Cyber's Escape

by Jamie Davis

  Cass shrugged. “It was pretty awesome in a lot of ways. Things are a lot different than we think they are outside of the enclave.”

  “Oh, I know. Ever since I was little, I’ve been looking over my dad’s shoulder while he worked. I learned early on how to hack out of the enclave’s systems. I’ve been doing it for a long time. I was able to get into the mass market entertainment networks by the time I was eight without anyone noticing it. I know all about what goes on outside.”

  “Really?” Cass said. Her estimation of what Cadence could do increased a little bit after hearing that. “What else do you know about the outside?”

  “Oh, a whole lot of stuff. I’ve told Elena about some of it. There’s a lot of people out there and everyone has something that’s connected to the Mantle in their homes. They may not go as far as some do getting personal implants, but everyone’s got a refrigerator, or a toaster, or just their home computer all connected. I don’t think the Sapiens Movement is going to get people to give up all that stuff no matter what the grownups think will happen. I’ve begun to think that maybe the Sapiens Movement is a lost cause.”

  Cass couldn’t hide her shock at the bold words coming from the girl. It was enough to get her mandatory re-education in one of the movement’s special camps. “That’s a bold thing to say, Cadence. For someone your age, it could get you sent away. If it were someone like me, well, they’d chuck me out entirely.”

  “I’m careful with whom I talk to. I figured with your girlfriend and all, you probably aren’t going to turn me in.”

  Cass smiled and nodded. “You’re right. Your secret’s safe with me, and Elena, too. Right, squirt?”

  Elena waved her hand at Cadence sitting next to her. “Oh, Cadence and I are best buds.”

  Cadence nodded as she took another huge bite of pizza. As she chewed the food, she smiled and said, “So, what did you both need?”

  Elena gestured with her slice of pizza at Cass between bites. “I think it’s my sister that needs something.”

  Cass nodded. “Um, yeah, I was wondering if you could help me connect a device I brought in from outside the enclave. I know I really shouldn’t have it, but I didn’t want to leave it at school. When I opened it up this morning, it couldn’t connect to the outside, and then it just sort of shut down. It caused all kinds of problems I think.”

  Cadence leaned forward and slapped her hand on the top of the counter. “You’re the reason my dad’s been running around all morning like a chicken with its head cut off.” She started laughing until tears came to her eyes.

  “What do you know about that?” Cass asked.

  “Only that he thought he caught some sub hiding here in the enclave. He was sure there was some person with some kind of medical implant that had gotten it through the firewall and security wards somehow. I wasn’t so sure based on what I saw going across the data stream on his tablet when I stole a look. Now, I’m positive. Did his little security program damage your device at all?”

  “No, thank goodness. It messed up some files, but that’s it. It’s a special tablet I got to use at school. I wanted to use it to talk to Shelby, but I was unable to get through the network when they caught me the first time. I tried to hack my way out this morning and well, you know what happened then.”

  Cadence giggled. “Yeah. My dad was so excited he went running over to your house right away. It’s pretty funny; he was so close to the source of the breach the whole time.”

  Cass and Elena exchanged a glance. The girl was closer to the truth than she knew, even if she had one key detail figured wrong.

  Cass cleared her throat after swallowing a bite of her pizza. “Anyway, Cadence, I was hoping you could help me figure a way to use my device to communicate through the firewall again. Is there some sort of port or something you can open up for me like you did before?”

  Cadence shook her head. “It’s not going to be that easy this time around. Dad found and closed down a lot of those openings I created over the years. A lot of them were back doors I installed into the system myself. His review of the security wards found most of them. He doesn’t know I did it, he just went ahead and shut them down.”

  Cass’s shoulders sagged a little.

  Cadence must’ve noticed. “Have no fear though, Cass. There is a way. Did you bring the tablet with you?”

  “No. I didn’t want my parents to see it. They would’ve known what it was right away. I left it in my room.”

  Cadence paused in thought then announced, “That makes it a little more difficult, but not impossible. Let me think for a few minutes.”

  Cadence got up from her stool and walked across the kitchen where she picked up a large computer tablet about twelve inches across at its widest point. She set it down on a pop-up stand on the central counter and climbed back onto her stool. She waved her hand, deploying a virtual keyboard over the countertop, and began typing away.

  Cass leaned over to look at the screen. All she saw where numbers and letters streaming by. She realized Cadence was accessing and adapting direct computer code.

  Cass pointed at the screen. “Wow, that’s impressive, Cadence. You’re quite the programmer, aren’t you?”

  “I want to go to MIT someday. I want to be one of their best coders ever.”

  “MIT?” Cass asked. “That’s a big school. It’s even more daring than me going down to City University.”

  “Oh, I’m going whether they let me go or not. I’m not going to wait for permission. I’ll just pack up and leave at some point and never come back. I am through with the Sapiens and their backward ways, Cass. I am going to change the world someday with my software.”

  Elena smiled. “I told you, Cass. Cadence is going places.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Cass leaned back and ate another slice of pizza while Cadence continued working on her tablet. Every minute or so she’d pause long enough to take another bite of pizza, wipe her hands off, and then go back to work on the virtual keypad displayed in front of her.

