The Hive

by Barry Lyga

  The Superman key was digging painfully into her palm. Cassie opened her hand and stared down at it. It had everything she needed to change the world. To save herself.

  And yet, it was useless to her.

  “What do you want right now, Cassie?” Alexandra asked. In the moment, in the dark, the words felt soft. Safe.

  “I want my mom free,” she said, her voice catching. “I want my life back.”

  “And I believe you can have those things.” Alexandra pointed to the key. “But you have to hold off on that. You can burn the system to the ground, but that won’t actually help you at all. You’ll be a martyr, which isn’t a great life because … well, because you’ll be dead. But if you can move the needle a little bit, I can do the rest for you, behind the scenes. I can make the system work for you rather than against you.”

  Cassie still stared at the Superman key, contemplating. “And my mom goes free.”

  “Yes. Of course. That’s easy. That’s a phone call.”

  “And the people who were arrested at OHM. Them, too.”

  “You want to send up a flare to the world, saying the fix is in? I can’t help them, Cassie. You, yes. Your mom, sure. That’s it.”

  Bryce walked the few steps between them and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s a good deal, Cass,” Bryce told her. “You get your life back. The OHM folks will figure themselves out. You’re no good to anyone if you’re dead.”

  “But …” Cassie’s mouth felt too small, her bones too big. For a while there, she thought maybe there could be something bigger. Something like a revolution.

  But was that what she wanted? A revolution? Her dad’s blood yearned for the ultimate disruption, for tipping over the table entirely. But she was tired. And deep down she was scared. A revolution was a luxury she didn’t have the time for. She just needed to stop running and go home.

  “I have to get going,” Alexandra said. “I’ve been off the grid way too long. People are going to start asking the kinds of questions I can’t answer.” She took a few steps toward the door and then paused in front of Cassie. With a slight hesitation, she took Cassie’s chin in her hand and tilted her face upward a bit.

  “You really do look …” she murmured, then dropped her hand. “Good luck, Cassie.”

  Bryce exchanged a complicated look with Carson, then joined Alexandra. Carson and Cassie were alone.

  Alone.

  She didn’t know what to do. Exposing the Hive for what it really was felt satisfying and thrilling, but … What if Alexandra was right? What if Bryce was right? What if the smartest thing to do was to keep playing the game, only this time with an ace up her sleeve? Alexandra seemed to have the right idea, but … could Cassie trust anything that came from her?

  “We need to get the hell out of here,” Carson told her, breaking into her thoughts. “We’re just standing around waiting to be seen and there’s only one exit.”

  He was right. They scrambled out the door and into the night.

  *

  Mask in place, she hopped on a bus with him. They stayed toward the back. Carson had brought a big twenty-inch folding tablet, which they opened and crouched behind. There was no one near them on the bus, but they still kept their voices low.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  Carson curled his lip in distaste. “I don’t trust either of them.”

  “So … go big or go home?”

  He groaned. “I don’t trust them, but I think they might be right anyway. It kinda makes sense.”

  That was precisely what she expected to hear … and exactly what she didn’t want to hear. Alexandra had laid out a very convincing description of how Cassie’s plan to blow up the system could and probably would fail. She’d seen any number of internet wars, from the small-scale high school stuff to the big-time political arena. Very rarely did the truth come out until all the dust was settled and it was too late to help anyone anyway. There would be think pieces about the lessons learned and exhortations to do better next time …

  And then “next time” would be exactly the same.

  The whole thing was garbage. “I have no good options,” she said, almost to herself.

  Carson drummed his fingers against the tablet. They traveled a centimeter to the left, where they grazed the top of her hand. “I know,” he said simply.

  “How can I change things?” she murmured. “Everyone wants to kill me.”

  Now his fingers were holding hers. “Maybe not everyone.”

  She couldn’t bear to release his hand. “This is getting near the end of the line for you, Carson. You’ve already risked enough.” She thought of her mom. Of TonyStark. Too many people had already sacrificed too much in her name. She wasn’t worth a single person more, another life ruined.

  His eyes, warm and soft, studied hers. “You don’t get to tell me when to jump off the train.”

  “I can’t let you keep risking your life. You’ve already done enough to get sent to prison for the rest of your life.”

  “Exactly,” he agreed. “So why stop now?”

  “Because … because it’s stupid to go down with this ship when there’s a raft right next to you!”

  “Cass.” Carson squeezed her hand. “I don’t care if your last words are to tell me to run. I’m not going anywhere.”

  She opened her mouth, ready for a smart retort. But something else occurred to her instead.

  “Hey, wait a sec.” She sat up straight and Carson moved quickly to keep the tablet between her face and the camera.

  “Wait a sec what?” he asked.

  “Last words.”

  He blinked. “Yeah?”

  “People’s last words are, like, important. Memorable. Sometimes iconic. Right?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So right now, that’s my advantage. I’m basically on death row and everyone is clinging to every word and image about me. Alexandra said to move the needle and I’ve been sitting here like a dumbass trying to figure out how to get people’s attention.”

