Crash Into Pieces (The Haylie Black Series Book 2)

by Christopher Kerns

  4:12

  “Four twelve,” she whispered to herself. “Four twelve. One hour to kill before meeting back up with Vector. I can do that, right?” She surveyed the room, nodding. “Piece of cake.”

  She took a sip of her Americano, squinting through the afternoon sun that cast long shadows across the floor. A woman sitting three tables away checked her email, her laptop’s screen burning white and perfectly within Haylie’s view.

  Scanning the rest of the crowd, she saw laptops, tablets, phones everywhere; even the people deep in conversation were staring into the dull glow of their screens, sometimes on both sides of the table. Haylie could only rub her hands together, wringing her fingers.

  They don’t know what they have—they can do anything they want. Build anything they want. Talk to friends across the world with a few clicks.

  Without it, they wouldn’t know who they are.

  Haylie craned her neck to get a better look at the woman’s laptop screen. She had begun to browse Rockyrd, a popular message board hosting “the best of the best of the day’s internet,” an essential list for anyone that wanted to be in-the-know. The site’s algorithm refreshed the list every five minutes, making it as addictive as the coffee warming her hands. It was a site that Haylie remembered as a poison to productivity—she’d even installed an app that blocked access to Rockyrd back in high school to help her focus during coding sprints.

  The woman jumped from link to link, reading headlines. A new Inca temple discovered by a teenager using only Google Maps. A new electric car being revealed tomorrow. And a video of dogs trying to catch tennis balls, but failing miserably. Haylie cracked a smile as the video looped, the woman at the table giggling uncontrollably.

  Click on that other one—the one with the guy from the X-Men movie. What’s that one about?

  Pictures from NASA. Olympic trials. Presidential election news. Scenes from Comic-Con. The pictures and articles flew through her mind as the woman surfed. As Haylie leaned in closer to get a better look at a punchline, a pair of young men glided into the chairs next to the woman, shutting down Haylie’s view.

  She threw herself back onto the cushions, crossing her arms with a huff.

  Sixteen more months. Maybe it’ll fly by. Maybe the worst is over.

  She pulled her notebook from her bag, turning the pages, pretending to get lost in something important. I hate this. Her eyes darted around the room, fully aware that she was the only person sitting by herself. They’re all looking at me. They’re all asking questions.

  Don’t let them bother you.

  She pivoted, stretching her legs across the cushions and facing the TV affixed to the wall. She watched the talking heads as closed captioning rolled across the bottom of the screen.

  WITH LESS THAN FOUR WEEKS LEFT UNTIL THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, THE NATIONAL DEBATE IS HEATING UP…

  THE BALANCE BETWEEN NATIONAL SECURITY AND PERSONAL PRIVACY HAS NEVER BEEN A BIGGER TOPIC…

  THIS RACE LOOKS TO BE DOWN TO THE WIRE. NO ONE CAN CALL THE WINNER AT THIS POINT.

  She tried to sync the mouths with the delayed closed captioned transcriptions below them, but the cameras cut too fast, and with a three-person panel all yelling at the same time, it seemed even the poor staffer typing couldn’t tell who was saying what.

  After what seemed like an hour, Haylie turned away from the newscast, having learned nothing that she hadn’t known before.

  It must almost be time.

  She looked up to the clock, hoping she wasn’t late to meet Vector. The clock stared back at her.

  4:12

  Her face twisted into a question mark, and she craned her neck to check the hands from a few different directions. A student walked by the couch on his way to the stairs, pointing up at the clock.

  “That thing’s broken,” he said, tossing his coffee cup in the trash bin. “Been broken for months.”