  Elena pulled out her phone and began looking at something while she waited.

  Cass kept her attention focused on Cadence. She was putting a lot of trust in this girl. She hoped it paid off.

  A half-hour after she started, Cadence smiled and snapped her fingers. “Got it. I was able to reconfigure one of the worms I use to drill through the firewall. I can set up the program now so that it gets installed on any device. It won’t be quite as elegant as what I do here manually when I can program on the fly, but it should get any system that’s got Mantle access through the firewall and connected again.”

  Cass raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Any system? I find that hard to believe. You mean that could even get, let’s say a medical grade implant, outside the firewall.”

  Cadence shrugged. “Sure. They all use the same basic software routines to access the Mantle and other wireless systems. They might have other sub-routines running in the background, but everything runs on the same base code nowadays.”

  Cass didn’t know if that was true or not but she had to accept that the girl knew what she was talking about. It was a considerable risk installing anything from outside onto her implant. She’d done it once already with Derek. Now she was trusting a fourteen-year-old girl’s computing capabilities with her safety and maybe her life, if it somehow corrupted her implant’s basic coding.

  Cass decided she was all in at this point. “So, how do I install it?”

  Cadence smiled. “I’ll give you a chip with a wireless transceiver in it. All you need to do is hold it up next to the device. It should pair with any wireless connection automatically and open up a file on the device’s interface. I’ve named that file ‘ Cass’s Secret.’”

  Cadence grinned as she said the name and continued her instructions. “Just run the program, follow the prompts, and you’re home free. You’ll be talking with Shelby in no time.”

  “That’s awesome, Cadence. I owe you one.”

  Ca
dence waved it off with one hand and pointed at Cass’s sister. “That’s okay. Like she said, we are best buds. You know she’s trying to get me hooked up with Donny Glenn. She says he kind of likes me.”

  Cass shot her sister a glance.

  Elena looked up from her phone. “Yeah, I’ve almost got him convinced that he should take the leap and ask you out for lunch.”

  Cadence giggled and smiled from ear to ear. Cass was a little embarrassed at deceiving the girl this way. She clearly was on Cass’s side even if she didn’t know everything about what she’d just done. She was no strict Sapiens member, even if she’d been raised here.

  Cass got up from her stool and started cleaning up their trash. They’d finished the pizza and most of the wings. She wrapped the rest of the wings up in foil for Cadence and put them in the refrigerator.

  Gathering up the empty bags and the pizza box, Cass turned to Cadence. “Where do you want me to put these?”

  “You can put them out in the garage through the back door to the yard. There’s a bin out there and they’ll go in the recycling with the paper plates and everything else.”

  Cass went out into the yard and set the pizza box, bags, and other paper goods in the recycling bin there. She turned around and stopped dead in her tracks. There on the wall, hanging from a hook inside the back door, next to some assorted cables and wires, was a large belt pouch like a fanny pack. It had a coiled cord extending from it leading to a long metal tube shoved in a leather sleeve attached to the belt.

  A symbol stood out on the black fabric of the fanny pack. It was a clenched white fist inside a white circle which Cass recognized as the symbol of the Sapiens First terrorist movement.

  Cass knew that device all too well. It looked identical to the one Simon Cantwell had used to kill Shelby’s brother and the other six cyber humans. Had Cadence’s father designed the device that fried Eric’s brain, killing him?

  She didn’t know the answer, but given what she was staring at, she felt more than a little foolish for sharing so much with Cadence. Could it have all been an act?

  Cass went back into the kitchen. Cadence and Elena chatted about boys, oblivious to the expression on Cass’s face. Cass tried to collect herself as she puttered around the kitchen a little bit, straightening up. Then she said, “We should probably get that chip from you and head back home. Mom probably needs our help with something around the house this afternoon, don’t you think, Elena?”

  Thankfully, Elena took the hint and nodded. “I’ll call you later, all right, Cadence?”

  “That would be great. You still need to tell me when Donny’s going to meet me for lunch.”

  “I should know any day now.”

  Elena and Cass headed out to the street. They started walking down the sidewalk through the community towards where the Armstrongs lived. Cass put her hand in her pocket. She had the custom-programmed wireless chip there. She was a little worried about using it now, after what she’d seen in the Benson’s home.

  What if Cadence was messing with her and came up with a way to fry whatever device came close to that chip? Cass wasn’t sure she wanted to take the risk.

  “Hey, squirt, what do you think of Cadence. Is she really that reliable or was all of that talk an act?”

  “She hates this place, Cass. She literally can’t wait to get out of here. I think by the time she’s fifteen next year, she will have maxed out on all the science and math programs they can teach here in the enclave. Once that happens, I wouldn’t be surprised if she just ran away and headed to Boston to go to MIT all on her own. That’s all she talks about when she’s alone with me anymore. Well, that and Donny. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m a little worried, that’s all. I saw something in their garage that leads me to think her father’s mixed up with something that might be more dangerous than just being the cybersecurity director here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think he’s a member of Sapiens First.”

