by Ryan Schow
“Were you just talking to Lennox Carlisle and that actress he’s with?” the girl asked. She had to be twenty-five, not more than twenty-eight.
“Sabrina,” he said, over the noise of the crowd. “Sabrina Baldridge.”
“She did that hooker by night show on the CW, right?” the girl asked.
“Lies & Lays,” he said.
“What’s Lennox like?” she wanted to know. How the girl was so star struck she’d suddenly cut her date and Aniela out of their conversation made him uneasy.
He felt the tension building in Aniela. Or maybe he was imagining things.
“Honestly, he seems a little faggy to me, but in an overly confident way,” Brayden answered, nonchalant, like he could give a crap less. “It’s like whatever androgynous shit he does, bisexual or otherwise, he’s the trendsetter and everything is just cool because it is.”
“You don’t get that successful that quick and keep your humility,” she said. “The kid’s a rock star. He has everything he wants.”
“Yeah,” Brayden replied, thinking of Sabrina, all the little deaths she suffered sitting deep within her eyes.
“So are you a fan or what?” Aniela asked, working her way into the conversation.
“Oh, yeah. I’m Anne Marie, by the way,” she said, like it was the first time she even looked at Aniela. She extended a bejeweled hand out over the table which Aniela politely shook. “This tall drink of water with almost nothing to say is my boyfriend, Dusty.”
Dusty, unamused but unoffended by her comment, gave Aniela a polite nod and within a few minutes the four of them were getting along fine. After that Brayden started drinking Alien Nipples, perhaps a little too fast and a little too often. He was really wanting to soften that razor sharp edge he couldn’t seem to shake. Aniela was watching him putting the drinks away too fast. She kept saying, “Dude, pump the brakes,” but he was fine.
Until he wasn’t.
When Anne Marie asked what the hell an Alien Nipple even was, for a second he felt his brain trying to go from neutral to fifth gear and it was one giant sputtering of thought and blurry confusion.
Finally, he handed it to her and she took a sip and things were no sharp edges and lots of delayed effects. Like his equilibrium was having issues: fast forward, pause, super slow mode then fast forward and pause. Oh, thank God for pause.
Finally his brain dropped back to neutral then slammed hard into first.
“An Alien Nipple is Butterscotch Schnapps, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Midori Melon liqueur. A quarter ounce of one and a half ounce of two, but something like, maybe…I don’t know. What do you think?”
She started to talk, but he wasn’t listening. His head was swimming, and his thoughts were the same as they always were when he became emotionally vulnerable: Raven, Abby, Savannah.
Time skipped forward.
He couldn’t remember the in between, like how he got from letting Anne Marie taste his drink to how the next thing he knew he was dancing with Sabrina just about completely shit-faced and honestly taken aback by it.
“What are you doing here?” he asked her, slowing the rhythm he’d apparently built up when he was mentally lost in space only moments ago.
She was in his arms. It was that kind of song: slow, sensual, moving.
“You asked me to dance.”
“Why did you say yes?” he said, his lips near her neck, the skin so smooth and perfect.
“Because you looked as sad as me and misery craves company.”
“Indeed.”
“Are you…did you have something done to you, genetically, to make you this perfect?” he asked.
If he was sober, he wouldn’t have asked such a question. Girls like Sabrina, they knew they were perfect looking and rule number one if the girl you were targeting was better looking than you was not to complement them. It was to neg them. To bring them down a bit. Get them thinking they’re not all that and you’re on the same level.
“Awhile back.”
“I never did tell you,” he said, the alcohol just tearing away every last shred of pretense and common sense, “that I think you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.”
She gave a sad little laugh and said, “That’s what most guys say.”
The clunking gears of his brain began to adjust. He cleared his throat and said, “Don’t get me wrong, you’re not my type. I was just saying that when you’re nice, it’s easy to see you and you are so terribly easy on the eyes.”
She pulled back, a humored expression on her face, and said, “Are you hitting on me Brayden James?”
“I’ve got Aniela. Even though she’s dancing with some one else and I’m with you—”
“How does that work?”
“I don’t know that it will. She almost twice my age and it bothers her.”
“So why are you two together?” she asked, settling back into him.
“Because apparently older women like me. I don’t get it. My first was an older woman with a dog I met on an elevator out here.”
“What’s the dog have to do with anything?” she asked.
“It was her husband’s dog and she hated it. She left to take care of it before I even got her name.”
She started to say something, but stopped when she saw him. Lennox came strolling onto the dance floor like Brayden had enjoyed his woman long enough and now it was time for him to kick rocks. He asked to cut in, but Brayden looked up and said, “No man, you get her all the time and I’ve just got her until the song is over.”
“She’s my girlfriend,” he said, posturing up.
“And I’m happy about that, I really am,” he said, a bit of a slur still stuck to the bottom tone of his words, “but we’re mid-conversation here and you two can talk anytime you want. So when I’m done with her, I’ll deliver her back to you, unharrassed and unkissed, and then you can just be you the way you are when you’re with her and I’ll go back to my girlfriend, whom I’m starting to miss at this point.”
