Feral: An Our Cyber World Prequel

by Suastegui, Eduardo

  “Good. Spurn his pride, make him chase after you to repair it. But not too much. Moderation is best, no?”

  “Of course.” Sasha took another sip from her glass, and kept it there, hovering in front of her lips, her eyes drilling into Chana’s.

  Chana shifted in her seat, making the cushion under her moan. “How are your other associates behaving these days?”

  “They’ve gone from extolling the merits of the cause to padding the stacks of one hundred dollars they’d love to lavish on me.”

  “Ah. Persian generosity. Should it concern me?”

  “I lack for nothing.”

  “Thank you for saying so. I take great pride in ensuring that remains so. But be careful that your modest living and altruism don’t carry you too far.”

  “Dare I ask why that would worry you?”

  “Those Persian pals of yours. They may sooner or later connect your altruism as the reason for why their stacks of bills can’t rise as tall as they’d prefer.”

  Sasha took a longer sip from her glass. This time the water rolled raw and bitter over her tongue and down her throat. Behind her, the refrigerator kicked into a higher gear, and its humming vibration went through her shoulders and down her back.

  “You think they know?”

  “They are trying to keep it quiet, so as to not unveil how they’ve bypassed US sanctions.” Chana winked. “You have that going for you.”

  “As I thought. They have no clue.”

  “We like to assume what sets our mind at ease, don’t we?”

  Chana downed the rest of her water in one swallow. She grimaced, no doubt also getting the full impact of the water’s bitterness.

  “I think I should go,” Chana said. She stood up and winked at Sasha. “Get more glasses and fizzy water ready. I’m not the only one who pays house calls.”

  Of course, Sasha knew Chana meant that in a figurative sense. The part about other parties paying her a house call, that is.

  Sasha turned on the unlisted, burner cellphone she kept for communications with them. Sure enough, a text message specified a meeting time, and a location in lightly coded GPS coordinates. So yeah, the part about setting up glasses and water for incoming guests was figurative, but the part about Chana’s team tapping into the burner phone’s messaging to learn of the upcoming meeting worked quite practically.

  Sasha gathered her purse, checking its contents to feel the small pistol in the concealed compartment and the can of pepper spray intermixed with various smaller tubes of makeup and toiletries. She stood at the front door for a second, as if she had a choice, as if she could say to heck with it, blow them off. It took her only ten seconds to convince herself she should go. As she stepped through the hallway and down the staircase, she asked herself whether she did it from lack of a better choice, or because part of her enjoyed all this a bit too much.

  From her West Hollywood apartment, at this time of night, the drive to Westwood wouldn’t take long. After typing the GPS coordinates into her car’s navigation system, she recognized the displayed destination.

  Once there, at a small café trying and failing to project a Parisian ambiance, she took an outside table, ordered a café au lait and resisted the temptation to add a chocolate croissant.

  The time for her meeting came and went. She didn’t fret it. No doubt her late evening date and his associates were hiding somewhere, scanning the surroundings to ensure no other surveillance.

  Sure enough, fifteen minutes and a full cup of coffee later, she saw him coming. Same guy they’d sent last time. This surprised her. They would never send the same person to meet her twice in a row. In fact, several encounters would go by before she would meet the same go-between. As his lanky figure approached, now draped in street light, then going into shadow only to reemerge, she guessed why they’d sent him again. He’d struck her as the most technical of the whole lot of them. Maybe they wanted to get down to specifics. The thought unsettled her. If they wanted to get technical—or more to the point, to get her to produce—she would have to redouble her efforts to deflect and delay. Or she’d have to play along at last.

  “Sasha,” he said, his eyes darting from her to one side, then back to her, then to the other side. As if he couldn’t get a fix on her.

  She gestured toward the empty seat across from her. “They serve good coffee here.”

  “Not coffee,” he said, his eyes still darting.

  “Afraid the caffeine will keep you up tonight?” Sasha smiled inwardly as she recalled Chana’s suggestion forty minutes earlier. “Water, perhaps? Sparkling?”