  She watched the student tread down the stairs as her anger rose. She jumped to her feet, throwing her backpack over her shoulder and walking to the end of the couch. She reached out and, with a single movement, yanked the TV’s cord from the wall. The set gave out a fleeting pop as it went dead; the cord fell against the plaster with a thud and was left swinging against the wall in her wake.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Xasis Resort & Casino

  Las Vegas, NV

  October 23rd, 9:43PM

  “Hey kid, get your ass over here,” the boy’s father said, waving his hand at him without even as much as a look. He sipped on his coffee and gestured towards the largest screen on the wall with a lazy swing of his mug. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  The boy stood pressed into the corner—his feet locked close together—as he gazed in wonder, in awe of the scenes flashing across the sixteen LCD screens arranged on the security suite’s wall.

  His father was a tank of a man—five foot eight and thick as a barrel. As far as the boy could tell, his father had always loved this job more than anything else in the world. At least, he hoped so.

  I mean, he must love something, right?

  “What is it, Dad?” the boy asked sheepishly, taking a few gentle steps forward. He looked back and forth between his father’s eyes and the screens.

  “Most people that walk into this casino, they don’t even know they’re being watched,” his father said, eyes scanning from screen to screen. “Or maybe they know, and they just don’t really want to think about it, you know?” He smiled and crossed his arms, puffing out his already bulging chest. “I’m watching every one of these bastards. They’re in my house now. My house. Illusion is the key—provide the appearance of entertainment, but always under constraints and control. With control, we make money every hour, every day. And up here, we’re always in control. Always.”

  The boy had heard tall tales about his father’s job but hadn’t seen it with his own eyes until tonight—stories told every other weekend about cheats and liars and fights breaking out on the casino floor. How his dad had always seen them coming—every single time—and did so from the best seat in the house. The boy had never actually seen the old man in action, but with his mother out of town, tonight was his night, at least until bedtime.

  The room was a high-tech fortress, with screens and flashing lights and important-looking people speaking into headsets with hushed voices. An entire wall of glass lined the far wall, behind it a collection of smart-looking grown-ups sitting at desks in front of racks and racks of flashing lights and computer terminals. The whole thing looked like something that Tony Stark would have in his secret basement lair.

  It was awesome.

  Jabbing a stubby finger at a monitor two down, three from the left, his father’s eyes showed a rare sparkle as he inched forward and rested his coffee down on a tabletop.

  “Look at his hands—always watch the hands,” his father said under his breath. “Sarah, can you zoom in on table 42, please? Position 2.”

  A woman gave a polite nod and edged her chair towards to her keyboard, surrounded by a sea of phones blinking with pale red and white lights. Her eyes locked on the screen as she typed a few commands.

  The boy found himself pulled back and forth through the different scenes on every monitor—top-down views of faceless guests drinking and smoking, a mix of black and white video feeds—some grainy, others crisp and clear.

  Sarah reached to her right to find a black, kidney-shaped controller pad. After a few taps on the keypad, she grabbed control of the foam joystick. The boy watched as camera #1025 zoomed in on the man sitting one seat from the far right of blackjack table 42.

  “Here comes the shuffle,” his father said, breathing the words out, almost in a trance. “Notice how his fingers are extended when the cards are in play, but not when the bets are being paid out?” He clapped his hands together with a sudden rush of energy. “Okay—let’s survey the surrounding tables. Sarah—start checking the eye-level cameras for anyone else that might be helping him out.”

  The b
oy could see that the suspect had amassed a large pile of chips in front of him—small, crumbling towers mixed with blacks and reds and greens, all in a haphazard lump like the base of a sandcastle, being eroded away with the rising tide. As the boy’s eyes flicked from screen to screen, he watched the joy of blackjack dealers hitting 21, the wooden stick pulling back tumbling dice, and a spinning roulette wheel with anonymous hands shoving bets onto numbers.

  I could watch this all day.

  “You should have seen this place when I showed up,” his father beamed as he gave the rest of the room a quick once-over. “It was a mess. An absolute mess. I’ve spent years making the Xasis the most advanced gaming facility in this town—maybe even in the whole world. Guys like this…” he pointed back to the screen, “used to get away every night. Cheats and liars.” He stood up straight, tucking in his shirt and looking down at the boy with a smile. “But not anymore. We’ve busted fifteen people counting cards and stealing chips tonight, just in the hour before you got here. And let me tell you, kid, it’s been a slow night.”

