by Dan Wells
She was standing, but on what? It was too dark to see. But no, she thought. It’s not dark—my mind is interpreting it as darkness because there isn’t any other input. I can see myself just fine. The reason I can’t see anything else is because there’s nothing else to see.
In the instant she realized she wasn’t standing on anything, she felt herself falling, plummeting through the nothingness at breakneck speed. She screamed, and the sound seemed to fill the world—the only sound this world had ever known. She flailed wildly, terrified at the sheer vastness that surrounded her—she could fall forever, never landing, because there was nothing for her to land on. She could grow old and die and still be falling, a tattered skeleton in ragged clothes. But no, she thought again. It’s only limitless because that’s how I’ve imagined it. NeverMind is a reflection of my own thoughts. Anja said there’s nothing here but what I put here.
So she put something there.
She imagined the autocab, and suddenly there she was, sitting inside of it, with Omar holding her side and Anja studying the tablet screen intently.
“Are you real?” Marisa asked.
“We’re manifestations of your subconscious,” said Anja, “but you know that already, or I wouldn’t be able to say it.” By the end of the sentence it was Marisa speaking, not Anja, and Marisa couldn’t help but shudder at the sensation—these were her own thoughts, reflected back at her through an Anja she had imagined out of nothing. Marisa looked out the windows and saw Anja’s high school, but only in vague outline—it wasn’t a building she knew well, so her mind filled in the gaps as best it could, extrapolating the specific shape into a broad generalization of other buildings pulled from Marisa’s memory—red bricks, wide windows, and tiled roof covered in solar trees. She studied it, looking for pieces she recognized, and saw bits of her own school: a corner here, a lawn there, and suddenly it was her school, more familiar than Anja’s and thus more clearly rendered, as solid in NeverMind as it was in the real world. She focused on the school, unnerved by the fluid way the world kept redefining itself, willing it to stay here, to stay one thing just for a moment. The wind blew in the trees; the sun glinted from the glass in the windows. She smelled flowers.
“Not bad for a first-timer,” said a voice. Marisa spun, searching for whoever had said it, feeling the whole of reality seem to lurch with the realization that the speaker was Someone Else. A brain that was not hers had entered NeverMind, and with that sense of invasion her control shattered, the school physically splintering like a cracked mirror, bright shards of a false reality spinning off into the void. She felt herself falling again, only to be caught by a soft leather couch, black and smooth and gleaming faintly from a light source she couldn’t identify. The rest of a dark red room seemed to fly at her from all sides, walls and floor and ceiling and a low black table assembling themselves into a simple box with her in the middle. A glass bowl appeared on the table, filled with white stones, and the voice spoke again. “Not bad at all. I always thought that table needed something on it.”
“Are you Grendel?” asked Marisa. Her voice was coarse, like she was out of breath, and she tried to force herself to calm down. Her body wasn’t even here—she could sound like whatever she wanted. Her heart rate—her imaginary heart rate—seemed to slow, and she breathed deeply, filling her lungs.
“I am.”
Marisa nodded. “What are you doing?”
“I’m building a room,” said Grendel. “It’s the same room I always use for these meetings, but the bowl is new. You added that. I like it.”
“We’re creating this reality together,” said Marisa, trying to sound more sure than she really was. She almost said That makes sense, but stopped herself. She needed to look more certain than that, more experienced. She crossed her legs with what she hoped was a stylish flair. “What makes you think I’m a first-timer?”
“Because you fell,” said Grendel, and she could feel his amusement rippling through NeverMind. “Everyone falls the first time.”
Marisa winced. “How long have you been here? I thought I was alone.”
“I’ve been here ever since I sent the invitation,” said Grendel’s voice. “You just didn’t see me because I’m . . . very good at not existing.”
“Do I get to see you?”
