“Why?”
“He was pissed off that the press hadn’t started talking about him after the Xasis. He didn’t want to take the chance of that happening again.”
“He’s growing bolder, yes?” Mary said.
“He is,” Haylie said. “But also better. The Xasis casino took persistence, but the actual exploit was relatively trivial. The Patriarch hack was a backdoor, something you could find on the black market, but you still need to know what you’re doing once you’re inside. He’s getting more comfortable.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“Somewhere here, in the U.S., definitely. His use of language, his targets. I’d guess a large city in the U.S.”
“Why a large city?”
“He needs to be able to go unnoticed. Disappear. In small towns, people talk. People know your name. If you spend your days and nights cooped up in your room with nothing but machines around you, people will start asking questions.”
“So where do we find him?”
Haylie looked around the room, seeing all eyes on her. She flinched when she saw that all the analysts from every corner of the room had stopped what they were doing to listen in.
A mist of sweat formed on the back of her neck. Her throat closed up—she shut her eyes as her heart pounded deep in her chest. Stop looking at me.
Stop looking at me.
“We need a starting point, Crash,” Mary said. “What do we do? Where do we begin?”
“There’s…” Haylie did her best to stammer out her thoughts. “He’s got to be out there … looking for his next hack. That means he’ll be using tech to store notes and plans—online storage locations, things like that.”
“Too wide of a target,” Mary said. “Even if we could get access to every online Dropbox in the world, it would take years to comb through them.”
Haylie’s eyes darted through the room as the crowd still hung on her every word. Their whispers felt like a weight pushing her down into her chair, causing her shoulders and back to ache. “We send him a payload—a file, something with his name on it. He’d have to click on that, right? To find out what’s inside?”
Mary smiled and sat back. “But we don’t know who is he, dear. If we knew that, this whole thing would be over in a few hours.”
“I don’t know,” Haylie said. She put her fingers to her temples as she thought, slumping in her chair. “I just don’t know.”
“Sure you do, dear. Just say whatever’s on your mind. It all matters. It all matters.”
Haylie swallowed a dry gulp of air. She looked down at the keyboard, trying to push the room out of her mind, trying to focus.
Mary whispered. “Silence sometimes speaks louder than any voice. I can’t think with them here, either, Crash. But we must. We have to push through, ignore the others. Let’s talk about the silence. We checked those forums. Why wasn’t he posting there?”
“I don’t know,” Haylie said. “For the first time in his life, he feels like he’s in the zone. He’s getting into systems he never dreamed of before.”
“Mmm,” Mary said, nodding. “That’s what I love about silence. It’s relative—it’s not absolute. Silence from the Endling doesn’t mean he’s not speaking. Maybe it just means we’re listening in the wrong places.”
Haylie turned her head, looking Mary in the eyes. “What do you mean?”
Haylie looked around the room, all eyes still on her, and sat up. Glancing down at the laptop screen, her mind began to race. “The forums,” Haylie said. “This isn’t a guy with friends. This isn’t a guy who goes to meetups or hangs out to talk technology. He needs an outlet; it has to be online, somewhere.”
Mary nodded. “A place where people won’t judge him. Make fun of him.”
“Beginner sites,” Haylie said with a spark in her eye. “HackLite, ExploitZone, even Brux—places where people go to learn,” Haylie said, putting it all together. “We were mining advanced communities. People on the inside, discussions between some of the top hackers in the world. But that’s not his world. We were looking in the wrong place.”
Mary smiled. “So it seems we’ll need to…”
“I’m going to need to write a script,” Haylie said, staring off into the distance, a smile cracking through. “Natural language processing. Analyzing text patterns from beginner forum posts that match his behavior. Going back for the past couple of years.”
“Just what I was thinking,” Mary said, gesturing down at the laptop. “How long have you been waiting to write something like that?”
“Months,” Haylie beamed. “But it feels like years.”
“Well, don’t let me get in your way. Let’s get started.”
>>>>>
University of Texas
Austin, TX
A rare, welcome rain streaked down the other side of the glass as Haylie sat, knees pulled into her chest, walking back through her day. “Think how happy those trees must be right now,” Haylie could hear her mom saying, like she did every time a surprise storm rolled in. “They must love the rain.”
The room grew dark as the clouds collected overhead, gray swirls rolling through the sky. A lone lamp across her room shone a spotlight down onto her empty desk, clear of any cords or connections, just one neat stack of paper notebooks next to a University of Texas mug full of an assortment of pens.
It was during quiet times like this that she wondered about her brother. Where is he? Out there, somewhere. Helping people.
She thought about her afternoon at the NSA. She and Mary had worked for hours, throwing ideas back and forth about how to best track down the Endling from his message board history. That wonderful mix of laughter and accomplishment that just bonded people together, even if they had just met. Haylie had done most of the coding, but Mary was already correcting her syntax as they built out logic. Even though she had left a few hours earlier, Mary’s words still echoed through her mind.
“Let’s chart our own course.”