  “But you’ve already got their attention.” Carson was catching on. “All you need to do is figure out where and how to direct it.”

  Cassie considered. An idea was forming, expanding behind her eyes. Carson looked very interested. She knew what to do. The only thing that could possibly make a difference. The one thing no one would expect.

  “What’s up your sleeve, Cass?”

  She met his eyes. There was a hint of a sparkle in them, and it lit her up inside. “One hell of a last speech, for starters.”

  100102700101

  When they finally uncuffed her, Rachel’s wrists were red and raw. She exhaled sharply as her fingers caressed them, then told herself to woman up. A little pain on her wrists was nothing compared to what her daughter had endured. Was enduring.

  Assuming …

  Assuming Cassie was —

  She wouldn’t let herself go there. Not a chance.

  She was in a different interview room this time, one that looked well used and was positioned in the middle of the precinct, in full view of other officers rather than hidden in an abandoned corner of the precinct, which she guessed was a good sign. Then again, the cuffs were a bad sign. They had left her alone, for now, though of course she knew that behind the wall of mirrors facing her was any number of officers, dying to catch her in the act.

  Of what, exactly? She was under arrest for “aiding and abetting a Hive fugitive,” the arresting officers had said. Which was funny, considering the only time she’d left her house was to go to work, on a transit path that was well monitored and easily able to prove her lack of contact with Cassie. Or with anyone. Yesterday’s classes had shrunk back to their expected sizes, but most of the students were still way too interested in watching Rachel crack, real time, than in learning about the origins of
the Roman senate.

  Someone knocked on the mirror. Rachel jumped so hard that she kicked the leg of the table. The door opened a moment later, and the arresting detective sauntered in along with another, similarly rumpled, matching smirks on their faces.

  “Mrs. McKinney,” the arresting detective announced, dropping into a seat across the table from her. She eyed the other one, who leaned against the far wall, next to a small window protected by bars.

  “I said, Mrs. McKinney,” he repeated, all traces of humor vanished from his face.

  “What?” Rachel asked, more exhausted than annoyed.

  “Watch it,” he warned, smacking his tablet against the table. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Rachel looked at him dully. The unforgiving lights of the interview room did his skin, splotchy and gray, no favors. She herself hadn’t looked in a mirror in days.

  “Because you arrested me.”

  He stared at her for a moment with unadulterated disdain. He turned to his partner. “You hear that, Coop? We got a comedian on our hands.”

  “Lucky us,” Coop said, barely looking up from his own tablet. He was tapping furiously at his screen.

  “I’m not making a joke,” Rachel sighed. She leaned back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. Rust-colored rings formed a pattern in the corner; a leak, long ago. “You arrested me. That’s why I’m here. I know exactly as much — or as little, depending on your perspective — as I did the last time I was brought in here.”

  The other cop — !Coop, Harlon would have called him — leaned in close to Rachel. She expected to smell coffee on his breath, but instead she smelled spearmint: fresh, enticing. She closed her eyes and wondered when she and Cassie had last been to the dentist. Before Harlon’s death, definitely. She’d have to make an appointment when she got b —

  Rachel opened her eyes and stifled a scream. She’d been near-asleep, running a to-do list through her head the way she did every night, forgetting where she was. There would be no appointments to make.

  “You. Have. No. Idea. How. Much. Trouble. Your. Daughter. Is. In,” !Coop spat. He was staring at her, and she had the sense that if she’d been asleep for hours instead of seconds, he would have been staring the whole time regardless. He meant to intimidate her dreams.

  Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Is that a joke? Is there a trouble beyond death that I’m not aware of?”

  !Coop slammed his tablet down on the table again. Her tax dollars at work. “It’s been four days, Mrs. McKinney. We know you and your daughter were close. You have to have heard from her by now.”

  Rachel looked out past the lone window. The sky was a sickly yellow, but Rachel couldn’t tell if it was the lights reflecting on the glass or if the day had really decided to succumb to a color so sad, as though it was as tired as she was. Close. She and Cassie. If only that were true. The last seventeen years had been a constant battle for Cassie’s affections, one she was always losing. The more she tried, the worse it got. She and her daughter could never get in sync.

  So, no, Rachel wouldn’t classify them as close.

  But it wasn’t for lack of trying. In the early days, she’d catch herself pulling away from her daughter, disconnecting sometimes, as if she was subconsciously worried that getting too close to her, loving her too much, would damage her just as equally as not loving her enough.

  If she ever got Cassie back … when she got Cassie back, she corrected herself … that would all change.

  Rachel met !Coop’s eyes. “You obviously don’t know my daughter. But I do. And I can assure you, if you haven’t caught her by now, you won’t ever catch her.”

  That caught !Coop’s attention. He straightened, strode over to the table, power-posed next to her. “What makes you say that, Mrs. McKinney?”

  “Because she doesn’t want to be found. Her life depends on it.”

  “You think she doesn’t want to be found?” !Coop chuckled, shuffling from one foot to the other. “You don’t think she likes this attention, Mrs. McKinney? Just a little, tiny bit?”

