Kill Switch

by William Hertling

  “We know what she’s capable of,” Robin said, choosing her words carefully. “If you corner her, there’s going to be collateral damage.”

  Enso gave a puzzled grin and leaned toward the camera. “Are you scared of her?”

  “She has a certain…intensity that is alarming. Sir, we should really focus on Igloo. She’s worked with Angie all along, and she’s part of T2. She doesn’t have all the details, but she has enough to paint an accurate picture of what’s going on. With the right leverage, we could get a backdoor into the system through her.”

  “Legal says we can get her on domestic assault with the videos of her and her girlfriend,” Enso said. “But if we don’t play it right, she’ll go right to Angie for protection, and then all we’ve done is tip our hand. Turning Igloo is going to require finesse.”

  “Not a threat against Igloo herself,” Robin said. “We direct the threat toward the girlfriend, or Igloo’s family, or best of all, Angie herself. Igloo’s not hardened the way Angie is. She’s reserved, but emotionally raw. I think she’d do almost anything to help Angie.”

  Chapter 25

  Igloo ran down the hallway at Tapestry headquarters as lights blinked on and off at random. Her footsteps echoed, the building silent except for the pounding of her feet. Everywhere she looked, in the moments when lights were on, the desks and offices were empty.

  Breathing hard, she turned the corner and opened doors looking for Ben and Diana, but found only empty closets.

  She was alone, completely alone, and there was so much code left to write. She’d have to do it herself.

  But who would review her code? Not Essie, Essie couldn’t know. Igloo had to keep this secret.

  Then she was back at her desk, coding, and Essie was next to her. Igloo leaned over the keyboard so Essie couldn’t see what she was typing. Essie stared at the screen instead, and Igloo had to stand to block the monitor from Essie’s view.

  Igloo edged closer, trying to block any view of what she was doing, but she accidentally nudged the display to the floor. The screen shattered, and her code leaked out onto the floor. She tried to scoop up the text and pour the letters back into the monitor, but they were all jumbled. She cried—

  —And woke up, breathing hard.

  “You okay?” Essie said, her voice sleepy. She reached out to rub Igloo’s back, her hand warm against Igloo’s cold skin.

  “I don’t know,” Igloo said. “I was dreaming.”

  “You were talking in your sleep.”

  “What did I say?” What if she’d revealed secrets about T2?

  Essie didn’t answer.

  Igloo shook Essie, and Essie startled awake again. “What did I say?”

  “I don’t know.” Essie raised her head slightly off the pillow. “You were worried about something. Kept asking for more time. Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  Igloo got up, headed for the bathroom, stepping cautiously to avoid anything left out on the floor. But the floor was clear. There hadn’t been time for a proper playtime with all the toys in a while. Igloo was glad that she and Essie had gotten that one night last week when they went out together. Since then, it was day after day of non-stop work.

  She sat on the toilet in the bathroom. She needed more time. They all needed more time.

  In the morning, Igloo logged into the secure chat room they’d convened for everyone working on T2. It was twenty-four days since the FISA court order. Seven days left to preemptively release T2 to avoid complying with the order.

  They were using an anonymous chat room, because they ostensibly didn’t know who was who. Igloo had guessed at some people’s identities by informally correlating code commits on the T2 with a lack of code commits on T1. She couldn’t confirm for sure, not when everyone’s connections to Tapestry were encrypted, but she could also detect the tell-tale traces of VPN traffic across the network, and those same users were responsible for substantially more encrypted traffic than anyone else. They were working, on average, nearly twice the hours the rest of the employees were. They occasionally ran into each other in the hallways late at night, faces haggard, eyes haunted with feverish energy, trading cautious nods but no words.

  Maintaining anonymity under those conditions was mostly a façade, but they needed plausible deniability should things go south.

  She started the chat by confirming everyone’s progress and making sure they were all up to date. They were avoiding a central backlog of stories to work on, because they didn’t want the exact set of features to be listed in one place. Instead, each person or pair kept track of what they had to do and collaborated only on a need to know basis. Igloo, as the supposed, yet still anonymous, leader, needed assessments of how much work was left to do, without knowing too closely the details of that work. It was a ridiculous cat-and-mouse game.

  At the end of the meeting, Igloo stared at her electronic scratchpad. Not good. She sent Angie a message that they had to meet. Angie told her where to go. Igloo left her electronics at her desk.

  “We don’t have enough time,” Igloo said. “Everyone thinks we need another two to three weeks, but we’ve only got a week left.”

  Angie studied her. They were surrounded by custodial supplies, but the walk-in closet was one of Angie’s emergency safe zones in the building. She’d scanned it for devices when they walked in, then triggered an EMF screamer, broadcasting white noise across the spectrum. In theory it would be contained by the Faraday cage surrounding the closet. If not, they’d probably wipe out every electronic device within a hundred feet.

  “You can pull it up. Two weeks of work in one non-stop week, it’s not a problem.”

  “Two or more…and we’re not talking about regular weeks, we’re already working around the clock.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” Angie said.

  “Give us more time to get T2 out.”

