Firewall (Magic Born)

by Sonya Clark

  It was time to change that.

  “We start it here,” she said, more thinking out loud than trying to convey coherent thoughts. “New Corinth is ground zero, because of the ordinance and the protests and the shootings. It’ll be the first domino to fall.”

  “Snow.” Hayes leaned forward. For a moment it seemed as if his eyes were the same electric blue-white as cyberspace.

  Tuyet blinked the illusion away. “We develop the plan here. All the spells, how to spread them. We’ll need to go over everything on Paula’s camera. It’ll be more effective if it’s edited at least somewhat. Maybe intercut with some of the interviews she did before...” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Vadim said, “Not too long though. Two, three minutes, tops. Keep it brief and very direct.”

  “Jason can do the editing,” Calla said.

  Lizzie stood and walked to the desk, returning with a pen and notepad. “I’m not much of a trancehacker but I can damn sure take notes.”

  “I watched the footage,” Tuyet said. “She got clear video of a cop shooting someone in the back, and of a grenade being launched at a bunch of people running away. Plus the texts.” Again, she couldn’t finish. “We’ll need more than just us.”

  Hayes reached for Tuyet’s hand when her pacing brought her close to him again. “You want to get the rest of the underground involved.”

  “Once we have everything worked out, I want Vadim to take it to them. I want as many of them on board as possible.”

  “We get the video out here, then others pick it up at the network access points,” Vadim said. “I can almost see that working.”

  “Almost?” Tuyet wanted to hear every hole in the plan anyone could find, so that it could be filled.

  “You said your girl Paula was getting shut out quickly. Whatever we do will have to be hard and fast and powerful enough to blast through any and every kind of firewall we might come up against.” Vadim exhaled slowly, the sound of a man in dire need of a drink. “Yeah, this is going to take a lot more than stealing rent money from my least favorite DMS agent. We’ll need every trancehacker who’s willing to get involved.”

  “Not just from FreakTown,” Tuyet said. “We really are going to need the rest of the underground.”

  “Getting them to do something so public is going to be tough,” Vadim said. “Whether it makes the news or not, it’ll be seen as an announcement on the part of the Magic Born. Those of us who can work with electricity and cyberspace, anyway.”

  “You mean an announcement to the government?” Hayes shrugged. “They already know. I think they’ve known for a very long time.”

  The heavy weight of every pair of eyes in the room pressed down on Tuyet. “He’s right. If anyone has doubts about taking part because of fear of exposure, tell them about the Magic Rangers.”

  Silence fell.

  Finally Hayes spoke. “How’s Mekhi?”

  “Better,” said Nate. “I saw them today and he’s a lot stronger. Zinnia says a couple more days and he’ll be ready to make the switch.”

  “You could leave then.” Vadim stared straight at Tuyet. “No one would think less of you. This has been your fight long enough. Now you’re both on a wanted list that could get you sent to prison for the rest of your lives. Maybe even the death penalty. With that reward money on the table, people are going to be looking pretty hard for you too. You need to get out.”

  A couple more days, then out of the country within a week of that, maybe less if they pushed hard. It was tempting, more so than she was comfortable admitting. But she’d made a promise, and she intended to see it through.

  “We will, but I have to do this first. You and Calla are good trancehackers. I’m better. If this plan or whatever is going to work, I have to be part of it.” The words sounded boastful and clumsy, leaving a bad taste in her mouth. She wasn’t sure whether she could articulate what this meant to her, so she let the awkward declaration hang in the air.

  “She’s so modest, isn’t she?” Hayes graced the room with his dirty sunlight smile. “She’s right too. She’s the best. But we can’t call this the plan or whatever. This is a mission and it needs a name.”

  Vadim said, “Got something in mind, Captain Cream Puff?”

  “I think Operation Firewall has a nice ring to it. Don’t you, Snow?”

  Adrenaline knocked in her veins. “Firewall it is.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Hayes snapped awake from a hard doze. Several seconds passed before he was able to orient himself to his surroundings. Music filtered through the fog in his head, that smoky-voiced female singer Tuyet liked so much. He yawned and shifted his position on the couch, the movement sending a three-ring binder tumbling to the floor. Zinnia was a writer and he’d been reading one of her serials when he’d started to drift in and out.

  He sat up and stretched then picked up the binder and placed it on the end of the couch. Tuyet was nowhere to be seen, which meant she was probably still in the bedroom at work on spells. He found his phone on the floor just under the edge of the couch and checked the time. Way too late for anyone to still be working. He stood, stretching again as he ambled to the back of the apartment.

  The bedroom was painted a dark wine with deep gold trim, decorated with scarves and candles and other lush, pretty things. The rest of the place was basic, functional, comfortably lived-in. The bedroom was clearly a refuge, a safe haven for two people deeply in love. A sensual playground too. Driven by the awkwardness of their situation, Hayes and Tuyet had been sleeping on the floor on a pallet of blankets and throw pillows. Tuyet’s belongings had been retrieved from the car they were to have taken out of the city. Seeing the dragon he’d bought for her in Hong Kong had squeezed his heart, then made it nearly explode with happiness.