  “That would be nice.” He rubbed his hands on his knees and forced himself to raise his gaze from the table up to her. “We need to talk.”

  “Looking so forward to it.”

  He broke eye contact again, looked over her shoulder, then down at the table, and finally back at her. “It’s time.”

  She checked her watch. “Yeah, the late kind.” She flipped her wrist toward him so he could see the watch’s face. “Eleven thirty-five. Way past my bed time. Way-way. You know what happens to me when I don’t get my sleep? All of it?”

  He frowned and scratched his chin like one trying to solve a puzzle.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  He tried to force a smile.

  “What is it this time?” she asked.

  “Same thing we discussed last time. They want in on what you’re doing. And enough with the games. We talked about what you’re doing last time. We know.”

  “I’ve had a lot on my mind. And it’s late, like I said. Be a dear and remind me?”

  His nostrils flared and he turned to the side, keeping his dark brown eyes on her. “The stock market hack.”

  “Hmm. I don’t recall admitting to that.”

  “Come off it. We know.”

  “You guess you know.”

  “No. We know.” He brought his hand on the table and balled it into a tight fist. “First hand.”

  Sasha let her gaze drop to his fist and let it dwell there with disdain. “How does that work?” She met his eyes again. “Knowing first hand?”

  He brought up his other hand, also in a fist, and leaned toward her. “Did you get to ask Jason?”

  She held herself in check. It wouldn’t do to react. But there she had it, confirmation of how Jason had gone down. Or switching the letters, who had put him down.

  “No, I’m afraid I didn’t,” she said. “Never got a chance to. Tragic what happened to him. But necessary, I’m sure.” A cold chill went down her neck, not at the thought of Jason’s murder, but that she’d caused it. That, and how she sounded right now, like she didn’t care—like Chana would sound when she didn’t care or wanted to make you think she didn’t.

  “It is a good reminder, no?” he said. “Yes. Yes, it is. Let us all use Jason as a good reminder of how we should conduct ourselves.”

  “You wasted a perfectly good bullet, you know. Even if it was a tiny twenty-two cal.”

  He frowned, perhaps in transient surprise at how she’d know the caliber of the bullet that pierced Jason’s frontal lobe. He traded the frown for a scowl, no doubt putting it together that a hacker should have no trouble accessing a coroner’s report.

  “Your little hack is stealing from us.” His voice hissed through a pulsing, tight throat.

  She nodded. Jason had shown them, like he showed Martin. He’d shown them enough for them to get at the logs and confirm the hack tapped their accounts. And they’d killed him because if he talked to the feds, they might arrive at the same conclusion: that Iranians had bypassed restrictions to trade in the stock market. More than that, how they were manipulating it, taking advantage of it. Jason had been foolish enough to help them play that game, on the bits and bytes side of things. Now he lay in a morgue somewhere. Or six feet under. She had no clue.

  Another chill went through her. It started at the back of her neck and crawled down to the small of her back.

  “That’s r
ight,” he added. “And they don’t like it. They don’t like it when people steal from them.” He released one of his fists so that his fingers could rub out the international money sign. “So they want payback now. And you’re going to provide it. Plus interest.”

  She took a deep breath and managed her best to project condescending confidence. “What dreams do you guys fathom in those playful heads of yours?”

  “You’re going to hand over your hack.”

  “To what end? So that you can, what? Hack the entire stock market? Make it crash, maybe? Bring the whole US economy to its knees?”

  “Lower your voice.”

  Now she leaned in. “I don’t know what you’re imagining, but it’s not going to do that.”

  He aimed a bony index finger at her. It came within an inch of touching her nose. She could feel it, right there, tip to tip.

  “That’s where you come in, isn’t it?” he hissed. “I’m sure you can make it do wonders.”

