Hacked

by Tracy Alexander

  ‘Remind me about graphs with equations that have squareds in,’ said Joe.

  I obliged. ‘They’re curves because a negative and a positive both end up positive when they’re squared.’

  ‘If you don’t know that, you’ve got no hope,’ said Ty, creeping up behind in his Vans.

  ‘I don’t need hope, I need facts,’ said Joe.

  ‘Three weeks and three days left,’ I said. ‘There’s a fact.’

  Ever since my day in Westminster, Ty and Joe had acted as bodyguards, sticking close in case anyone was thinking of having a pop at me. Not that anyone did. I had the impression that being a wanted man in America wasn’t particularly newsworthy on top of what most of the school already knew – Pay As You Go, hacking the BBC, colluding with Angel. If you asked them, they’d probably also have accused me of dealing ketamine, carrying a knife and arson.

  As I walked out of maths, Aiden arrived by my side. The bonding from the field trip had persisted despite my ever more criminal reputation.

  ‘Will you go through the ecosystems chapters with me?’

  ‘All right.’

  I sat in the library with him – he was ridiculously grateful, considering I’d only helped him a handful of times.

  ‘If I get a good grade it’s all because of you,’ he said, as we got up to go to the canteen for lunch.

  I turned to find Ruby standing by the returned books shelf. She smiled, but was gone before I could say anything. She hadn’t actually spoken to me since she called me a liar.

  But after our geography exam, she did.

  ‘I’m sorry about the lousy Yanks,’ she said. It sounded awkward, as though she’d practised what to say.

  ‘Me too,’ I said.

  ‘It sounds like your lawyer’s good.’

  ‘Did you see him on Points West?’ (Somehow Charlie had got a slot on the local news, talking about my case. I was on the way to making him famous.)

  She nodded. ‘My mum said he could do with a dry clean.’

  ‘She’s not wrong.’

  We walked out of the grounds and through the park, swapping comments on the exam paper. Joe and Ty saw us together and steered clear. I was so happy to have her near me but her last words were still scabbed on the soft tissue of my brain. If she was going to be nice for five minutes but then remind me of what an idiot I’d been, I decided I might as well hear it now.

  ‘I know I lied, pretending not to still be coding, but the thing is, Ruby, it was fun. I never thought about what I was doing. It’s a pathetic excuse, but it is the truth. Joe’s brilliant at climbing up walls, I’m brilliant at hacking. And the reason it’s so … compelling is because hackers can understand and mould stuff in a way that not even the people who first made it can.’

  She made a sad face. Like she wished she could change me, but knew she couldn’t.

  ‘Will you come home with me?’ I said, totally rash. ‘No one’s in. Not till six, anyway.’ And then I used what turned out to be my trump card. ‘When I’m on my own I can’t stop imagining them taking me straight from the court to a holding cell at the airport.’ There was an unexpected tremble in my voice.

  ‘OK. But I want hot chocolate and —’

  ‘Anything. You can have anything.’

  45

  She stayed for two hours. In my room. Door shut. Enough said. We were back on. Big time. Only thing was, I now had too much to lose to leave my future to chance.

  46

  Ruby was on her way out of the front door when she stopped and looked at me.

  ‘Dan, I don’t go volunteering on Sundays for something to do, I go because I want the world to stay beautiful and if people don’t do their bit, it won’t. You need to do your bit somehow, not just wait for Charlie Tate to save you. Write a blog about extradition … Write a blog about how easy it is for teenagers to get sucked into the evil internet … Do something, Dan.’

  Maybe she was right …

  Before I had a chance to reply, we heard El yell, ‘Hello, Ruby.’

  She was coming up the road with Mum, obviously hyped up by after-school club because she ran up to Ruby and gave her a hug.

  ‘I’m much better at cartwheels now. Can I show you?’

  ‘All right,’ said Ruby. ‘But then I’ve got to go.’

