happen if we go poking in their servers?”

  “I don’t know. They might ask why, I guess.” Martin waved off the implied objection. “We have a cover story. You guys are good for that. With all your cover stories.”

  “Hmm. OK. And what cover story would you suggest? And note, we’re preferably going for something that doesn’t cause a market panic.”

  “Right. Wouldn’t want another trading shutdown, would we?” Martin tried to sound sarcastic, but he got Stan’s implication.

  This thing had to stay behind curtains, the thicker the better. Like they’d said back in Milpitas, they wanted to identify root cause and button it up before they contacted the Securities Exchange Commission or any of the entities running the markets. In fact, if Odehl and company had their say, they wouldn’t want anyone outsid
e the cone of silence to get the slightest whiff of this incident, crisis, or whatever they wanted to call it.

  Trace the hack. Shut it down. Clean up. Leave no trace. Get out.

  Why then had Odehl agreed to Martin’s suggestion to come to New York, when Martin had clearly implied, if not stated, his intention to do some up-close-and-personal poking around brokerage house computers? Why had they allowed him to go chat up Jason?

  Because Odehl had spoken with a colleague over the phone. Because of SES.

  “Any idea who this Cat might be?” Stan said.

  Boom. There it was. Stan’s deft touch reaching out to coax Martin’s cooperation. Stan had proven himself adept at that, hadn’t he? Always did it while posing like someone on Martin’s side.

  Martin shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Sure of that?”

  “Why do you question it?”

  “Because you seem… I don’t know—”

  “Dead tired? After putting in a fourteen hour day at work, then flying cross-country on a redeye? After getting blood splatter on me? Who would have thunk it?”

  “Coming to New York was your idea.”

  “Yeah, my idea. To get a closer look at those servers. The idea apparently no one had any intention of following through, and whose flaw no one cared to share with me. Until now, of course. So thank you for your forthcoming explanation.”

  Stan nodded. “Would you like me to get you more coffee?”

  “I don’t need any more coffee, Stan. I’m wired enough as it is.” Martin closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids. “You said they had some showers here?”

  “Oh. Good idea. Maybe that would help.”

  “You’re so nice to me, Stan. Going for full-on sainthood.”

  Stand stood up and went to the door. “Let me ask them to set you up.”

  “You do that, Stan. I’ll start typing up my letter to the pope. We’ll put it in the mail by close of business. How does that sound?”

  Stan smiled, probably thinking to himself that Martin’s sense of humor was a good sign.

  By the time Martin got out of the shower, a change of clothes he’d packed into his overnight bag rested on the side wood bench, as promised. He dried off with one of two rough, over-bleached white towels. Since the first towel wouldn’t dry him all the way, he switched over to the second. With less moisture on his skin now, it felt like he was defoliating with sandpaper.

  He dressed and came out of the showers into the adjacent restroom area. Squinting into the sharp, oscillating fluorescent light, he combed his hair in front of the mirror. With his dirty clothes bundled and tucked under his arm, he walked out. Two guards stood waiting.

  “Here,” one said, extending his half open overnight bag.

  Martin jammed his clothes into it. The guard withdrew and zipped up the bag. Martin searched for a joke about prison and inmate possessions under lock and key, but he soon lost the heart for it.

  He might have also asked where they were taking him, but he didn’t see much point in that. Knowing. Controlling. Two different propositions.

  But he noticed they had gone into the same wide corridor he’d walked after getting off the elevator. They passed the elevators. Ahead of them, he saw the two large doors with SSAC emblazoned above them. Then he saw the corridor where they had turned to access the conference room. This time they didn’t go that way. They kept walking toward those two large doors. The SSAC inscription got bigger. Next the guard on the right was swiping his badge, and the doors were unlatching.

  The other guard held the door open.

  Martin stepped in. Sylvia stood there, with Odehl and Stan flanking her.

  “New development,” she said. “We need you to look at something.”

  “Not code, I hope.”

  “Oh, this code you can look at.”

  “That’s a switch.”

  “Not so much.” She waved him over to one of the nearby terminals.

  Martin approached it. He stood there for a minute, with both hands gripping the back of a chair. Same code he’d seen back in Milpitas. Same code Jason had shown him.

  Martin kept staring at the screen. “Where did you find this?”

  “We sharpened our pencils,” Sylvia replied. “Which in our case means we fine-tuned the input scenario and surrounding data for SES. It predicted where to go looking and for what.” She let a couple of seconds tick off. “The incident with your… friend… It helped, too. And now you understand why I said you can look at it.”

  Martin nodded.

  “Something you need to tell us, son?” Odehl said.

  Martin didn’t know how to react to that. Should he take comfort in Odehl calling him son? Or should he panic at the implied accusation? Either way, he was caught.

