Alias

by Tracy Alexander

  I didn’t use either method. Because someone else did it for me. I was too frightened of leaving a trace. Once Samiya had left Buckingham, the trail needed to be ice cold. As Angel, I bought a name, a copy of a birth certificate and a National Insurance number from an anonymous creature that inhabited the dark web. And then, because I couldn’t imagine being called Georgia, I bought a second one. It was pricey, but I’d made thousands selling phone credit using Dan’s hack – which sadly didn’t work any more. Some cyber detective must have found the glitch.

  The idea of hiding out in the holiday cottage we’d stayed at in Norfolk popped into my head with no warning – it was the perfect place. The lady who’d let us in when we arrived was a chatterbox, so I knew all about the ‘foreign’ owners. They’d bought it, done it up, and then decided it was too quiet and a nightmare to get to. That’s Norfolk for you – stuck on the side. The property was advertised on Luxury Holiday Cottages Direct, so all I had to do was check the bookings page. Empty until May half-term. Couldn’t be better.

  Everything was falling into place. All that was left for me to decide was when I was leaving Buckingham. But that was the hardest thing of all. I was scared – something I found it hard to admit. So far, all I’d done was plot. If I took the next step, there’d be no going back.

  Did I really want to be a fugitive for the rest of my life?

  No, I didn’t. But maybe it wouldn’t turn out that way. Nelson Mandela, ‘the black terrorist’, ended up President of South Africa. Gerry Adams, who denied being an IRA operative, was photographed shaking hands with Tony Blair on the steps of Downing Street. Menachem Begin, aka Israel’s former Prime Minister, blew up a hotel in Jerusalem, killing ninety-one people.

  The path to political leadership wasn’t necessarily Eton, then Oxford. The bomb-making route seemed just as effective.

  Nothing to stop me being head of Liberty, having proved my dedication to human rights …

  Fate decided me, like it did everything else.

  I was in the library last period, four days after Dan sent me the code, when Hugo and Lucy turned up. Only she came over.

  ‘You look busy,’ she said.

  I wanted to ask her why she was with Hugo, but I already knew the answer.

  ‘English,’ I said, with my arm over the book – the American civil rights movement wasn’t on the syllabus.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ she said. ‘See you later.’

  The two of them sat a few tables away and talked quietly.

  I went back to staring at Malcolm X quotes.

  ‘Usually when someone is sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.’

  Critics of the black human rights activist said that the discriminatory laws would have been overturned without violence, but they didn’t say when. And that’s the critical bit – violent protest accelerates change. Throughout history, it’s there again and again. You either wait for reformers to slowly change opinion, like the crawl towards women bishops, or you demand it.

  The librarian didn’t seem to be annoyed by Hugo and Lucy’s whispering, but I was. It hurt to see their heads so close together, my only friend and my arch-enemy.

  I turned the page.

  ‘By any means necessary,’ was Malcolm X’s mantra. When white Americans accused him of condoning violence, he reminded them that his ancestors were brought to America in chains, kept in line by whipping, beaten to death for disobedience and torn apart by dogs for fun …

  The side with the power can terrorise all they like, but only those who rise up against that power are called terrorists. White state troopers terrorised the black people who marched in Alabama asking for the vote. Drone pilots terrorise whole communities —

  ‘Hi, Samiya.’

  What the hell!

  Hugo was standing right in front of me in his sharp suit. Lucy had disappeared.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

  He pulled out a chair and sat opposite me. Still beautiful.

  ‘Lucy’s idea,’ he said. ‘She thinks it’s time we made up.’

  I closed the book, collected my stuff together and stood up.

  ‘I’ve said I’m sorry. You know me, like to play to the audience.’

  He followed me along the corridor, speaking to my back.

  ‘So did you ever get anywhere with all those letters to your MP?’

  He was still trying to play with me, like a cat with a half-dead mouse.