  El dumped her book bag in the hall and dragged Ruby out into the back garden. Sixteen cartwheels later, a dizzy El stood next to me, both of us waving to my redheaded eco-warrior as she disappeared down the road.

  ‘See you Sunday,’ I shouted.

  Volunteering – all reassuringly normal.

  ‘Nice to see Ruby here,’ said Mum, a hand on my shoulder.

  I nodded. ‘Better get working,’ I said, taking the stairs three at a time.

  ‘It’s wonderful seeing you so single-minded about doing well,’ she said to my back, unaware that exams had just taken a back seat.

  Right. Where to start?

  Charlie Tate said there were three things in my favour – my age and my ADHD, both of which could be proved by a birth certificate and the doctor’s notes, and lastly my lack of intent, which was unproven. Given that we were talking about my life (not to be too dramatic), I had to find a way to turn that third point into a fact. That had to work better than me trying to blog my way to freedom.

  How to prove I was doing the equivalent of a fiendish Sudoku? Solving a puzzle with no consequences.

  The fact that I ratted on Angel went some way to establishing my innocence, but a clever lawyer (we’ve all seen them on telly) could easily suggest that it was a double bluff, especially as I’d left it until the last moment and she got away.

  Think, Dan!

  Who else knew that I was only messing? Joe and Ty. Friends wouldn’t make good witnesses, for obvious reasons. I needed the testimony of strangers.

  Ding!

  I’d been so swept up by the police going on about me and Angel that I hadn’t thought much about all the other mugs who’d helped her with her plan. Like the ones that gave her bots for the DDoS on London Transport. Like the fake feed she used to steal the drone in the first place. I’d forgotten my, surely correct, theory that I was one of a group of hackers duped by Angel. She’d manipulated all of us. I needed to find the others and make them confess. How the hell I was going to do the second bit I immediately set aside to deal with later, because finding them was a task I could knuckle down to.

  I logged on to my computer on Friday at exactly 6.30 p.m. (slightly worried that whatever I was doing was on a radar somewhere, but willing to risk it – no law against information gathering).

  First stop was to join every chat room, channel, thread, forum that I’d ever been on using a new name – I picked Grey Ghost. I was desperate to declare my reason for being there but resisted. I needed to get chatting and see where we went. Whatever colour hat – white/grey/black – the others were, none of them were going to be falling over themselves to come to Westminster with me.

  It didn’t take long to realise that my passive strategy was going nowhere, so I went back and started threads.

  how did Dronejacker manage to pull off that whole scam?

  Folk were keen to talk about it. Exploits always got a lot of interest but hacking a drone, terrorising the capital and almost striking the heart of the British Empire was up there.

  I kept commenting on all the discussions, slowly turning the chat round to the idea that she’d totally played the hacking community.

  Come on, someone … confess.

  Mum interrupted my witch-hunt with spaghetti carbonara.

  I ate without chewing.

  ‘I’m on nights for the next couple of days, Dan,’ said Mum.

  I hardly ever look at her … I mean, properly look. But I did then, in between sucking the strands of pasta. She was thin and her eyes had dark shadows under them. She smiled at me, but it wasn’t a happy face. It was full of fear. What had I done to my family?

  I needed to get back upstairs and fix it. El’s bowl was
still three quarters full when I got up to leave.

  ‘You’ll get indigestion if you eat like that, Dan,’ said Dad, prize burper.

  ‘The acid comes up your feeding tube and burns and you get scars and they tighten and then you can get cancer,’ said El.

  ‘Where do you read all that stuff?’ said Dad.

  ‘Patient.co.uk,’ she said.

  Whichever way you looked at it, we weren’t your average family.

  I had a quick flick down the feeds to see if there was any joy. Nope. Just loads of talk – suggestions about how she did it, claims that it was easy, general slagging off of Americans, Yemenis, Muslims and suicide bombers …

  The world really is full of crazies. Godwin’s law says that the longer an online discussion goes on, the more certain it is to attract a Hitler/Nazi comparison – something to look forward to …

  Eventually all the chats either ran out of juice or diverted onto other subjects. I gave up for the night, and Snapchatted Ruby instead. She sent a pic straight back so I Skyped her.

