The Last Hack

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘We good?’ asks Jack.

  ‘Yes, but don’t touch the USB. There’s a lot of data to transfer. Could take a couple of minutes.’

  ‘If only there was something constructive I could do in the meantime.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m still working on it.’

  I try a search for messages to which both Cruz and Dunwoodie were recipients. Unfortunately this gives me another shit-ton of results, all sorts of cascaded spam that went out to everybody. But among this flood my trained eye homes in on a message that only went out to the two of them. Its sender is listed as Linda Collins and its subject line reads: ‘What’s the word?’

  I open it, but the short paragraph of text makes no sense. It says:

  Sister flower hope takes diary pouting for gable sentry cardigan throw closes on pepper.

  The feeds refresh again. I see a flash of movement, but once more it’s on the edge of the frame. This isn’t just bad luck, I’m thinking. This is someone who knows where the cameras are pointing – or has somebody telling him where the cameras are pointing. I ask myself the likelihood that Cruz would be trying to avoid appearing on CCTV inside his own building.

  His office lobby appears again on the next refresh. I don’t think the door has moved since last time. I’m not sure it ever moved at all.

  At the bottom of my screen, I see the file transfer has about seventy seconds remaining.

  I open the metadata on the nonsensical Linda Collins email and check the headers. The display address is linda.collins@synergis.com but the original header states that it came from aux.gms.Gatekeeper@synergis.com. I run a search for the subject line, and there it is, repeated every day: ‘What’s the word?’

  I open two more.

  Sudden hold breaking for gloves to produce the wonder providing …

  Curled certainly with convincing unafraid for other genuine …

  Every time, it’s utter bollocks. But my hacker’s eyes, always looking for patterns, notice that in every message, the first word has six letters.

  My eyes fall upon the shitty burner mobile on the kitchen table next to my laptop, with its ancient push-button dial pad. No touchscreen for texting.

  ‘Sister’ is the PIN.

  ‘Jack, the code for the vault is seven four seven eight three seven. Confirm.’

  ‘Seven four seven eight three seven.’

  It’s as he calls it back to me that the feed from R&D goes black.

  PRIZE POSSESSION

  Parlabane hears a ping and a fading hum as the lab is plunged into darkness. It sounds like a surge-protector was tripped, or some automated system killed the juice to the lights, which would explain why he can still hear the fans in the server room. It makes sense that they would be running on a different circuit.

  He holds his position, giving it a few seconds to see whether emergency lighting kicks in or the system automatically restarts. Neither of these things happens.

  His next thought is that it might be closing time: perhaps the reason Cruz was on the move is that he has left the building, and maybe the last one out does truly turn off the lights, especially if he’s a cost-conscious boss.

  However, the stunned silence in his earpiece is arguing against this hypothesis.

  ‘Jack, you still there?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve lost the lights, though.’

  He waits for his eyes to adjust to the dark, for the glow through the windows to become enough for him to navigate without danger of tripping over a desk. He proceeds past the sub-zero room, the constant hum from within indicating that it is on a different circuit too. Its door is closed and he knows that the facility must boast near-impermeable insulation, so it must be only his own anxiety that is causing a chill to run through him.

  Steady the buffs, he tells himself. He’s almost there.

  He holds up his phone as he approaches the vault door, using its flashlight to illuminate the keypad.

  He punches in the PIN.

  Nothing happens.

  Shit. Did the electrics get killed? No. There is a red light on the keypad, so there is still power to the lock. There is a small orange light about a foot away on the wall too. Of course. A sensor plate for the GEM system. He taps his card against it and tries the PIN again. He hears the click and whir of an internal mechanism and the light on the keypad turns green.

  ‘We’re in.’

  Parlabane plays the flashlight around the darkened chamber. There are tiers of metal shelving running almost floor to ceiling around the steel-walled cube, most of it empty. He counts four boxes of files, all stashed low on the right-hand side. He figures the excess capacity indicates Neurosphere kept a lot more stuff in here once upon a time, but it would have been shipped out and possibly shredded before they handed the door keys to Cruz.

  ‘Can you see the prototype?’

  There is no question but that what he is after is the item directly ahead: a compact brushed-aluminium flight case roughly the size of a hardback book. The object is sitting on the middle shelf opposite the door; it has probably been positioned there for convenience, but he can’t help inferring an element of it being afforded pride of place, like it’s the god inside a tiny shrine.

  ‘I think so.’

  Parlabane flips it open, revealing a metallic device nestling on a tight bed of insulating foam, like an oversized engagement ring inside its presentation box. On the inside of the flip-lid is a printed label stating: Synergis Dimension PHP> Prototype version 3.1.

  ‘What is it?’ Sam asks.

  ‘I’m looking at it and I still have no idea.’

  He holds it in his hand. It is the size of a slim matchbox, uniformly metal but for a tiny glass dot at the centre of one face. Its purpose remains baffling, and he resents how such a trifling thing could have tyrannised his world for the past few weeks. The power is in his hands now, though: literally.

  He thinks about simply pocketing the device, but decides that taking the flight case would be a better option.

