by Jamie Davis
Ramona turned and disappeared back into the kitchen as Shelby climbed the stairs behind her.
“Ramona, I wanted to thank you again for having me. I didn’t know where else to go.”
Ramona flashed Shelby a toothy grin. “Believe me, this is great. I’ve been looking for a way to stick it to the Sapiens First bastards for years.”
“Yeah, but everybody thought you were just spouting off when you talked about them at the last family reunion. I never really believed in them either, until I saw what they did to Eric.”
Ramona tapped the right side of the implant that circled the back of her head. “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t believe the amount of data I have stored up here about them, and a lot of other things, too.”
Shelby sat down at the kitchen table and reached up to run her fingers through her hair, as she still struggled to wake up. “Have you had any luck figuring out how to get me to disappear?”
“I’ve got a few ideas. It’s going to be tricky, because you’ve already shown up on the tracking systems. Someone is definitely looking for you. Usually, when you eradicate a person, it helps for them to be off the radar to begin with. Then no one notices when little bits of the database change here and there. Don’t worry, though. I’m on it. We’ll get it done.”
“I hope so. I still can’t figure out how this all happened. I didn’t think they’d be able to find me.”
Ramona walked over and sat down in the chair next to Shelby. She laid a hand on her cousin’s arm and gave it a squeeze of reassurance. “How sure are you about what happened to your parents?”
“I heard one of the police officers say they were bringing two bodies out. My parents were the only ones home, so it’s got to be them.”
“I did a search of police records in the Boston area, and there are no reports of any fatalities with your parents' names associated with them. They may not be in the system yet or are still being seen by the coroners, but I’ll keep an eye out for them. Is it possible something else happened and you misunderstood?”
Shelby tamped down her anger as emotions started to rise to the surface. “I didn’t misunderstand. The only other option is that my two older parents somehow took out two people from a Sapiens First hit squad and then called the police. Somehow, I doubt that’s the case.”
Ramona shrugged. “I’m only telling you to keep an open mind. They might just be screwing with you. Stranger things have happened in this world.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Even if they’re still alive somehow, I can’t go back. It would be too dangerous for them. We have to figure out how the Sapiens team found me and keep it from happening again.”
The electric toaster popped up the first round of frozen waffles. Ramona crossed the kitchen and grabbed two plates, putting a waffle on each of them and returning to the table.
She handed one to Shelby. “The Sapiens First hackers are pretty damn good considering their stance on technology. At this point, they probably know everything there is to know about that video you put out on the net.”
“I tried to anonymize it, but I guess I didn’t do a good enough job. Maybe if I’d…”
Ramona playfully poked Shelby in the shoulder with two fingers. “Stop that. Blaming yourself isn’t going to solve anything. Those monsters killed your parents, not you. You shouldn’t have to hide from anyone for showing the truth to the world.”
“I know, but…”
Ramona shook her head. “No buts about it. Now, eat your waffle. I’ll put another one down for each of us.”
Ramona went over to the freezer and pulled out a package with two more waffles in it, popping them in the toaster’s slots and dropping them down to heat. Shelby started digging into her waffle. She didn’t really like things that were too sweet, so she opted not to add syrup to it.
The batter they used to make the waffle had some sugar in it, so it was sweet enough for her already. As she chewed her first bite, Shelby thought about Cass. If they’d found her, could they trace it back to Cassie somehow, as well? Shelby asked Ramona the question.
Ramona sat down and slathered butter all over her waffle before drowning it in syrup. “Hmmm, it’s possible they traced it back to her. I really need to figure out how they identified you first and take a look at the original video for myself. If I can uncover hidden stuff about it, they can discover the same things, too.”
“I’m worried about Cass. She’s trapped in that enclave already and she’s having trouble getting through the firewall to communicate with me.”
“I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for her growing up in there. I know you say she’s a really decent person, but I wonder how she lived all those years with monsters like that and isn’t twisted herself in some way.”
A hint of ire filled Shelby’s voice as she jumped to defend her girlfriend. “She’s not a monster at all, and from what I can tell, her sister isn’t, either. I think they’re all simply people who’ve been misguided by someone who told them things that made them afraid.”
“That doesn’t excuse the horrible things their terrorist arm does on their behalf.”
“Of course, it doesn’t. I’m only saying that most of the people are probably pretty decent, and just fearful of technology because of what unscrupulous people have told them. I suspect the true believers are limited in number.”
Ramona added yet more butter to the remainder of her waffle and then drowned it in even more syrup. She set the syrup back down and shoveled a huge piece into her mouth.
Shelby shook her head and smiled. Ramona had always been a little bit strange. She was also the best person to help Shelby right now, and maybe Cass, too.
Shelby ate some more of her waffle and sat back in her chair. “Once we’re done with breakfast, what’s the plan?”
“I want you to download the video to my system in the other room. Then I’ll start analyzing it, while I run a sweeper program to find any trace of your whereabouts and erase it. We’ve got a lot to get done to make sure no one knows where you are. Then we can get started changing your identity to something new.”
