Feral: An Our Cyber World Prequel

by Suastegui, Eduardo

  “When did I say that?”

  “I must have imagined it, then.”

  He went to say something, but held himself in check. He slumped and leaned back in his chair. “What are you saying?”

  “They’ve been squeezing me like they’ve been squeezing you, Martin.”

  “What? They couldn’t know.”

  “Not them. Not your they. The other guys.”

  He leaned forward, as if ready to spring into action, in her defense perhaps. “Who?”

  “Let’s not say, OK? No need for you to get mired in it. Let’s just say, the Americans got to you, and someone else was watching all along. Very interested in your future.”

  “Iranians?” he said, and of course he would, given her nationality.

  She tapped her lips with a stiff index finger. “Let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on what we need to do.”

  “You want to run. Get away from them.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “I want us to be free. Together and free.”

  “And do what?”

  “Well, we won’t be setting up a government-sponsored money-maker. But we’ll live in peace.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll lead the lives we choose, not jump through the hoops someone else sets up for us. You want this too, Martin.”

  “To do what? Go on the lam? Go find some island to live on? Go off-grid in the middle of some jungle?”

  “Once the dollar signs fade, it’s the logical thing. The feasible thing.”

  “Feasible? You tell me what’s more feasible. Accepting venture capital and starting my own company, or taking a vow of poverty so I can run off on some world-chase adventure with—” He came up short.

  “With me. It’s all right. You can say it. With me.”

  It took him a second to come back. “With nothing. I was going to say, with nothing.”

  Sasha settled herself down. She pushed aside the conclusion that she was part of the nothing Martin spoke about.

  He looked away for a moment to shake his head at some shadow on the wall.

  “Come on, Martin. You think they’re handing you all this, your own company, complete with cash flow, the computer equipment? You think they’re doing all that out of the goodness of their hearts?”

  His gaze darted back to her with a frown. “Who said anything about anyone’s goodness?”

  “They’re using you.”

  “We’re trading services. I do my part. They do theirs. Some folks call that doing business. It’s legal. It might even produce something useful. You know about it. Innovation. Ingenuity. Toss in hard work. It’s not as smelly as you want to imagine it.”

  “I once knew a guy who said imagination needs freedom.”

  “I want to do this. No one’s forcing me. If you want to spit on it, good for you. I want it for myself because I’ve earned it. And because I can make a difference.”

  “A difference.”

  “I can play for the good guys. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, but being sneaky and rebellious—it got me nothing. It got me less than nothing.”

  Nothing. Again. Less than nothing, even. It got him her, and he equated that with worse than nothing. She bit the inside of her lip. She pinched it until she tasted the first drop of blood.

  “They got you, then,” she said.

  “Or I got them. Or both of the above. Good ol’ quid pro quo. Whatever. It’s how the real world works.”

  “Ah, the real world. Yeah.” She let a long breath she intended as a sigh, but it came out too turbulent to pass for one. “You know what all this is, don’t you? You’re sharp enough to smell it no matter how many layers of cash they hide it under.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I am.”

  “Whatever you are, you’re going for it. The brass ring.”

  “Mine will be gold.”

  “And super shiny.”

  “I promise to make all my bling understated and in good taste.”

  “And comfy. And safe. Don’t forget that.”

  “There you go again, making it sound so dirty.” His lips broke into a half-playful grin. “Get over it. People have been trying to get ahead for as long as mother earth has spun.”

  “Get ahead to what? For what end?”

  “Maybe you’ve heard of it. Prosperity.”

  “And what does it get you? All that prosperity.”

  “Peace of mind.”

  “Does it?”

  He shrugged. “People seem to like it.”

  “Prosperity is the trap that ensnares you while you chase comfort and safety.”

  “Nice fortune cookie.”

  “You won’t be free, Martin. You’ll never be free. Just like the rest of suburbia. A bunch of slaves deluded into thinking they are free.”

