by J. D. Glass
Anna knew Charli well enough to read the distress that rose in her eyes as she tried to explain. There’d been enough of that in her life, and Anna didn’t want to add to it. She covered Charli’s hand with her own. “I get it,” Anna interrupted gently and told her, “I do.” She did.
She’d known, because it was part of her job, one of the parts she was growing to despise, that Charli had gone to Kevin’s apartment the night before. She’d forced herself not to think about it, of her, of him, together, of his arms around her, of what they might or might not have done. It was just a data point, a new bit of information, that’s all it was. One new piece of information.
Anna had told herself that repeatedly over the minutes that stretched into hours as they passed, but she couldn’t pretend to herself that it didn’t matter to her personally, nor could she deny that she’d spent the rest of the night steeped in files and research, analyzing and compiling data—all with a focus that would have been admirable, had it not been occasionally intercut by her imagination and the heated rush that had raced up her chest to her neck, had made her ears burn whenever she couldn’t help but wonder what and where Charli was. She didn’t dare let her mind wander to what she might have been doing.
Anna had never wanted to kiss Franko before she’d gotten the page about the breach.
Combining what had happened between them only a little while ago with what Charli had just shared with her, she not only had the answer to her silent question of the night before, she now knew not only what had not happened between Charli and Kevin, but also what Charli telling her both the background and her own intent meant, for her, for Charli, for them. And Anna had no words, nothing more coherent than the inadequate-feeling “thank you” she’d given.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Cry because she didn’t want to think that someone so admired and loved and trusted by a child could so violate all of that, or because she couldn’t stand the thought of Charli being hurt, left with a disconnect so deep, that the woman who could push code and body to the very limits was a semi-stranger in her own skin. Or laugh because Charli existed, she lived, dared, and succeeded anyway, and she had decided that despite all that, she was going to take a chance, a chance on—with—Anna.
And what Anna had to tell her…
She had no idea how to even begin, but she did know what to do, and she once more gathered Charli into her arms, pulled her close, settled them both back into the warmth and comfort of the bed. She kissed her head, her cheek, the tender skin of her neck, and the delicate sigh Charli floated against her throat confirmed for her she’d done the right thing. “You don’t owe me any apologies,” Anna whispered against the fine hair that lay across Charli’s temple. She didn’t know where the words she spoke next came from, but she was certain of them anyway. “And you don’t have to be sure of anything right now. It’s okay if you’re not—I’m okay if you’re not.” They lay there in a simple quiet.
“So…” Charli finally spoke into the silence, “any questions?”
The tone was a bit too joking, too bright, and Anna realized she’d been holding her breath. “Yes,” she answered, letting her tone remain light even as she tightened her hold on Charli, not wanting to let her slip away from the fragile “us” they’d just created, to ease into sleep or into her head, back and away to wherever it was she usually watched from, back to the place where Anna couldn’t feel or reach or touch her. “Where’d you learn to surf?”
Charli laughed, a relieved and light sound in the warm near dark as she returned the hold. “Virginia Beach—when, you know, after…after the whole thing. Everybody needed time. Surfing saved my life.”
“I’m glad,” Anna answered, and kissed her head again. As they drifted off together, all she knew was that she finally understood what it meant to be willing to give one’s life for a cause, for an idea. She’d understood it in the abstract, had taken an oath, had signed papers that said she would, wanted, and was willing to. First for the Company, and again when she’d been placed within the Treasury.
Still, she had never actually felt it before nor known it, not with the same gut-level fullness she felt then, before the frantic pages that had woken them, before the dime had dropped and the world had spun on it. She’d known, understood intellectually, had made solemn promises based on that understanding, but she’d never before really known what it meant, to truly want—to need—to be the one who would shield and guard, to protect something or someone, even if it meant making some sort of ultimate sacrifice to ensure it.
She felt it now, a strong steady force that beat in time with her heart, the white fire wave that flooded through the muscles in her arms and chest, a churning heat that made it easy to disregard the cold and the snow on her face even as she heard the distant splash that told her she wasn’t too far from the shore she aimed for and after checking her wrist to ensure she was still on track—a habit borne out of precaution rather than actual need—she once more dug her paddle into the black glass she floated on.
She knew, because it was obvious, that Charli was more than smart, and Charli could play very cool when necessary—and in most situations, she could probably take care of herself. But Charli didn’t know Romello, and Anna knew something else Charli didn’t: Cooper and Anna didn’t merely not get along, they hated each other.
She breathed with the freedom of admitting that to herself, letting it float out with the breath she couldn’t see into the night air.
She hated the way Cooper stood and spoke, hated the way he walked and gazed, the twitch of his hands, the quirk to his mouth, the furrow of his brow. The cock to his hip whenever he was near Charli absolutely infuriated her, though rationally she knew he probably wasn’t even aware of it. Lust and attraction, attraction and admiration she could and did understand, but there was something about the manner in which he did it—perhaps it was that she knew that Charli wouldn’t welcome the intention or the desire and that he seemed to so willfully disregard that, couldn’t be bothered to disguise it somehow, to keep his mental hands to himself—oh, she knew that didn’t make sense and it didn’t matter, anyway, because the only word that came to her mind was unclean, and even as she remembered it, she felt the crawl of it and the fury it engendered, fury she’d spent so much time muting, under her skin.