Lennox wasn’t used to not getting his way, and Brayden knew right away the kid wouldn’t fight for what he wanted, so he just shrugged his shoulders, waited a second, then turned around and went back to his booth.
Sabrina became very quiet, then: “Why did you do that?”
“Because he’s a beta pretending to be an alpha, and right now, you’re with me, and I wasn’t done with you.”
“You are an interesting boy, Brayden James,” she said, but in a good way, like she might be impressed.
“Thank you. I like you, too.”
“Am I ever going to see you again?” she asked.
“Do you want to see me again?”
“Yes.”
The song was becoming another song and he tasted his breath, which blustered a tad sour and felt more dry than he’d like. He wasn’t completely plowed; he started to get a hold of that tipsy feeling you get when that delicious haze of inebriation was threatening to burn off.
“You don’t know these people,” she said, a new look in her eye, something like fear passing through her expression. Was she referring to Lennox? The Hollywood crowd? The L.A. music scene?
“What about them?” he asked, his mouth a bit sticky.
She took a moment, glanced over at Lennox and his entourage (he had three slutty girls vying for his attention, but the singer’s eyes were on Brayden and Sabrina), smiled, then looked back into Brayden’s eyes so deep he felt she might actually kiss him the look was that intimate.
“They’re fucking soulless,” she said, her words a stark contrast to her charmed, yet blasé expression. She leaned in to him, gave him a light kiss on the cheek and—in his ear—she said, “I’m going to call you if I need to, if things get really bad. Is that okay?”
He felt the sudden stab of fear for her kick up inside his chest, then sink quickly into his gut.
“Is it really that bad?” he asked, glimpsing nonchalantly over at Lennox. One of the girls he was with sat down beside him. She had an
amazing body, one Brayden knew she worked hard on to offset the unattractiveness of her face.
Her eyes started to shimmer with tears and the thin, steadfast veneer fell away, betraying hints of something much more damaged than he’d seen before. Everything about her became the jittery aura of the freshly victimized. She had that barely-hanging-on look in her eye. That look of emptiness crashing into a scarcely-controlled-mania you often got when really bad stuff is happening.
His concern for her doubled, then tripled.
“Is there something I need to know?” he said, the fuzz of inebriation all but gone. The heat along his neck jumped a few degrees and he felt sweat gathering under his arms and along his upper and lower back.
“Yes,” she answered, the pouty, carefree façade returning. He wasn’t fooled though. The life had fallen out of her eyes moments ago, that plastic expression of frosty detachment settling right back in place. “I needed you tonight, Brayden. I needed to connect with you the way I did, and you were there for me, and I love you for that.”
And then she was gone, blown away on a soft breeze, heading back to Lennox. He was left with only the residue of her, an unsettled feeling stirring deep within him. Whatever that girl was suffering from, Brayden figured, was far worse than even he could imagine, and he could imagine some truly heinous things.
Aniela rolled into him, surprising him, and they started to dance. He felt himself moving with her, but he might as well be on another planet.
“What’s wrong?” she said, seeing his expression.
“There’s something wrong with Sabrina,” he heard himself say. “Something wrong with Lennox, or L.A., or something.”
“She lost everything,” Aniela said, no longer moving to the music. The two of them were standing in a crowd of dancing people in perfect stillness, like two stones in a river unmoving, hit by the current of light and sound and bodies in motion, but in a world all their own.
“There’s something inside of her that’s broken, I know,” he said. “But whatever bad things happened to her in terms of her family, they’re making it worse. Those trendsetting blowhards.”
She took his hand, pulled him off the dance floor and said, “When I see you this sad, or this lost, I only want to take care of you.”
Lennox and Sabrina and the entourage were leaving. Sabrina looked over her shoulder, searching for him on the dancefloor, then around the club. She found his eye, stopped, then turned back around and was gone.
Aniela took hold of his face, turned him by the chin to face her. “I want to make love to you tonight,” she said, softly, kissing him on the mouth. “Is that okay?”
He slowly nodded his head, then turned and hugged her.
“You’re going to need some Listerine though, because all that drinking has made your mouth smell like boiled ass.”
Back at his house, he brushed his teeth and rinsed with mouthwash, then they made love and it was a beautiful escape. Aniela was sensual and passionate, sometimes moving hungrily against him, other times riding the long edge of a slow grind. This was a woman who understood men, what they needed, how to coax the darkness out of them, if only for a moment.
Whatever it was she did specifically, she’d eased him out of the wash of Sabrina, and Raven/Abby, and she gently, precisely brought him to that blissful state where only he and Aniela existed. When they were done, he curled into her, let her run soft fingers over his face, his scalp, his body.
“I wish I didn’t like you the way I do,” she said. He was already dozing off, though, the soul-swallowing sex already exacting its toll.
3
The next day he left Aniela with a kiss. She’d been sound asleep, her naked body pulled into a fetal position and tucked under the blankets, her breath coming steady and softly through her nose. All he wanted to do was stare at her. God, she was beautiful.
So at peace.
