by Megan Atwood
Copyright © 2016 by Megan Atwood
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for Break the Code is on file at the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4677-7509-0 (lib. bdg.)
ISBN 978-1-4677-8104-6 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-4677-8834-2 (EB pdf)
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 – SB – 12/31/15
eISBN: 978-1-46778-834-2 (pdf)
eISBN: 978-1-51240-506-4 (ePub)
eISBN: 978-1-51240-504-0 (mobi)
To my parents, always.
CHAPTER 1
“You’re one of our most promising students, Maiv. What made you cheat?” The principal looked over her glasses and stared hard at Maiv.
“I didn’t cheat, Ms. Jackson. I promise, I didn’t.” Maiv felt tears in her eyes but kept her voice firm. “And I can’t believe you’d trust an anonymous note more than me.”
“It’s not the note that convinced me. It’s the answer key we found in your locker.”
Maiv forced down her rage. She had to stay calm. She had to be reasonable. Sure, an answer key for a recent test didn’t look good. But she hadn’t cheated and never planned to cheat, and her best bet was to stick to the truth. “I didn’t put it there.”
“If you can explain how that answer key got in your locker without you putting it there, I’m listening.”
But of course Maiv couldn’t explain. She knew who was to blame, but she couldn’t tell the principal.
The Benefactor had framed her.
“I don’t know how it got there. Someone else must’ve found out my locker combination.”
“Any idea who that would be?”
Maiv took a deep breath. She hadn’t shared her locker combination with anyone. And she wouldn’t lie about that. She wouldn’t frame someone else for this. “No. But how would I even get my hands on an answer key in the first place?”
“You tell me, Maiv. Your computer science teacher says you’re her brightest student. It wouldn’t surprise either of us if you were able to hack into her computer and copy that document from her files.”
“But if I am her brightest student, why would I need to cheat?”
The principal sighed. “I’m sorry to say I’ve seen it happen before. This is a big disappointment, Maiv. But since it’s your first offense, we won’t put you on academic probation. You’ll receive a failing grade on that test—”
“But that’ll lower my GPA!” For the first time, Maiv panicked. She was counting on her grades to get her into college—and to get her the financial aid and scholarships she would need.
“Consider yourself lucky,” said the principal. “I’m cutting you a break here. I’ll be calling your parents to let them know about this.”
Maiv swallowed back more protests and just nodded. Her parents would be horrified. Maiv never got into trouble. How would she face them tonight?
Because she couldn’t tell them about the Contest either. She couldn’t tell anyone.
As soon as she left the principal’s office, she sprinted to the nearest bathroom, locked herself in a stall, and let herself cry.
But not for long. She had work to do.
*****
Entering the Contest had seemed like a good idea at the time. Maiv’s family desperately needed money. Her father was on medical leave for foot surgery, and that meant a big pay cut. Her mom worked three jobs, and each one killed her back. Maiv hated watching her wince through household chores, so she ended up doing all the housework when she could. She didn’t get to be oblivious like her five younger siblings did.
Plus, Maiv really wanted to go to college. But that couldn’t happen without money.
So last week, when she got an email from someone called the Benefactor, offering her a chance to join a contest with a $10 million prize, she’d jumped at the chance. To win, she just had to complete ten tasks ahead of three other contestants. Maiv loved games. And she never lost.
Except this one, it seemed.
She’d found out fast—scary fast—that the Benefactor wasn’t hosting this contest for fun or out of kindness. The money had just been bait to get her on board. She was being used, manipulated—trapped into following the Benefactor’s orders. And now that she was part of the Contest, she was in it for better or for worse until the bitter end.
Her first task had been strange, but easy enough: write an article about teen runaways for the school newspaper. Maiv was the paper’s editor in chief, so she had no trouble getting the piece published. Still, it made her uncomfortable.
But that was nothing compared to the second task. Yesterday, the Benefactor had asked her to create a computer virus. The kind of virus that could wipe out all the information on a computer’s hard drive. They didn’t say that it was a virus or what it was for, but Maiv could tell from the instructions. Maiv still couldn’t decide what creeped her out more: the fact that the Benefactor wanted her to do this or the fact that he knew she could do it.
Maiv wanted to be an engineer—a software engineer. She’d done a lot of research on viruses, hoping that someday she could design antivirus software to protect computers.
Instead, she’d had to create something that would damage a computer. Just the thought made her sick to her stomach.
She’d tried to refuse. She’d tried to quit the Contest. But the Benefactor wouldn’t let her. So Maiv had done as she was told: created the virus, placed it on a flash drive, and sent the flash drive to an address in South Minneapolis.
And then she’d gotten down to the real work.
Maiv was a good student, a good daughter. She went to church and worked hard and took care of her family.
