by Barry Lyga
Oh well.
“Friggin’ hilarious,” TonyStark said. “Abso-friggin’-lutely hilarious.”
“Are you nuts?” someone challenged. Cassie didn’t know his name, but from his appearance, she decided he was Piercings Guy. “She’s already at Level 6 and now she’s bringing even more heat down? If she wants to blow herself up, fine, but not while I’m standing in the blast radius!”
There was a chorus of murmured agreements, but TonyStark just crossed his arms over his chest. “You said it yourself, man — she’s Level 6. WTF they gonna do? Kill her twice? Whole goddamn internet wants to eat her brains. Zombie hordes roaming the streets looking for a taste of that sweet Cassie-meat. Can’t get any worse.”
“Not for her,” Piercings Guy shot back, “but what about for us?”
Cassie could sense that TonyStark was losing the crowd. Democracy could be ugly, she knew. As much as she’d tried to block out her mom’s lectures on the early throes of democracy, she couldn’t unhear them.
“I was told to impress,” Cassie said, brushing her hair back. “I thought you guys were about resistance. About disruption. If you’re not going to kick the powers-that-be in the balls every now and then, what’s the point?”
It was her voice but not her words. Harlon had said the same thing to her once. “We disrupt to shake out the old order. To clear-cut the old growth and make way for the new. There’s a purpose. It looks chaotic, but it’s not. We have to kick the system in the balls every now and then; otherwise, there’s no point.”
“Chaos masks order,” she went on, recalling her father. “Like a fractal. There’s hidden order in the chaos and that’s what makes it all make sense. My prank will piss off the people who already hate me. Big deal. But it’ll give the people on the sidelines something to rally around. The president won’t be able to resist — he’ll have to punch back. Hard. And he’ll be punching down. And the people who care will be turned off by that and maybe we get a foothold into reversing my little problem.
“Oh, and BTW,” she said over her shoulder to TonyStark, “Who are you calling ‘meat,’ Mr. My-Scalp-Looks-Like-Easter-Ham?”
A ripple of surprised laughter filled the room. TonyStark smoothed back his bald dome with one hand and clucked his tongue. “Damn, girl. I’m on your side.”
“Coulda fooled me.”
More laughter. Piercings Guy could tell he was losing the room. Shared amusement went a long way toward shifting the mood of a crowd. That’s how memes worked, really. Her banter with TonyStark was infectious.
“We have their attention now,” Cassie said.
“Jesus Christ, like you didn’t before?” Piercings Guy grumbled.
“Now we have it for being something other than a victim of so-called Hive Justice,” she said. “There’s no way out of this on the defensive. There are too many of them and just one of me. If I ever want to go home again, I have no choice; I have to go on the attack. People respect strength. They’re drawn to it. Trust me.” There was a story from Roman history lurking somewhere in her mind, some memory of Mom discussing one of the endless ancient wars. But she couldn’t dredge up the details. What she did remember, though, was something from last year’s advanced biology class. “It’s evolutionary. Part of our lizard brain. Back when we lived in caves, we were drawn to the person confident enough to kill the mastodon or get us past the sabertooth lair.”
“This is true,” TonyStark said. He stepped closer to her and seemed ready to throw a comradely arm around her. She wasn’t quite ready for that and was relieved when he didn’t bother. She liked him and she was glad she’d impressed him, but that was enough.
“That’s how politicians and other assholes take charge,” TonyStark went on. “They don’t know jack or shit, but they pretend they do and people get suckered. Cassie just judo’d them.”
She was absurdly touched that for the first time he’d used her name instead of “that girl.”
Piercings Guy gritted his teeth and appeared ready to volley back. Cassie was already weary of him, especially since she wasn’t even 100 percent sure she was right. Fortunately, fate intervened in the person of Tish, who cleared her throat more loudly than any human should be able to and stepped in between Cassie and Piercings Guy.
“Data don’t lie,” she announced, holding up a tablet.
It took Cassie a moment to tell exactly what it was she was looking at. She realized it was a graph tracking her BLINQ status. She was still at Level 6 (that wouldn’t change), but her Likes had ticked up slightly. In fact, they were rising faster than her Condemns.
Her heart quickened. That familiar post-hack rush careered through her limbs; she’d missed it. She wondered briefly if returning to code was somehow betraying her father, if by giving up her self-imposed code ban, she’d made his death mean less.
Based almost purely on the satisfaction pumping through her veins, she decided no. Nothing that felt this good could be that bad. It was time for her to get back in the game. “I did it!” she blurted out.
A groan from the crowd. Tish fixed her with a withering, contemptuous glare that Cassie knew — even after only three days — was Tish Default. “Girl, don’t be so proud. Yeah, your Like velocity is up, but the ratio of Condemns to Likes is so great that it would take six years at the current rate for your Likes to outpace and drop you back to Level 5.”
“Six years? For real?” Cassie’s shoulder dropped.
Tish shrugged. “Five years, ten months, six days. I rounded up.”
“Well, shit.”
“See?” Piercings Guy licked his lips. He was back on a roll. “See?”
