“What is that?”
“That’s what we were debating, er, arguing about. It’s a Periscope bank,” George said, the lie rolling smooth out of his mouth. “They are giving live, real-time reviews of the movies playing today. We were arguing over which one to see. I’m sorry we got so loud, Father.”
Mr. Rhee gave his son a withering look. He knew his son only called him “Father” when he wanted to placate him and get lost. He pursed his lips and looked over his son as he weighed the truthful extent of the explanation. Finally, he turned to leave, but then stopped. “It’s silly to argue over what others say about a movie you haven’t seen. Go see the movie. Then argue over what you have seen for yourself. And do so quietly.”
His fatherly lesson given, he walked out of the room. George closed the door, holding up a finger for silence before either Dale or Mako could speak. He wanted to be sure his father was not lingering outside. After a moment, George reopened the door, checked the hallway, and then dashed back into his room. He flopped into his desk chair.
“Look, man,” he said to Mako, “I appreciate that you think you have a secret power as a Serb to read other Serbs’ minds, but I don’t think we can call the police and tell them, ‘Hey, Mr. Police Officer, yeah, after we hacked into a private network, we think we saw some terrorists because two of them went into a back room together.’”
“I’m telling you something is not right,” Mako hissed. “Serbian and Arab Muslims hate each other, except for when they are united in hatred of the West. They would not be lurking into back rooms together.”
“Dude,” Dale chipped in, “the one guy works there. Did it occur to you that maybe they’re just gay and were sneaking someplace private to give each other a little gift?”
“That’s gross. Muslims would not—”
George and Dale threw their hands into the air and groaned. The core of the argument that had brought George’s father pounding on the door was resurfacing.
“Right, there are no gay Muslims. Maybe not in the land of beheadings and cut-off balls, but in America—”
“There are plenty of gay Muslims,” said Dale, finishing George’s sentence.
Mako huffed and crossed his arms, his face set in stone. It was clear that his mind was made up. George threw his hands in the air once again and let forth an exasperated “Aargh.” He pushed his rolled chair across the room over to his keyboard to bring up more camera streams.
He immediately wished he had not. “Shit.”
Mako and Dale bolted over to the desk to look over George’s shoulder at the monitor. Without a word, George pointed to the top three camera streams.
The lobby was still crowded, but the hallways near the theaters were mostly empty. All the waiting lines had been cleared as the people had filed into their respective theaters for the start of previews or movies that had begun already.
Three of the hacked security cameras showed views of the exits in the hallways. Each had three males near the doors. One stood apart from the other two, peering down the hallway like a lookout. The other two were by the one outdated feature of the Palace theater complex: The doors had exit handles that extended out from the doors, rather than the modern ones that were flush against the door.
Now two men in each hallway view were pulling chains from backpacks and securing them against the exit handles.
The exits were now chained shut.
Chapter Six
Zavier walked into the theater and looked around to locate Maddie and company. He saw Vonda waving her hands with Maddie mimicking her with a bit more verve in her flapping arms. Knowing where he was headed, he started up the stairs being sure not to walk into someone or to trip. The last thing he wanted was to drop the drinks and popcorn gathered precariously in his arms. Getting back in line would be murder.
As he made his way down the aisle, he felt a hand on his leg. He looked down into the eyes of the Spanish woman Maddie had convinced to move.
“I’m sorry, young man. This seat is taken.”
“Oh, he’s with us,” Tina said. She moved quickly to grab some of the goodies.
The woman gave them a dubious look. “This is your daughter’s uncle?” Her tone conveyed disbelief.
Inwardly, Zavier shook his head. You would think in an era of blended families the idea of a black brother, father, or other family member would not be so shocking to people. Still, he could hardly blame the woman. He was not actually a family member . . . not in the traditional sense of the word anyway.
He smiled at her and shrugged. “What can I say? I’m adopted.”
“More like wandered into my house and never left,” Tina muttered as Zavier handed drinks to Derek and Vonda.
Sitting down, Zavier leaned back in his seat to look past Derek, who was chuckling at his expense. “I heard that, little woman,” Zavier said.
Tina looked back at him, her eyes opened wide. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, her words pure honey.
“Yeah, I see where Maddie gets that phony angelic look from.”
“Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom,” Maddie announced before Tina could respond to Zavier.
“Maddie, why didn’t you do that before we sat down?”
Maddie gave her mom the universal “duh” face and said, “We had to get our seats first.” She held up her fist and counted down her list. “Secure the seats. Get the snacks. And then use the bathroom.”
This time Tina and Derek gave Zavier a look, knowing full well where that checklist had come from. Zavier just took a sip from his Icee and turned to look at Vonda. He found no help there as she rolled her eyes.
“OCD as . . . um, behind,” she amended, remembering Maddie’s tender ears were present.
Tina started to get up. “Let’s go.”
“Mom! I’m eight, not a baby. I can go by myself.”
Derek reached out to touch Tina on the leg. “Honey, we’re at the movies, not an amusement park. She’ll be fine.”