“Trust me,” said Grendel, “I’m the last thing you want to see,” and as his voice grew angry the room grew dark, the red walls seeming to fester into the dark purple color of a bruise. The stones in the glass bowl hatched into maggots. Marisa clutched the arm of the couch, but even that was fake, another construct of this warped mind, and the armrest shrunk beneath her hands as if shying back from her touch. She stood up just before the couch shriveled in on itself and disappeared completely. She felt her skin crawling, and desperately started counting, concentrating on the numbers, one-two-three-four-five, praying that the single-minded focus would help her regain control before her subconscious mind converted the skin-crawling feeling into actual insects wriggling through her clothes. She breathed deeply, ignoring the stranger’s angry voice, the twisted images that oozed out of his mind, the fierce unreality of everything around her. Soon the numbers gave way to computer code, and she recited the commands in her head, calmed by the familiar words and cadences of programming. She opened her eyes and the room had returned to normal.
“You said you had information about that code,” said Marisa. Her voice wavered, but didn’t crack. “Do you know what it is? Do you know who made it?”
“I’ve seen that code twice before,” said Grendel. “The first time was in Japan, in a Dolly Girls program.”
“That’s what the guy on Lemnisca.te said,” said Marisa, leaning forward.
“Sobredoxis,” said Grendel. “His English isn’t the best.”
Marisa tried to build a wall in her mind, keeping her thoughts private. Someone had been deleting Sobredoxis’s messages almost as quickly as they were posted, and yet somehow Grendel had seen them. Had he just gotten lucky, catching one of the posts during that tiny window before it disappeared? Or was he the one who’d been deleting them?
“If I was the one trying to hide his posts,” said Grendel, “why would I be coming to you now?”
“You’re reading my mind,” Marisa accused. She gritted her teeth, as if that would help to keep him out. The disembodied voice chuckled softly.
“And you’re reading mine,” said Grendel. “That’s what NeverMind is. Don’t worry—the more you practice, the better you get at controlling what other people see and hear.”
“So what are the Dolly Girls?” asked Marisa. “Is it a band?”
“It’s not a group,” said Grendel, “it’s a technology. Djinni software that can sever a mind’s conscious control of its body, allowing someone else to control the body like a puppet. I’ll leave it to your imagination what they tend to use it for.”
Marisa felt a wave of disgust roll over her, rippling through the walls of the room like the slow, lazy flick of a tentacle. “That’s horrible.”
“And highly illegal,” said Grendel. “They circumvent a few laws by only installing it in paid, consenting hosts, but even then there’s still a ton of laws they’re breaking. That’s why most people have never heard of it.”
Marisa closed her eyes, trying not to think of those poor human puppets, dancing on the end of some sick bastard’s digital string, and then her eyes flew open. “Anja!”
“Who’s Anja?”
“Nobody,” said Marisa fiercely, mentally kicking herself for saying the name out loud. She felt a sharp pain in her thigh, and as she staggered away she turned to see a copy of herself standing behind her, her foot raised in a kick. She wished the copy away, and felt an uncomfortable shiver as she watched herself disintegrate, turning to dust and blowing away in an intangible wind. She turned around slowly, peering into every corner of the room, expecting to see Grendel hiding in a shadow, but she was alone. The shadows grew deeper as she probed them, until she found herself
at the center of a tiny circle of light. She wasn’t even sure if the walls were still there.
Grendel’s voice seemed almost unnaturally calm in the darkness. “I want to stress that the code you showed me is not the same as the Dolly Girls code. Just similar.”
“It’s a truncated version,” said Marisa. “It wasn’t growing in the right environment so it couldn’t—”
“You’re missing my point—it’s more sophisticated,” said Grendel. “Not less.” He paused for a moment, letting that sink in. Marisa felt the ramifications settle on her heavily—if the truncated code she’d found in the Bluescreen was somehow more powerful—
“So somebody found it in Japan and brought it here,” she said. “And then they . . . improved upon it.”
“You didn’t say on the message board where you found the code,” said Grendel, and then he paused just a fraction of a second before adding, “or where you are. I can only assume from your statement that you’re not in Japan?”
Marisa grimaced again, angry at how easily she was letting so much information slip out. “I’m not,” she said, “and I’m not going to tell you any more than that.”
“Let me take a wild guess,” said Grendel. “Los Angeles?”