“Brother, she moved a needle no one has ever moved before,” TonyStark said. “With just a couple of days and an impressively shitty laptop. I say we help her. Even if we can’t set her straight online, she’s an asset to us and what we do.”
She spied some nods in the group. Good. She didn’t relish the idea of staying at OHM forever, but right now it was better than the alternative. If they kicked her out … she’d be back on the street again. Defenseless. On the run with nowhere to go.
Piercings Guy grunted. “No. No way. She’s a risk and a liability and a loose cannon. And this is coming from the guy who turned off every traffic signal in the city last May. I know what a loose cannon is.”
A murmur of agreement. Bad.
Tish turned to Cassie. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
It should have been something from Harlon. It should have been from one of his infamous manifestos, the ones that set off Twitter wars and blog threads. She should have channeled him the way she always did in times of stress and crisis, used his words and his beliefs to sway these people — his people — to her side.
But the first thing that popped into her head was her mom.
“‘Give me a firm place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world,’” she told them.
The room fell silent.
“Archimedes,” she said, by way of explanation. “Like TonyStark said — I had a little time and a little tech and I moved the needle. Give me a firm place to stand and a lever and see what I can do.”
Piercings Guy shook his head. TonyStark grinned.
“Let’s vote, people!” Tish called out. “Hands up if you think she should stay.”
Cassie didn’t want to watch. She forced herself to anyway.
100101300101
“I want a lawyer,” Rachel whispered.
She couldn’t be sure exactly what they were up to. She wasn’t formally under arrest, but it still felt as though she were. A lawyer seemed appropriate.
While his partner drove and kept an eye on the road, Agent Hernandez twisted around to peer back at her from the front seat. “What did you say?”
“I said I want a lawyer,” she repeated more forcefully.
He nodded, his lips pu
rsed. “Are you sure? Lawyers are expensive. You don’t have much of a nest egg.”
“You looked at my bank records.” She said it without accusation or heat. It was just a fact.
“We looked at everything,” he told her.
“So,” Rachel snapped, “all of that stuff about how you have kids, too, and you feel for me — that was all just crap, I guess?”
Hernandez’s expression darkened and he glowered at her. “I do have kids. That’s why I’m doing this. So that they can grow up in a safe and orderly world.”
“A safe and orderly world where they get to hunt and kill other children,” she said. “How special for you.”
Hernandez sneered. “Watch your mouth, Professor McKinney. We’re still being nice.”
“This is nice? I hate to imagine what nasty looks like.”
He settled back into his seat, turning away from her. “You won’t have to imagine,” he promised.
*
They took her to the local police station but marched her in through the back door. She knew — vaguely — something of police booking procedures. Harlon had been arrested a couple of times early in their dating days, usually for defacing Confederate monuments. She knew that she should be processed with the desk sergeant, fingerprinted, face-scanned and photographed.
None of that happened.
Instead, they took her through a series of dark, empty corridors that wound like a maze in the bowels of the precinct. And for the first time, she began to fear. If they’d intended on merely arresting her and using her for leverage against Cassie, they would be following procedure. Instead, they were wending their way through a labyrinth, heading toward the minotaur, with no Ariadne in sight.
“Where are we going?” she demanded, fighting to keep a tremor out of her voice. These men only understood strength. They had no sympathy for damsels in distress.
“You’ll see,” Hernandez said.
Finally, they opened an obstinate old door and ushered her into a small room that stank of mold and rust. A broken mirror took up most of one wall, a chunk of missing glass allowing her to peer into the next room. An old, disused interrogation room, then.
There was a rickety table in the center of the room, lit by the overhead spasms of a single, unreliable light bulb. Hernandez’s partner, who hadn’t spoken a word, appeared in the doorway with a very sturdy chair. He placed it behind the table and guided Rachel into it with surprising gentleness.
They don’t want any bruises on me. No evidence. Does that mean they’re definitely going to let me go or that they want the body to be staged a certain way?
The equanimity with which she approached the notion that her own government — sworn to protect her and her rights — was planning to murder her didn’t even shock her. It just seemed natural at this point. They’d sentenced her daughter to death; why not her, too?
“Professor McKinney.” Hernandez’s partner had a surprisingly mellifluous voice. He could have been an opera singer. Even the spoken word sounded musical. “I am Special Agent Jason Khartouk. If you truly want a lawyer, of course it is your right to have one. But we hope we can clear this up without such complications.”
“What’s going on?” she asked warily.
“You’re not under arrest,” Hernandez told her. “We took you into custody to get you here and to talk to you privately.” He glanced over at Khartouk and a silent handoff took place.
“As I’ve told Agent Hernandez and every other NSA agent I’ve ever met: I didn’t know anything about Harlon’s work. I could barely understand it. He didn’t leave anything behind that you people haven’t already taken.”
Khartouk planted his fists on the table, leaning forward. “We’re not sure about any of that. We found references in some of your husband’s notes to something he called ‘a perfect encryption.’ He also made reference to ‘The Purloined Letter.’ ” Edgar Allen Poe’s famous story about a missing letter that actually turns out to be in plain sight. Harlon didn’t usually go in for literary allusions, but when he did he used them properly.
