I shudder and press my hand against my mom’s cheek, resting my chin on the bed so that her breath whispers over my face. The ensuing silence is wonderful, being with my mom, letting my mind go blank, alone with her, blocking out Peter and the noises of other people in the hospital.
The image of the gun resurfaces again. I clench my eyes, but it only serves to sharpen the image. I can feel it now too. Heavy in my hands.
Someone coughs in the bed behind the hospital drape, and then a radio turns on with the weather report. It’s cold and will grow colder overnight. I shake myself free of the intrusive memory.
“I need to man the cash, Mom,” I explain—that and hospital parking is fleecing me and everything right now seems to depend on cash.
“Jan, you don’t need to,” Peter says. It’s become his refrain and I’ve begun to believe that Assured Destruction is the only thing that stands between my mother and death, between me and total abandonment. Losing the war. I will not let Assured Destruction go.
He must see it in my eyes.
“You can’t do it all,” he says.
Janus is strong. I will prove him wrong.
“I’m tracking down old customers,” I reply.
He shoots to his feet. “Not a good idea.”
Oh, to have laser beams for eyes; unfortunately his head doesn’t burst into flames.
“Why? Every problem can be solved with the right tools,” I say. “A crowbar, for instance, can pry open a lock. Right?” My eyes narrow, and I try to gauge if he caught the reference to Darkslinger.
“Well, Christmas is coming,” he says. “Why don’t we have it at my place?”
I’m so startled by the change of subject, I just shake my head. “Whatever.” Then I give my mom a final hug and crutch away.
One thing is true: I do have a lot to handle, and the only solution is routine. Janus may be strong, but she doesn’t do routine well.
As I make my way back to the van, I work out my plan to beat-Pete.
Two hours for homework, six hours for school. Three hours at the cash, during which I can update Shadownet and Darkslinger. Each night I’ll set up one room for the international students and learn a little Mandarin, say one hour there. Seven hours of sleep. One hour to visit my mom and two hours at the soup kitchen. It would help if recent events didn’t keep flashing through my head. But even if I throw in some time to eat, commute, and play with Jonny, I’ve maybe an hour or two to find a way to save Assured Destruction. Peter seems to think my plan to visit old customers is a bad idea. So guess what? I’ll focus on that.
Chapter 6
<
Christmas? I shake my head again at Peter’s response. Well, I suppose I should start thinking about presents. Making something out of nothing takes time.
I pay for parking with my mom’s credit card, dismayed that the van’s fuel tank is reading only a quarter full. This thing isn’t exactly easy on gas.
On the way home I spot an old mattress poking out of a dumpster and back the van near the bin. A couple mildew spots and a rather large rusty stain deter me a little, but it’s a mattress and it’s free. Nothing some Febreze can’t handle, and Trin can help me haul it upstairs.
Twenty minutes later, I’m in Assured Destruction’s retail store, tallying what Trin processed today: three hard drives for destruction and about half a tonne of e-waste for pickup. It all amounts to about a hundred bucks. The same as the cost of Trin for the day at minimum wage. Hopefully I can put us in the black this evening. I’m free. Sort of. I do cost pizza. The real treasure in Trin’s daily haul is a battered Dell Inspiron—with a little extra RAM and a plug from the bin, I have a decent replacement for the last laptop I employed as a Frisbee in the name of justice. I even wipe the hard drive.
A customer with a broken monitor and another with a stack of laptops later, I’m ready to sign into Darkslinger, not only a forum for hackers and wannabes but also a marketplace for hacker services: software, penetration testing, spam, viruses, anything a hacker or a cracker could want. But before I log in, I need my armor.
Peter gifted me a memory stick that he says hides my identity and protects me online. But now I’m not sure I trust him; what if it’s really a keylogger that tracks all my keystrokes, logins, passwords, search history, everything? He’d know or have access to everything about me. But then, I also know it works. Sw1ftM3rcy, an elite hacker, couldn’t trace me. So, even if it’s a virus, it does have advantages. I decide it’s more important to remain anonymous on Darkslinger than twig Peter to my passwords. Passwords can be changed. I plug the memory stick into the USB port.
On Darkslinger I have a whole series of replies to threads I’m following. Last night, I posted the encrypted code from Peter’s hard drive and challenged anyone on Darkslinger to decrypt it. So far, the only notes I’ve received are:
I give up!
My best guess is you have a monkey at a keyboard and you just posted his literary masterpiece.
I smirk.
@Heckleena, they’re talking about you on Darkslinger, JanusFlyTrap Tweets.
You don’t wanna know what this monkey slings, Heckleena replies.
I laugh and add a new thread, asking for ideas on why my server has suddenly ground to a halt. I’ve learned that it’s best not to mention school in the forums, not if I want to be taken seriously. And on other threads they do; members ask me questions about code for the apps I make. Well … used to make—I miss coding. Coding’s an act of creation I can’t afford to spend time on right now. I’m on track with my plan, though. With one mattress stuffed in the elevator, I only have nine more to fetch. And who cares about plates and cutlery? It’s why pizza was invented.