Haylie pictured Mary sitting politely in her gray prison jumpsuit, white hair pulled down across her temples, staring right into Haylie’s eyes, not letting any of it bother her, always staying positive. She thought about everything Mary had told her that day—guiding her, making her think bigger. Not just with technical pieces, but with the entire approach. Mary had a gift for seeing the big picture, something that Haylie knew she needed to learn. And now, she had someone to teach her.
“The truth—that’s what’s going to set us both free.”
She turned back to face the window, watching soaked students, unprepared for the rainstorm, running for cover with textbooks and backpacks held tightly above their heads. Each step sloshed water across the asphalt paths and onto the brown grass, pooling up on either side, the waves and ripples forming short-lived patterns and then smoothing back out to nothing.
Haylie jumped at the sound of a familiar pattern of knocks at the door. “It’s open,” she yelled back. Vector’s face appeared, surrounded by a rush of white light from the hallway. Haylie pivoted from her fetal position to face the door with a wide smile across her face.
“You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had,” she said. “This project—it’s so cool. And this … person … this person I’m working with. It’s just amazing. I can’t wait to tell you about it ... at some point, you know? You’re going to love it.”
“That’s great,” Vector said, letting his backpack fall to the floor. He took a seat, flicking the water from his hair with a shake of his head. “Sounds like a good day.”
“This thing, it’s so much better than I thought it was going to be. I mean—I actually have a chance to catch … whoever it is we’re going after. The stuff we’re working on, it’s just fascinating.”
She jumped up from her seat, strolling over towards Vector and sitting on the desk next to him, bobbing her leg up and down with excitement.
“Do you want to read me some headlines?” she asked. “I want to know what’s going on out there. W
ho knows, maybe something from the news will help in the investigation, you know?”
Vector sat silently.
“What is it?” Haylie asked.
“Crash, you were supposed to meet me at Medici. For coffee.”
“Oh no … I’m so sorry.” Haylie’s face dropped as she realized that she had missed their weekly meet up. “I’m so…”
“I waited for about an hour, maybe more, I don’t even know. I shouldn’t have stayed that long—I mean, it was obvious that you weren’t going to show up after a certain point—but it was raining, you know, and I just wanted to wait it out.”
“I got held back,” Haylie said, reaching an arm out. “I’m so sorry. I don’t have a phone—you know that—and I just—”
“I know, you’re busy.” Vector’s head, cloaked in shadow, barely moved as he spoke. “I get it. But I just wish you wouldn’t forget about me in the process.”
“Listen,” Haylie said, standing. “I’m sorry about the coffee shop, but this is important stuff. If I could tell you, you’d understand all about it.”
“About what, the Endling?” Vector asked, raising his head.
Haylie jumped back. What did I say? How did I already screw this up? She searched her mind for anything she had said, any clues she had given.
“Don’t worry, you didn’t say anything,” Vector said. “But it’s pretty obvious, with you and Hernandez running around like crazy people all the time, mixed with some headlines that are starting to pop up. It wasn’t that difficult to put the pieces together.”
Relieved, Haylie sunk back into her chair. “I wish you could be part of this. I wish you could help, you’d love it. You’re a better hacker than I am by a longshot, and plus, I think you’d get a kick out of it.”
“What have you found so far?”
“Unfortunately, not much,” she said. “We’re just getting started, really. I’m sorry, Vector. I’m sorry that I’m not around as much as usual, but I’ll be back. I mean—if you know about the Endling, then you know how important this is.”
“Important,” Vector said, deadpan. He stood, snatching his backpack off the ground with a quick swipe and walking over to the door. “At least you think something’s important in your life. That’s good to know.”
He turned the knob and slipped through the door, washing the room with a bright rush of light from the hallway. As the door shut behind him, it fell back to black.
Haylie watched the door in silence for minutes, sitting in the dark, hoping—praying—to hear Vector’s knock. All she heard were the words in her head, playing back from that morning. Mary’s words, swirling in her mind, like the rain pooling on the asphalt below.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Wrigleyville Apartments – 4D
Chicago, IL
October 29th, 1:25PM
I am a beam of light, caked in radiance.
Anthony arranged the windows across his desktop just so, placing the FileDrop location front and center and pushing various hacking forum windows and running scripts onto the screens to his left and right.
I am a method to the madness. I am a path.
The files for the next exploit were late, but he wasn’t going to let that bother him, not today. Today, he was on his way to where he had always wanted to be. Besides, he was still running the script for the exploit that he had kicked off last night.
Anthony reached across the desk to pump up the pounding EDM beats as he bobbed his head, keeping careful watch of each window.
Today is the day. I’m ready. Give me the fuel.
The details for last night’s hack had arrived early that morning in Anthony’s burner email account. It seemed that BridgeLink—the country’s largest cable and wireless provider—had a problem with their customer service portal. By simply typing “test” in the lost password “mother’s maiden name” field, the site would grant you full access to any account. Some idiot developer had forgotten to remove the test code when putting the site live. All Anthony—or anyone, really—needed was a valid email address in the BridgeLink database.