Tina grimaced. Letting Maddie go to the restroom alone went against all her motherly instincts. There were crazy people all over the place. “Kids can disappear just the same at the movie theater,” she said.
“She runs around the neighborhood by herself all the time. She’ll be fine,” Derek said again.
Tina huffed, giving in. “Don’t talk to any strangers.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. They sounded so cliché. Lord, when did I turn into my mother?
“Don’t worry, Mom. Uncle Z showed me some moves.” Maddie struck a kung fu pose and then moved through the aisle to head to the restroom.
The Spanish woman chuckled. “You got a bit of a spitfire there, young lady.”
“Yes, I do. And this guy right here,” Tina said, reaching over to grip Zavier’s leg, “loves fanning it into an inferno, much to my dismay. Are you teaching my daughter how to fight?” she finished, her eyes boring into Zavier’s.
“Umm, no. Course not. That would be . . . wrong of me,” Zavier replied, his eyes avoiding Tina’s.
Derek slapped some popcorn in his mouth as if the show had already started. “This is why I love having this guy around. He gets in trouble for all the things I might do,” he said, addressing Vonda.
Vonda snorted so hard, soda shot through her nose.
While Vonda struggled with a coughing laugh as she patted herself with a napkin, Zavier spotted walking into the theater the two Muslim males who had given the teenage girls the evil eye. There were no young children with them. By itself this was hardly cause for alarm. The Ranger Apprentice series had both teenage and adult fans.
Zavier’s stomach rumbled anyway.
The two casually looked over the theater, as if looking for seats. The theater was almost full, but there were still empty sets of seats available here and there. One set of side-by-side seats, in fact, were directly in front of Zavier and his crew a couple of rows up. The young men looked at the seats, but ignored them. One male sat down in a seat in front. The o
ther walked across the theater, taking a seat in the same row, but opposite from his companion.
Zavier put his drink down and sat forward. His eyes narrowed like a hawk scanning the grass for mice. The two young men were sitting casually enough, but seemed more interested in the theater surroundings than the preshow videos or playing on smartphones like most people.
Zavier turned to his left to look behind him. When he was halfway turned around, he held his position and scanned all the rows and seats. He saw none of the other young Muslim men from the lobby. All he saw were families and groups of preteens playing on their phones. The difference between everyone else and the two young men up front made his stomach move past rumbling and into a clenched cramp.
“What’s wrong?” asked Vonda.
Zavier turned back around, pausing to look at Vonda. The look in his eye made her freeze. She had known him for years. She had seen every possible emotion on his face: anguish, fear, sorrow, and joy. What she saw now did not have a name. It only had a date and a moment that she’d seen on many people’s faces years ago.
September 11, 2001.
Chapter Seven
The three young hackers stood frozen. The images streaming through the security feed did not compute to them. Everyone knew that the twenty-first century was the age of terrorism, school shootings, and other public attacks, but these events happened elsewhere. It happened to other countries, in other cities, and to other people. It did not unfold in front of you on your computer screen like a real-life video game.
Except it was happening, or at least appeared to be getting ready to.
Unnoticed by George and Mako, Dale shuffled backward until he felt the back of his legs hit the bed. He leaned back, his hands searching around the sheets. His eyes never left the monitor.
“George, see if this is happening to anywhere else in the theater,” Mako said, his tone hollow.
The question seemed to shake George awake, and he quickly ran his fingers over his keyboard, bringing up other camera feeds. The view was the same in four other feeds. Two men by the exits, the doors chained shut.
George looked at Mako. “Security has got to see this, right? They have to see this, don’t they?” Behind him, he heard Dale speak, his voice low and tentative.
“H-Hello, 9-1-1? I-I think there is going to be an attack at the Palace theater,” Dale said into the phone. “There are these guys, they look like Muslims, and they’ve put chains on the exit doors. No I’m not there. I’m looking at it on my, I mean my friend’s computer screen.”
George and Mako walked over to Dale. He had stopped speaking. The voice on the other end was too low to hear, but it was obvious that a question was being asked.
“No, listen, dammit!” Dale screamed into the phone. “It doesn’t matter how we can see what’s happening at the theater. I’m telling you right now, something bad is about to happen. You have to get the police . . . No this is not a prank.”
The volume of the 9-1-1 operator’s stern tone increased enough for George and Mako to overhear her. Dale looked at his two friends with flat-out frustration. Mako grabbed the phone from him.
“Listen, lady. I’m telling you we have multiple guys that have chained the theater doors shut. Stop worrying about how we know. We just know. Get—hello? Hello?” Mako looked down at the phone. “She hung up. That bitch 9-1-1 operator hung up. That is so fucking cliché.”
Alex Sanderson should have been watching the security monitors. It was Christmas Day after all, and after a few years working at the Palace, he knew nothing said Merry Christmas like someone’s friend sneaking them into the theater. Christmas season was the worst day of the year in terms of people attempting to catch a holiday flick free of charge. Alex never understood how people could resort to stealing on Christmas of all days. It was Jesus’s birthday, for God’s sake. Well, not really, Alex knew. A teacher at school had said it was really like March ninth or something. Still Christmas was when everyone celebrated the birth of baby Jesus, so trying to sneak into a free movie ought to be a sin of the first order. It was so disrespectful.