  “But Daddy always says that’s nothing but a myth.”

  Cass took a chance and kept talking. “They’re not. They’re very real and very dangerous. Simon Cantwell is one of them, too. He might even be their leader.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “You remember that tattoo on his arm? He left his sleeves rolled up when we were eating dessert after cleaning up from dinner. You must’ve seen it.”

  “Yeah. I saw it. It was pretty cool. I thought maybe he got it in the army or something.”

  “That’s the symbol of Sapiens First. I saw them in that video that went around.”

  “The fake video? You heard Dad. You can’t trust that thing.”

  “You’re wrong. I can trust it. It’s real, Elena. Everything in that video really happened. Have you even seen it?”

  “No, you know they don’t let us see stuff like that here inside the enclave and I never went looking for it when I could peek through the firewall. I hear it’s pretty nasty and graphic. Since it’s all fake, though, who cares?”

  “It’s not fake, Elena. I know for sure it isn’t. When those people were killed in that video, the person who killed them had the same tattoo in the exact same place as Mr. Cantwell. That’s how I know who he is. There’s something in the Benson’s garage, something horrible, with that same image on it that leads me to believe Mr. Benson is mixed up with it somehow, too.”

  “I don’t know, Cass. It all seems a little far-fetched. I mean, how do you know all that, just from being outside at school for a few months? You talk like you were there at the rally when it all happened.”

  Cass bit her lip, then decided she’d said so much already, she may as well go all the way. “I wasn’t just there, Elena. I recorded the video via my ocular and cerebral implants. I saw the whole thing and I have the whole recording up here to prove it. It was awful. I had it zoomed in to try and find out where Shelby’s brother was. I finally found him on stage just before they killed him. While I watched and recorded it, Shelby streamed it out from her tablet.”

  Cass stopped walking when she realized Elena was no longer next to her. She turned. Her sister stood a few feet behind her, staring at her with her mouth open.

  “Come on, Elena. Don’t freak out on me. Nothing’s changed. It’s just I saw something horrible and now I have to live with it. I told you because I trust you more than just about anyone right now.”

  Elena finally found her words again and shook her head. “Cassie, that must’ve been horrible. And Shelby’s brother was one of the ones who was killed?”

  “Yeah, and now I think Mr. Cantwell is chasing after Shelby with other members of their group. That’s why he had to leave in a hurry to go to Boston. It’s also why I have to reach out to Shelby and make sure she’s safe. I got through to her briefly last night and said enough to warn her. Now she’s on the run and I’m worried about her.”

  “Isn’t it already too late?”

  Cass shook her head. “No, Shelby got away from some people trying to catch her last night and took off to go into hiding. She thinks they killed her parents at her house and now they’re after her. She called me before she turned off her access to hide her location. Now I need to reach out to her, but to do that, I have to be able to get through the firewall. That’s why we had to go see Cadence.”

  Elena smiled and walked up next to her sister as the two started walking again.

  Cass glanced at Elena while the strolled down the sidewalk together. “What are you grinning about?”

  “I’m sure glad you’re home, Cass. Nothing this exciting ever happens when you’re gone.”

  “I could do with a little less excitement right now. Let’s go back to the house so I can see if the hack Cadence came up with actually works.”

  Chapter 19

  The internal alarm in Shelby’s implant sounded and woke her up with a start. It took her several seconds to remember where she was. Sitting up, Shelby rubbed her eyes and tried to get back in sync. She w
as tired, both physically and mentally, but she remembered she was at her cousin Ramona’s house. A check of her internal chronometer showed it was well past noon. She’d been asleep for a long time.

  Shelby sat on a ratty, orange plaid sofa from another century in a low-ceilinged basement. The cheap wood paneling on all the walls and the worn, shag carpeting all gave off a look at something out of a period holo-drama from almost a hundred years before.

  Across the room, a clothes washer and dryer sat side-by-side in an alcove beneath a simple set of wooden stairs. Shelby shook her head and pressed against her temples with her fingertips, massaging her head with gentle circular motions. Her head still hurt from the data blast Ramona had sent her the night before while she was driving down to Pennsylvania.

  Shelby stood up and walked over to the stairs. She heard footsteps above. Someone was up and around in the kitchen. She’d been here once before, a long time ago when she was little, and she remembered playing with Ramona in this basement. This was Shelby’s cousin’s childhood home.

  Ramona was an only child, born late in her parents’ lives. When her parents had passed away a few years back, Ramona had told the whole family she’d sold the house at auction to someone else. Of course, that was all part of her plan.

  Only recently had Shelby discovered that Ramona had repurchased the home from herself using a false identity. That was one of the reasons Shelby decided this was the place for her to come and try and disappear. Ramona Roche was as close to being untraceable as Shelby thought someone could be.

  As Shelby started to ascend the stairs, Ramona, a tall and gangly red-head, stepped into the doorway at the top of the steps. “Oh, I was just getting ready to call down to you. You said you wanted to get up about now. I know it’s after lunchtime, but I usually eat breakfast about now. I have some toaster waffles if you want to something to eat.”