I am not here by chance. I was placed here. I was created.
The sheep, the chaff, the others: they don’t know.
To make that hack substantial, Anthony needed email addresses—lots of them. He had found them in a few different ways: some he had downloaded from forums, collected by hackers for dictionary attacks against major sites; others he had purchased from marketing firms scattered across the internet. Emails are surprisingly easy to buy, since so many contests and giveaways were designed to just collect contact information and sell it off to the highest bidder.
How many people have lived—throughout all of time? About one hundred billion? And how many of those do people know about? Even their names, let alone the great feats that they’ve done? Napoleon. Julius Caesar. Jesus Christ. Maybe three hundred? Four hundred, if you’re lucky? Out of all those souls?
It’s not just because people forget; it’s that most people don’t do great things. Not even close. They consume. They waste oxygen. And then they die.
With both the exploit and a list of emails, all he had needed to do was to ping BridgeLink’s servers from multiple machines across the globe with random timing patterns. He figured that, with BridgeLink’s monopoly on cable television and internet, within a few days he could collect around thirty to forty per cent of the personal information of people in Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan from this hack alone. And that’s exactly what his scripts were doing right now—pinging, collecting, and then moving on to the next victim.
But the details of the next hack were still late. Anthony checked the file location again, hitting refresh. Still nothing.
Don’t give up on me now. We’re doing so well. We’re growing into something no one ever saw coming.
The agreement said very plainly that the files would be in the FileDrop location by 1 p.m. Central. Maybe they were running into problems. After all, these men who were paying him, they were mere mortals. They wouldn’t know perfection like Anthony did. He couldn’t expect them to be as focused as he was, day in and day out.
I follow orders, but it’s not the orders that matter. It’s me. I’ll be here after they’re here. I’ll be known after they’re forgotten.
Anthony tapped the desktop with jittery fingers as his eyes flicked from monitor to monitor. No files in the Dropbox.
Eight minutes late now. Don’t cut me off, not now. We’re just getting started. We’re just getting warmed up.
The money was in his account, that he knew. Half of the money always came before the files. Quick and easy. Anthony looked back to the empty file drop location, sucking in deep breaths as his pulse raced through his veins. He pushed his chair back, stood, paced in front of his desk.
He thought back to the single verbal conversation with the man calling the shots—both sides masking their voices with software. To actually speak to him, to hear him describe the next few steps, even offering a few pieces of encouragement, had been enlightening. Exhilarating.
“It’s fine. Everything’s fine,” he whispered, raising his voice just enough so that he could hear his own words over the pounding music. The scripts continued showing each name and data collection status, then moving on to the next. They wouldn’t stop until they were told to stop, but he knew he needed more. He couldn’t wait.
“We’re doing such wonderful things. We’re in this together. We’re running in lock step. We’re dancing, you and I. Don’t cut me off.” He ran his hands through his hair as he leaned back, stretching his spine, trying to relieve the tension.
I’m going to be one of those—the remembered. I have to be one of those. Why else would I be here?
He paced heavily, his stomps growing louder, boots hitting hardwood. He walked from one corner of the room to the other, keeping his eyes on the floor.
“We’re doing so well together,” he said. “We’ve been out fishing and having such a good day. The fish are b
iting. We just need more bait. Give me more bait.”
I want this one to be big. Please, make this one big. We’re building towards that, aren’t we? That has to be where we are headed. Hand in hand.
“But I can’t do it without the instructions!” Anthony shouted, his face growing red, leaning back over the desktop. “I need to be in on the plan. Let. Me. In. That was the deal … We had a deal!”
Still perched above his keyboard, arms extended and palms flat on the desk, Anthony turned his head over to face the far wall. There, he saw the framed, broken magazine cover with Haylie Black’s face looking back at him. His eyes narrowed as his focus drifted from her face to the smears of blood now dried on the glass and down the edges of the frame.
“This will be my Haylie Black moment,” he said, nodding to himself as he ground his teeth, the music continuing to pound in the background, shaking the keyboard under his fingers with each beat. “I see you, Crash. But all you are is vapor. Vapor. You weren’t meant to be where you are. You were a mistake. And I hate mistakes.”
A ping came from his laptop’s speakers and Anthony twisted back towards his machine. He brought the file drop window to full screen and leaned in close to the monitor, close enough to make out the edges of a few individual pixels around the text label of a single file. It was just sitting there in the Dropbox location, labeled ‘four,’ waiting for him to click.
One simple, glorious file.
Anthony opened the document as he slid back into his chair. As he studied each word of the instructions, a twisting laugh rolled from of his belly and was met with tears that welled in the corners of his eyes.
“Oh my,” Anthony said. “You’re a big fish, aren’t you?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NSA Texas Cryptologic Center
San Antonio, TX
October 29th, 4:15PM
“Show me what you’ve got,” Agent Wilcox asked, reviewing the report handed to her seconds earlier.
Crash Into Pieces (The Haylie Black Series Book 2) Page 11