But it was unlikely that a single corporation would be able to retaliate against the sheer number of hackers he was amassing. Peter planned on posting the same message across more than a dozen boards, accessed by thousands of members of the hacker community.
Still no word from Rain when he checked his email, which worried him. She hadn’t struck him as a con artist—if anything, over the past few months she’d been one of the most reliable and steadfast members of /ALLIANCE/. What he’d told Amanda about the honor code was no exaggeration: Hackers helped one another whenever they could, and a strike against one was generally taken as an affront to all.
Consequently, Peter had gone from wondering if Rain had robbed him to concern that while digging around on his behalf, she might have fallen victim to Mason and his goon squad. After a moment’s thought, he shot off another email to her, just the question u ok? in the subject heading. Peter blew out a breath of air, thinking. He had no other way of tracking her down. He’d just have to hope that wherever Rain was, she was all right.
Feeling slightly better, Peter turned back to the post he was composing. He should have done this in the first place, he thought with a grimace, but he’d been worried about the fallout for his parents. Well, now he didn’t have anything left to lose.
Peter finished typing the post and hit send, then sat back to watch the reaction. What he’d written was simple and to the point:
Attention /ALLIANCE/ questers: We are under attack! Someone stole our domain name and took down our site and backup wiki. They’re striking at our core, trying to scatter us. But we will not be overcome! Time to strike back. Cover your tracks and stay groovy and I’ll see you on the other side … Vallas.
Within a minute, the thread started going nuts with people railing about how this was a typical attempt by “the man” to exert control over the internet with Orwellian big-brother tactics, others raging about free speech, still more spewing vitriol about what the bastards deserved to have done to them. The handles ticked by quickly, comments posting so fast he had to start scrolling almost immediately.
Peter skimmed the tirades. Smiling, he posted the same message on every other wiki, forum, and imageboard he could think of. Not that he needed to bother—it had probably already gone viral, shooting across cyberspace, passed along like a virtual baton. And the people he really wanted to reach wouldn’t bother posting a diatribe. They would have understood the subtext of what he’d written, and were probably already gathering.
“Cover your tracks and stay groovy” was a code that any regular /ALLIANCE/ user would recognize. But Mason would probably take it at face value, assuming that a punk kid was laughably throwing around military jargon.
At least that’s what Peter was hoping.
He logged into The Quad and started a thread under the heading, “CYTASG.” Then he waited.
Within minutes, users began flooding the room. He waited until a few dozen were present and accounted for, then typed in, Thanks 4 coming.
This totally sux, man, wrote Loki.
Peter recognized that handle—Loki had helped with most of the /ALLIANCE/ operations over the past year. I know.
So what do we do? asked Moogie.
Peter had been thinking this over. He wanted to carpet bomb the bastards, but he also was dying to know what they were up to. I want to go full Anon/HBGary on them.
There was a brief pause.
Moggie typed, Dude, seriously? Brick them?
Grab data first, but yeah.
Silence.
Bricking, or “phlashing,” was serious. The goal was to damage a system so badly that it couldn’t be accessed until its hardware was replaced. And replacing hardware was insanely expensive and incredibly time-consuming. Getting information off the server first was trickier, but it had been done before.
If they succeeded, the servers involved would be rendered completely useless, effectively turned into bricks. And if there weren’t backups stored elsewhere, the company could lose everything.
So any hesitation to participate in such an attack was understandable. The whole point of /ALLIANCE/ was to act within the boundaries of the law—Peter had enforced that rule from the get-go. Bricking a server was, technically, a violation of the Internet Architecture Board’s proper-use policy. It was also illegal in most countries.
Not totally cool with that, typed Ariel.
I get that, Peter wrote. Won’t hold it against anyone who doesn’t want in, you’re all still welcome to be part of /ALLIANCE/ when it’s up and running again. But trust me, these are some seriously bad guys.
I’m in, Loki said.
Me 2, wrote Moogie.
One by one, users either signed on to the raid, or checked out of the chat room. Fewer left than Peter had been expecting; he had mixed feelings about that. Based on what little he’d told them, if he’d been on the other side of things, he probably would have been among the first to log off.
By and large, the longest-running members of his ad hoc community remained, those stalwarts who’d played critical roles in all of /ALLIANCE/’s previous missions.
Honestly, it was a little touching. Especially considering the magnitude of what he was asking.
Loki typed in, How do u want it to go down?
Internet vigilantism was a wonderful thing, Peter reflected as he laid out his plan.
Noa sat in a corner of the café sipping coffee. Her hair was tucked into the black cap from the boat, and she wore a pair of oversized sunglasses that she’d bought for five bucks from a street vendor. Not the best disguise, but she was at a table in the back that was partially concealed by a sickly palm tree. It afforded a good view of the MailPlus entrance and stores on either side of it, but she wasn’t easily visible from the street.
She’d been here nearly an hour. Her coffee was long cold, but she still took tiny sips of it. She’d gulped down about a gallon of water already, too, repeatedly refilling her glass from the free jug on the counter until the server gave her a funny look. Noa was dying of thirst, but still not hungry. She’d tried to choke down a banana and a muffin, with little success. Which was starting to bother her. It was strange not ever feeling hungry. Stranger still was that even when she tried, she couldn’t force food down her throat.
