Netminder

by Jeff Adams

  Score! The tracker was offline.

  A small speech bubble appeared in my vision. Had someone been testing the lenses yesterday? There were only three pairs in circulation—mine, Lorenzo’s, and an agent’s who field tested them. Lorenzo and I hadn’t conducted tests between ourselves in two weeks because we’d both been busy on other tasks.

  I accessed the messages, and there was a single message that had no sender name attached. The message was simple: C me

  If anybody caught me staring hard into the mirror, they might think I was trying to see into Wonderland.

  I focused on the words floating in front of my eyes.

  Why was this familiar?

  I knew this…. I just had to figure….

  That’s it!

  I’d sent a similar message in Denver to help TOS find me.

  Watch me.

  Lorenzo!

  He must have his lenses in. Rather than trying to message back, I pulled the unregistered phone from the pack and called his personal number.

  “Hey, it’s Lorenzo….”

  Straight to voicemail like yesterday. I disconnected.

  I blinked the sequence of commands to bring up the lenses menu and discovered that Lorenzo’s message was sent nearly three hours ago.

  I brought up the screen to reply and typed Y. I stopped short of sending it. He’d configured his message to go out with no sender information. The reply had to be the same. If I sent it as is, it would be branded as Winger with information that could possibly be used to get my location.

  I could make the same configuration changes that he did and get the message out.

  Back in the main room, before I brought the computer online, I modified it further to mask its address and change it at random intervals. Last night I’d only made a few changes, but I wanted as much masking as I could to keep me stealth. I updated all my electronics to do this.

  It was more difficult to do anything about the phone number on the unregistered phone. I didn’t have another SIM card, so I had to settle for changing what I could. If I kept to text messages that could transmit over the internet, it would be easier to mask my communications.

  Once I was satisfied that every possible connection was secure and modified the lenses text function, I went back to Lorenzo’s message and sent the Y.

  If the messaging worked like it was supposed to, only Lorenzo, wearing the lenses, would be able to read it.

  Hopefully he would.

  Like a lightning bolt, an idea struck me.

  Why hadn’t I thought of this earlier?

  Mom and Dad had tracking code on their phones that would be nearly impossible to remove. I’d put it there a long time ago and had only used it once—to look for Dad during the tracker case.

  Sometimes I worried I’d get in serious trouble for planting the code—either my parents would somehow discover it and ground me, or TOS would come down on me for leaving a security loophole for myself. Times like this, though, it was ideal to have some insight on where they were. Or, at least where the phone was.

  Opening a command prompt, I typed the simple commands to find Dad. After a few moments of a spinning cursor, a set of coordinates appeared. I routed my Google Maps session through a web anonymizer and revealed Dad’s location to be Potsdam, Germany. He’d been on a mission, so I didn’t know if he was supposed to be there, but it wouldn’t be out of the question.

  Mom’s phone pinged back even faster showing her in Victoria, British Columbia—not far from her last known location. Getting out of the States might have been the right call for her.

  The message icon flashed in the lenses. Despite using these for testing, the alert jarred me. I looked to it, so it would open.

  Alone?

  Again the sender was unnamed, but it had to be Lorenzo.

  I typed back: Y

  I waited. Time slowed to the point that each second felt infinite. Since I responded right back, he would surely keep up the conversation.

  Accept feed?

  We’d barely begun to test the video overlay capability in this release of the lenses. It allowed agents working together to see what the other could see in a picture-in-picture setup.

  As soon as I accepted, a rectangle opened across the upper right quadrant of my vision. I’d only tested this once before, and it was disorienting having a video on top of normal vision, especially since I could see through it and around it.

  The view was an open laptop screen with a blank word processing page. Letters formed as someone typed.

  It’s Doc.

  The typing paused for a moment and then continued.

  Standby.

  The picture bounced as Lorenzo moved. It was impossible to tell what he was doing. His phone suddenly appeared, and he swiped to his camera app. Flipping the camera around, his face appeared on the screen.

  My heartbeat pounded in my ears as butterflies bounced off the walls of my stomach. It was hard to not surrender to the rush of emotion at seeing the first trusted face in so many hours.

  It quickly sunk in, though, that he was hurt. An angry purple bruise extended along the left side of his face and his upper lip was split and puffy. Somehow, he managed a slight smile, though, as he waved at the screen. He propped the phone against the computer screen so I could see his face as he typed.

  Can you do video?

  I responded: Y

  I blinked my way through the menu to open the link, so he’d be able to see. While the link established, I set up everything like he did—I loved being able to type on the computer for him to see instead of having to form the words with my eyes. Once the green icon lit up to indicate we were connected, I waved back at him. He shuddered and looked like he couldn’t decide to laugh or cry. I understood 100 percent.

  Are you okay? You look rough.

  He shrugged and typed back: HQ was overrun yesterday evening. A few of us managed to avoid capture. I’m trying to restore the network. What about you?

  This was worse than I could’ve imagined.

  I typed: I’m okay. House was invaded, and I got away. Shotgun is badly injured…maybe worse.

