by Dima Zales
“You’re wasting valuable time,” I whisper. “I don’t want innocent people to get hurt.”
Something inside the woman seems to break. Her shoulders droop, and tears flood her eyes. “Look, I don’t know how you’re communicating with him, but I can’t get you out, even if I wanted to. I’m not—”
“Let’s make sure Joe doesn’t do anything crazy,” I interrupt. “I’ll tell him to stand down, but you have to get me onto your Wi-Fi so I can make that connection. Quickly.”
She looks confused but says, “The Wi-Fi password is in my phone.” She reaches down, plays with her phone, and shows me a long string of digits. “How do you plan to reach your cousin? Do you want me to bring you your phone? It might be faster if you call him with mine.”
“Jean.” Agent Lancaster’s voice manages the impossible feat of sounding colder than ever before. “I can’t believe you’re falling for his social engineering hacker tricks.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Crap. He must’ve heard me call her by her real name through the surveillance in the room and came to make sure she didn’t let me out.
What he might not realize, though, is that I already got something extremely valuable. I recorded the Wi-Fi passcode she showed me, and I’m getting onto their network while they argue.
“How can he know the names of my son and his family?” I hear her ask as though in the distance. “Or that they live in Queens, or what my son looks like?”
“He saw you for that therapy session in Manhattan,” Lancaster replies. “He must’ve hacked—”
I don’t hear what the agent says next, because I get online and my brain boost hits me like a ton of pleasurable bricks.
“You’ve been offline or unconscious for three days,” Einstein says. “Current time—”
I ignore Einstein because I’m overwhelmed with the sensation of becoming whole again. It’s like regaining sight after being blind for ten years, waking up from a coma, and coming home after a military tour, all rolled into one package and multiplied a millionfold. The time dilation effect kicks in instantly, and I feel like I could write a philosophical treatise in the moment it takes Agent Lancaster to say a single angry word to Jean-Jane.
I form a plan to get out of this place almost seamlessly. Then I realize I can come up with a dozen more, though none will get me out of here as fast as I’d like.
In the span of a breath, I sweep through my captors’ computer network and verify this is indeed a government task force, as Lancaster said. Their specialty is cybersecurity, and they recently formed due to some bullshit political pressures. I also see clues that explain past events. For example, when my pseudo-shrink told them about my paranoia, they stopped spying on me for the rest of the day, which explains why I felt relieved after therapy. They genuinely weren’t following me anymore. And when they found out Muhomor and I were admitted into the hospital, they freaked out, in part because of some interesting information I discover about Muhomor in the task force’s files.
As it turns out, despite all the frequent bragging, Muhomor never told us about his most dubious accomplishments. For example, under other aliases, he’s participated in the creation of cyberweapons for the US, UK, and Israel—software that makes the Stuxnet worm, a weapon designed to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, look like child’s play. The agents also think he has a whole database of kompromat—the Russian word that stands for blackmail materials.
I soon see that this is why the task force didn’t go after Muhomor directly, no matter how much they wanted Tema for homeland security purposes. They had good reason to believe he has a sophisticated version of dead man’s switches/insurance in place that would get triggered if something happened to him—like being locked in a room with no access to the internet. The task force believes that much of his kompromat will go public if he’s in a jam, and they even worry that automated cyber attacks might hit American and/or Russian targets. These attacks would create a major scandal, because the weapons used would be of state design. What’s really telling is that they fear a scandal more than the cyber threats.
When they learned about Muhomor’s condition, they risked hacking some of his servers to prevent his countermeasures from getting released, but it was all encoded using Tema, giving them an extra reason to need to crack the system as soon as possible. Though I get the sense they would’ve done what they did to me even without the rush.