  It felt good, lying in my bed looking at her face, hearing her laugh. Almost good enough to smother the tick of the time bomb. Almost …

  ‘Why the change of heart, then, Ruby?’ I asked. Brave of me.

  ‘Same heart as before,’ she said.

  ‘Seriously, how come you decided to forgive me now … today?’

  ‘Who said you were forgiven?’

  ‘I could tell from the kissing,’ I said, staring into her eyes.

  She tried to hold my gaze but her eyes wouldn’t obey. The rosy blush appeared on her cheeks. They should invent Skype with touch sensors.

  ‘It was Aiden,’ she said, recovering her composure.

  ‘Aiden told you to forgive me?’

  ‘You know I don’t mean that. It was you being nice to him.’

  ‘I am nice.’

  She shifted a bit, crossed her legs and tucked a stray hair away. She was wearing a woolly jumper the colour of a sheep and what looked like washed-to-death joggers, once dark now less so. I thought of Soraya with her bright pink and purple everything – Ruby made her seem like she was from Toys R Us.

  ‘Can you come round tomorrow?’ I asked.

  ‘Not easily.’

  ‘Why? What are you doing?’

  ‘Revising – Spanish.’

  ‘You can’t work all the time – in fact, you told me that. I’ll come over to yours for half an hour. What do you say?’

  She didn’t say anything for a bit.

  And then, ‘I don’t want my mum to know.’

  I nodded in her general direction. A teenage terrorist wanted in the United States of America probably wasn’t most parents’ idea of an eligible suitor.

  She changed the subject, and soon after said she had to go.

  ‘See you Sunday,’ I said. That would have to do.

  47

  ‘What sort of muddle have you got yourself into, Fella?’ said Ted.

  ‘It’s hard to explain,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t give him a hard time,’ said Ruby. ‘He might be deported in three weeks.’

  We’d agreed that it was better to be up front.

  ‘You seemed such a nice boy,’ said Dot. ‘And I pride myself on being able to judge a character.’

  ‘He is a nice boy,’ said Ruby. She was holding my hand, and her whole side was pressed against mine. Glued. I wasn’t complaining.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ said Isaac. ‘We’re all here for the same reason – that’s what matters.’

  Isaac’s words set the tone for the day. We travelled to a bit of coastline south of Weston where we cleaned the beach – recording how much string and plastic we found – and replaced a length of fencing that had been reported by a local rambler. It was warm. The sea was huge. We walked to the end of the jutting out bit – promontory, Isaac called it – and had cake there. I wanted to stay right where I was. Surrounded on three sides by water, and the other by Ruby.

  We trundled back to Bristol on the bus, sun-baked and happy, but as I left Ruby (after some frenzied kissing), the shadow loomed, blackening my mood. I thought about being on death row – every day wondering whether it’s your day for the injection that paralyses you, before the one that stops your heart. I’m pleased to say, I didn’t feel quite as bad as that.

  48

  The days till Extradition Day flew. It was the opposite of waiting for Christmas. On the days our exams coincided, I went to the café afterwards with Ruby, but she didn’t come back to mine. Her mum was on her case about revising every spare minute.

  ‘Single mums have a lot to prove,’ she said.

  ‘Single mums should be pleased their children aren’t single.’

  She stuck out her tongue.

  ‘I’ll come over at the weekend,’ she promised. ‘And then we’ll have —’

  I finished the sentence. ‘Seven exams left.’

  She corrected me, ‘More time.’

  I carried on revising with Ty. He was staggered that Ruby had taken me back.

  ‘What did you do to change her mind?’

  ‘Copied Mandela.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Truth and reconciliation.’

  Charlie Tate came by one evening to see how I was doing.

