I didn’t say anything. I was tired of lying, but I still reflexively felt that going public about this was a bad idea. I was pretty sure that Carrie Johnstone had been the one to tell Joe’s opponents that he had someone working for him who was behind the darknet. She must have figured that isolating me was the first step to neutralizing me. She was probably right.
“Thanks for everything, Liam” is what I said.
He studied my face a moment longer. “I don’t want the job,” he said. “I’m going to quit.”
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because the world will be a better place if Joe Noss is elected to the California Senate than it will be if one of those other two schmucks makes it into office.”
He barked a laugh. “You’re kidding, right? You really think it makes a difference who we vote for? After you’ve seen the darknet docs, seen how someone uses the system to get rich, then uses their riches to change the system to keep them that way? Jesus, Marcus, what is this, high school civics? Come on, bro, you of all people should know better than that.”
“If you really believe that, why were you working for Joe in the first place?” It was weird sticking up for the guy who’d just fired me, especially since I was starting to get pretty pissed off about being fired. I mean, optics? What the hell kind of reason was that to fire someone? (The nagging voice in my head told me that it was a perfectly good reason if you were running for office, especially if the person generating the bad optics had lied to you—or at least failed to mention some very important information.)
“It’s a job. Who gives a damn? Might as well be flipping burgers or walking dogs.”
I started to say something about how you shouldn’t do a job you don’t care about, but I remembered all those months I’d spent knocking on every door I could find, handing out résumés like chewing gum, and all the big, fat NOs that had got me. “Listen, Liam,” I said. But there wasn’t anything to say to Liam. The fact was, he was probably right. “Forget it,” I said. “Call me if you need tech support, okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. There was a second where we might have given each other a big, back-slapping dude-hug, but neither of us moved. Liam had looked up to me so much, and it had been nice, but it had also been weird, all that adulation. I had a feeling I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.
* * *
Once upon a time, my government turned my city into a police state, kidnapped me, and tortured me. When I got free, I decided that the problem wasn’t the system, but who was running it. Bad guys had gotten into places of high office. We needed good apples. I worked my butt off to get people to vote for good apples. We had elections. We installed the kind of apples everyone agreed would be the kind of apples we could be proud of. They said good things. A few real dirtbags like Carrie Johnstone lost their jobs.
And then, well, the good apples turned out to act pretty much exactly like the bad apples. Oh, they had reasons. There were emergencies. Circumstances. It was all really regrettable.
But there were always emergencies, weren’t there? My whole nineteen years on this earth had been one long emergency, according to all the papers and the TV. When would the emergencies finally end? Would there be a day when unicorns pranced through the Mission and pronounced an end to hostilities around the world, a return to the promised normalcy, with jobs and freedom for all?
Hell no. If someone like Joe Noss could turn out to be just another politician, then so could anyone and everyone. Carrie Johnstone had been fired, but she ended up getting more money, more power, and more authority, with even fewer checks on her ruthlessness. Carrie Johnstone was always going to end up on top. I’d been an idiot to think that we could elect someone who’d make it all better. I once thought that Liam was an idealistic fool who lacked the sophistication to appreciate just how good it could all be if we just had the right people out there, passing good laws and making good government. Now I saw who the fool was. It was the idiot I saw in the mirror every morning, and I was getting pretty sick of his face.
* * *
Ange didn’t answer emails or IMs, and didn’t pick up her phone. Who cared? What I was about to do wasn’t about her, it was about me.
Setting up the first darknet docs site had taken a fair bit of work. It was a lot easier the second time around, and now I had all of the Johnstone d0x in a nice, safe, untraceable place. I wrote a blog post explaining what these docs were, who they belonged to, and even how I’d come by them, gritting my teeth until they hurt and typing out the admission that I’d been rooted by a gang of anonymous trolls who’d done the same thing to my archnemesis.
Jolu was right. I’d spent far too long letting Johnstone drive me ahead of her like a terrified, bleating sheep. It was time I started leading the chase, instead of just running away in terror.
I didn’t publish the post. I almost did. But I didn’t.
Instead, what I did was email the post, along with the darknet link, to
I had just hit SEND and begun to (metaphorically) crap my pants when Ange called.
“What’s up? I had class.”
“I got fired. Carrie Johnstone told Joe Noss’s opponents that I’d been the one behind the darknet docs, and they called the FBI. Joe negotiated my freedom in exchange for shitcanning me. So I got home and emailed Carrie Johnstone a copy of her d0x. I’ve just sent a copy of the darknet address to your Tunisian Pirate Party email address. If I go missing, spread it around, okay?”
“Marcus?”
“Yes?”
“What did you just say?”
I repeated it.
“That’s what I thought you said.” There was a long silence.
“Hello?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m not going to apologize,” I said. “It’s my life. I’m tired of running away. I’m tired of being a stupid idealist. It’s time to take charge, time to do something. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you beforehand, but—”
“I wasn’t going to ask you to apologize,” she said. “You don’t owe me an explanation. It’s pretty clear you don’t owe me anything. Don’t worry, I’ll get that darknet address and keep it safe and make sure everyone knows about it if you go missing.” I had never heard the tone of voice she was using at that moment. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or scared or maybe even … proud?