“Do you think they might have followed me here?”
“I watched your scrambled signal all the way in. Between my anonymizer program and your quick thinking to drop offline, you did a good job of covering your tracks. I should be able to finish it up and make it so no one knows exactly where you are. They probably know you headed south initially, but after you got on the interstate and turned off your implant, they lost you. After that, we jacked the car’s identifier system so they probably have no idea where you are.”
“Probably doesn’t sound certain.”
Ramona smiled. “The goons aren’t going to find you here, Shelby. This house doesn’t exist anymore as far as most of the authorities know. Only the locals know where it is, situated back in the woods the way it is. I’ve shielded the entire structure so no electromagnetic emanations come off of it. People can’t even tell we’re using electricity in here. I’ve tapped into a pretty large stream that runs through the property, creating a small hydro-electric generator that runs all the power in the house. No one knows I’m here and that means no one knows you’re here.”
That revelation made Shelby feel better. She’d known Ramona was a bit paranoid, but she’d taken her precautions to extremes since the last time Shelby had seen her.
“Go ahead and finish up your waffle. The other will be done soon. Then we can get to work.”
Shelby nodded and went back to eating. Ramona wasn’t much for talking most of the time and it appeared she’d reached her limit for now. That was fine with Shelby. She wasn’t interested in talking anymore either. Her thoughts returned to Cass, wondering what she was up to that afternoon.
Once the two cousins finished breakfast and put the dishes away, Shelby followed Ramona into her office, or “the war room” as she put it. The computer system set up Ramona had was quite impressive.
Shelby had seen a lot of hacker rigs in her day,
but this one was over the top. It looked like Ramona had several different completely separate systems running simultaneously. She sat down in front of a bank of computer monitors. There were a half dozen in all, stacked on top of each other in two horizontal rows of three. Three separate mechanical keyboards sat on the desk below each pair of screens in the monitor bank.
Ramona sat down and began typing away at the left-most one. “I’m opening up a connection to the system for you. Open up your implant and search for something called Ramona one. It’s in my local network here at the house. Be careful. Don’t reach out to the Mantle by accident.”
“I know what I’m doing. I got this far, didn’t I?”
“Sorry. It’s just a standard warning. I’ve forgotten where I am in the process. It happens. I’m always careful and double check things. I’m going to make sure you’re cautious, too.”
Shelby checked her implant’s signal and opened up only enough so she connected to the house’s network. Once she was there, she found the port Ramona had mentioned. “I found it, now what?”
“Go ahead and download the cleanest copy of the video directly to me. I don’t wanna pull it off the web because it will have been corrupted from other sources. Getting it straight from you will give me the closest to the original copy there is, and I can get a reading on what they might be able to figure out based on it.”
Shelby went ahead and did as she was instructed, downloading the video to Ramona’s system. The connection was pretty fast and it was done in a few seconds. Shelby pulled a chair over from the corner and sat down next to Ramona, watching her start working on the complex system she’d created.
“What’s next?”
Ramona smiled. “I’m running a system check on the video first. Then I’m going to put it through a series of identifier programs I’ve created. While they’re running in the background, I’m going to scrub your back trail for you and make sure no one can trace you to anywhere near here.”
Shelby watched as her cousin continued to work for almost an hour.
Ramona muttered something under her breath, then hit return on the central keyboard one last time, and leaned back in her chair. She stretched her arms up over her head.
“Finished. Right now, Shelby, I can say with some confidence that no one has any clue where you are at this moment. I was even able to go back and wipe your passage through the tolls below Boston. I can’t believe how easy it was to break into that system. There’s a chance the others might have already pulled that information for themselves, but if they didn’t, they aren’t going to find it now.”
“So that’s it? I’ve just disappeared?”
Ramona nodded, beaming with pride. She held her hand palm out in front of Shelby’s forehead and shouted out like a holovid preacher on Sunday morning. “You are Clean!”
The two cousins enjoyed a brief chuckle together before Ramona turned back to the wall of monitors. “Now comes the tricky part. Enough people are looking for you right now that I can’t just do my normal scrub and replace job to create you a new identity. They have surely uploaded your likeness into the cloud and are running a facial recognition search for you right now.”
Ramona pointed to a series of photographs of Shelby that popped up onto the rightmost screen. “I’m going to have to carefully remove mentions of you, including all these search reference photos, one at a time in a variety of different places. We have to make sure I’m not creating a pattern of deletions that anyone can identify. The goal is to make it so that you just sort of ghost away off the grid without anyone noticing. That’s going to take us most of the rest of the day. You can help by running me through your normal daily routine and giving me access to all your accounts at home and at school. Once that’s done, I can start passing through those systems and purging them so you were never there.”
Shelby nodded. “I can download a GPS track of my location for the last month from my implant. Will that help?”