Marisa glared at the darkness. “How in the hell did you—”
“I told you I’ve seen that code twice,” said Grendel. “The first was in the Dolly Girls, and the second was about three months ago. A hacker named eLiza posted on Lemnisca.te, just like you did. I recently learned that she lived in Los Angeles.”
“Lived?” asked Marisa. “Past tense?” She felt her chest tighten with fear.
“I wasn’t planning to contact you at all,” said Grendel, “but then I saw the news and decided I should warn you. eLiza was found murdered in her Los Angeles apartment not two hours ago.”
“Ay, que no,” said Marisa, shaking her head. NeverMind grew darker as the light slowly faded away.
“Be careful, Marisa Carneseca,” said Grendel, and Marisa felt her heart freeze. He knows my name. “Don’t go poking around where you don’t belong. Whoever knows this secret really doesn’t want it to get out.” The light disappeared, and Marisa sat up with a desperate cry, gasping for air in the back of the autocab. She felt like she’d just surfaced from a deep dive. Omar steadied her, and Anja grabbed her hands.
“Easy,” said Anja, “you’re back.”
“What happened?” asked Sahara from the speakers. “Is everything okay? Somebody talk to me!”
“We’re screwed,” said Marisa.
“He didn’t upload anything,” said Anja, “I was watching the whole time. We’re safe.”
“We’re not even close to safe,” said Marisa, shaking her head and panting. “We’re back to plan A: run.”
NINE
“What happened?” Sahara demanded. “Did you get hurt?”
“Doxed at the very least,” said Marisa. “He knew my name, and if he knows that, he knows everything.” She took a deep breath and pulled away from Omar. “But he’s not what we need to worry about—he was warning me. Autocab, start driving.”
“Where would you like to go?” asked the cab. Its voice was friendly, but there was no real personality behind it.
“I don’t care,” said Marisa, “just drive.”
“Let’s take a tour of the city,” said the autocab. “Would you like me to point out landmarks as we drive?”
“Just shut up and let her talk,” said Anja.
“Marisa,” said Sahara, “calm down. Take a breath, and tell us what happened.”
“A hacker was found dead,” said Marisa. “Have either of you ever heard of someone named eLiza?”
“Of course not,” said Omar.
“She means Anja and me,” said Sahara. “And no, I haven’t.”
“I think maybe?” said Anja. “Nothing big—I probably just saw her name on Lemnisca.te somewhere.”
“That’s where Grendel found her,” said Marisa with a nod. “She was asking about the same Bluescreen code we found, and now she’s dead.” She grabbed Anja’s hands. “She died the same night Bluescreen made you run into traffic, and the same night I posted the code on the darknet. This is not a coincidence.”
“I’m looking her up now,” said Sahara. “Sharing the link to your djinnis.”
An alert from Sahara appeared in Marisa’s vision, and she blinked to open it. The cab seemed to fill with small white squares, each containing a news story or blog post. Marisa blinked on the nearest one, and it unfolded into a small, hovering video screen that only she could see and hear.
“A USC student was found dead in her Jefferson Park apartment early Friday morning,” said the reporter. “Authorities are holding five fellow students for questioning. Officials say that Elizabeth Swaim, twenty-one, was found on the living room floor of her apartment just before six a.m. The woman suffered several stab wounds to her chest and arms, and was pronounced dead on the scene. Neighbor Christopher Lodge told this reporter that Swaim was always a quiet resident, keeping to herself. . . .” Marisa closed the article.
“Elizabeth Swaim?” she asked. “We’re sure that’s the right one?”
“The link I watched said she was a computer science student,” said Anja. “And her death matches what Grendel told you—it sounds like she’s our hacker.”
“Who killed her?” asked Omar. “These links keep saying ‘five fellow college students,’ but we don’t know if they’re suspects or witnesses or what.”
“It’s too early to find that kind of information,” said Sahara. “The police probably haven’t even released it.”
“But they’ve collected it,” said Marisa, sitting up straighter, “and that means we can find it.”
“Jeez, Mari,” said Sahara. “You can’t hack the LAPD.”