  “That’s the one thing I can’t do, and you know it.” Angie shook her head. “We have to be in compliance with the FISA court order next Monday. We have to find a way to get it done.”

  “We’re not talking about a user interface feature,” Igloo said, getting a little choked up. The task ahead of them was monumental. “We’re trying to build and deploy software in a way that’s never been done before. We don’t get any second chances.”

  “No, we don’t.” Angie stared into her eyes. “Do what you can. I’ll check in with you tomorrow, then we’ll make a decision.”

  Chapter 26

  The next morning, Angie entered Igloo’s office without knocking. Igloo didn’t look up, she was too deeply engrossed in a tricky bit of blockchain validation.

  Angie hovered impatiently over Igloo’s monitor. “I want you to convene the T2 team immediately.”

  Igloo gestured toward her screen with an aching arm. “We’re all in chat together.”

  “I want to get together in person and review where we are.”

  “Where we are?” Igloo said. “We don’t have time for that. We’re supposed to release this in five days.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “No, we’re not fucking ready.” Igloo wanted to scream. “We’re trying, okay? Give us a break.”

  Angie squeezed Igloo’s shoulder. “I need to know exactly how much time you all need. In person, in the Ops room.”

  Igloo was too exhausted to argue. She sent the message, marked urgent, over chat. Virtual groans were the response. No one wanted to stop what they were doing for a meeting.

  “It’s not an option, people. We just have to do it.”

  A few people were home and had to come into the office. They set the meeting for an hour later.

  Once that was taken care of, Igloo slumped back in her chair. She was so tired. She’d been coding for days. She glanced down, saw her phone on the table, blinking away. She picked up the device and found waiting messages from Essie, Charlotte, Heather, her mom, her sister, and the doctor’s office. When had she even last looked at her phone? When ha
d she even been home? Or eaten? She was losing track of time.

  Charlotte wanted to play. Oh, jeez. The world in which she got to play with people and have fun seemed a million miles away.

  Igloo > I miss you so much. But I’m in total crisis mode at work. I’m sorry to do this, but it’s gonna be a few weeks before I get out from under this mess. I’ll get in touch when things are better.

  She realized she was lying as she wrote that. She really had no idea what the future would bring. There was some non-zero chance that she’d be in jail in a few weeks.

  She sent quick, perfunctory messages to Heather and her mom, neither of whom needed much investment. She spent a few more minutes on a reply to her sister, who did.

  Now to deal with Essie. She absolutely couldn’t leave Essie hanging. The last message Essie had sent was a huge wall of text that spanned several screens. The gist of the message was that Essie thought Igloo was avoiding her to get back at her because of Michael. She explained before that there was a work emergency, but Essie wasn’t buying it. Igloo would need days to hash everything out with Essie, and longer still to repair all the damage. but she didn’t have that time now. All she could do was string things along.

  Igloo > I love you. I’m sorry if it feels like I am ignoring or avoiding you. Work is insane right now, and I can’t go into why, but please believe me that it has nothing to do with you and Michael. I will do everything I can to be home as soon as I can.

  A minute later, a new message came in from Essie.

  Essie > When we started dating you told me you had a hard time talking to people. That you preferred computers. That’s why you made the chatbots. You’ve been having a hard time for weeks…months… Please don’t shut me out. I love you. You’re still my partner. Just because I love Michael doesn’t take away from the love I have for you.

  Igloo didn’t think her central nervous system had any adrenaline left, but somehow Essie’s message still managed to enrage her.

  Igloo > You love him? Since when is this?

  Essie > It’s just something I’ve come to realize. I think it’s why you’ve been having a hard time. But I still love you just as much.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Igloo screamed in an empty room. Why now? Of all possible damn times?

  Igloo > How can you love him? You barely know him. We’ve been together for a year. You’ve been with him for two months.

  Chat showed that Essie was typing, and typing, and typing. It was going to be another monster message. Igloo didn’t have time for this.

  Igloo > I don’t care what you believe. I’m telling you I’m dealing with the literal end of the world here at work. It has nothing to do with you or Michael or anything. I just have to deal with this. I have to go.

  Igloo stared at the screen. Then tossed her phone on the table. She’d deal with Essie later.

  The Ops room was in the basement, two walls covered in monitors. They used it when they had a major outage and needed to coordinate everything.

  Today the screens were all dark. Igloo entered, saw Ben and Diana sitting across the room. Angie stood at the front. Then everyone started to file in, confirming most of Igloo’s guesses. Melanie and Mike, almost certainly working on the browser-based containers. Toni, Bob, Chris. Jeff, and Tony with a Y. Gene and Dave. Stephanie and Erik. Dovi. Wendy. Carly.

  They looked around at each other, nodding sometimes, surprised at other times.

  At least half the folks were the most senior people in their respective areas, but others were newer, brilliant people they’d brought on late. Eighteen people altogether, eighteen people to reinvent how software was delivered, architected, and executed on one of the world’s most popular web sites.

  They’d worked around the clock the last few weeks as it became obvious just how much work there was to do. The entire team looked like the walking dead.