  Tuyet sat in the middle of their pallet now, eyes closed and a soft blue glow around her adding to the candlelight. A tablet was perched on a pillow in front of her, wrapped in the same blue glow. Hayes leaned against the doorway, happy to simply look at her. He could do that now without having to hide it or find an excuse. Reach for her hand, run his fingers through her hair without the cover of a glamour and a mission. Kiss her without fear or doubt or a thousand other things getting in the way.

  Okay, there was some stuff in the way. They were both wanted terrorists and needed to flee the country as soon as possible, but honestly that seemed like nothing compared to the walls that had divided them in the past. This was something they could face together, openly.

  The electric glow faded and Tuyet’s posture relaxed. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “Hi.”

  The smile she gave him lit every inch of him with happiness.

  Hayes moved to sit behind her, guiding her to lean against his chest. “It’s late. You should call it a night, get some rest.” He wrapped his arms around her.

  “There’s still plenty to do.” She snuggled into his embrace. “Okay, most of it’s done. I had the framework for the spells finished so once Jason finished with the video, all I had to do was stitch it all together. There’s still plenty of planning work to do.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re done, at least for the night.”

  “I’m still trying to figure out how to get into TMG. Their security is top-notch.”

  Hayes smoothed her hair back, sliding his fingertips over the soft strands. “Can Silver Wheels help?”

  She didn’t answer for nearly a full minute. “He’s helping with a lot, including that.”

  “So how did a game developer get involved with the Magic Born underground? Is he like Lizzie and Jason?” He didn’t really believe that was the case, but he wasn’t ready to ask point-blank. His theory about Silver Wheels was crazy. Impossible. So absurd that she’d probably laugh at him if he dared voice it.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “He
keeps his identity secret. It’s safer that way.”

  That was a pointless nonanswer if he’d ever heard one. He filed it in the column in favor of his crazy theory and let the subject drop. “There is one obvious way to breach TMG security. I’m surprised you haven’t thought of it.”

  “Walking through the front door and loading the virus directly into their servers would be great, but somehow I doubt they’d let me.”

  “They would if you worked there. Say, as a night watchman.”

  Tuyet pushed herself up and turned sideways to look at him, mouth open and eyes wide. He grinned.

  “That’s perfect,” she said. “Genius. Devious, even.” She looked him over with an appraising eye. “When did sweet, innocent Dale Hayes become devious?”

  He wanted to wink, laugh, find some way to turn what he was feeling into a joke. Anger wouldn’t allow it.

  Tuyet saw the faces of those she’d left behind in her dreams. These last few nights, Hayes hadn’t seen faces. He’d seen images of people running, black-clad police firing at their retreating backs. Heard the sound of rushing water and his own pounding heart as he ran for safety.

  No, Hayes couldn’t bring himself to joke about this. “I’m not devious. I’m vengeful. Scott Channing wants to pin his crimes on me, I figure turnabout’s fair play.” He took a deep breath then exhaled, hoping it would expel some of the anger, some of the darkness. “Besides, it’s probably the best way to get us into TMG and get access to the servers. Doing that directly rather than just by trancehacking might be the best way to accomplish what we want.”

  Tuyet was quiet for a moment. “So I launch the virus from within their own system, so when they trace its origin they wind up in their own house. Once I’m in, I can change passwords and other settings. Make it that much harder for them to stop the video.”

  “Even mess with the hardware if you have to.”

  “I can see this working.” She bit her lip, staring at nothing as she considered things. “We’ll need to know his routine. When it’s time, we’ll need him out of commission and available for us to enchant a glamour.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the power issue too.” With reluctance, he eased her away so that he could retrieve his phone from his pack. He brought up the data charts he’d saved. “I measured magical energy across the city. Not just close to the zone but everywhere. The readings were all over the place. The only real consistency was Friday nights. The protests would bring on a big spike.”

  Tuyet took the phone from him and studied the charts. “The English and the Chinese are light-years ahead of us on magical research, but I think I can make a guess at what this is.”

  “Tell me your ideas, then I’ll tell you mine.”

  “Natural magic, in the land, the water table and the river. What was here before the city. But also what the city itself has created, or rather, what the people who live here have. Neon and streetlights. Concrete and steel. Electricity and cyberspace. Music and crowds.”

  “Fire, earth, air and water.”

  “Exactly.” She smiled. “You really did pay attention to me and Halif.”

  “It was my responsibility to lead the team, to take care of my people. I felt like that meant I had to understand my people too. With you and Halif, that meant understanding magic.” He shrugged. “As much as a Normal can, anyway.”

  “So what’s your idea about all this?”

  “You can draw on neon and concrete and the other elements. Why not all of the energy created by New Corinth? You and the other trancehackers like Vadim, you draw on that power source as a means to help push the video virus from a local source out to...to everywhere. Could that work?”