  ‘Not bad,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ he said, ‘lobbying. There are a lot of people angry about the unreciprocated arrangement we have with the US, particularly given the so-called special relationship. The Home Secretary is very aware of your case, and the fact that the British police aren’t pursuing you gives us leverage. We’re in a good place, Dan.’

  Not good enough.

  He had a beer with Dad in the kitchen and I disappeared back to my room where I carried on with my nightly quest – trawling around various sites, commenting on anything that might prompt a show-off hacker to admit his/her part in Dronejacker’s plot. I was losing faith in the idea but didn’t have any better ones.

  Despite the hundreds of threads I’d started, I still hadn’t had a Hitler comment …

  But Friday night, out of the blue, KP got a message from another name I recognised – Anaconda:

  I have a cell now – a Blackberry please may I have some credit like I asked you before I like your name

  I had a vague memory of an infant asking me that in the Pay As You Go days, but hadn’t registered the name. I had a clearer memory of Anaconda on IRC #angeldust handing over 5,000 bots. And a rock solid memory of me telling the police about it. I needed to be careful. What if it was a trick?

  I looked at the post again, deciding what to do. And slapped my own forehead, really I did, when I realised she wasn’t called Anaconda. My brain had tried to read her nonsensical arrangement of letters, and the closest it could get was the snake. In fact, she was called Annacando, which, based on my knowledge of little girls, meant Anna Can Do. It wasn’t a trick – it was a variation on El’s friend’s YouTube channel WhatBetsyDoes. I’d found what I was looking for, another of Angel’s gullible online friends. (Or rather she’d found me.)

  What to do …?

  49

  I quickly decided that the internet was too public to carry on any sort of conversation, given my status in the eyes of the law.

  I’ll call you – send your number – that was me.

  no credit I get $15 a month and I spent it all on apps – Annacando.

  if I get you credit will you talk to me? – I typed before I registered the dollar sign, and before I realised that I sounded like a groomer.

  1-078-669-4634 – Annacando clearly hadn’t heard of Stranger Danger.

  As the old hack no longer worked, I got out my debit card, ready and willing to invest my own money in safeguarding my future, and desperately hoping you could top up a US phone from the UK.

  No, was the simple answer.

  I re-routed myself to an American server. Better. And then, because there’s a funny system in America where the person receiving the call pays and I had no i
dea how much it might be, I bunged $50 on her account. As soon as the screen confirmed it had gone through, I took a deep breath and … didn’t ring Anna.

  I needed a script to follow. I got a pencil and made a few notes …

  call me KP – she typed.

  What the hell!

  I rang the number.

  ‘Hi, this is Anna speaking,’ said a super-confident voice. ‘Is that KP?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you so much for the credit.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. It was surreal talking to a tot of a Yank. I was completely fazed about what to say. Luckily she wasn’t.

  ‘Why are you called KP?’

  I explained about Club Penguin. She giggled.

  ‘You sound real funny!’

  ‘No, you sound funny,’ I said. ‘I sound English.’

  ‘Are you calling all the way from England?’

  Duh!

  ‘No, the moon.’ Unhelpful of me. I decided to move it on.

  ‘Anna, did you collect some bots for someone called Angel?’

  ‘I sure did. I got seven thousand or so. Do you wanna know how I did it?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I put the virus in a link for a video called “My brother poked my eye out”. It was me with a patch on, holding an eye from the joke shop.’

  ‘Cool,’ I said.

  ‘It’s had fifteen thousand, four hundred and fifty-nine hits as of today. Did you also give bots to Angel?’ she asked.

  I was getting the idea that this little American girl didn’t have a clue about Angel.

  ‘No, I did something else for her. Do you know why she wanted the bots?’

  ‘It was a swap. five thousand bots for four thousand, two hundred Microsoft points,’ she said, missing the point.

  ‘Anna, I need your help, but it’s a bit complicated.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ she said. ‘I was fifth grade “Helper of the Week” before the vacation.’