  ‘It’s a shame,’ he said, louder now, as I was further away. ‘Someone should have done something.’

  I galloped down the stairs, went into the girls’ loos and sat on the seat with the door bolted – like a bullied teenager. A victim.

  How sad was it that the only person who’d appeared to understand me was Sayge? And he wasn’t real.

  The tears ran down my face – I didn’t bother to wipe them away.

  Too much wallowing in self-pity makes you despise yourself. I had a wee, splashed water on my face in case Hugo was lurking and set off home.

  Dad was at football. Mum was off out. As soon as she left, I went up into the loft to get the rucksack I used for my Duke of Edinburgh Award. When I’d packed the bare essentials, I left it in the lean-to out the back. I wrote an overly dramatic note saying I was going to stay with a girl I’d met at the Cambridge interviews because I needed ‘some space’. I put it under my pillow, ready for the morning. Last of all, I committed social-media suicide, deleting all my accounts on everything.

  There’d been altogether too much thinking.

  First thing Friday, I was off.

  22

  Despite the enormity of what I was about to do, I made myself behave exactly as normal. The trick was not to think, just act. Quick goodbye to Dad, short conversation with Mum – without meeting her eye, school suit on – but soon to be replaced by jeans. Usual last-minute bolt up the stairs to fetch something I’d forgotten – this time it was the letter, which I put on my pillow.

  I nipped round the back of the house, got my rucksack and walked to the roundabout, hoping no one I knew would see me before I got a lift. My wish was granted – as soon as I stuck out my thumb a red Golf stopped. It was a youngish bloke going to Bedford. Suited me. I told him I had an interview. Seemed more sensible than telling him I was on the run. Not that I intended to run anywhere. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. My horizon pretty much stopped at the date I’d chosen for London to go kaboom! My grandma’s birthday – or thereabouts. Details like dates of birth, addresses, times were pretty fluid in the mountain village. Maybe I’d go back there … when it was all over.

  As we joined the A5, he sped up. I had a sudden crazy death wish. If we crashed, I wouldn’t have to be the one to take a stand. Mum and Dad could grieve for me and then carry on with their little lives. It would be easier all round …

  Safely in Bedford, I changed out of my suit and dumped my phone – turned off, of course – in an industrial wheelie bin, so I couldn’t be found using the GPS. I kept the one I’d bought when I became Angel in case I needed to make a call. I bought a panini and made myself eat it in the hope that it would settle my stomach – which it did.

  The fear was there, but rather than crippling me, I felt alive.

  The journey went better than I could have expected. A train to Cambridge, two more lifts, lots of small talk and a bus, and I was in Fakenham, Norfolk. I bought enough food for a couple of days and enough make-up for a beauty pageant, and then walked the half a mile along the lonely road to the house we’d stayed in. Not one car, tractor, van or bicycle passed me. A good omen.

  I crept around the outside of the house first to make sure there hadn’t been a last-minute booking. Nope. Deserted.

  The code for the key safe hadn’t changed. The alarm was off, as expected – the housekeeper had told me she didn’t like messing with it.

  I dumped my bags, checked the Wi-Fi was still
connected – yes – and then collapsed on the sofa.

  Mum and Dad wouldn’t start to worry until Sunday evening, when I didn’t arrive home. If they called the police, no one would do anything. Every year 140,000 teenagers go missing, that’s 383 every day. I would be a statistic. Full stop. When they got round to making enquiries, people would mention my unsettled behaviour after the ‘trouble’ in Yemen. The Sherlock deduction would be that I’d run away. No one would think to mention a place we’d only been to once. I was safe for the moment. I’d given myself ten days, after which Samiya and Angel would both be history.

  My true identity was bound to come out. If Hugo didn’t betray me, the security services would eventually get there. I couldn’t wait to see Samiya’s life story in the headlines, making people understand why the drone wars had to stop. By that time I’d be using my alias, Saffron. Practising her life story by saying it out loud as I wandered around the house was a priority, as was creating her face.