“Oh,” I said. “Well.”
“Well, I think I’d better go,” she said, and the line cut off. Not proud, then.
* * *
My parents were both out for a change. Dad was doing some grocery shopping and Mom had a client meeting. The house felt more than empty—it felt hollow. Spooky. Every creak and bang was a squad of Zyz mercs about to break down my door and kidnap me.
And even though I knew that was the one thing they couldn’t afford to do now that I had my finger over the button, I was sure I was about to get snatched. Or maybe they’d take my parents. Or Ange. What had been Jolu’s other suggestions for actions I could take? Move to Albania. I didn’t even have a valid passport—the one I’d used to go see Mom’s relatives in the UK had expired two years before. I could dump it all on Barbara Stratford. Well, why not? She’d helped last time.
I got my bike out of the garage and set off for the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s offices. I was nearly there when my phone rang. The caller ID didn’t know the return number. I answered.
“Yeah?”
“You’re some kind of trouble-magnet, aren’t you?”
It took me a minute to place the voice, mostly because I’d internally decided that I’d never hear it again.
“Masha?”
“You busy?”
“What?”
/> “From what I can see, you’re somewhere by the Embarcadero. Judging from your rate of travel, you’re either on a bus that’s making a lot of stops, or a bicycle. And from what I can see, you’re no longer listed as CTO of the Joe Noss for California Senate campaign on their website, so I’m thinking you might not be totally busy. So how about you turn off your phone altogether, remove the battery, and meet me where your idiot school-buddy tried to wrassle me. Do you know the place?”
The day Masha had disappeared—the first time—she’d tried to take me with her, and we’d been shadowed by Charles Walker, a drooling gorilla from Chavez High who would have dearly loved to nark me out to Homeland Security. Masha had kicked his ass, flashed her DHS ID, and threatened to arrest him. It had been on one of the alleys off Jackson, up on Nob Hill. I wasn’t exactly sure which one, but I thought I’d recognize it again if I saw it.
“I know the place.”
The line went dead. People kept hanging up on me. It wasn’t a very pleasant experience. As I pedaled for downtown, I realized I didn’t want pleasant experiences anymore. I was done with trying to optimize my life for what would make me happy. From now on, I was going to optimize my life for whatever worked at the moment. Happiness was overrated.
Chapter 15
I was nearly convinced I had the wrong alley. I waited ten minutes, then fifteen, then I walked off. I got to the end of the block and I turned around and walked back. I looked down the alleyway. It wasn’t much of an alleyway—just a narrow space between two buildings, wide enough for the fire exits and trash cans. The fifteen minutes I’d spent standing in the alley had been enough time for me to memorize every single feature of the place, from the ancient, mossy urine streaks on the wall to the dents in the trash cans. And now I could see that something was different. Hadn’t that trash can been over there? It had been. I took a cautious step into the alleyway and my palms slicked with sweat, because I could tell, somehow, that there was someone in there with me. I took another step.
“Back here,” a voice said from behind the trash cans. I tried to peek over them, but couldn’t quite see, so I went deeper in and came around them.
Masha was sitting with her back against the wall. She looked like she was on her way to the gym, in track pants and a loose T-shirt, her hair in a pink scrunchie, a gym bag beside her. Her hair was mousy no-color brown, and she was wearing big fake designer shades. She could have been rich or poor, teenaged or in her late twenties. I wouldn’t have given her a second look if I’d sat next to her on BART. I wasn’t sure it was her, until she lowered her shades on her nose and skewered me on her glare.
“Have a seat,” she said, and gestured at the space next to her behind the trash cans. She’d put down a piece of new cardboard there, which was a nice touch and made me think this wasn’t the first time she’d done this. I lowered myself into a cross-legged position.
“Nice to see you,” I said. “A bit unexpected.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Zeb and I walked out of there a few days ago, but it’s been busy.”
“Walked out of there.”
“Those Zyz people, they’re mostly meatheads that couldn’t cut it in the DHS, so they went private sector, tripled their pay, and set out on their own. They have a lot of faith in their systems. Like, say, if a vendor says a CCTV is secure, they believe it. Same with electronic door locks, tracking ankle cuffs, and perimeter sensors.”
“Oh,” I said. I’d always known that Masha was a million times more badass than I was, but in all this business about saving her, I’d somehow come to think of her as a damsel in distress. “Did you have to come far?”
“Are you asking where I was held?”
I shrugged.
“Are you sure you want to know that?”
I shrugged again. “Probably not. All this spy shit, I pretty much totally hate it, to tell you the truth. Is Zeb okay?”
“Zeb’s as good as he has any right to expect. Better. He’s doing some stuff on his own for a while.”
I mentally translated this as We had a big fight and split up. “Oh.”