Stress, she told herself. Just too much stress. Nothing to worry about.
A MailPlus employee had appeared at 8:23 a.m. She was in her sixties, heavyset, hair a few shades too blond, eyeglasses dangling from a long beaded chain. She unlocked the doors, then trundled around and rebolted them behind her. No one Noa recognized, which might pose a problem.
Noa watched the woman walk around the store turning on lights and powering up copy machines. At precisely eight thirty a.m. she unlocked the front door, then went to stand behind the main counter.
A model employee, from the look of things. Also not a good sign.
Noa spent another half hour sitting there watching a steady procession of people enter MailPlus. None of them lingered, and no one looked blatantly out of place. Either they went to a machine and made a few copies, headed toward the back where the mailboxes were, or approached the counter. After a few minutes, they concluded their business and left.
Noa got up and returned to the counter. Ignoring glares from the girl working the register, she filled her water glass again and carried it back to the table.
This spot offered a good vantage point of a large swath of the street. The parked cars on either side of the block were empty, and the spaces turned over steadily; not a single vehicle had stayed more than twenty minutes. It was also seriously cold outside, so Noa had a hard time believing someone would be hanging around out there. Maybe she’d finally caught a break and the coast was clear. They might still be combing through the Harvard library for her.
Still she hesitated, last night’s pursuit fresh in her mind. Whoever was after her had invested a lot of time and resources into tracking her down; that was clear. And if they’d found her in the temporary Cambridge a
partment, they probably knew all about her PO Box. They’d assume that eventually she’d need access to cash, and would be forced to come here to claim it.
And they were right. She really needed to get in there. What the past few days had made alarmingly clear was that there were some things the internet couldn’t provide. Noa was kicking herself for not stashing a cash reserve somewhere.
Right now, across the street in box number 460907, there should be an envelope containing a new bank card. Getting her hands on that envelope was key to getting her life back. With it, Noa could withdraw enough cash to buy a fake ID. There might even be a check waiting, from her last freelance job for Rocket Science. She could deposit it in a new account, under a new name. Find a short-term sublet on Craigslist that accepted cash, somewhere to hole up safely while she unraveled what had happened to her.
But no matter what, she had to get into that box.
The bells dangling from the café door jingled, catching Noa’s attention. So far there had only been three other visitors to the café, all stroller-pushing moms who ordered lattes to go.
A guy walked in wearing a wool suit and overcoat. Hair going gray at the temples, muscular build—decent looking for an older guy. Panning down to his shoes, Noa frowned. He was wearing combat boots. Even though the dark sky promised rain, the boots definitely didn’t go with the suit. And now that she looked more closely, he seemed uncomfortable in it, arms shifting like he was trying to make room in the sleeves.
The guy scanned the room, eyes glancing off Noa. Had they hesitated before continuing on to the girl behind the counter?
Maybe she was being paranoid, but it felt like a weird tense energy had overtaken the room. Like something really, really bad was about to happen.
The counter girl perked up at the sight of him. She flipped back stringy hennaed hair and smiled broadly at the guy, leaning on her elbows so that her V-neck sweater gaped open as she purred, “Can I get you something?”
Noa’s instincts were blaring, and she decided to listen to them. She casually closed her laptop and unplugged it, winding the cord around before tucking it into her messenger bag. The whole time she tracked the guy out of the corner of her eye. He placed both hands on top of the counter and matched the girl’s smile. His own was dazzling, teeth almost too white. “I’d love a coffee.”
“What kind?” The girl bent over farther, exposing a sliver of pink bra. “I’ve got French roast, espresso, and our daily blend, which is, like, totally awesome.”
“French roast, please. Black.”
He turned away from the counter, gazing out at the street. But Noa couldn’t shake the sense that his focus was actually homed in on her.
She got up and went to the door. As she shoved it open, the counter girl said, “Hey, don’t forget your coffee!”
Noa broke into a jog. Footsteps behind her. She chanced a glance back. The guy had left the café and was following her, walking briskly with a determined expression on his face. His lips were moving, and Noa noted the Bluetooth device jutting out of his ear. She scanned the street and saw another guy step out of a doorway in the building next to MailPlus. They could have been clones, both oversized guys in ill-fitting suits and combat boots. Trying to blend in and failing.
When Noa hit the corner, she broke into a run. She was annoyed with herself for not choosing a better spot to stake out the MailPlus. Annoyed, too, that she hadn’t waited at least a day before going there. No helping that now, though. And she really had needed that bank card.
On the plus side, it seemed like there were only two guys chasing her. And this time she’d had the forethought to map escape routes.
She was heading for the closest one now. As opposed to Cambridge, Brookline was an area she knew well. Her longest stint with a foster family had been here—six whole months with a Harvard sociology professor and his wife. The Pratts were earnest people who’d made it clear that taking her in was their way of giving back to society. Their own kids were already in college, and as they repeatedly explained they considered it selfish to occupy such a large house alone when they could share it with someone less fortunate. Apparently they’d almost taken in foster kids earlier, but were afraid of the “negative impact” it might have on their “real” children.