  A look of horror flashed on Rachel’s face. “The attention of an angry mob of people with a legal right to kill her on sight? No, sir, I don’t think she likes that kind of attention.”

  !Coop grabbed Rachel’s arm and forced her to a standing position. “I’m about to teach you a little something about your daughter, Mrs. McKinney.”

  He dragged her across the room, her feet tripping over each other. She was too frightened to protest.

  “Tell me,” he said, shoving her roughly against the small window, gripping the back of her neck. “Do people who don’t like attention do this?”

  Rachel blinked.

  They were on the fourth floor of the precinct; she remembered taking the elevator. Across the street was a parking lot, a fast-food place, a bank and a billboard park — one of the ones that had been erected a few years back, where billboards of differing heights flashed ads and livestreams, visible for blocks.

  But they weren’t flashing ads or livestreams now. They were showing something else.

  “Been doing that on a loop for twenty minutes,” !Coop said from behind her and Coop. “Care to explain that to us?”

  Rachel stared. There was only one explanation she could offer, and it brought a smile to her face that even !Coop’s angry, deranged snort of derision couldn’t erase.

  Cassie was still alive.

  100102800101

  Across the city, every digital billboard — and there were thousands — went blank at the same time.

  After a protracted period of nonactivity, the screens all lit up at the same time with white text on a black background.

  The font was Inconsolata.

  #HasCassieSurfacedYet? flashed on every billboard.

  The hashtag remained on-screen for ten seconds, then flickered and vanished, replaced by: Not yet.

  Ten more seconds. Flicker.

  Soon.

  Ten final, excruciating seconds. And then … a set of coordinates. Longitude and latitude.

  It repeated every minute for almost half an hour before techs were able to lock down security and purge Cassie’s botnet from the billboards’ network.

  By then, damn near everyone in the city had seen it, and it had gone viral across the country.

  100102900101

  From the relative safety of his bedroom, Carson leaned over Cassie’s shoulder, chuckling as the billboards came to life under her control.

  “Think you got their attention?”

  Harlon had once hacked the Super Bowl. Years later, when he told her about it, he seemed almost ashamed. Almost. I was young and angry and hotheaded. I don’t regret doing it, but I see a new context now. Sometimes when you have to put a hole in a wall, you need a sledgehammer and sometimes you just need a drill. Know the difference.

  “I guess we’ll find out soon.” She rubbed her hands together. “Let’s get ready for Step Two.”

  100103000101

  The coordinates converged on a baseball stadium, empty this fall night. A crowd converged, too.

  The crowd numbered in the tens of thousands, verging into six figures. The stadium seated close to fifty thousand, but there was space on the field as well.

  The security team on duty that night had a heads-up from management about five minutes before the Hive Mob was audible in the near distance. Five blocks in every direction, you could hear them, marching. Chanting.

  “Le-vel 6! Kill on sight! Le-vel 6! Kill on sight!”

  The security team was ordered to unlock and roll back the gates. Full cameras in operation, including backup drones. The owners of the stadium had no desire to suffer the wrath of a Hive Mob by keeping the place shut up. They would have lost the battle anyway, their meager security team of rent-a-cops against a hundred-thousand-strong moving bulwark of anger and outrage. Better to
open the doors, let everyone in and take lots of pictures in case things got out of hand and people needed to be sued and/or prosecuted later.

  The mob was remarkably orderly as it trooped into the stadium. The chant echoed and reechoed through the tunnels leading out to the field, rebounded up and down the ramps, filled with the percussion of two hundred thousand feet.

  Cassie and Carson watched livestreaming aerial footage from a local news drone. From overhead, the stadium filled like a spill of water in slow motion, the seats going from home-team navy blue to a motley speckled rainbow. And then the field itself transmogrified from bright, overtended green to a wash of tints.

  “You sure this is gonna work?” Carson asked without checking over his shoulder. His fingers were poised above a keyboard.

  She wasn’t sure it was going to work, but she was sure it would surprise people. Just like hacking the business channel feed during the president’s interview. There was something only she could do, and it was guaranteed to shake things up.

  When the dust settles, sometimes you see new things, her dad had said.

  The drone caught a good shot of the stadium’s main jumbo screen, a sleek, curved black glass parenthesis. “Just type what I told you to type,” Cassie said. “My script’ll do the rest.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Let’s do it,” she said.

  *

  In the stadium, the big screen flashed once, a burst of white light that stalled the chant of the mob and transformed it into a nearly worshipful mass groan of surprise and awe.

  The screen was roughly 245 feet by 73 feet, an area the size of thousands of fifty-inch televisions. It was the biggest of its kind in the world of sports.

  And Carson had hacked into it. Cassie could have done it, but she’d been busy figuring out what she was going to say. There was no time to record, so she would have to do it live and absolutely nail it. Anything less than perfection would just make things worse.

  One hundred thousand people all turned to look up at the massive screen as it flared to life. Around the country and around the world, untold millions more watched Periscopes and Facebook Lives and BLINQvids streamed from the site.