  I wiped at my eyes after I typed that, hoping to beat back the emotion that rose up.

  The shock on Lorenzo’s face said everything. He hadn’t known. I wanted to ask him if he knew anything about Mom and Dad, but it didn’t seem right.

  Can I help with network?

  Lorenzo’s shrug and eye roll said it all.

  I thought I had it earlier, but I either tripped a security protocol or someone monitoring shut me down. I’ve located Amp and Ghostlight, but they’re on the move looking for a secure place to be. If you’re somewhere

  Lorenzo jerked his head to look behind him, and he slammed the laptop shut.

  The feed went dark before I could see who found him.

  I quickly closed the connection on my side just in case.

  “Please don’t be dead,” I murmured to the empty room.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I’D STEPPED away from the computer for a while after what had happened to Lorenzo. If I thought it was safe, I’d have gone for a walk to clear my head. Instead, I lay back on the bed. I drifted between thinking about the past day and the clues I might have, dozing and jerking back awake when images of John or Lorenzo forced their way in.

  After an hour or so, I returned to the desk.

  While Lorenzo confirmed the TOS network had been compromised, some things continued to work right. For the text and video of the lenses to work, a connection was established, and I needed to exploit that.

  Had he tried accessing the network that way? Or was it something he’d restored and didn’t have time to tell me? It was worth a try to see if I could make some progress that way.

  The logs the lenses would’ve recorded provided a good place to start. Copies of all lens activity went to my secure cloud because of the debugging I’d been working on.

  The lenses operated along the same network path they always did. Whate
ver had hijacked most of the network hadn’t affected this.

  Using the log information, I’d connected directly to the interface that controlled the lenses. I’d hesitated at the login because if anyone caught it, they’d see I’d done it. I should have enough measures in place that my physical location wouldn’t be revealed.

  The question became: How far could I get? Opening up another couple of windows, it was annoying that I only had the one small laptop screen because there was so much I needed to see simultaneously.

  While I enjoyed moving through the system outside of the slick user interface, I hated wasting the time. Traffic was almost nonexistent, indicating exactly how incapacitated the network was.

  There had to be—

  The unregistered phone vibrated on the desktop, and I pushed back from the desk so hard I almost knocked the chair over.

  No number or name displayed on the screen. The caller knew how to mask their number, location, and caller ID.

  I swiped to connect the call but said nothing as I held the phone to my ear.

  Seconds ticked by.

  TOS protocol dictated the other side speak first and identify. While we weren’t on a secure line, I wanted the caller to go first.

  “Come on, Theo. Don’t you want to say hello?”

  The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t immediately place it.

  I stayed quiet. They didn’t have to know that I’d picked up. Someone else could have this phone.

  “Would you rather I said, Winger, Westside here.”

  Fuck.

  How did he get this number?

  I trembled like I’d fallen through the ice on a pond. Westside had taunted me in Denver, and my fingers trembled at the thought of punishing him for this.

  He’d been one of the Blackbird agents responsible for hacking into the TOS agent tracking system and capturing Dad. He’d been taken into custody in Denver, but he’d escaped. His wife had worked undercover at Glenwood Music to infect audio files with code that could steal people’s personal information and emit a sound that could drive certain people, myself included, into a rage.

  “We both know you’re trying to decide on something clever to say. But you’ve got no moves. We’ve got the TOS network. We’ve got many of your colleagues. Maybe more importantly we know where Victor and Katherine are. Or, if you’d prefer protocol, Defender and Snowbird. Should we just call them Mom and Dad? Your pick. We’ll have them in the next few hours.” He sounded cocky with his sickeningly sweet voice.

  What had I done to let this happen? Security was one of my priorities. Somehow I’d let everyone down.

  Was it because Eddie got my computer in New York? Everyone thought the computer had been fried before any information could be accessed.

  I punched at the air with my free hand and kicked at the garbage can, sending it flying across the room toward the front door. Its meager contents of a couple of napkins scattered across the floor.

  “It’s time you figured out we’re the right team. It would’ve been so much easier if you’d been home when we showed up yesterday. You might have convinced John to cooperate.”

  He disconnected.

  The phone slipped from my hand and bounced off the edge of the desk. I tried to catch it but missed, and it fell to the floor.

  I gulped for air as my chest tightened.

  Truth or deception?

  It seemed inconceivable that every TOS agent could be captured in less than twenty-four hours. I didn’t have a timeline on when things started going bad, but if it started with John yesterday it had only been sixteen or seventeen hours.

  A command line window opened on the computer.

  Maybe you’d rather talk here instead. What are you up to Theo?

  The cursor blinked after the question mark.

  War Games, Tron, and Mr. Robot flashed through my mind.

  Rather than answer, I checked the security on the phone and laptop and everything looked like I was on the internet from Waco, Texas and Boulder, Colorado.

  I could sever the connection, but that wouldn’t yield anything.

  Trying to hide the fact that I’d logged in was ridiculous since I’d used my credentials.