And she hacked.
As she’d learned more about coding and systems, she’d discovered hacking almost by accident. And it had become her secret hobby: sneaking past firewalls, decoding encryptions, taking peeks at information no one was supposed to see.
It was just for fun. For the challenge. She never changed or used anything. It wasn’t like she was stealing people’s social security numbers. Maiv had no interest in hurting anybody or in breaking the law. But the hacking gave her a sense of control, a feeling that she could solve any problem, find a way around any barrier.
Except when it came to the Contest. Maiv couldn’t find a way to hack the website. She’d tried for hours last night and had gotten nowhere. Which made her wonder several things.
One: how was she ever going to find out anything about the Benefactor if they had covered their tracks so well?
And two: why had the Benefactor asked her to create a virus when they were clearly capable of doing it themselves?
Then she’d gotten her second
email from the Benefactor.
Your actions are a violation of the Contest rules. You will be punished.
And now she had been punished. Maiv had no doubt that the Benefactor had somehow arranged this cheating accusation. They’d probably do something even worse if they caught her breaking the Contest’s rules again.
If they caught her.
CHAPTER 2
From the start, Maiv had known she was being watched. The Benefactor knew too much about her, about her family. And it hadn’t taken her long to find the bugs.
There was a tiny camera in her locker, disguised as a magnet. And a listening device behind her desk lamp at home. She’d pretended not to notice them. Because this meant the Benefactor, or someone working for the Benefactor, had been in her house, in her school, without leaving any other trace. No broken locks, nothing out of place. And if they could do that once, they could do it again. Maiv didn’t dare remove the bugs, for fear that they’d be replaced—and that she’d be punished.
And that might not be the only way the Benefactor was monitoring her. She was pretty sure someone had installed a keystroke logger on her computer, tracking everything she typed. Maiv changed her computer password once a month, but her antispyware program was out of date. Even if she found and removed the keylogger, the Benefactor might just invade her home again and reinstall it.
She was also pretty sure she was being followed. She kept seeing the same middle-age white guy lurking near her usual bus stop before school. He’d never been there before. On some level, that creeped her out more than anything else.
Still, she had no intention of letting this Benefactor win. Whoever they were, they had intruded on her privacy, ruined her chances for a scholarship, and blackmailed her. So for Maiv, that meant one thing: war.
If there was one thing she’d figured out from her brief and creepy interactions with the Benefactor, it was that there was a master plan somewhere. A master plan with wiggle room to take care of any glitches that might come up.
Standing by her bugged locker, she made a decision. She’d figure out what that master plan was. And then she’d find a way to ruin it.
In history class, Maiv pretended to be taking notes. Instead, she scribbled down what she knew about the Contest so far. With the Benefactor monitoring her digitally, old-school paper and pencil seemed like the best way to keep track of her thoughts.
Benefactor has contestants threaten one another, send items to one another, so there’s no trail back to the Benefactor. And so that there is a trail back to us. We’re being framed for the Benefactor’s actions.
If they can bug our homes, computers, and phones, they can also probably erase the evidence. Scrub our emails, delete the website. Make it look as if none of this ever existed. The only evidence left would be what we’ve done. Our fingerprints on items. Our faces caught on public cameras.
Why is the Benefactor going to all this trouble? What is the purpose?
Why did the Benefactor choose me? Why were the other contestants chosen?
Are the other contestants competing because they want to? Or because the Benefactor is forcing them?
The other contestants must have answers to at least some of these questions. Of course, first she’d have to figure out who they all were. And then find a way to talk to them—without the Benefactor knowing.
Maybe if she created an entirely new email address, from a computer the Benefactor couldn’t possibly expect her to use . . . Maiv thought up a new name and wrote it down This would be the email she’d use to talk to the other players.
Once she found them.
For now, she would pretend she’d learned her lesson. She would let the Benefactor think she was following the rules.
And she would see where this Contest led her next.
CHAPTER 3
Between classes, Maiv checked the Contest’s website for her third task. She was supposed to buy a burner cell phone and hoodie and sweatpants—guy sizes. Then she needed to program a single phone number into the phone. The phone number was listed on the website—a St. Paul area code. Finally, she needed to mail all these items to James Trudeleau in East St. Paul by 8:30 tonight.
So: good news and bad news. The bad news was that she was going to be even busier than usual after school. The good news was that she had another contestant’s name. If she could find a safe way to make contact with this James Trudeleau, maybe they could work together.
Right after school, Maiv went into the nearest phone store and bought the cheapest prepaid phone in the place. Next, she stopped at the thrift store and picked up the clothes, spending the last of her meager babysitting money. Had the Benefactor even considered that she may not have enough money? She had no way of getting hold of them if she came up short. Maybe she could just say out loud, “I need money for this task,” and one of the many listening devices would pick it up. She almost snorted out loud at the thought. The Benefactor had dangled $10 million in front of her nose, and yet the Contest had made her even poorer than she already was.