  09» Back-trace

  The best coffee in the world wouldn’t make this situation passable. Martin didn’t really need Beloski standing over his shoulder, and he could do without the snotty kid on his left pretending he was working on his own trace, while he kept sneaking peeks over at Martin’s screen.

  “How’s it going over there?” Martin asked. “Solved the mystery of the alarm system yet?”

  The kid shrugged. “Like you guessed. An update, a big one. Full reconfig of the software and firmware. Took three full passes.”

  Martin restrained the inward smile that so wanted to appear on his lips. “Uh-huh.”

  “Like you said. Big download, in stages to keep the alarm system operational at all times.”

  Of course it happened like Martin said. First, he’d designed the system to allow for remotely initiated updates, provided all pass keys and encryption safeguards were employed. But more than that, after his video chat with Feral, Martin had covered the unusual high data usage by faking an alarm update. Now he hoped the snotty kid wouldn’t show the initiative to go poke the originating servers, since, beyond the log files he’d planted, they wouldn’t show the update push.

  “How about your trace?” Beloski said, reaching over Martin’s shoulder and tapping on the screen.

  Martin hated that. People tapping on a screen and leaving their greasy fingerprints.

  He drew a tissue from a nearby box and used it to wipe his display. “This is a long lead item.”

  “Still no luck, huh?” the kid on his left said, now taking the liberty to abandon his station to lean over and get a closer look.

  Martin tamped down his annoyance. At least the kid wasn’t digging any deeper into that alarm software update.

  Still, he scooted back in his seat and waved at his screen. “Want to give it a try?”

  The kid shook his head.

  “We got other people working it,” Beloski said.

  Martin scooted forward. “Oh, yeah? How’s that going?”

  Neither Beloski nor the kid replied.

  Martin smirked. “That’s what I thought.”

  For the next thirty minutes, he worked away while the other two looked on. He guessed the kid was acting as his designated backup. Or cross-trained partner, as they liked to call it. Watch that Martin like a hawk, don’t miss a single keystroke. If he goes down, you’re it, so take good notes. Martin guessed that meant the kid had a good measure of skill and aptitude. Maybe he should have noted his name.

  “Branson, right?” Martin said at the end of the thirty minutes.

  “Benson.”

  “Right. Listen, Benson. I think we should take a break. Maybe go for a walk outside to clear our heads some before we go real deep. How’s that sound?”

  Martin stood up in time to see Beloski give the kid a slight shake of the head.

  Benson waved his hand in a poor attempt at striking a nonchalant pose. “Nah. You go ahead. I got a couple of things to check out here.”

  “Fresh air sounds good,” Beloski said. “I’ll go with you.”

  Martin shrugged. He didn’t exactly want to spend his break with Beloski. But he knew he had little choice. They might have dropped the sequestering bit, but they still wanted to birddog him. He could sense that. It would take a preponderance of the evidence before Stan’s superiors would clear Martin of the hack. It was, after all, his code out there.

  Two heavy vault doors hissed and popped open to usher Martin and Stan Beloski out to the lobby. Outside, the Southern California air flowed warm to hot under a sharp, near high noon sun. They followed an undulating, winding path among trees whose foliage provided uneven, incomplete shelter from the sun’s rays. Here Martin had a thought. What if he could buy that whole building where his secured lab resided? What if his company could occupy all of it? Then he’d have the outside grounds spiffed up into a nice garden area, a place where his teammates and employees could come out to visualize and imagine amidst a small pocket of nature that shielded them from the urban sprawl all around them.

  “How are you doing?” Beloski asked when they’d gone halfway around the building.

  “I think I’ll have it figured out in a few hours.”

  “I mean you. How are you holding up?”

  Martin stopped at a bench, bent down to clear it of leaves, and took a seat. He gestured for Beloski to do the same.

  “I’m tired,” Martin said.

  “I overheard you say that you didn’t get much sleep last night?”

  Martin shrugged.

  Stan sat and sighed. “Yeah, I wouldn’t sleep much either if my code’s out there getting used for God knows what purpose.”