  Enough.

  It was time to battle back. Westside and Blackbird had to pay for what they’d done to John, Lorenzo, and everyone else.

  I typed: Just trying to find out what you’ve done and fix it.

  In another window, I continued exploring the network, looking for signs of why it was offline. If Blackbird was rounding up agents, they had to be using the communications and tracker network to find them. That meant there had to be a way to access those systems—and likely more.

  Why don’t you let us pick you up? We can show you exactly what we’ve done. Maybe you can convince Lorenzo to join us. He’s being a stubborn holdout—a lot like you.

  From the set of tools I had in cloud storage, I deployed some reconnaissance bots to look around and report back, specifically on inbound and outbound network traffic.

  Depending on what I learned, another possibility would be to send out bots to overwhelm the system. If I put too much stress on it, I could force a reboot that might allow me to regain full control.

  You realize you’re just one person, right? There’s no way you can get past the army of people we’ve got making sure we stay in control.

  Almost as if Blackbird had jinxed itself, I found a path courtesy of one of the bots and lenses. The data stream from the lenses was tiny because of how we compressed it. Like the trackers and comms, it was stealth by design so that it could travel along various networks and be undetected except by the most sensitive monitoring systems.

  I piggybacked on the data to get into the larger network.

  You’ve always underestimated me, Westside.

  There it was. I gained access to the full network.

  “Yes!” I shouted into the empty room

  Let me know when you’ve changed your mind. We’re not going to wait much longer.

  I rolled my eyes. Maybe he wasn’t—

  The screen went dark.

  What did he do?

  There’d been no sign that he’d locked on to me.

  I held the power button down until I heard the hard disc power down. I counted to ten before powering back up.

  Nothing. Just a white screen.

  I powered down again and took the extra step of unplugging the power cord and counted to ten again.

  I tried to boot up in safe mode.

  Once again, nothing but white.

  Shit.

  He’d fried the laptop—just like I’d tried to do with the electronics they stole yesterday.

  I slammed the lid down and shoved it across the desk.

  So stupid. I’d taken so many precautions, and yet I hadn’t disabled the code to allow the laptop to be fried.

  My best weapon to fight with was gone.

  I’d truly messed this up.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ONCE I’D beaten back the frustration, I checked the computer again. It was truly dead. When TOS blacklisted electronics, they had to go back to HQ for refurbishment if they were going to be reused.

  That wasn’t an option.

  Mom told me once that it was nearly impossible to account for every scenario. One of the things TOS liked about my work was that I often thought outside the box to get things done. Maybe if I’d been more methodical in this case, I wouldn’t have lost the computer.

  A new one, with the power I required to do the necessary work, would cost more than I’d want to spend. They could be had cheaper online but waiting on shipping was out of the question too.

  A public computer would be too risky because it wouldn’t be secure enough.

  With my MIT student ID, I might be able to talk my way into a computer lab at any of the nearby universities. But that would likely get logged in to a system that Blackbird might catch. I should’ve had a student ID made up for my new identity. I’d add that to the list of th
ings that had gone wrong in this operation.

  There was no choice but to spend the money. I had to have a computer, and it would take way too much time to figure out how to steal one.

  Did I have Blackbird fooled that I’d left Boston?

  If I were them, I’d assume that I’d secure another computer. It probably didn’t matter if I bought it with a card that had my real name. I’d just have to get away from the store as quickly as possible, so they couldn’t easily pick me up.

  I didn’t trust my ability to stay under the radar at this hotel. I’d screwed up letting them take out the computer. I might have missed something else.

  I gathered up what few things I’d taken out of my pack. Out the window, nothing looked suspicious. I left the key card in the room and headed for my parked bike. At least I had transportation.

  Maps showed me that a Best Buy was less than a mile away.

  Biking on the busy street in broad daylight put a ball of stress in my stomach. I couldn’t hide, and the bike helmet obscured me only so much. Once I removed that, I had no other cover.

  Blackbird wasn’t stupid. They’d be monitoring the cams.

  I’d plan better before I went out again.

  Best Buy had a few customers and several employees. Keeping my head downcast would help avoid identification. As I headed toward the computers at the back of the store, Mitch’s team picture displayed on the wall of TVs to my right. Under it were the words “breaking news.”

  What?

  I froze in the middle of the aisle transfixed. Iris’s picture from last year’s yearbook replaced Mitch’s.

  No. No. No. A vise locked on to my chest, and it felt like my heart might implode.

  My team picture flashed on the screen next. I was totally exposed now in the store. Salespeople watched the screens, and it would only be a matter of time before one of them saw me.

  A photo of John came up next to mine. I’d never seen this one. It looked like a snapshot from a phone, maybe. He was in a T-shirt, outside, smiling as if he had no cares.

  Dizziness overtook me, and I grabbed on to the shelf of cell phone accessories to stay upright. I took the necessary deep breaths to not pass out. The story ended, and anchors were back on the screen. Under them was an 800-number asking for people to call with any tips.