  The boy nodded, walking over to a bay of screens and running his hand along the chrome edge of the rack. He saw camera views of not just the casino floor, but also the parking garage, the dice-and-card destruction room, the warehouse, the kitchen, and a gray-paneled room where men with large guns guarded the stacks of cash being counted by three white-gloved employees.

  “Your school tries to teach you about history and current events and all that.” His father grabbed a radio from the charging station and held it up by his shoulder, at the ready. He turned to face the boy. “Tries to teach you about the world. Well, let me tell you, son—this is where life happens. I see it all, every day. Right here in this room. Life may feel like freedom, but there’s always something going on that you don’t know about. A hand that’s pushing the world. Keeping everything under control.”

  Just then, a slow, steady beep filled the boy’s ears, like the microwave oven at home where he heated up his chicken nuggets. But this noise didn’t stop after a few beeps—it kept sounding and sounding, constantly chiming every other second, echoing through the room. The boy looked up over to the glass wall and something caught his eye. He walked over to pull on his father’s sleeve, watching the glass as he tugged.

  His dad brought his radio down from his ear, his eyes showing a quick blaze of anger as he spun to meet his son’s stare. “Don’t do that,” he snapped. “I’m working.”

  “Dad,” the boy said. “What is that room back there, behind the glass?”

  Jerking his sleeve back out of the boy’s grasp, the man shook his head, keeping his eyes locked on the main screen in front of him. “We call that ‘the Fishbowl.’ It’s nothing—that’s just where we keep the computer nerds.”

  “But,” the boy stammered, stopping himself before getting permission to continue.

  His father let out a loud exhale. “What is it?”

  “What,” the boy stammered, “what is that man doing?”

  There, on the other side of the glass, was a short, thin man. He was standing spread-eagled, waving his arms, as the other people scattered around the room, carving their paths around desks, holding laptops as they ran, yelling at each other from different sides of the room.

  His father’s face dropped. “What the hell?” He dropped his radio and jogged towards the Fishbowl, breaking into a run just before he reached the door. He quickly typed a seven-digit code into the electronic keypad, triggering a loud metallic click.

  He pulled at the handle, releasing a loud chorus of server fans mixed with whoop-whoop-whoop alert tones, a swirl of ringing phones and people yelling, popping in and out of server racks at a fever pitch. A stuffy, hot scent filled the boy’s nostrils as he filed in behind his father to prop the weight of the door open, trying his best to help.

  “We’re losing the system!” yelled the head engineer, bent over his laptop and switching frantically between desktop windows. “Someone’s in our network, machines are going down all over the place.”

  “Talk to me,” the boy’s father yelled. “What is it?”

  “Everything’s rebooting, we don’t know why,” the engineer yelled back, waving off another staff member who was trying to get his attention. “When the machines finally do come back online, each one is dead; all data is wiped clean.”

  “So cut the pipe,” his father said, obviously trying his best to keep a calm tone. “You can do that, right?”

  “Of course I can do that,” the engineer spat back. “But as far as I can tell, the attack is coming from inside our network.”

  Frantically searching the room, the boy’s father helplessly checked random screens and stared through the glass at his control room, now with the eyes of his entire staff staring back.

  The boy took a few steps away from the chaos, keeping the door propped open but wanting to fade into the wall. To disappear. Engineers brushed against him as they ran by, holding laptops and phones to their ears, yelling words the boy knew he wasn’t supposed to repeat. His heart felt like it was beating through his chest as the alarms continued to shout, now coming in from multiple different sources and mixing with the row of ringing, blinking phones on every wall—all combining to create a constant, ear-numbing wall of sound.

  “Stop whatever this is,” his father yelled. “Lock down the network or whatever it is that you do.”