The Pratts were prone to lecturing Noa about social injustice, and how the system failed kids like her. A familiar refrain was that if only more sane people adopted older kids out of foster care, a whole host of social ills would be resolved, from drug abuse to homelessness to crime.
Whenever they started to pontificate like that, Noa had to bite her tongue. Because, yeah, she was all for having normal people take in foster kids like her. The system sucked. It had definitely failed her and every other kid she’d encountered at The Center.
What was interesting, though, was that when she tried to join the discussion, sharing specific instances of terrible things that had befallen her over the years, the Pratts shut down. Noa quickly realized that they weren’t really interested in her personally—more as the embodiment of an idea. They preferred to appreciate what she’d been through in the abstract; the concrete details were too frightening.
Four months in, however, the Pratts broached the possibility of adopting her. Noa was wary. They were kind of weird, but on the plus side never hit her or burned her with cigarettes or refused to feed her. Riding out a few more years with them made sense. They’d even offered to pay for college if she wanted to go.
Unfortunately, a month after they discussed adoption, Mrs. Pratt caught her husband straddling one of his teaching assistants. Their marriage exploded, and Noa was quickly swept back to The Center.
Which was a shame, because despite the fact that they were kind of snooty and full of themselves, she’d liked them. They’d also inadvertently provided a key out of the revolving door she’d become stuck in by offering unlimited access to a computer.
And Noa had gotten to know Brookline like the back of her hand. Which was one of the main reasons she’d rented a PO Box there. It was an easy T ride, located halfway between the two places where she spent the bulk of her time: her apartment in Newton Centre and the Apple store. She usually only checked her snail mail once or twice a week, anyway.
Noa raced down the block past nail salons, restaurants, and bookstores. She didn’t dare look back to see how close the suits were. The line of shops became staggered the farther she got from the café, until they dissipated entirely into tiny homes.
Half a block to go. Noa left the sidewalk, cutting across a baseball field. The rain that had been lurking in heavy gray clouds all morning started to fall uncertainly, like it wasn’t 100 percent ready to commit and would settle for a drizzle.
At the far end of the field, Noa locked in on her target: An enormous brick building with white stone columns that shot up four stories at the entrance and a flight of stairs that widened at the bottom like a grin.
Noa pounded across the street without checking for traffic. Heard a screech of tires, but kept going. She dashed up the flight of stairs, heart pounding, heels aching as they slapped concrete. Right outside the front doors, she paused long enough to see the guy from the café circling around a car that had stopped dead to avoid hitting her. He didn’t look calm anymore; sweat poured down his face. His buddy was right behind him.
Noa raced inside. The atrium was similar to the library from last night—that’s actually what gave her the idea to come here. This was one place where an adult who didn’t belong would stick out like a sore thumb, and where she was familiar with every exit, entrance, and hidden corner.
Brookline High School.
She’d spent five months as a sophomore here. The Pratts had gone on about how lucky she was to be at one of the best public schools in the entire country. Noa hadn’t really cared for much besides the computer lab, though. That had been impressive. The PTA had sprung for all new equipment the previous year, and for the first time in her life she had access to something besides clunky d
ecades-old library terminals. She’d first learned Linux here, and basic programming with Python. Noa had spent hours after school exploring the internet, until one night she stumbled on a hacker site and something just clicked.
She tore past the security guard parked in a chair by the door. He looked up, but didn’t seem fazed. Just another kid late for school.
She wondered how he’d handle the guys who were about to charge in behind her.
One thing had been made clear during opening assembly on her first day of school: The principal took the safety and well-being of her students very seriously. And unlike a lot of other public schools, BHS could afford a full-time security team.
Noa didn’t need the guards to actually stop the guys, though—just to stall them.
A yelp behind her. The two guys must have come in.
Noa skidded into a hallway and dashed toward the nearest stairwell, her boots squeaking against linoleum polished to a high gleam. Lockers lined either side, broken up periodically by bulletin boards and classroom doors.
The hallway even smelled familiar, a mix of science-class formaldehyde, burnt dust from the woodshop, and commingled cafeteria meat all overlaid by pheromones. Noa experienced an unexpected pang of nostalgia.
She bolted up the stairs three at a time.
Unfortunately, she could still hear the guys behind her. Noa bit her lip—this had to work, she was counting on it. She yanked open the door at the top of the stairs and entered another hallway identical to the one downstairs. Class was in session; the hall was empty. Halfway down it, Noa heard the stairwell door open behind her.
What was taking so long? She felt a twinge of annoyance with the principal, and with herself for believing her. Maybe she should have followed Plan B and headed for the nearest T stop. Or her absolute fallback, Plan C—going to the nearest police station.
As she was thinking it, something hit her hard from behind.
Noa kept flying forward, but her feet were knocked out from under her. She landed hard, pinned beneath the guy from the café. Her head knocked against the floor and for a second she saw stars.
Don't Turn Around Page 12