He tried to imagine himself with her. He tried to imagine them being exclusive. What would she be like in ten years? Who would he be? Would they still even like each other? They’d only ever existed together inside the world of pick-up. Their scene was the club scene.
That’s when he leaned over the bed, gently kissed her cheek, just beside her mouth. She gave a half whimper, barely audible. She turned her face into his. He kissed her on the mouth, once, twice, three times. She rolled back over, saying nothing, going back to sleep. He wanted to say something, but what? What should he have said?
What could he say?
He knew how to pick girls up. But he had no idea how to be a boyfriend to a woman. Was that what he was supposed to be doing here? Were they now boyfriend/girlfriend?
When they last slept together, it turned out he was the only person she’d been with in years. She came off like a player, but that ended up not being the case. Her true emotions were buried in her, locked in a vault, too delicate to let the light of the world and all its cruelties shine upon them.
He’d hurt her.
A lie of omission was still a lie, and he’d lied to her. Didn’t tell her how young he had been. That he was underage.
Now he was no longer a minor in the state’s eyes, but the age gap still stretched between them the same. Outside he got in his car, glancing over at the neighbor’s house. No minivan. No hot mother with her two little kids.
Slapping the Mustang into gear, he stepped on the gas and roared off to work.
The FBI’s cyber action team was basically a couple of lesbians he just met and a handful of Class A, blue ribbon buttholes. If they were good at their jobs, they might not have taken to picking on him the way they did, but they were like typical government people: a little better than average, but not great.
To be a hacker, you don’t have to be some shut in, some anti-social tweaker. You don’t have to have zits and body odor. But this? Oh my God, he thought. These people aren’t real. Hacking isn’t something you study. It’s not an elective. Not a college major. In the world of hacking, there’s no “fake it ‘till you make it.” You’re either a hacker or you’re not. He was.
And these people in cyber security?—they weren’t.
To do the things he did required a certain skillset that’s infused in you at the DNA level. You don’t understand the mindset of a hacker because you have a passion for computers, a criminal law degree and some basic understanding of profiling. To him, working in the Cyber Action Team division of the FBI was nothing more than a spiffy job title, albeit one he’d use in the clubs to get laid if it came to that. Not that it would. It wouldn’t.
Beyond that, Brayden was a different beast altogether. For him, hacking ranked second only to breathing. Seriously. Lock him in a basement in Anywhere, America with a computer, a bag of chocolate glazed mini-donuts and a four pack of Cranberry Red Bull and it was freaking game over. He’d run hacks until his eyeballs dried out, his fingers fell off, or they had to cart him off to the hospital after having collapsed with exhaustion. Again.
Yes, that happened before.
His first trip to the hospital was seven years ago and he’d passed out from a nasty combination of dehydration and exhaustion.
4
Brayden was eleven years old when he first heard of the dark net. Back in those days, if a hacker talked about addiction, about the crack cocaine of the internet, he was talking about spending time in the dark net—that peer to peer (P2P) network that sits like some deep ocean of possibility beneath the regular internet, which hackers refer to as the Clearnet.
The plebs and pretenders of the hacker society mistakenly refer to this vast unknown as the deep web, not knowing the dark net was just a small portion of the much larger deep web. This was the great unknown that turned guys like Brayden into junkies.
All the really nasty shit you hear whispers of on the dark net—hard drugs, weapons and munitions, trafficked children, prostitution, hitmen, digital manuals relating to all things hacking and the purchase of counterfeit bills—that’s the black market that opened its front doors for busi
ness underneath the Clearnet. Silk Road and all its variants, Crypto Market, Apple Market, Acropolis Market, and so on. But that high only lasts so long.
Brayden knew there had to be more. Rumors were this was where the government and all the intelligence agencies communicated.
Enter: Tor.
The Onion Router, better known as Tor, was an encryption software program that allowed you to dip under the Clearnet and operate without difficulty. But guys like Brayden, cyber crusaders, they had to have a bigger brain than most back then. They needed to know about ghost hacking, proxies, parent directories and backdoors, scramblers, dump sites, etc… He had that knowledge, that base of thinking that the guys and girls he was working with at the FBI would never have.
Tor was a program that concealed your identity. It represented complete anonymity. Back then, before Tor was refined—or really even accessible to anyone other than the US Naval Research Laboratory inventors—if you wanted into the dark oceans that sat like a bottomless abyss under the indexed internet, you were a digital pioneer. Fearless. You didn’t slither into the deep web to go somewhere specific. You went there not knowing what you’d find. You went there because you had no idea what it was even about.
But you’ve heard the stories. Some of you might have even confirmed a few of them yourself.
For a guy like Brayden, it was the difference between standing at the door of the girl’s locker room while all the cheerleaders were changing, and being inside watching them get naked behind a two way mirror. Brayden never thought of himself as a peeping Tom in the real world, but he most definitely became that in the cyber world.
Everything was a challenge. The deep web became his biggest challenge.
Fueled by the conversations on 4Chan, he sought to separate the wheat from the chaff, to see if these anonymous hackers were full of crap or straight up legit. Brayden plunged into the unindexed unknown breathless and excited. He was untraceable.