  “OK, so I’ll skip the soccer dad thing.”

  “All of them trapped in their mind-numbing, soul-crushing, nine-to-fives, and the horrendous commutes that go with them.”

  “Not if we’re doing a job we love. You, me—”

  “All of them pining for financial freedom while they’re nothing more than well-bathed, clean-shaven slaves to their mortgages, their car lease payments, and their stacks of plastic credit.”

  “How about we downgrade the rhetoric a notch.”

  “Maybe if I were successful, I could figure out how to tweet it to you.”

  He shook his head and pumped a fist in the air. “And for your next trick, start yelling power to the people.”

  Sasha let out another long breath. She knew it then. She read it in his face. It was over. She saw no sense in continuing to push for the opposite outcome.

  She placed her hand on the base of the wine glass and slid it toward him. “Well, then. Why don’t you pour me more of that prosperity?”

  “Pretty yummy, right?”

  “Warms the esophagus, even if it doesn’t quite drip all the way down to the soul.”

  He reached for the bottle and splashed out a generous pour. She let her eyes daze in the swaying crimson liquid and the way the light danced in it. Drawing the glass closer, she smelled the inebriating fumes that would pacify her. Still, though she tried, she could not shake the clichéd observation. It looked like blood. It tasted a little like it too when it mixed with hers inside her mouth.

  They spent a few minutes in silence. Martin took sips from his glass while he peered over it at her taking long, careless swallows. He didn’t break the silence, and neither did she. He kept eyeing her until she finished her glass.

  “I’m not rejecting you,” he said.

  “Sure you are.”

  “My offer is still on the table. I’d love to have you.”

  “Oh, right. That silver bullet.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “No thanks.”

  He gave her a knowing nod, like he also knew that it was over. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “But does it really matter?”

  Martin set his glass down and slid his chair to come closer to her. Sasha stood up. He hesitated for a moment before he pushed up from his seat.

  She reached inside her purse and turned off the recorder. Her hand came out holding another tissue with which she dabbed her nose. She sniffed, supposing she should’ve kept up the act through dinner. But she didn’t care if he didn’t buy it now.

  “Will it put you in a bad spot?” she asked. “With them, I mean?”

  “You saying no?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  He shrugged. Like she thought, they wouldn’t care either way. They only cared about Martin. If they got him, victory. If he needed a cute hacker gal at his side, they’d try to accommodate him for as long as it took to keep him on the leash.

  “I’m sure they’ll want to know why I said no.”

  He shrugged again. “I think I can paraphrase.”

  She slung her purse on her left shoulder and walked to the front door. From there, she turned halfway and shot him a sideways glance.

  “Go ah
ead and quote me. Tell them I said, I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and I rather live free.”

  With a hand on the door knob, she froze where she stood. Her mind wanted the knob to turn, her mind to pull back on the door, and her feet to take her through the threshold. But none of that would happen. Not until Martin came to her and, with his hand on her shoulder, gently turned her back toward him.

  “Let’s not leave it this way,” he said.

  “I should go.”

  “Would you at least think about it some more? It’s a great opportunity, Sasha.”

  Something sarcastic came to mind, but she swallowed it. She nodded, broke eye contact, and turned back toward the door. He released her arm. She walked out and drove home.

  Once there, she got ready for bed and went into her bedroom with the voice recorder in hand. Lying on the soft pillow top with eyes closed, she replayed the conversation. Twice. She wanted to go through it one more time, but couldn’t bring herself to it.

  Now she had to decide. Let Chana hear it, or not? She slid the device onto her nightstand and turned out the light. She’d think about it again come morning.

  29» Insiders

  “The president wants answers,” Odehl snarled at the conference room crowd.

  Martin rubbed his eyes and blinked at the overhead clock. Yup. Still 5 AM. They had roused him from bed an hour later and driven him here. To his surprise, he hadn’t complained much. Neither did his fellow teammates. Tired and haggard, they all sipped the last of their coffee cups and squinted up at the screen, where the details of the latest hack on the financial markets had flashed in one chart after another.