It’s ironic that they feared a scandal from Muhomor, because now, they’re going to get one anyway, courtesy of me. I upload all the videos from my phone’s disk onto Mitya’s most secure server in case someone figures out I’m in their network and shuts the whole thing down. Once the videos are safe, I create a nice montage of the most shocking violations of my human rights, shown in the grisliest details. That done, I email the footage to Mitya and start a Teleconference app connection with him and Ada, frantically saying in Zik, “Hey, Mitya. I’m back online. Sorry, but I didn’t read your email. What can you do with this video?”
“Mike,” Ada responds instantly, her message full of so many turbulent emotions that I can’t tell them apart. A torrent of Zik messages follows so fast I wonder if Ada got an extra boost while I was away and can now talk faster than I can register.
“Slow down, please,” I interrupt her. “I have a ton of favors to ask of you too, but let me talk to Mitya first. He has connections who can help me.”
“Start Share,” she demands and appears in the air in front of me as her normal self, only smaller. Her worried face is a balm to my overactive nerves.
I start the Share app so my friends can see what I see. I also locate the camera in my room and send them the video feed. This way, they’ll have two vantage points.
“Dude,” Mitya butts in, his telepathic message a discernable mixture of concern and relief. “As I mentioned in the email that you didn’t read, I know who has you and I started the ball rolling on getting you out.” Mimicking Ada, he appears in the room as a small, floating figure near Agent Lancaster’s shoulder, and like Ada, he’s wearing his usual clothes. “Your task force was formed by agents from the CIA, FBI, NSA, and a slew of other acronyms. A certain Congressman Chandler is the driving force behind it.”
I multitask as Mitya talks, doing a quick mental internet search that reveals Congressman Chandler was a victim of a major hack by Russia. Somehow, he turned that embarrassment into a political crusade. It’s not surprising that he’s behind this task force.
“I’ll be meeting with the congressman shortly,” Mitya continues. “I’ll inform him of what kind of shit his name is about to be associated with, not to mention the fact that I’ll spend a few hundred million dollars on negative ad campaigns against him if you’re not released in the next hour.”
I put a large red circle around the torture table in Mitya’s view of my room and say, “You best cut that hour down to minutes.”
“Of course,” Mitya says, this time out loud. “I’m watching the video you edited, and I can’t believe these people.”
“Me neither,” Ada chimes in, her face full of horrified sympathy. She turns her gaze from me to my arguing captors, and her sympathy morphs into wrath. “I can’t believe what they’ve put you through.”
“Let’s post that montage on YouTube,” I tell them. “Plus the live feed into this room.”
“Great ideas,” Mitya replies and looks thoughtful for a moment. Then he nods and says, “Video’s already on YouTube, and I’m messaging James, my marketing guru. He’ll make it his top priority to push that video until it goes viral. The live feed will also go online, and I’ll send it to the congressman.”
“Speak with Kadvosky as well,” Ada suggests vindictively. “Once we’re done with these people’s credibility and careers, we’ll need to destroy them in court.”
“And have my cousin visit a few.” I nod at the slow-speaking Agent Lancaster.
“That one-eyed asshole will probably end up in jail after all of this is over. For a cop, t
hat can be a fate worse than a visit from Joe,” Mitya says. “I’ll also look around their network. If I find something embarrassing, I’ll distribute it as publicly as possible.”
“Thanks, guys.” I switch from Zik to English for emphasis. “I owe you big.”
“Don’t mention it,” Mitya says.
“It’ll take a lot of sexual favors for us to be even,” Ada mentally replies.
“TMI.” Mitya’s face reddens. Ada must’ve said her joke in the shared conversation instead of privately.
“Okay, here, look around.” I send Mitya the task force’s Wi-Fi credentials.
“So,” I say to Ada as Mitya starts his work. “I have something I want to ask you to do, something less urgent.”
“Of course. What is it?”
“I want to fulfill Muhomor’s dream,” I say. “I want to make Tema open source.”
“I see,” Ada says with obvious enthusiasm. She always took Muhomor’s side when we argued about Tema’s fate. “Once the whole world has access to Tema, this task force will no longer need you.”