  I got into a little routine. Each morning I’d scrutinise a different part of the plan – paying particular attention to anything that could go wrong and making contingencies. After lunch I’d put on one of the ancient DVDs that were left in the house – because you can’t think all the time. I watched The Hunger Games twice and Love Actually repeatedly.

  For dinner I stuck to simple stuff because there was Nothing, capital N, in the kitchen, not even a flake of chilli. While I ate, I reviewed the same aspect I’d studied in the morning. Check. Double check.

  In the evenings I tried different looks in front of the mirror – smoky kohl-rimmed eyes and red lips … false lashes, glossy lids and nude lips …

  It was odd seeing myself with foundation-smoothed skin, blusher-enhanced cheek bones and sultry eyes, and a relief to wash it all off in the bath before dozing in the enormous bed. I didn’t think about the fact that my parents had slept there. Everything to do with home was locked up in a corner of my brain – it was the only way I could stay strong.

  Using Tor to stay anonymous, I Googled my name and Angel’s. Dan was leaving messages for Angel everywhere we’d ever been. He was desperate to find me, and it wasn’t because he was missing me …

  I also kept an eye on the bookings page to make sure no one was planning a last-minute romantic weekend at my hide-away.

  Every other day I went food shopping, using different stores and going at different times so I didn’t ever see the same cashiers. I also varied my route and made sure no one saw me enter the property. I didn’t chat to anyone, but wasn’t in the slightest bit lonely. It’s lonelier to be an outsider in a group than not in a group at all.

  No one came to the house, not to shove a flyer through the door or check the meter.

  Three days before my chosen date of 7th April, everything was ready.

  The drone strike relied on sewing together thirteen separate elements – unlucky for some. I had the lines of code I needed to get into the US Military network and hack the drone, I had the fake video showing the drone crashing, the warning written, the code to take down the BBC home page, the route mapped from Germany to Norfolk and then from Norfolk down the coast to London, and the commands to fire. I had computers infected with bots, ready to bring London Transport’s ticketing site crashing down. I’d repeatedly checked the timing plan. I’d thought of everything, thanks to Sayge. Our practice runs at planning attacks had been invaluable for thinking things through and paying attention to detail.

  Two days before, I had diarrhoea. Classic case of nerves.

  Doubt overwhelmed me.

  I thought about going home, saw myself arrive at the front door, felt Mum’s tears on my face as she wept with joy, heard myself say I was sorry, watched Dad kiss my forehead, let him take my bag …

  Hijack day came.

  23

  Sunday 6th April. A little bit of tapping and the drone was under my control. More tapping and the live feed was replaced by a video of the UAV crashing. I put in the GPS co-ordinates and the drone knew where to go. That was all it took. Autopilot did the rest. I almost sympathised with the drone operators. It couldn’t have felt less like I was wielding a weapon, or less like a war.

  While the killing machine skimmed over the water towards British airspace, I made myself sleep for two hours. Being tired made for poor decision-making. I woke to find an independent site was already circulating a rumour that an American Predator had crashed in woodland somewhere in Germany. The fake feed had done its job!

  I hadn’t expected the news to leak so quickly, but it made no difference. For the foreseeable, the military would be looking for a wreck.

  I checked the GPS co-ordinates of the drone every half-hour to make sure it was still keeping a low profile, looping over the trees of the Norfolk countryside. The whole point of stealth drones is that you can’t detect them using radar. You can see them with your eyes, but the population of Norfolk is small and the sky is big. It was a calculated risk.

  Online, word spread.

  Was it a crash? Or a hoax? Or a cyber plot?

  Wait and see!

  Despite the temptation to get on with it, I stuck to my timing plan. The warning went up at noon, replacing the BBC News home page – courtesy of the sucker who thought Angel wanted to put up a plea for a cancer charity.