  They’re never worth as much if you don’t have the original box, he muses, closing the lid gently and placing the flight case carefully inside his rucksack.

  Parlabane clicks off the flashlight, plunging the chamber into darkness. He waits again as his pupils respond, watching the shapes of desks and monitors gradually resolve themselves against the rising glow.

  He’s on the home straight now. He admits to himself he never thought he’d make it this far, so he has to beware euphoria: stay frosty for the egress. It would be all the more painful were he to fuck it up now, especially if it was due to an oversight, an act of carelessness resultant of being too eager to GTFO.

  With that thought, he suddenly remembers about the memory stick, still jammed into a port in the server room. He is wearing latex gloves right now but knows he must have handled the memory stick when he wasn’t. He can’t be sure, but it is possible Sam might have handled it at some point too.

  He experiences a tiny surge of fright, like a trailer for the panic that would have hit him had this detail only occurred to him later.

  Okay. Server room and then exeunt Parlabane.

  He steps through the vault door and something hits him in the chest.

  He is racked by a surge of the most enormous, convulsing pain, amid a riot of light. It is not a flash but a storm: a matrix of brilliant but agonising energy enveloping his whole body.

  As he falls backwards, his first thought is that he has been shot, but when he hits the floor and he tries to reach for his chest, he finds he is unable to control his limbs. Not only are they powerless, but it is as though they are restrained, held in an invisible mesh. He feels them spasm.

  He is aware of motion close by: the movement of air and the sound of soft footfalls. He senses a figure crouching over him, initially only an outline of black against the greys. In time he makes out a visage, though in his confused and disoriented state, he struggles to decode his own senses. He sees a face he recognises, yet it is a face that is not a face. What he se
es, or thinks he sees, refuses to add up. It is blank and yet distinct; unmistakable and yet …

  Anonymous.

  A Guy Fawkes mask.

  Parlabane tries again to raise himself, feeling sensation and control begin to return to his arms.

  This proves a mistake.

  The figure extends a hand and he is convulsed in a second storm of light and pain.

  Then there is nothing.

  PART THREE

  WINDOWS UPDATE

  I think I’m going to be sick. I stand up and head for the sink as quickly as I can, allowing for the scattered bottles of bleach, oven cleaner and a dozen other trip hazards. This is not like my previous hacks, which churned up my insides in a good way. The tension surrounding this has been growing for weeks, becoming close to unbearable since Jack entered the building, and that was before I lost visual contact. Now I’ve lost audio too. There was a weird crackling sound, then a thump, then more crackling, then the connection was dropped altogether.

  I can’t talk to Jack. I can’t hear him, I can’t see him, and I know this can’t be good.

  I grip the sink, staring out of the kitchen window at the street below, quietly getting on with itself. I wonder how many other silent crises are taking place behind the walls of all these other homes, while their neighbours obliviously assume the world outside their own door is calm.

  In the past I would sometimes look up from my computer and realise I was starving or that my bladder was full; so much time had passed, so much drama had unfolded before my eyes and yet there I still was, still sitting in my bedroom. Whether hacking or playing video games, there was always that air gap between the places on my computer and the reality everyone had to live in. But the air gap has been completely breached, and everything that happens on this laptop tonight changes the world I will have to live in afterwards.

  The sick feeling passes and I splash water on my face. The only way to get through this is to get busy. I need to hack into the works, take control of Tricorn House’s internal electrics.

  I remember about Nigel Holt, the buildings manager, and I scroll to his username and password in the list among my research documents. I open another shell and navigate to a fresh login screen, but the fields are greyed out, looking for a 2FA PIN.

  Shit. Coleridge’s login allowed me to deactivate 2FA for Synergis, but not the whole building.

  I’ll have to do it analogue.

  I call Aaron once again. It rings and rings with no response. Ten rings. Twenty. He could be on another call. He could be in the toilet.

  Keep it together.

  I hang up, force myself to wait a full minute, watching the second hand tick all the way around the kitchen clock face, then try again.

  ‘Hello, Tricorn House.’

  ‘Aaron, yeah, me again. Gotta stop meeting like this.’

  I manage a chuckle and try to keep my voice light and breezy, though my hand is shaking as it holds the phone.

  ‘People will talk. Least I know I’m not the only one working late. What can I do for you this time?’

  ‘It’s Mr Cruz. He’s trying to get hold of Nigel Holt because he says the lights have gone out in the Research and Development lab. I said I’d call and ask you to look into it as well. Can you have a check on your system, see if everything is okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I can call that up. Happens all the time. Usually them power-saver switches being a bit over-keen, though sometimes it’s a blown fuse at a main junction box, and I can’t do nothing about that. Need to wait until the maintenance guys get in tomorrow morning.’

  I hear him type slowly as ever into his keyboard. It’s excruciating.

  ‘Let’s see. Nah, according to the computer, all the electrics are running normal. No outages, no problems.’

  According to the computer.