  This was a come on, a baited draw. Beloski wanted him to venture a guess of what that purpose might be, get the conversation started that way. Or maybe he hoped Martin would go ahead and confess.

  “I’m tired of this, Stan.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it.”

  “You know where you can get plenty of rest. You get to share a bunk bed with Vitto, they feed you three tin pan meals, and they let you out in the yard for some exercise. Lots of downtime. Very relaxing, I’m told.”

  “Really, Stan? Now they got you doing the scare tactics, too?”

  Stan Beloski turned to face Martin. “You know I’ve done nothing but extend you the benefit of the doubt in all this. It’s gotten me quite a bit of heat, actually.”

  Martin wanted to say something sarcastic, but left it at, “Thanks.”

  “My sole concern is the technical integrity of the program.”

  “In which I am your most prized slave.”

  “You play this right, and the future is nothing but sunny for you. You know that. I’ve told you plenty of times, and you ought’a know by now I’m not BS’ing you, Martin. You can run this whole thing one day if you play your cards right.”

  Martin didn’t bother to point out that if anyone would run things, it would be Stan. And Martin was Stan’s star performer, the wonder kid that could make it all click. In short, Martin was Stan’s ticket to more federal funding for a fledging Cyber program, one of many straining for supremacy.

  “But this thing,” Stan said. “Whatever is going on here, with your code—”

  “Should we be talking about this? Out here?”

  “We’re not crossing any lines. Just keep it non-specific.” Stan pursed his lips. “You get what I’m saying, right? You gotta show us this has nothing to do with you.”

  Martin nodded. “I get it.” And he did. He got that if he had spilled his code, shared it with Feral, Stan’s project would come to an abrupt end. In a few days a team would come in and gut that office space in there. Not much more than hanging wires would remain.

  “Do you? Get it? All the way?”

  “I’ll trace it, Stan. I’ll flush this Feral idiot into the open, and then you can have your way with him.”

  Stan peered into Martin’s eyes. “Good. That will resolve all doubts once and for all.”

 
; “Why does that sound like it’s about more than this case?”

  “You know why.”

  Martin gritted his teeth and turned away. “Right. My phantom partner in crime.”

  “Uh-huh. You know full well some folks never let go of the theory that your hack needed a helper.”

  And like dogs with a bone, they would never let go, would they? Martin had known that all along. In due time, he’d shrugged it off. They could believe whatever they wanted. Except that belief matched truth, and truth now came calling.

  Martin stood up. “All right. Let’s get back in there and prove them wrong, then.” He stopped to point at Stan. “And to make you proud, of course.”

  Stan’s lips broke into a faint smile. As they restarted their walk, Martin considered how he would manage it. He needed to trace Feral, whose identity he knew with almost near certainty, and he had to do it without anyone else noticing when the trace hit home. Stepping ahead of Stan he let his own lips show a smile when he came upon the solution.

  At around 3 PM, Stan Beloski tapped Martin on the shoulder. That was enough for one day. Martin should go home, get some rest, come back tomorrow with fresh eyes, and so on. Martin shrugged. Sure, that sounded fine by him. Maybe get a real meal while he was at it, he added.

  Stan shrugged back. “Just make sure it isn’t cholesterol-loaded.”

  Martin drove himself to a California Pizza Kitchen, placing a to-go order on the way. He only had to wait five minutes there before his pizza and salad came out. The guy at the counter winked at him as he slid the box and salad container across the counter. The pizza box didn’t feel hot as he carried it out to his car. It shouldn’t.

  He arrived in his Sunnyvale apartment fifteen minutes later. There he closed every drape before he opened the pizza box. From it he extracted a thin laptop, not a super-powered one—it didn’t need to be—and a portable burner cell hotspot. He connected it all and had it on and booted up in a matter of minutes. Into a browser screen he typed a memorized IP address, one of thousands he’d launched his code into pretending it linked part of the trace. But this particular node contained a payload that now downloaded into his laptop.