  The US Predator Drone is in London. I haven’t decided where to direct the missile strike yet. How does it feel, Londoners? Knowing you might be on a job or shopping and boom! Look to the sky at twelve noon Monday 7th April and think about all the people who are scared every day, like you are now, because of killer drones flying above them.

  Pandemonium.

  I watched the fallout from the squidgy sofa. In no time #April7 was trending on Twitter and I had yet another name – Dronejacker. Nice tag. Stories about drones dominated the media, just as I’d hoped. All sorts of theories appeared online, fun to read, most far from the truth. It was a Guardian journalist, a woman, who first suggested that Dronejacker was someone who had a personal problem with America’s ‘drone wars’.

  The term ‘collateral damage’ started to appear.

  Finally, a year and a half after my grandma’s murder, I’d got the world talking about civilian deaths attributed to UAVs.

  Life felt brilliant. There was I, only eighteen, single-handedly bringing London to its knees. The first ever collateral damage from a drone strike in Britain was hours away. Maybe the last ever collateral damage in Yemen was a step nearer too.

  I was watching the late news when I got an unexpected message from the Secretary of State, delivered by the BBC no less.

  ‘… British Government does not negotiate with terrorists but in this instance the threat to the general public combined with the explicit nature of that threat has impelled the Secretary of State for Defence to ask for a dialogue. In this unprecedented move …’

  Dialogue was exactly what I’d wanted a lifetime ago, when no one would listen. The offer had come way too late.

  I responded to the government using the BBC’s Twitter feed, bang on midnight (using 149 characters) – another little trick I’d learnt from a pal.

  The job goes ahead at noon. How does it feel, civilians, to be at the mercy of an unmanned flying weapon? By the way, Dronejacker’s good. I like it.

  I made myself sleep again, although the adrenalin meant that it was fitful and full of crazy dreams. It was a mistake to have left such large chunks of time in the plan, but I hadn’t imagined it would go so smoothly. I half-wished I’d flown the drone straight to London, but the chances were it would have been spotted before I had time to get everyone good and scared. Patience would pay off in the end.

  My alarm went off at five in the morning. I made French toast and ate it at the breakfast bar with both the telly and my browser trained on the news.

  There was a lot of speculation about what the target might be, ranging from Buckingham Palace to Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium. No one was even close.

  The icing on my Predator cake was to br
ing London Transport to a halt. At ten-thirty I activated the botnet that a whole community of hackers had helped me to build and launched a DDoS on London Transport’s central servers. The ticketing system collapsed in front of my eyes.

  Before I had a chance to congratulate myself, Twitter went ape – loads of hashtags referring to a statement on the BBC. I clicked.

  The entire site had been taken down to send another message to me. This time it wasn’t the government.

  The person, known as Dronejacker, threatening to strike London at twelve noon with a missile fired from a stolen American drone calls himself Angel. He is a Black Hat. He recruited other hackers online by setting them challenges. I am one of them. I had no idea what he was planning. There are other people out there like me, I believe. We are innocent. Angel is in this house near South Creake, Fakenham, Norfolk.

  There was an image from Google Maps together with the GPS co-ordinates of the house I was in.

  What?

  I am an elite hacker, but a White Hat. Please take me seriously. My name is Dan Langley and I live in St Albans Road, Bristol. I am 16. I tried to report him but no one took me seriously. Go and get him!

  I had to read it twice, the second time out loud. Dan Langley knew where I was. And he’d told the world.

  NO!

  The shock was physical. I stood motionless for who knows how long, paralysed by panic.

  Then my electric circuits zapped back into life. I grabbed my computer and the folder containing my new identity papers, fetched my wad of cash and my purse and ran out of the front door. I turned onto the road, thought again, and ran round the back and into the field next door. I followed the line of the hedge. It was a smart move because less than a minute later a fast car came from nowhere. I saw the roof as I was climbing a fence – it was a squad car. I ran through the next field and caught my breath for a minute by a gate that led out to a country lane.