But the antagonism and hatred had not only been as mutual as it was unspoken, it had also been, due to their work focus, a contest between peers, despite the differences in their rank: work created a level playing field. Funny, she mused, how as much as they hated each other, they understood each other—to a degree anyway, at least when it came to if not their feelings, then at least their intentions toward Charli.
Now, though, Cooper had what he undoubtedly believed was his first kill under his belt, and not just anyone, but someone he’d actively perceived as a rival. Flush with the success of that, who knew where else that already unstable mind would go, or what he’d do to—no. She had to rethink this.
Romello was a wannabe demagogue, a potential terrorist, not a rapist, and by his own manifesto, fancied himself some sort of super-civilized human being. Cooper, she was forced to admit, other than his facial expressions and broadcasting body language—and that wasn’t true evidence—had never said or done anything inappropriate, to Charli, anyway. There had been that bit of trouble with him and Eunae… She swore under her breath. If he touched Charli, if he so much as laid a finger on her—Anna quashed that avenue of speculation. It would do neither her nor Charli any good, she told herself firmly. She had to trust Charli to take care of herself, and she had to keep her own head clear and in the game. Anna paused in her thoughts and checked her surroundings.
The tug was lit up and she saw it before she heard it. She dug deep into the water, a short hard stroke that reversed her direction, and stopped herself in time, not much more than twenty feet away from the vessel. The low throb of it seemed to surround her, a thrum that echoed even under the snug fit of the hood, a cotton echo in
her ears, while the wake lifted the board, forcing her to stroke just to maintain her pace.
Impatience surged through her while she waited and as soon as it passed—there, finally. A few strong strokes and she shot forward. It was all about time, she had to make good time. C’mon, c’mon—you can do this, you have to do this, she told herself as she crossed the wake, and she lifted her paddle once more. In the breath between one stroke and the next, instinct made her glance to her right just as the first ripple hit under the board. An absence in the blackness, the hole in the dark, loomed swiftly and silently toward her and she pulled, swift and hard, heart pounding with exertion and adrenaline, past the empty shadow that grew ever larger as it drew closer, she paddled with focused strength over and against the lethal pull of its draw through the water.
When the threat and the wake of it was no more than a gentle kick beneath her, she glanced back in time to see it as it silently passed, first the green starboard light, then finally, the amber on the stern of the barge. She’d gotten lucky—had the tug traveled any faster, she would have gotten caught on the line that ran from it to the barge it towed, or worse, crushed by the barge itself, sucked into the wake, then more than likely keelhauled beneath its length.
The near miss didn’t scare her and she used the adrenaline kick of it to strengthen her resolve. She was determined: she would do anything, face anything, brave anything to prevent anyone from ever, ever, hurting Charli again.
Starting program: /hacking/$ ./SHELLCODE=.HIJACK
Binary
Ben Cooper was confused, and that didn’t bode well. He was quite used—or so he believed—to feeling only one thing at a time, at least since adolescence, anyway. It was, or so he thought, what made him so certain in his ideas and beliefs. Used to being in, presenting, and discovering situations that could be narrowed to only yes/no or on/off possibilities, he let logic dictate his answers and outcomes.
Did a classmate want to sit next to him? Yes. He made room for them to sit. Did they want to talk with him? No. Fuck ’em then. He ate in silence. There was a social event after work. Did anyone ask him directly? No. He didn’t go. Did Eunae say his presence was required? Yes. He showed up. It was all quite simple, really. A situation, an object, an event, either was something, or it wasn’t.
If he was snubbed, he got angry. If he was included, he was happy. If he was working, he was satisfied. If he wasn’t, he was bored. Of course, there were subpaths, different possibilities that opened and closed depending on each situation, but still, the process was straightforward and didn’t require what he considered useless emotional wastes of time.
The problem with Ben’s self-assessment was that it left things out, such as the hope that had shot through him that day in the lunchroom, and the angry tears that had formed but didn’t fall when he’d overheard the same tablemate make fun of him later the same day. In the same way it had already let go of the earlier events of the evening, it also conveniently forgot that when Eunae had asked him to attend that particular party, he’d decided that it meant she was interested in him and had acted accordingly. That had gotten him into a bit of trouble, but Charli had smoothed it all out—she understood him, or at least, he thought she did, usually.
At the moment, he didn’t know whether to be pleased, concerned, or furious. John practically ignored him, Charli refused to speak to him, and he wasn’t certain what to make of the attention John paid her or how she responded to it.
It hadn’t bothered him, not at first, because he hadn’t noticed. He had known Charli would understand, would get it, and Ben had to admit that he’d felt not only pleased, but also a distinct flush of pride when he’d returned with coffee not only for Charli but for all of them, and saw the serious and intent way that Charli listened to John.