In line at the checkout, she glanced at the time. Already almost four. She had to hurry home to meet her sisters at their bus stop. That meant she wouldn’t have time to mail these items. She’d have to do it later tonight, after dinner. It would be hard to get out of the house once she was home, but she’d just have to think of something.
When Maiv came out of the store, she saw her bus closing its doors. She sprinted, the plastic bag with the clothes thwacking against her knee. Just as the bus began to pull away, Maiv reached it and banged on the door. The bus driver frowned and stopped, then opened the door.
“You’re lucky, missy,” she said and then lurched the bus forward right after Maiv got on. Maiv stumbled down the aisle and found an empty seat, wiping sweat off her temple. Close call. Her sisters would have had no one to meet them and walk them home. And she would have been in a ton of trouble.
Especially because Adam’s family was coming to dinner tonight.
Adam was in Maiv’s grade, and their parents had been friends for years. Maiv knew Adam liked her—he was so obvious sometimes it hurt. And Maiv’s mom, especially, thought Adam was a great catch. He was Hmong. He was from Laos, like them. And he was a really good guy.
Maiv knew her parents would be perfectly happy if she got married—to Adam—right after high school. But that wasn’t going to happen. Adam was sweet, but she just wasn’t interested. Still, she needed to help her mom with dinner and tidy up the house before Adam’s family showed up.
Meanwhile, Maiv took out the burner phone and got it activated. She plugged in the number she’d memorized from the Contest’s website. Then, tugging nervously at her hair, she glanced around the bus. No one seemed to be paying any attention to her. She was pretty sure none of these other passengers were Benefactor spies.
On impulse, she hit the call button.
She could get in trouble for this, big time. But since she’d just bought this phone, the Benefactor couldn’t be bugging it.
“Hello?” A man’s voice. “Who is this?”
Maiv hadn’t really expected an answer. What should she say? Was she talking to the Benefactor?
“OK,” said the man, “I know it’s you, whoever you are. Listen, I’ve done everything you asked. I’ve told you everything you wanted to know. When can I be done with this? I know you have things on me, but—I can’t keep doing this forever. EarthWatch was a good place to work . . . Hello? Are you there?”
Maiv frantically tried to process what she was hearing. Definitely not the Benefactor. Another contestant?
The man swore under his breath and then hung up.
Maiv took a deep breath. This had to be another person being blackmailed by the Benefactor. She called back, but this time there was no answer. A voicemail message kicked in: “Hi, this is Paul. I can’t answer my phone right now, but leave a message . . .”
Maiv opened her mouth to speak, and then she realized—if the Benefactor was bugging this guy’s own phone
, the Benefactor would hear her message. And punish her.
She hung up. She couldn’t risk it.
Not yet, anyway.
CHAPTER 4
At the bus stop, Maiv picked up her sisters: ten-year-old Kiab and five-year-old Lili. Lili bounced off the bus holding a large piece of paper.
“Look, I drew you!” Maiv looked at the picture and saw her whole family drawn there. Her twin brothers, three-year-old Liv and Leev, her brother Cai, and Kiab and Lili and Maiv were all standing up, holding hands. Her parents were drawn lying on beds.
Maiv’s heart broke. She knew if her mom and dad saw that picture, their hearts would break too. They wanted so badly to be able to do more.
Maiv hugged Lili and said, “That’s beautiful, little flower. Maybe you can give that to Niam and Txiv for Christmas?”
Lili nodded, excited. “A present!” She opened her worn backpack and stuffed the picture in. She’d probably forget about the picture in about ten minutes. Maiv made a mental note to take it out of her backpack later tonight.
After she figured out how to finish Task 3.
*****
When Maiv and her sisters walked in the door, their mother shooed the younger girls down the hall. “Go say hello to your father,” she told them. Then she turned to Maiv, her eyes worried.
“The principal called—”
“Niam, I didn’t cheat,” Maiv said in a rush.
“I didn’t think you did, honey. I can’t imagine you ever doing something like that.”
Of course, her mom also couldn’t imagine Maiv hacking. Or being stupid enough to get mixed up in something like the Contest.
“This has to be some kind of mistake,” her mom went on. “That’s what I told the principal. Your father feels the same way.”
Maiv nodded gratefully. “Thanks, Niam. I still want to clear my name, but I don’t know if I can. I’ll talk to my computer science teacher tomorrow and see if I can sort it out with her . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she noticed a thin string around her mother’s neck. “Did you go to the shaman?”