  The last slide glared back at them showing a rough photo of a top Russian mobster, arms at his back, handcuffed, with two FBI agents manhandling him out of his Long Island mansion. “Massive Cyber Insider Trading,” read the bold caption at the bottom of the screen.

  “It looks like a pretty rough hack,” Dennis said from the other side of the room.

  “Meaning?” Stan Beloski replied.

  Dennis shrugged. He scratched the back of his neck and shrugged again. “Looks like plain vanilla breaking and entry all the way. Maybe with an inside player unlocking this and that.”

  Beloski aimed a rod-straight index finger at the screen. “On all those companies?”

  Dennis cleared his throat. He eyed Martin as if looking for support.

  Martin shrugged at him. He sure didn’t want to offer any wisdom and become the resident expert on this latest crisis.

  “It’s butt simple, OK?” Dennis said. “It’s not like those press releases are the most secure thing. Heck, if someone can break into a mail server and download the whole database, like they did with Sony or Clinton—“

  “No one has evidence of that,” Beloski said.

  “Right. Whatever. Same difference. It’s butt simple.”

  “Right,” another guy said. “For all we know it was an email attachment, sent around for review.”

  Martin craned his neck to cast an over the shoulder glance at Cynthia. She sat at the back of the room. With arms crossed and her head resting against the wall, she eyed the nerds with a look that hung somewhere between contempt and resignation.

  He grinned at her. She cocked an eyebrow.

  “What do you think, Martin?” Beloski said.

  Martin turned back to face the screen. He dwelled there, like he was studying it for a final answer.

  “Part of me is with Dennis. This feels too brute force and straightforward to mean what I think you guys want it to mean.” He shot Cynthia another over-the-shoulder glance to accentuate his point.

  “On the other hand,” he added. “Did you guys ever figure out why Jason Coulter got a bullet to the head?”

  “You think this has something to do with that?” Dennis said.

  Martin turned to Odehl. “Russian mobsters hacking into companies to grab their earnings reports before they hit the street so they can put in their buy and sell orders ahead of everyone else? Might be a good reason to get rid of someone who might blow the lid on all that.”

  “But Jason was pointing you to Sasha’s hack,” Cynthia said.

  Martin didn’t turn to answer her. No sense in giving her a chance to catch the half-truth in his eyes. “So he was. But when someone’s showing you something, drawing you all sorts of bright arrows to point it out, you have to ask: what aren’t they showing you?”

  “That’s a pretty big logical leap,” Cynthia said. “Unless you can point us to some evidence to suggest a tie-in between Jason and these Russian mobsters—”

  “Maybe. But if it’s that big a stretch, why are we here?” Martin waved at the team. “If this is just about some mob thing, why bring us in?”

  “First, because it’s a Cyber matter,” Robert Odehl said. He waited until Martin faced him again. “Second, because it involves Ukranian hackers.”

  Dennis let go of a hissing curse. “Here we go again. Those Ukranians.”

  “Or those Ukranians, hired by those Iranians,” Cynthia put in. She too waited until Martin and the others had turned to face her.

  “You have intel on that?” Martin said.

  She sat up and took a deep breath, as if to wake herself up. “Sketchy, but as good as we’re going to get.”

  Martin nodded and looked down at the table. He watched his hand, resting there. He wiggled his fingers. Whatever had just happened over there in New York, whoever those mobsters were and whoever they had teamed with to achieve an insider trading advantage, Sasha was going to get pulled in with them, whether she had anything to do with it or not.

  Cynthia watched the team filing out of the conference room. Only Martin, Beloski, Cynthia, and her father, Robert Odehl, remained.

  At the moment Martin had his eyes closed. His cheek pressed into his fist, and his elbow rested on the table. Cynthia felt for him. The weight of this whole thing had crashed on him all at once.