I open a new browser window and place an ad on a couple of local used sites saying I’m willing to take mattresses off of people’s hands for free—can’t be worse than dumpster diving—and then a customer drops off a box of peripherals—keyboards, mice, speakers.
After he’s gone I pause, staring at a keyboard. Some of the keys are missing and I wonder if someone popped them off for a reason. Like maybe to spell out someone’s name … a ransom note? LOL. Maybe not, but would I wear Escape Key earrings? What about Delete? Page Up and Down? My mind starts to run and I pry off the < and then the 3 and grin. The two keys in emoticon-speak form <3, a heart. Would the identical twins at school buy a necklace with Control C–Control V keys? Copy and Paste!
“Hilarious,” I say and look about for some old earbud wire to use as string. Emoticon necklaces. That will cover presents for the women in my life! I’m excited. With customers, hackers working for me on Darkslinger, and my mom safe, I am rocking. I will beat-Pete.
Another private message notification pops up on my screen. It’s from Sw1ftM3rcy and I click through.
Saw you online. You want to make some $$$?
I swallow, my brief elation overrun by a prickle of fear. He knows I’m online. And I have to respond. What do I say? This guy is a cracker—a criminal hacker—I’m almost sure of it. What am I willing to do in order to save Assured Destruction? I can’t say yes, but I also don’t want to scare him away. Sw1ftM3rcy has helped me.
Maybe, I reply.
LOL Decide, dude, then we talk. This is going to be huge.
I log out. I have no idea what was so funny or what he’s talking about. But I do know there’s no way whatever he’s selling is white hat, or even gray. This will be black.
Chapter 7
<
While I wait for Jonny, I search YouTube for how to learn Mandarin in sixty seconds.
No luck. From a phrase site I practice how to say hello, good morn
ing, and goodbye. The only thing I manage to do in sixty seconds is forget everything. By the time Jonny rolls in, I only remember hello.
“Ni hao,” I say.
“Chāojí huǒqiú jīhuó,” he replies with a grin. “You’re in a better mood.”
“No one tried to kill me. How do you know Chinese?”
“Mandarin, and just a bit. Mostly from gaming.”
“What did you say?”
“Super fireball activated! I think.”
I laugh. “I’m glad you’re here.” I turn my face to his for a long kiss. He pulls away first.
“I can’t stay,” he says. I sag, the degree of my disappointment surprising even me. “Sorry,” he continues, “my mom can’t prove I wasn’t at home last night, but she’s suspicious. I told her I was inspired to paint and took off early.” He looks a little bit defensive about it. “Which is a bit true as I did go painting.”
“Ha, so I am your muse!” I’m also his corruptor.
“Humph. I’ve picked the book for you.” He fumbles around in his backpack.
“What book?”
“The book you’re supposed to read over the holidays.”
“Oh yeah, does it come with a movie?”
“Actually, yes.”
“Then I’m in. What’s the title?”
He pulls it out and drops it on the stainless steel counter. “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.”
“This is a chick book,” I say, flipping through the pages. “And it’s two hundred pages too long.”
“You’re a chick—I didn’t say I would read it. And you’re only going to watch the movie anyway.”
I shrug and he sits up on the counter. “So what are we going to do?”
“First I need to update Shadownet, then we eat pizza. Then reconnaissance.”
Doing the math on the hours I have available to me, I realized that it’ll be tough to hit the businesses during daylight, but I can at least check to see if they’re worth looking into. Tonight I will knock off U Technical, which sounds promising, except they don’t have a website—which of course is ridiculous. If I’m really lucky, I can swing by a third former customer as well. It would be nice to do it with Jonny as backup. At some point I should probably bathe.
“I didn’t come here to watch you update Twitter.” He jams his hands into his pockets.
“I’ll let you run the shredder,” I say.
Chop-chop, our hard-drive shredder, is a big box behind me.
“Deal.” He vaults off the counter. “Give me a hard drive to munch.”
Boys love to destroy things. “Here are three,” I say. “I’ll be downstairs.”
I ease off the chair to lock up and then delve into the bowels of Assured Destruction and “clap on” the Shadownet clan. Seven monitors in a ring network blink on; a Christmas garland ropes them together. The big boiler that heats the building burps hungrily. Upstairs I hear Chop-chop rumble and then chew through the first hard drive. Jonny pretty much squees.
I frown at the scratchy sound my server makes. Something’s wrong. I consider “double-clapping off” the whole system but that’s supposed to be for emergencies. And even clapping hurts. I let everything load. Chop-chop spaghettifies another hard drive and then another, but Shadownet’s still booting like it’s 1999.
I’m bending over, patting the black box that is my server, when Jonny speaks: “Wanna give me the reins to anyone?”
I jump and scream in pain.
“Sorry, Hairy even?” Jonny fidgets beside me.
“Don’t scare me like that, and they’re not horses,” I say. “And no.”
“I could tweet some chess moves, or maybe some puns.” Chewbacca growls on the screen and Jonny makes like he’s frightened by it.