  06» Calling Card

  Not long after one o’clock, they boarded the return flight to San Jose. They landed shortly before 8 PM, Pacific Time, and drove right back to the office. Why? Because SES had predicted the Cat was operating somewhere on the West Coast. Which only made Martin feel, if not look, guiltier.

  Odehl called an emergency meeting to recap what they knew. Without getting too specific about sources and methods, and leaving out mention about a certain IT specialist’s assassination, Stan relayed key findings from the SES-aided analysis. That pretty much let everyone know Martin was somehow involved. If nothing else, the hack contained his code.

  By the time they arrived in the office, the local forensics team had confirmed it. Yup, no doubt about it. Ninety-nine percent confidence score: it was Martin’s code all right.

  The other coders gave him sideways looks. Martin decided he wouldn’t waste any calories trying to dissuade them. How do you prove you’re not guilty, anyway?

  They would believe what they wanted to believe. In this case, they’d default to the obvious conclusion. He’d gone back to his bad boy ways and broken his agreement to not touch any computing systems “unless so directed by and under direct supervision of government representatives.” Funny how he remembered that line verbatim from his signed agreement—the one that had kept him out of jail. The one that would send him there for good if this thing kept wrapping itself around his neck.

  Martin Spencer sat to the side, folded his arms, and shut up. To his surprise, Stan Beloski didn’t say much either. Only when the debate about how to proceed lost most of its steam did Stan raise an index finger to speak.

  “Back in your office space,” he said looking at Martin. “You have a fully stocked pantry and refrigerator, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Change of clothes?”

  “Yeah.”

  Stan turned to Robert Odehl. “Let’s stash him there. Sequestered until this clears up.”

  “You’re thinking he’ll need to help us from there,” Odehl replied, the way a senior dude talks like none of his underlings are in the room, or more to the point, as if their presence doesn’t matter.

  “Under supervision, of course,” Stan said.

  Odehl pointed at Stan. “You mean, your supervision.”

  Stan nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Odehl gave Martin a hard stare and shook his head. “I really hope for your sake you didn’t do this, and that if you didn’t, you can show us.”

  Martin thought better of pointing out how the government would have to prove he actually altered that firmware inside that network server controller. After all, any lawyer worth his salt would wave his hands in court and say “circumstantial evidence” and “no motive” and whatever else legal magic terms he could spout. And that would amount to “reasonable doubt.” But Martin didn’t want to get into that. He didn’t want to think about it anymore than he wanted to have it go that far.

  Martin didn’t mind the sequestration. He preferred to work in his own office space, away from all those other turn-the-crank coders. There he had all the computing power and access he needed—of course, never to be used unless under strict supervision. But the feds always wanted him to work in their
facility, a dingy space at the very northern edge of Milpitas, California. Martin resented that.

  For all the money he’d spent, his own office didn’t represent more than a front for an Information Technologies business he could barely run. The only thing keeping him and his business afloat financially? The salary the feds paid him, most of it off the books, and hence, tax free, which helped to a point, because he had to declare most of it as revenue for his business, and hence got it taxed, even if at a lower rate. Rob Peter to pay Paul, with a little skimming in between. Or more like rob the taxpayer to pay the IRS.

  Whatever. He wasn’t sitting in jail, even if it felt and looked that way.

  His office, located in the second floor of a non-descript building, hid behind a heavy vault door. With that door locked, Stan Beloski provided the strict supervision he’d promised. A computer science geek pretending to know more about Cyber than his favorite video game joined them. On the other side of the vault’s door, two ITAA agents disguised as rent-a-cops stood guard.

  “This whole thing’s a joke,” Martin said against his better judgment.

  Stan smiled. “Hopefully we’ll find out the joke’s not on you. Or that it is. It’s so confusing right now. With you having hacked yourself, or someone trying to frame you for it. Or something really technical only you can comprehend.”

  Stan held Martin’s gaze. In those dark eyes, Martin read what Stan had left out. Why would someone kill Jason? Why would that someone leave Martin standing? It sure looked like Martin had something to gain from Jason’s death, didn’t it?

  Martin sighed. He was reading too much into things. Stan didn’t meant to convey that. No one had brought it up, after all.

  “Come on. You know I didn’t do it. Why would I point the finger at myself?”

  “You didn’t exactly admit it was your code from the get-go,” the young kid said, right before he turned away to avoid Martin’s glare.

  Over the next hour they made themselves comfortable. Martin found a couple of sleeping bags he stretched on the floor for them, while he claimed the couch as his for the night. After that, they searched the pantry and refrigerator to discover they would have to order more groceries in the morning, but that at least they had enough for the evening meal.