  Sure, because that’s how I would play it if I was messing with this place: bypass the fault detection so it reports all systems go. The good news is that if this is the case, then it should respond to a reset. The very bad news is that this would all but confirm there is somebody else messing with this place, and after a reset there would be nothing to stop them simply killing the lights again.

  ‘Can you reset the lights in that area anyway? Just in case it saves Mr Holt having to come out?’

  ‘I think so. Let me see. Research and Development, you said?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  While Aaron is plodding his way through this, I run a program to list everyone currently logged into the system. It may not tell me who I’m up against, but it will at least identify whose account they’re logged in from.

  The results scroll down beneath the command line, showing only three. As well as the two I am responsible for – jdunwoodie and mcoleridge – there is one more user active: lcruz.

  ‘Okay, I think I’ve reset the lights, but as it was showing okay before and it’s showing okay now, I don’t know if it’s worked.’

  ‘Thanks, Aaron. I’ll give Mr Cruz a call and find out.’

  I look at the CCTV views along the top of my screen. None of them has auto-switched to the R&D labs, which I take to be a bad sign, though it might need a few moments for the reset to take effect.

  I watch and wait. Nothing changes. I watch some more, then glance at the clock again. It’s been at least a minute and the windows are still showing the same feeds. The reset hasn’t worked.

  Then it hits me. The windows haven’t changed. None of them has automatically cycled to the next view. Something is different.

  I try the CCTV command system again and find I’ve got full control. I can select any camera and hold the view as required.

  Whoever hacked into the Tricorn House systems must have logged out, having finished whatever they were doing. Something tells me this is not a good thing.

  I refresh the list of active users. It now only shows jdunwoodie and mcoleridge.

  I start toggling through CCTV views, looking for Jack. I’ve got access to a branching menu telling me where all the cameras are. I bring up the Synergis ones, opening a sub-menu listing cameras inside Research and Development.

  I see one marked ‘Vault’, and click on that.

  One of my windows now shows the view inside a dark chamber, light spilling in through the open door. Jack isn’t there.

  I click on ‘Server Farm’. That’s empty too.

  I toggle through three more, each showing desks, cubicles, corridors, locked doors. Still no sign.

  Finally I click on one tagged ‘Sub-Zero Room’, and my mouth falls open in horror.

  MURDER IN THE DARK

  Pain wracks him. It is all he knows, all he can sense, as though these receptors are the only systems to have fully come back online as he struggles to reboot his consciousness. At first it feels like it is everywhere, too many parts of his body reporting damage for him to pick out discrete sources, but gradually his head, his face, his ribs and his chest make their cries distinct. There is an unmistakable metallic taste in his mouth, and he can feel its stickiness on his top lip and around his gums. He can hear absolutely no sound, other than the rush of his own blood in his ears, and when he opens his eyes it makes no difference: he can see nothing. He recalls several blows to the head, and fears he may have been blinded.

  Memories of the violence are the freshest, but they make way for a swirling, woozy recall of what immediately preceded it. He remembers who did this: the V mask, the hoodie. He had a hand-held electroshock device and a telescopic baton.

  The former was to render him helpless. It was the latter that did the lasting damage. He was dragged somewhere, still twitching from the second shock.

  He remembers a voice, someone speaking.

  Sam.

  It takes him a moment to realise that he’s cold: really cold. He is lying on his back and every point of contact with the floor beneath him is freezing.

  He is in the sub-zero room. That’s why he can’t see.

  Instinctively he puts out his right hand to push h
imself upright and winces in pain. He fears his arm is broken, possibly from a defensive wound. He reaches out his left hand and it touches soft material, something beside him on the floor. That’s when it hits him that his latex gloves are gone. There is something solid beneath the cloth, and that’s cold too.

  There is someone next to him. Someone dead.

  He manages to sit upright, his head spinning from the sudden upwards movement. Something wet runs into his eye. He wipes it away, following the path it traced. He is bleeding from his scalp.

  He reaches for his phone so that he can use the flashlight, but his pocket is empty. It takes a second for the true import of this to sink in. Never mind the flashlight app: without the phone he has no way of letting anybody know he is in here.

  He crawls forward in search of a wall, bashing his head on a shelf maybe, or a table. Using his good arm, he manoeuvres around the obstacle, which is when his eye is drawn to the only thing in the room that can be seen: a tiny orange light.

  It’s a card sensor. Thank fuck.

  He begins scrambling slowly towards it, mindful of further invisible obstacles, when suddenly there is a click and the room is bathed in light.

  He gets to his feet and turns around to look at the body on the floor, dead from multiple stab wounds. His face has taken a battering too, probably from the same telescopic baton, but there is no mistaking his identity.

  It is Leo Cruz.

  Equipment lies scattered about the floor, circuit boards and anti-static gloves from an upended table. It looks like evidence of a struggle, but it wasn’t one he was a part of, and if the same assailant killed Cruz, he doubts that was much of a contest either: not with an electronic cosh in the attacker’s armoury.

  Parlabane fumbles for the swipe card. It is doubly awkward because he is having to reach with his left hand into an inside left-hand pocket, and because he is shivering.