“You can absolutely hack the LAPD,” said Omar. “I go to the same school as all these people; I want to know who did this.”
“Saif’s a student there, too,” said Marisa, opening the LAPD website. “Business college or something. Everything keeps tying back to USC.”
“Who’s Saif?” asked Omar.
“My dealer,” said Anja. “You’ve never met him.”
Omar glowered. “I don’t want you to meet him anymore, either.”
“Shut up,” said Marisa. “I’m bringing out the Goblins.” She needed to concentrate; she’d never hacked a government website before, but there was a first time for everything. She opened one of the hidden folders and activated her Goblins—a suite of programs she’d written specifically to help with hacking. Each one of them performed a specialized, automated function to make the process faster and harder to trace.
The first Goblin was a distraction—it went out into the internet, grabbed whatever unprotected computers it could find, and told them all to access the target website over and over again, all at the same time. It didn’t help the hacking process, but it made it easier to cover her tracks later. The second Goblin went to work on the website’s link map, building a visual reference of exactly what the site contained, and how the different sections were connected to each other. This showed her quickly where the login points were, and what security system they used to manage their passwords. “They’re using Longhorn,” she said out loud. “That’s tough, but at least it’s basic.”
“How can it be hard and easy at the same time?” asked Omar.
“It’s like a really tall wall,” said Anja. “It might be hard to climb, but there’s no flying crocodiles to fight off while you do it.”
“Let her work,” said Sahara.
“We call those dragons,” said Omar.
“I know the word for dragon,” Anja snorted. “I said flying crocodiles on purpose.”
Marisa activated the third Goblin, which went to work on her own connection to the target server—not breaking the connection, or even hiding it, just resetting it over and over. Then she pointed the fourth Goblin at the login page and set it loose, trying every password it could thi
nk of, starting with the most common. Usually a blunt-force attack like this would raise a red flag, and Longhorn would block the connection completely, but with the third Goblin constantly resetting the connection Longhorn would get confused, and the attack could proceed unhindered. She waited, holding her breath, and then a sad goblin face appeared in her djinni display, shaking its head.
“Crap,” said Marisa. “We’re locked out.”
“Another security layer?” asked Anja.
Marisa closed her eyes, feeling overwhelmed. “Biometric.”
“Those have got to be hard to hack,” said Omar.
“They’re impossible to hack,” said Sahara. “It’s probably a fingerprint or a retina scan or something—the only way to get through the second layer is to literally be the person in charge of the account. You can’t even cut off the person’s finger, like in the vids, because it checks for blood flow—not that I’m into severing fingers, I’m just saying.”
“This is ridiculous,” said Omar. “Give me sixty seconds, max.” He leaned back in his seat and blinked, holding up his finger for silence. He started a call on his djinni, and when he spoke his voice was pure honey. “Hi, can you connect me with Brooklyn Grace? This is Angel Vasquez, personal assistant for Francisco Maldonado. Thank you.” He winked at Marisa, and whispered conspiratorially. “LAPD financial administrator. They’re transferring me.” He looked up suddenly, smiling brightly even though it wasn’t a video call. “Good morning, Ms. Grace, this is Angel Vasquez, personal assistant for Francisco Maldonado. How are you this morning?” Pause. “Yes, he got your gift, thank you very much for sending it.” Pause. “No, please, it’s we who thank you. Mr. Maldonado considers it a privilege to donate to the department.” Pause. “Well, as it happens, Mr. Maldonado is very concerned about the news this morning. It’s always a tragedy to lose someone so young, especially a promising student like Ms. Swaim. As you know, Mr. Maldonado’s son Omar attends USC, and—oh no, don’t worry, Omar’s fine—but we would like very much to know the names of the students being held by the police, so that we could help the families with anything they might need.” Pause. “I understand the rules, but Mr. Maldonado was hoping that you might be able to bend them, just a little, out of respect for his long history of extremely generous financial support.” Pause. “Thank you very much. I’ll let Mr. Maldonado know how helpful you’ve been. Thank you. I’ll talk to you soon.”