Each year the managers put their best or most trusted employees on monitor duty. For the last two years that person was Alex, and he took it seriously.
The only thing he took more seriously was food, which is why his eyes weren’t on the monitors at the moment. Thanks to his coworker Rashid, pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni were Alex’s main mission right now. On the way out of his house, Alex had grabbed a couple of cookies his little sister had left for Santa—it was all he had eaten since nine this morning. When Rashid had knocked on the security door and said he had pizza, Alex nearly bowed to him in thanks.
Alex pushed the box toward his coworker, who was sitting in the seat next to him watching the monitors. “Have a piece, buddy. You’re making me feel like a pig.”
Rashid turned to him and grinned. “You are a pig. A pig eating a pig,” said Rashid, pointing a finger at a piece of pepperoni.
“Oh that’s right, you can’t eat pork. I’m sorry, man. I always forget—hey!” he stopped in midsentence as Rashid’s joke dawned on him. He leaned over and nudged Rashid with his elbow. “That was a good one,” Alex said, but Rashid was no longer looking at him. His eyes were looking past him back toward the security monitors.
Alex turned to the monitors too. He was standing at an odd angle and so could not see the screens very clearly. He leaned in a little to get a better view. He saw people standing near the hall exits. Not exactly anything odd, but that he could see the same thing on several camera feeds did pique his curiosity.
“Rashid, look what we have here,” he said, stepping toward the security monitor for a better look. He had not finished his first step before feeling a sharp, painful jolt at the base of his back. The pain stole his voice away, and his muscles locked up as fifty thousand volts of electricity poured from the Taser in Rashid’s hand.
Unable to move or keep his balance, Alex fell to the floor in a heap. Rashid looked down at him like a technician examining a test rat. He placed the Taser he had just used on Alex down on the table, next to the pizza. He down looked at his immobilized coworker.
Alex was still conscious but could not even widen his eyes in fear as Rashid pulled a large folding knife from his pocket. He could have used it instead of the Taser, but that would have been noisy and messy. This was better.
He liked Alex. Alex had always been kind and respectful to him. At least for an infidel, he thought.
Rashid bent down, and with complete calm, he pushed the knife through Alex’s ear just as he had been taught on the Internet. As promised, the knife easily slid through the ear canal and into the brain. Alex’s death was swift and with minimum blood loss.
Rashid left the knife in place and walked over to the security monitor station. He hit a couple of keys to disable the cameras. He then double-checked to make sure there was no blood on him. Not that it would matter soon.
A couple of minutes earlier, George, Mako, and Dale had been speechless in front of a monitor. Now they were speechless as they all looked down at the phone. A phone that a moment before held a 9-1-1 operator that had hung up on them.
“I can’t believe that just happened. Can they even do that? Just hang up on people?” Dale said, incredulous.
Mako rubbed his hands over his head. “They thought we were pranking them.”
“Well how the fuck would they know that?!” George shrieked. The outburst made his friends flinch. George never lost his even tone. “Call them back.”
“Wait. What the fuck?” said Mako. He was staring at the monitor. The others followed his gaze. The feeds were showing nothing but static.
“What happened? Did you lose the connection?” asked Dale as he moved back over to the desk.
“No, moron. Someone cut the cameras,” said George.
“Who did that?”
Dale’s question elicited nothing but a grim stare from his friends.
Without a word, George slid i
nto his chair. He opened the screen he had used to hack into the feed, his hands flying over the keyboard. He had no doubt what was going to happen now, and that knowledge gave him focus.
He needed to get the camera feeds back up. It was something he could do, and he needed to do something. Over his shoulder he started shouting instructions.
“Mako, pull up our gamer distribution lists. Shadow Chief, set up live streams for Ustream, Vine, YouTube, and Periscope.” Here George paused as his half-formed plan coalesced in his mind.
It was probably a bad idea, but he would be damned if some minimum-wage phone operator would ignore them now. “Mako, after getting our gamer lists, create a Facebook page called ‘Attack at the Palace.’ And get the Twitter feeds for the local and national news stations.”
It was strange to hear George use their gamer and hacking handles in such a situation, but it had the desired effect. Dale and Mako felt each of their minds clear as they moved like lightning to their laptops. The rat-a-tat of fingers hitting keys reigned supreme as each one focused on the task at hand.
Even though George had hacked into the feed earlier, he had just piggybacked the feed to his computer. The commands that actually worked the security systems were a separate hack. It took him longer than expected, but he got into the system.
Video feeds started popping back up on the monitor. “We’re back in.” Now that he had control of the camera system remotely, he set up a cycling block to keep anyone on sight from regaining control. George started cycling through the feeds. The view by the exit was the same, except the lookouts were now pulling from their backpacks what appeared to be automatic guns.
If there had been any doubt, it was now erased.
“Fuck,” whispered Dale.
George pushed his chair backward, rolling it to the bed. He grabbed his cellphone. Mako was looking at him.
The Madison Jennings Series Box Set Page 4