He reviewed the events as best he could from when she’d woken. Yes, he’d been thrown for a bit, just a few seconds.
“You shot Anna,” Charli stated. The flat tone, the frozen immobility of her eyes, her face—she radiated chill, a chill that had left him scattered when all he’d wanted to do was explain. John had probably explained it better than he could have even as he thought of what he would have, should have said. It wasn’t murder, of that he was certain. If this was war, if this was revolution, then he was a front-line soldier. “Casualties,” as his father used to say, “are to be expected.”
His father had crawled, sweated, and bled through a jungle half a world away; now he, Ben, would do the same, only his jungle was made of concrete and wires, electric enemies that counted directly in dollars, ignoring the carnage they left behind. And this time—unlike Vietnam, free of bureaucratic mistakes driven by the military-industrial complex, the man who ruled the world—this time, this was a winnable war.
The hour they spent waiting in the roadside hotel—John had insisted they wait somewhere where they could rest for a bit because he wanted them to be as alert as possible in case contingencies arose, plus it gave them time to recharge their various electronica—had gone well, with John discussing and explaining to Charli the same eagle-eye clear view of the world he’d given Ben. But that was then.
There had been an intense exchange of questions and answers between Charli and John, but it was during the drive over to the boatslip, the almost silent ride over while John explained the roles they’d play once on the other side of the water, and then the careful but swift walk up the path, the entrance to the first building of the complex—that’s when Ben had finally noticed that other than her direct initial statement, and then a quip about work that quasi involved him but was told to John, Charli had not said another word to him except for the briefest nod of thanks when he’d handed her the coffee he’d brought in its Styrofoam cup.
That stupid ugly cup. He could still feel the texture in his hands, almost as if its poison had leached through his skin and left a buried tactile memory. Ben hated Styrofoam and what it did to the environment—the damn synthetic stuff was a planet wrecker, what with it never degrading, mucking up the food chain, and releasing noxious toxins—but it was all the local store supplied. And the coffee…ugh. It probably wasn’t even shade grown, sustainable growth stock, either, which made him unwillingly complicit in planetary rape. That would change soon, he reminded himself, that would all change very soon.
But still, now that he sat there, waiting instead of being there for the big moment, Ben felt the stirrings of resentment, unable to admit that what he really wanted was Charli to see him do it, to watch him bring the Man—or rather the military-industrial complex that was the force behind the global fall, the boot on the neck of the world—down, on their knees and begging for the same mercy they historically had withheld.
Him. It had been his idea, Ben’s, to bring Charli in, his idea to use her code and modify it. None of this would be happening—could not exist as reality—had he not hacked and cracked the code, the servers, and the firewall, written an accompanying set of programs that made the final transactions unidentifiable, untraceable to any of them, and essentially victimless. He’d imagined himself a sort of techno Robin Hood as he’d done it.
John chose him, had needed him to set it up, to tap into his own network of associates, like-minded people that John culled through.
Ben wasn’t certain what exactly he’d expected, but certainly not this, the coldness Charli emanated, the faint laughter that he thought John held in his eyes and in the corners of his mouth every time he and Charli glanced his way.
He knew how to recognize that, silent laughter. He’d endured it growing up when his classmates made fun of his father, called him a lazy pothead, an unemployed loser, and him his egghead son. It used to infuriate him, that they didn’t care or understand that his father was a hero, had fought and lost a part of himself so they could enjoy their neon drinks and casual curses, but then one day he realized they didn’t understand because they couldn’t—they simply weren’t capable of it.
Those sorts of beings were what made the world a miserable pl
ace, those were the ones who couldn’t see beyond their noses and bellies unless it was to put down what they couldn’t comprehend, or to take more of whatever would fill their enormous appetites.
Ben thanked the day he had discovered computers, and then the Internet. Through it he found others who thought and felt as he did, and from there, he’d found DsrtFx, the man who had found a solution, a solution that Ben himself had helped create, was an actual part of.
And now, at the most critical point, when the exchange was to actually be made, it was Charli who would do the technical piece, not him. Ben wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be jealous or relieved.
Things had gone even more easily than he’d thought they would. He’d known, he’d simply known that Charli would understand about everything. Maybe it was no big deal at all that he wouldn’t be there to witness the exchange. After all, John trusted him to ensure that they wouldn’t be interrupted, that there would be no unwanted witnesses.
And so he waited, right in the door for the outer lab, the complex surprisingly quiet, all things considered. Ben had been honestly surprised. John had told them—him and Charli—all about the history and the current activities of the place, and as a result, Ben had imagined that they’d have to be much more cautious in their approach; he’d expected the place would be filled to bristling with military types and rigid academics in full pursuit of the micro mysteries of the universe, but it wasn’t that at all. Instead, it was a laboratory and testing facility that ran with regular business hours, and it had a workforce that commuted back and forth via ferry every day. Now, after the strike, there was a less-than-skeleton staff on hand, and security, due to that same strike, while present, certainly seemed lax to his civilian eyes.