“That’s perfect. Go ahead and upload it to the system named Ramona three.”
Shelby smiled and started uploading the information to the network port so that Ramona had access to it. While she was doing that, a chime sounded from the system on the left. That was the one running the check on the video.
Ramona leaned close to the lower left monitor, scanning the code displayed there.
“Uh-oh,” Ramona said.
“What do you mean, ‘uh-oh?’”
“I mean there might be a way to trace the video back to Cass. Where did she get her implant put in?”
“I told you, it was after an accident during a trip we were on. A hospital in the islands installed it.”
“Yeah, I remember you telling me about that, but I’d forgotten. It seems as if her system ID’s serial number tagged itself to the video. It’s deep in the code, but it’s there.”
“What does that mean?”
“Unless you tell it not to or shut it off permanently, every implant tags its serial number to outgoing transmissions. It’s just another way to keep things straight in the Mantle. A lot of people know to shut that off. You probably did it a long time ago. I suspect no one even told Cass about it, and because of that, it’s still tagged to the video. It’s clearly identified as a medical grade device ID.”
Shelby scratched her head. “So?”
“So, that’s the problem.”
Shelby leaned over and looked at the screen, trying to discern what Ramona was looking at in the lines of computer code.
Ramona pointed at the screen and continued. “The medical ID is tagged back to its manufacturer. All they have to do is find out where that device was sold and where the doctor was who installed it. Then they can hack the medical records and figure out whose implant it is. The good news is, you said you were both down in the islands, right?”
Shelby nodded.
Ramona smiled. “That might actually work in our favor. I think I’ll try and see if I can hack in down there, too. We’ve got to see if we can erase the connection between that medical ID and Cass. I fear it’ll be next to impossible to remove all the links. If we can’t, then you’re going to have to go find a way to get her out of the enclave before they trace it back to her. It’s not a matter of if they do it, only when.”
Shelby shook her head. “We can’t count on being able to get her out of there. Let’s get to work and see if we can backtrack it and erase the records. We can do that first. I think it’s more important than erasing me right now. We know I’m hidden. Cass is not.”
Chapter 20
When Cass and her sister got home, she wanted to go upstairs and try out Cadence’s chip update right away. Unfortunately, her mom had stuff for both she and Elena to do around the house that afternoon. By the time she was done with the chores, it was dinner time.
While they sat eating, Cass’s mom and dad made random small talk about their day and shared some gossip from the neighborhood. Cass tuned it out. All she could focus on was getting upstairs and running the update to see if she could reach out to Shelby somehow.
She thought she’d finally get away to her room as the family finished their meals, when her dad announced, “I think we should all do something as a family. I want to head out and go down to the Community Center together. I think given everything that’s happened since Cass has been back from school, it would be good for people to see us together.”
Something about the way he said it irked Cass. “What do you mean, Dad?”
“It’s just that everyone here knows about your relationship with that girl.”
“Her name is Shelby.”
Her dad continued without acknowledging Cass’s correction. “I think it’s important for people to see that you haven’t changed. They need to know you’re still the Cass they knew before you went away. That’s important, honey. Otherwise, the enclave leadership might decide you’re a risk to the community and ask you to leave.”
Cass suppressed the smile that she wanted to show, when she heard his men
tion of the threat every enclave parent held over their teens. Once someone was shunned by the movement, there was no return and no contact.
In this case, shunning would solve her problem. If the other leaders of the community kicked her out, her father would probably try to stop it. He had some standing in the national movement as well as locally, but if he didn’t fight it then she’d be free to leave and he wouldn’t be able to stop her. Her only other option was to sneak out in the night and get away before anyone could come after her.
It was someone coming after her that Cass feared the most. Her dad wielded a lot of power inside the national Sapiens community. Everyone knew how connected he was to Sterling Noble, the movement’s leader. Her father would resist Cass’s desire to go back to school any way he could. He would fear the embarrassment her defection would cause him.
Cass decided her only recourse right now was to nod and smile at his request to go out. She had to ignore the slight to Shelby. She couldn’t very well refuse, not until she had some sort of plan to get away. Otherwise, he’d just come out and get her. He had friends inside the local police force so she couldn’t rely on them to help her if she told someone she was in danger.
After dinner, the four of them left the house together and walked through the neighborhood towards the enclave’s Recreation and Community Center. According to the digital sign in front of the building, a movie had been planned for that evening’s activity. It was an old two-dimensional flat screen version of a classic comedy that happened to be one of her father’s favorites when he was a kid. She’d seen it at least four times growing up, but decided to make the best of it and enjoy the show.
Cass surprised herself at how much she enjoyed the movie. It was called Home Alone, and it was about a boy celebrating an old Christian holiday, in which his parents left him home with no supervision. It was cute and pretty funny in a weird sort of way. Her father laughed louder than anyone else.
When the movie ended, Cass got up and walked over to the refreshment table to get something to drink. She picked up one of the sugar cookies laid out with all the other snacks.