“I don’t know anything about —” she began wearily.
Khartouk cut her off. “That’s a conversation for another day. We’re here to talk about your daughter.”
“What does she have to do with Harlon’s purloined letter?”
A tight smile. “Please don’t play dumb. It’s unbecoming. This is about the Hive. Contrary to popular belief, we government stooges can walk and chew gum at the same time.”
She imagined how it had happened: Level 5 girl goes missing. Government wants to get involved. And, hey — look! It just so happens we already have some NSA goons watching the family anyway. How convenient.
“Professor McKinney, your daughter is in deep, deep trouble,” Khartouk was saying. “And this isn’t just about her. It’s about the integrity of the entire Hive system. Now, eventually the mob will find her. And it will be ugly. But if you help us get to her first —”
“You’ll what, expunge her record?” Rachel said it a little more nastily than she’d intended, but there was a slight lilt of hope in her voice. Could they do that? Would they? Why else would they be here?
Hernandez clucked his tongue. “Your daughter broke the law. Run, sure. Show how clever you are, lead the mob on a merry chase, yeah, OK. But she ditched her phone. She went off the grid.”
“Wouldn’t you, if you were running for your life?”
A sigh. “There’s a bigger picture here. The social good. The stability of law and order.”
“The death of a child.” Rachel pulled her shoulders back as she said it. “Even the Romans had the decency to kill them as infants, before they could speak.”
Hernandez’s lip curled and he stepped closer, but Khartouk cleared his throat. Hernandez stepped back.
Good cop, bad cop, Rachel told herself. Hernandez slaps you around and Khartouk stops him so he gains your sympathy. Don’t fall for it. They’re both bad cops.
“For Cassie to do as good a job as she’s done hiding,” Khartouk said in his calming, musical voice, “she must have had help. Witnesses report an adult woman with her at the campus. Your campus,” he said pointedly. “And RideHop reports a rental car was sent to your apartment with a destination of, once again, your campus. It’s all pretty incriminating, and I know you’d like to explain it to us.”
Rachel bit her lip. Bryce had said “we” (whoever we was) had hacked away evidence of her ride. So much for that. There was no winning scenario here. She obviously wouldn’t tell them a damn thing about Cassie, but she couldn’t wish away the evidence they had either. And Hernandez was right: lawyers were expensive, and she didn’t know any, in any event. She wouldn’t risk her meager savings and her life on a name plucked from Google or Yelp. The wisdom of the crowd didn’t seem all that wise these days.
Her best bet, she reasoned, was to give them just enough to get them to let her go. Then she could try to figure out a plan of action, in her own home, not under a naked light bulb in the dank basement of a police precinct.
“Sometimes kids — especially kids in trouble,” she said after a measured moment, “do stupid things, like use their parents’ credit cards and accounts to order car services.”
Hernandez’s contempt for her was as blatant and obvious as his knitted eyebrows and the furrow between them. Khartouk, though, merely nodded, as though perfectly happy to buy this line of bullshit.
“That’s true,” he admitted. “Kids do all sorts of crazy things. Like BLINQ filthy comments about the president and his family. Because let’s not forget, Professor — that’s why we’re here.”
“Don’t do this,” Rachel said. “Not to Cassie. Look, you can rip my apartment to shreds, take everything Harlon ever touched. That’s what you want, right? That’s what you’ve always wanted. But please, leave my daughter alone.”
Khartouk smi
led too smoothly. “We can multitask. Right now, we’re interested in Cassie.”
Right now. So it would never end is what they were telling her. They would hunt her not just until they found Cassie, dead or alive, but until they found Cassie and whatever it was they wanted from Harlon. Rachel decided to change her approach.
“Were you young once, Agent Khartouk?”
His smile did not falter. “A long time ago, yes. A different world. But even then, my parents knew to keep me in line.”
“So this is all my fault? I’m a bad parent?” She was on comfortable ground now. Sure, they could argue about her parenting skills. She was a mom — she was used to people telling her she was doing it wrong.
“There’s being a parent,” Hernandez snapped, “and there’s aiding and abetting a felon.”
“These theoretical children of yours, Agent Hernandez: Wouldn’t you do the same for them, if you were in my shoes?”
Hernandez grimaced and took a step toward her. She didn’t actually think she was in any danger until Khartouk suddenly stepped between them and backed Hernandez up. Hernandez waited a beat and then closed the door. The room was no darker, but suddenly seemed so much smaller.
Khartouk turned around, facing Rachel again. He looked crestfallen, disappointed. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you, Rachel?”
She wasn’t Professor McKinney any longer. And the door was closed. The door was closed and she was alone with two men who did things for a living.
It took a while to swallow and find her voice. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I don’t know where Cassie is. I really don’t.”
Hernandez crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the door. Khartouk stroked his jawline and regarded her for several protracted moments.
“The problem, Rachel, is this: I don’t believe you.”
“I can’t help that,” she replied.