“Nope. I got it.”
“Jan the juggler,” he sighs. “I’ll just be over here.” He sits on the floor near a drying stream of water. Now that winter’s arrived, the basement has stopped leaking. Small win.
“Something’s wrong with my server,” I say. He shoots to his feet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so full of energy.
“What?” he asks.
“Everything’s taking too long.”
“Maybe you need a new server.”
“I don’t.”
My dad’s desktop computer boots and our formerly happy family looks out from the screen. Watching them always makes me feel like Harry Potter. Lonely. And filled with a desperate yearning to understand. On this hard drive are answers to the question of why my dad left; I’m sure of it, but I’ve told myself that I’m willing to wait until my mom tells me the truth, or he does. Wherever he is. But what if my mom can’t tell me anymore? What if she waited too long?
“Can we go now?” Jonny asks.
“You just don’t get it, Jonny, Shadownet is all I’ve got.”
He stands with his head cocked.
“And you, sorry, but these are important to me.” I’ve invested a lot in these entities. They’re my muses, pieces of me online, and they’ve helped me work a lot out. I swear Heckleena even saved my life.
“Well, I’m glad I rank up there with a glorified Twitter account,” Jonny says, but he’s smiling.
Argh. The system is so slow I can’t even log in as an administrator to figure out what’s wrong. Only Gumps’s green dash blinks reassuringly, but he’s not accessing the server because they didn’t really have servers when they made him. It doesn’t escape my attention that both my server is messed and the school’s.
What’s going on, Gumps? I type.
Answer: Slow and steady wins the race.
Five minutes later I wave my hand like a flag of surrender.
“Pizza,” I say.
“No pineapple.”
“In your dreams,” I reply as I crutch back upstairs.
“And after pizza?”
I pause. “I’m either supposed to be spooning through my community service hours at a soup kitchen or figuring out why Assured Destruction lost customers.”
“And finding your dad,” he adds.
I hadn’t admitted it, but yeah, I’m hoping the customers will lead me to my dad. “Yeah,” I say, “especially now that I’m losing my mom.”
“Don’t say that.” He puts his arms around me. Having a boy here, all alone. It all feels so serious. Adult. More like the rest of my life has become.
“It feels like I am losing her.” It feels like I’m filling up, I’m full, and what I really need to do is go to bed, pull my cover over me, and sleep. But Janus is strong.
“You have friends too, Jan,” he says. “Harry and Hannah and Karl, even Ellie. Let us in.”
I nod, but I don’t really know what he means. I break away to order the pizza for pickup—it’s cheaper that way—and then throw on my winter coat. “We’ll pick up the food after we stop at U Technical,” I tell him.
Five minutes later we’re in the van: “Pull for brake, push for gas, right?”
“You’re kidding?” He grabs the steering wheel.
“Yes,” I say and lean over, putting my arms around his neck and pulling him in for a kiss. “And thanks for coming; my dad’s former customers can be a little scary.”
“Perfect, so glad we’re doing this at night.”
Chapter 8
<
“Are you sure this is it?” Jonny asks, leaning across my seat to peer out the window into darkness.
I check the pulsing blue dot on the phone again. “Google doesn’t lie.”
“Not sure about that, but I can’t see how this place ever used Assured Destruction.”
I have to agree.
The van’s sitting
beside a high gate. A security camera peers down at us. Rolls of razor wire run along the surrounding fence. Beyond the gate is a field of snow without a single tree or shrub, and then a red brick mansion in the middle. The house has three stories, four if you count the stone turret, and a three-car garage. An old-style TV antenna climbs from the ground to the peak. It’s lit like a prison; high-powered lights shine down on the field from the four corners.
“This is the address,” I say. I check it again: 42 Fifth Line, Gatineau, Quebec.
“Maybe I should try the intercom?” I wait for Jonny’s objection, but he’s quiet.
Gravel crunches beneath the wheels as I turn into the drive and stare into the camera. Above the intercom, carved in stone, is the image of a skull with a chain dangling from an eye socket and then wrapping around its neck. I’ve seen it before, but I’m not sure where.
“Nice,” I say, showing the carving to Jonny.
My finger hovers over the intercom button. I want to press it as much as I want to jab a needle in my neck, but it took almost half an hour to drive from Ottawa out into the depths of Quebec. Forest hugs the fence line, but I can see where overhanging branches have been cut back. These people are serious about their privacy.
“It’s electric,” Jonny says and points to the image of the exploding skeleton they’ve wired to the fence.
“Still, can’t hurt to talk to them,” I say as if trying to convince myself.
“Really?” Jonny’s hand clutches my shoulder when I reach out to push the button. “Look,” he whispers.
Someone stands in the drive silhouetted by the light. He’s holding something. It could be a rake, or a rifle.
“Maybe we’ll skip this one,” I say. “We don’t need all the customers. A couple would be fine.”
“Good plan,” Jonny agrees and doesn’t release my shoulder until we’re half a mile down the road.
Assured Destruction: The Complete Series Page 35