  “It doesn’t work that way, sir,” the head engineer yelled back, typing at his keyboard. “Our local system isn’t the only potential source, all of our global systems are connected, it could be coming from an East Coast location, or right here in Vegas. Maybe Europe, I just don’t know. This is going to take time.”

  Sprinting back to the door and standing halfway between the two rooms, frantic, the boy’s father raised his hands to his head, his face flush. “And why do the phones keep ringing? Can you just shut those up?”

  “That’s all our people calling—none of our employees can log in,” the engineer yelled. “Their laptops are all dead. Nothing’s working, they’re calling us for help.”

  “You,” his father pointed at the main engineer with a stiff finger. “I paid good money for you to handle all of this computer crap. Fix it. Now.”

  The engineer threw his arms up into the air, stepping back a few paces, palms out. “This global internal network is new, even to me. I need a few—”

  “FIX IT.”

  The engineer grabbed both sides of his desk and hunched over. After a deep breath, he looked up at the rest of his team. “Okay—any of you who can still get in the system, we need to stop the bleeding. Shut down the Active Directory servers before this spreads to Asia. And lock down the customer database. The last thing we need is a privacy breach.”

  An engineer yelled, “Hold on, hold on!” as he typed. After a few seconds, he shook his head. “I’m seeing new files in here, compressed folders that I don’t recognize. They have timestamps from just a few hours ago, and we sure as hell didn’t put them there. It looks like someone zipped the customer data and downloaded it. It’s sloppy work, but there’s a good chance our data has been compromised. How did we not see this happening?”

  “What’s the source?” the main engineer asked.

  “Our Foxchaser location,” the other engineer said. “The resort in Pennsylvania. They’ve been seeing dictionary attacks on their webservers over the—”

  The engineer was interrupted by a security guard bounding through the main door to the control room. He was built like a pro wrestler and stuffed into his suit, with beads of sweat running off his massive, shaved head as he huffed heavy breaths.

  “The elevators are down … The front desk is a mad house,” the guard said between gasps for air. “Guest keycards have stopped working—all of them. What the hell is going on up here?”

  “I don’t know—I just don’t know,” the engineer said, wringing his hands as he spoke, one over the other. “If someone got in the network, they could be anywhere right now. E
verything is run off this main system—everything.”

  The boy watched as his father’s eyes flew back to the bay of screens. He walked slowly, calmly, over to the view of the money room where the white gloved employees continued to sort and count the taped, bound stacks of cash under the watchful eye of armed guards.

  And then the screen went dead.

  The boy heard the room gasp. The boy watched his father’s posture freeze, the radio still dangling from his hand. Every camera view—from the eyes in the sky to the hidden table-views—now showed only blank screens. They were blind.

  His father ran full speed through the control room door. The boy followed, stepping as quickly down the stairs as his legs would go. The boy passed by men and women leaning back, hugging the wall with shocked expressions as they let them pass.

  He lost sight of his father around the first floor turn in the stairwell and ran through the only door he saw. He found himself on the main casino floor, greeted with the sounds of chiming slot machines, passing crowds, and the smell of old cigarettes. The boy recognized his dad, now running towards the center of the closest gambling pit, surrounded by card and dice tables. He ran behind the computer terminal and began pulling cords from the wall with violent jerks, pointing and shouting at other workers to do the same. The boy crept forward, watching as every power plug and every network cable—some snapping off at the base, others being ripped from the machines with circuit boards still attached—were thrown onto the floor.

  His father wiped the sweat from his brow as he ran to the next station, shouting frantic, desperate commands at any employee who would listen. Phones rang as security personnel sprinted across the casino floor.

  The boy sat on the edge of a stool at a nearby blackjack table as security ran in one direction and guests ran in the other, people swirling all around him. Looking behind the table, he could see a single computer screen at the center of the pit, one of the few that had been missed. It was still plugged in and displaying a “Welcome to the Xasis Casino” desktop background.