“Exactly,” I say. “But it’s also meant as a big fuck-you to them.”
“And,” Mitya chimes in, “once it’s wide, the world will see that Tema is uncrackable, and no one will ever want to kidnap any of us to get some kind of edge on it.”
“That’s what I thought too,” I say. “Which leads me to another, even less urgent idea. I think we should share the Brainocyte design and software with the world—open source it all like I’ve been suggesting for months. Had these people known about Brainocytes, I’d be in worse shape. The next bunch of idiots might want Brainocytes, and they might kidnap one of us to get it. Plus, of course, my usual argument about openness leading to faster development of more features and apps and cheaper production of nanos, etcetera, ad infinitum.”
“You’re just distraught and want to disrupt the established world order.” Mitya whistles as he considers a world where millions of people become members of the Brainocytes Club. “You know I was never against this idea. Muhomor was.”
“I wasn’t against it either,” Ada says. “And I suspect Muhomor will forgive us once he learns we released Tema.”
“Then it’s settled,” I say, relieved they’re going along with my idea. “Mitya, did you talk to your congressman yet?”
“Dude,” Mitya says sarcastically. “Congressman Chandler is working on regular-people time, so he obviously hasn’t even opened the email yet. But I’ll text him and urge him to check his damn email.”
“Okay, thanks.” I then look at Ada’s image and say, “Babe, can you lead Mr. Spock out of the building?”
Since the little guy is still not connected to the internet, I connect him, and he instantly showers me with positive emotions. I guess he likes his brain boost as much as I do.
“I’ll get him out,” Ada says, and her forehead crinkles in determination. “What do I tell your mom? I’ve been covering for you, but she’s getting suspicious. It’s been a few days since you last spoke. Also, Lyuba and Gogi want to know where you are.”
“Stall Mom a bit longer,” I say. “But you can tell Lyuba and Gogi where I am. How’s Gogi, by the way?”
“Healing well,” Ada says. “He and Lyuba are keeping Muhomor company.”
“I’m sending a car to your location,” Mitya says. “Oh, and you’ll be happy to learn these morons kept records of the drugs they gave you, as well as the surveillance video of some of the atrocities they did to you—including stuff you missed because you were unconscious. Kadvosky and his gang will have these people’s firstborns.”
“And speaking of atrocities,” Ada says. “Are you listening to that conversation?”
As soon as she directs my attention back to it, I realize I indeed wasn’t paying attention to what Agent Lancaster was saying, but I am now, and I hear him say, “I want you out of this room. Now.”
Less than a few seconds of real-world time have passed since my friends and I started our hyper-quick Zik chat, so I know I didn’t miss much of Lancaster’s monologue. I can extrapolate that he said something like, “He lied to you about your son.”
The old woman looks scared and for good reason. Lancaster looks like he might choke her if she disobeys his demand for her to leave.
“Joe,” I text my cousin. “I’m almost out of this. Don’t kill anyone. Talk to Mitya or Ada. We’re in touch.”
“Where are you?” Joe’s reply is again impressively quick for a Brainocyteless human.
“Talk to Mitya about that also,” I text Joe. “And I repeat, leave her family alone.”
“Fine,” Joe answers. “We’ll meet shortly.”
I gleam a lot of sinister subtext in Joe’s words, but since it’s directed at people who deserve it, I don’t care. Besides, he’s not suicidal enough to take on the government.
“Your family is safe,” I tell Golovasi-Berger as she shuffles toward the door. Unsure why I’m being nice to her, I decide to get something for myself out of this setup and add, “After you leave, please tell whoever’s in charge to call Congressman Chandler. Also, tell him or her to check YouTube for a viral video that’ll surely make all of you infamous.”
At the mention of the congressman’s name, the eyes of the fake shrink and the only eye of the agent look like they want to jump out of their sockets.
“What did you tell him?” Agent Lancaster looks ready to grab a scalpel and slice open his colleague. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.” Golovasi-Berger sounds panicked.