  “I need a shower.” His voice ebbed out on the edge of raspy. His eyes remained closed.

  “There’s a lot of pressure on us,” Cynthia said. “This will really rattle the markets today.”

  “And tomorrow everyone will forget about it. Like they always do. The fat cats will swoop in and pick up a bunch of bargains.” He opened his eyes and sat up to arc his back.

  “You’re sure she has nothing to do with this?” Cynthia’s father said.

  Martin rolled his shoulders. “Sounds like a question for her. Which incidentally, I notice you didn’t bring her in at this ungodly hour.”

  Robert Odehl narrowed his gaze. “You have pretty good instincts. What does your gut tell you?”

  “Come on, Robert. I’m not the profiler here.” Martin shot Cynthia a sideways glance.

  Her father nodded for a couple of beats. “What about you? Does any of this trading ring a bell for you?”

  “Huh?”

  “The stocks they were trading,” Beloski interjected. “They were pretty much the same ones you were trying to trade when the market shutdown happened.”

  Cynthia watched Martin fall back in his chair. He craned his neck to glare at the ceiling.

  “Nice,” he said. “You’re accusing me so I’ll help you go after her.”

  “We just want to do our due diligence,” Odehl said.

  “Sure.” Martin stood up. “Tell you what. I’m going to go back to my office, lay down on my couch, and stay there until about eight or nine. Unless you have handcuffs and an arrest warrant, you don’t need to come in there.”

  “Come on, Martin.” Robert Odehl also stood up and took a step toward Martin.

  He put his hand out. “Save it, Robert. I don’t need it. I don’t want it. You want to solve this…” he gestured at the screen, still showing that final slide. “You’re going to do it without me. I’m out.”

  Cynthia watched her father huff. He looked at her, as if she could do something to restrain Martin. She gave a short shake of the head.

  “No use in anta
gonizing him further,” she said after the door had shut behind Martin.

  Her father dropped back into his chair with a groan. “You think he’s clean?”

  She eyed Stan Beloski, then looked back at her father. “You know? Maybe I should go find a couch myself.”

  Her father frowned at her. So did Beloski.

  “I’m not exactly objective, now, am I?” She held her father’s gaze. He looked away first, the most tired of the two.

  “I think he’s clean,” Stan said. “Those stocks he was trading were high fliers. Very popular. A number of people were playing them.”

  “Sasha, then?” Odehl said.

  Stan eyed Cynthia. “I think it’s time to start listening to Cynthia on that. We’ll never know whether we can trust her or not. Every time we think we have her contained, something like this pops up.”

  “Yeah,” Odehl said. “By her own admission, she’s tied to this Ukranian hacker crew, right?”

  Beloski eyed Cynthia again. This time she saw support in his eyes. Like he wanted her to know he was with her.

  “That’s how I see it,” Stan said. “We need to cut bait on her.”

  “We’ve gotten all we need from her, right?” Odehl said.

  Beloski looked over at Cynthia a third time. “Not to hear Martin talk about it. He has all kinds of projects she can help him with.”

  Odehl dropped his head and looked at the floor. “We need to cut her lose, then.”

  Stan dropped his head, too, as if in solidarity with his boss. “We need to do it with a soft touch. Martin won’t take it well.”

  Cynthia almost asked who was going to tell Martin, but she stopped herself. It didn’t matter. The question hung among them all the same.

  Both her father and Stan looked up at her to answer it.

  Odehl stood up, nodded at Cynthia and made to leave the room. He stopped at the door, as if anticipating his daughter would object at his departure. After a few seconds, he nodded again and stepped out.

  Cynthia turned to Stan. “I take it you have something to share.” She regarded him, noting the sudden unease in his demeanor. “Just get it out, all at once. Like ripping a Band-Aid.”

  He swallowed and leaned back in his chair. “I’m worried about you. And Martin.”