“So I wanted to say thanks,” she said. “You’ve done some stuff that needed doing, but you did it for me and Zeb and that was damned good of you. Even if ‘spy shit’ isn’t your thing.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, glad to be of service, even if you didn’t need me in the end.”
“Oh, I needed you. Zyz’s been in an absolute panic pretty much since the moment they grabbed us. I figured out pretty quick that you were behind it. They were awfully anxious to know what had gotten out, what else might come out, and how they could stop it. They had a lot of really sincere questions for me. But it was an excellent distraction, and from what I can tell, all the people who supplied me with that material are happy with how it’s gotten out. There was a lot more material waiting for me when I got back online. Enough to keep me busy for a really long time.” She was being super macha, but I was starting to see that there was something wrong with her. She rooted in her gym bag for a water bottle and took a slug of it. I saw big, ugly bruises—no, welts—on her wrists and at her throat. I swallowed.
“Well, glad to be of service. Wish I’d known, since I happened upon some more ‘material’ of my own recently.” I told her about Carrie Johnstone’s d0x and the source of them.
“I see,” she said, in sober tones. “And where are these files now?”
“I emailed them to Zyz corporate headquarters,” I said.
I have to admit, I was a little proud of the silence that followed. She might have been James Bond–meets-Spider-Man, but I’d managed to do something so heroically crazy-stupid-brave that I’d rendered her speechless. But the silence went on, and on, and on. I peered at her shades, trying to see if she’d fallen asleep behind them.
“Um?”
“Shush,” she said. “I’m figuring angles.”
“Oh.”
She lowered her head for a moment, and I heard her muttering to herself. There was a raw ligature mark around the back of her neck, which disappeared beneath her chin.
“So if I have this straight, you’ve sent all this in to Zyz and to Johnstone personally. You’ve implied that you’re ready to publish it at the drop of a hat, but as far as they know, you haven’t actually done anything about getting it published, right?”
“Pretty much. I’ve locked down the server my blog is on six ways to midnight, because I figured they’d be after it with everything they had. I’m half convinced they’re going to come after me personally again, but that was always a certainty. They’ve tried to snatch me twice now. There’s nothing I could do that would stop them from coming a third time.”
She nodded along with me and held up her hand as I came to the end. “What if I could stop them?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if I could negotiate something with them, so that they made a meaningful promise to leave you alone, and you agreed to leave the Johnstone d0x alone?”
“Just so I’m clear on this: you’ve just escaped from a secret prison run by these goons, and now you’re proposing to negotiate with them for my safety? As we say on the Internets: double-you-tee-eff.”
“Oh,” she said. “Marcus, come on. I’m not doing this to negotiate for your safety. I’m negotiating for mine.”
Derp. “Right,” I said. “Right. And Zeb’s.”
“Zeb, you, me, your little girlie, all of them. Zyz is stupid and evil, but it’s a business. Money talks and bullshit walks. What you’re about to dump, it will cost them plenty. If we give them a chance to cut their losses, they’re going to do that.”
“What about Johnstone? Won’t she come after me after she’s fired?”
“They won’t fire her,” she said. “Whatever reasons they have to fire her, you can be sure she has amassed a fat dossier of reasons why they shouldn’t fire her. That woman’s got the survival instincts of a cockroach. She only goes when she’s ready to go. The U.S. Army only fired her once she was ready
to be fired, once she’d set up the Zyz deal to step into. She let them fire her.”
“You sound almost like you admire her,” I said.
“The only day I wouldn’t piss on Carrie Johnstone is the day she caught fire,” Masha said, without the slightest hesitation or expression. “But if you’re not prepared to learn from the teachers that life gives you, you’ll always be ignorant. I’ve paid for every lesson that Carrie Johnstone has taught me, and I’m going to get my money’s worth.”
Sitting with Masha was like sitting on a razor’s edge. On one side was my old life: safe little Marcus with his safe little life, in the system, applying for jobs, building his little electronics projects. On the other side was the life that I’d have if I followed Masha: violence, secrecy, poverty—but also power, strength, and adventure. I could disappear from the world, become a ghost and a legend, a fugitive who only gave the system what I deemed it deserved, not what it demanded.
After all, wasn’t the system the problem? No matter who we voted for, the government always seemed to win. What was the point of living out my little fantasy of democratic change and justice when the real action was being fought out in secrecy, with anonymous envelopes of cash, encrypted whispers, secret bunkers, and secret deals?
Masha got to her feet and I was alarmed to see how slowly and painfully she moved. I was even more alarmed by how heavily she leaned against the wall. “Gimme a little help here,” she said.
I hastened to stand beside her and let her put her arm around my shoulders, putting a lot of weight on me. Her hair tickled my cheek. It still smelled of her hair dye, a smell I remembered from being a kid who tried a different hair color every week. Back when I felt like I could express who I was and what I felt with my hair.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go use your network connection to do some negotiating before they scramble the black helicopters and nuke your ass.”
“I haven’t agreed to the deal,” I said. I was practically holding her upright at this point, and I was amazed by how light she was, how little there was to her under her exercise clothes.
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