  Tuyet leaned against the bed frame and stretched her legs out across the blankets. “I don’t know. It sounds like it could work, but that’s a hell of a lot of power for a handful of people to be channeling. I don’t know how stable it would be, how long we could manage to control it.” She paused for a moment, hands in the air as if she was struggling for the right words. “I did it on a very small scale the night of the riot, when I threw up that shield. But I couldn’t maintain working with that level of energy for long. Think of that grenade as a defensive spell, a big one, and it knocked me on my ass. What I did that night amounted to standing in a tiny pool of calm water. What we’ll need to get the video out would be like trying to swim in grade-six white-water rapids.”

  The most deadly of rapids then, and far too dangerous for one person to handle alone. Hayes wasn’t exactly surprised, but he’d been hoping the mishmash of thoughts and ideas rolling around in his head might have proved at least somewhat useful. “This is why the plan of getting the rest of the underground involved is better, isn’t it? Create a sort of relay system through cyberspace and let as many people as possible help carry the load.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell. Yours is a really good theory and I’d love to test it, but this isn’t the right situation for that. I can draw a lot of energy from around me and channel it successfully using my own to guide it. Once you reach a certain threshold though, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how much a body can take. How much a witch’s consciousness can take.”

  Hayes stood and paced the short distance between the bedroom’s door and far wall. “Could a witch’s consciousness be overwhelmed enough that they’d be trapped in cyberspace?” He wanted to see her face as she took in the question, but he didn’t want her to see his, so he continued to pace with his gaze on the floor.

  “I don’t...why would you ask that?”

  He stopped at the window and moved the heavy curtain enough to give him a sliver of a view. A lone streetlight bathed a small circle of pavement in front of the apartment building. Farther down the street, witchlight danced in a rainbow of colors. “If you knew it would work, that’d be one thing. But if it might be dangerous, yeah, we’re definitely better off getting the rest of the underground involved.” He turned back to find her trancehacking again and let her finish before asking.

  Tuyet answered, “I emailed Vadim about Channing. He’s already found out quite a bit but if we can get a better idea of his routine during work hours, that should help. Does he leave for his lunch break? Or should we grab him before he enters the building for his shift? That kind of stuff.”

  “I thought we agreed you were done with work for the night.” Hayes returned to the nest of blankets, lying on his side to face her. “I can think of much better things to do.”

  Tuyet pushed him to his back and draped herself over him. “Tell me.”

  He did, in great detail.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The news that trickled in from Rockenbach went from bad to worse. Raids were now a daily occurrence. A sunset-to-sunrise curfew had been hastily put in place by police, with strict enforcement. Between all the different types of disruption going on, businesses in the neighborhood could barely operate. Residents weren’t safe from police harassment in the streets or even their own homes. The deaths and injuries in the last protest had cast a heavy pall over Rockenbach and the movement as a whole, but as the crackdown worsened, shock gave way to boiling rage.

  Text messages and darknet chatter were full of that rage. Tuyet skimmed the surface of it, searching for any details that might be important. What she found was an increasingly dangerous mood among the residents of New Corinth.

  The worst of the police action might have been confined to the Rockenbach area, but the rumbling unrest didn’t stop there. Rumors of new blood tests for all spread like wildfire. Accusations of false tests were flying through the city’s elite. Just like in the early days of the Magic Revelation, people were accusing their enemies as a means of settling scores. It horrified Tuyet to see history repeating itself, but she was heartened by something radically new and different: a growing swell of support for the Magic Born and the abolishment of the Magic Law
s.

  Best of all, that support was showing up in cities other than New Corinth. In dribs and drabs, Paula’s earlier videos were spreading via the darknet and its chat rooms and forums. Before Friday, help from others in the underground had been sporadic. Now every zone in the country was putting its best trancehackers to work spreading the news of the violence in New Corinth.

  It was a good thing, but it wasn’t enough. To really make a difference, they had to get the video of the last protest out on the regular internet. Had to get it seen by average citizens, by news media, by politicians of all levels. First, they had to crack TMG security.

  Tuyet dove into the slipstream of cyberspace and made her way to the online game play of Silver Wheels. It didn’t take her long to find the game’s eponymous designer, his mirrorball helmet avatar flashing a brilliant rainbow across the darkness.

  “TMG’s got some of the most complex security I’ve ever come across,” he said without preamble. “Not all of it is code, either.”

  That could only mean one thing—spells. Tennant Media Group had witches on the payroll. “The combination of code and spellwork is intricate, constantly shifting and changing. Finding passwords and backdoors isn’t going to work. This is going to take brute force.”

  She wasn’t really surprised, but she knew it would make things more complicated. “We need an easy way in. Hayes had a good idea.” She told him about the possibility of using Channing.

  “We’ll still have plenty of work left to do but that might help, getting a foot in the front door like that.” His avatar dimmed darker than cyberspace for a split second. “Plus the added benefit of screwing over Channing.”