  “You all know what we’re up against,” Angie said. “I need your minimum time estimates to deliver what’s left.”

  “Igloo’s got our estimates,” Dovi said. “We don’t have to get together just to repeat that.”

  “I need to hear it for myself.”

  They went around the room, most people hemming and hawing, reluctant to commit themselves. Nobody offered a date of less than a week, some as much as a month.

  In other words, they were going to miss the FISA court order deadline, and by a lot. By doing so, they’d be unable to argue that the T2 release was pre-planned and inevitable. It would obviously be an attempt to work around the court order.

  The silence in the room was oppressive. Everyone knew but nobody would voice what was on everyone’s mind: they’d burned up the time they had to comply with the FISA court order. Even if they wanted to, it might be too late to install the required backdoors that would allow the government to spy on everyone. The company could be shut down. Igloo wondered if Angie would go to jail. Maybe they all would.

  Angie stared around the room. She was as haggard as the rest of them, but there was a fire in her eyes that Igloo recognized from their all-night hacking sessions. Somehow, unbelievably, Angie had a plan!

  “Dovi, you’re going to finish up your work by tomorrow, then help Gene and Dave. Wendy, skip the UI work, and help Jeff and Tony with a Y. Carly, find a way to finish faster. Pull in whomever you need from your team, even if they aren’t cleared for T2.”

  “People, I’m not going to sugarcoat this. T2 has to go out. I realize it can’t happen by Monday, but damn it all, it fucking has to be out within a week. Everything rides on this.”

  “The court order deadline is noon on Monday,” Ben said. “There’s no wiggle room on that.” He turned to Diana, who nodded.

  “I’ll find a way to get you all another week.”

  “That’s not possible—” Ben started.

  Angie gave him such a hard look he stopped mid-sentence. “Don’t you ever tell me what’s possible. I’m going to buy you a week. That’s all the time you get. There aren’t going to be any other magic bullets.”

  She fell silent.

  Someone cleared their throat, then Angie started again.

  “You have to focus no matter what happens. I believe in you, all of you. You are the most talented people I’ve ever worked with. You can make it happen. Now get back to work.”

  Igloo stood, along with everyone else. Her body was tingly, half-asleep already.

  “Not you, Igloo.”

  Igloo sat back down and closed her eyes for just a second.

  She was startled awake, Angie shaking her. The room was empty except for the two of them.

  “You’re going to have to keep everyone operationally secure,” Angie said. “That’s going to include keeping them on the move. I want you all out of this office. They may try to shut us down on Tuesday. But if you’re not here, then they can’t stop you.”

  Igloo nodded, feeling like she was missing something.

  “Treat it like it was the two of us hacking. Nobody can know where you are. Rotate safe houses.”

  “What about the company party on Friday night?” Igloo asked. “Is it safe to show up there?”

  Angie looked off toward the wall. “Yes. That’ll be the last time it’s safe for anyone to show up in public. After that, keep in hiding. Remember that the best defense is a good offense. When they come for you, strike back. Don’t let them own the network.”

  “Yeah,” Igloo said, “but where are you going to be?”

  “I’ll be distracting everyone. That’s my job. Your job is to insulate everyone else from that distraction and get T2 released.”

  “Got it.”

  “That’s not all,” Angie said. “The election. The world can’t withstand another four years like this. Get the right person elected.”

  “That’s not for six months. We can work on it together.”

  “Just don’t forget. Now go to work.”

  Igloo got up, glanced back to see Angie standing alone in the room, staring off into the distance. She l
et the door slowly close, and Angie disappeared from view.

  Chapter 27

  The FISA court order would take effect Monday. Angie needed to buy the team time. Time to fix bugs, get the final features done, and get the release out. A few weeks would be nice, a few months would be a dream. But at this point, even a few days would help.

  If the only problem were Enso at BRI continually hounding her, then she could bury him in an onslaught from the hacker community. But what she needed now was something on the order of a miracle. She needed to countermand the FISA court order.

  Maybe something like a presidential executive order could do that. Or she needed to take out the entire executive function. Bring down the FBI so they couldn’t enforce the FISA court order.

  Also equally improbable.

  So what could work? What would create sufficient cause to alter the FISA court ruling?

  For a moment, she thought of reaching out to Nathan9. She’d missed having someone of his strategic nature on her side. Hell, she really wished her old mentor Repard were there to help. Well, none of them were on her side. She’d have to deal with it herself.

  What would Repard and Nathan tell her? Of course they’d say that the direct frontal approach would always fail. Hacking the highest levels of governmental systems to forge an executive order or court decision was ludicrous, right?

  She stalked back and forth in her office.

  They had computer systems, like anything else. If she could penetrate those systems, she could take them over. All she needed was one computer on a sensitive system with an available exploit, and she could take it over.

  She could open a backdoor with Tapestry, but she was exceedingly hesitant to do so. She had to assume BRI was watching her every move. To compromise a sensitive system, a watched system, with a backdoor in Tapestry would create a trail that would lead right back to her.