“Out,” he shouts. Before she even exits the room, he grabs an icepick-like object from the table and leaps at me. “He’s going to tell me everything in a couple of minutes. I guarantee it.”
“Oh shit,” Mitya says in Russian. “That doesn’t look good.”
“Activate the Relief app,” Ada orders me, and I instantly obey.
I enjoy a couple of breaths free from the million aches and pains plaguing me. I also enjoy how the app dilutes the calls of my body’s functions.
Unfortunately, my respite is brief.
Agent Lancaster crosses the distance between us and grabs my left hand in a death grip.
“Oh shit,” I say, echoing Mitya’s earlier assessment, only I say it in Zik. I cringe and turn away, though I can still see what he does through the video feed from the wall camera. “I don’t think the Relief app was designed for something like this—”
I don’t finish my thought because I begin screaming.
Lancaster sticks the icepick under the nail of my right pinky finger and slides it into my flesh.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I keep screaming, out loud in Russian and English, but also telepathically in Zik.
My body convulses, and I fear I’m about to lose the contents of both my bladder and bowels.
If the Relief app is lessening this pain, I don’t want to imagine what this would feel like without it.
My friends telepathically scream with me.
“I’m ready to talk,” I yell at Agent Lancaster as loudly as I can.
“I just found his phone number in their directory,” Mitya says. “I’m sending the full Tema algorithm to it.”
“Check your phone,” I shout. “You got your fucking Tema!”
Instantly, Lancaster’s heroic ringtone goes off.
“It might not be my email.” Mitya looks at the culprit phone suspiciously. “Maybe it’s the congressman. If he’s watching the live feed I sent him, I bet he’s beyond pissed.”
The problem with the brain boost is it makes the agony last longer. After an intolerable millisecond of pain, Agent Lancaster rips the icepick from my poor finger and glares at his phone.
The Relief app masks the pain in my wounded finger, allowing me to finally inhale.
The door to the room creaks open, and Golovasi-Berger storms in with a couple of Suits whose faces I remember from the hospital, plus Agent Pugh.
Just like at the hospital, the Suits are holding Tase
rs. Unlike at the hospital, it’s Agent Lancaster, and not me, they’re pointing their weapons at.
“You should speak with Congressman Chandler,” one of them says in a hard tone. “Mr. Cohen is to be released, immediately. You are relieved of your duties.”
Lancaster looks like a trapped animal, and in a pre-cog-like moment, I can almost see him raising the icepick and jamming it into my eye.
I guess the Suits also see his intent, because without another word, they shoot him with their Tasers.
Lancaster collapses onto the floor, and a person in a surgical mask shows up, seemingly out of nowhere. He injects the twitching agent with a syringe, and Lancaster’s body slumps on the floor.
“I think I’ll need to run the BraveChill app for a few weeks after this,” Ada says. She sounds as shaken as I feel. “Is it just me, or did this agent totally lose his mind?”
“I guess he was attached to that eye,” Mitya deadpans. “He must’ve wanted to literally have an eye for an eye transaction with Mike.”
Ada groans, but I focus on the medical person, because he pulls out another syringe and approaches me next.
“Wait,” I say. “What are you—”
The needle goes into my arm, and warmth spreads throughout my body.
“This is a good sign.” Ada reassures me, though it’s unclear if she believes what she’s saying. “I bet they’re letting you go but don’t want you to know where the black site is.”
“I would have preferred one of those black bags over my head,” I reply, my thoughts already blurring. “And I know where I am.”
“I guess it’s too late to tell them we already know where their station is.” Mitya sounds like he’s far away.
“I can’t believe I’m getting knocked out again,” I send in Zik, and the drug finally does its job, making everything go black.
I wake up to the smell of coconut shampoo and the feel of petite hands stroking my back.
“You have been unconscious for five hours and sixteen minutes,” Einstein says. “Current time is 5:47 p.m.”