Crash Alive (The Haylie Black Series Book 1)

by Christopher Kerns

  Haylie squirmed to find a better position in the quicksand of her chair as she thought back to the Calculus classroom, picturing the members of the Math Team hard at work selecting a clever, geeky, slightly ironic, and totally lame name to put on their inevitable t-shirts and bumper stickers. The fact that she was here, and not there, made her feel a bit better—she knew that despite the awkward nature of study hall, she had made the right call to dodge the math nerds.

  Haylie had a long history of playing the same game set forth by every new teacher, year after year. A few weeks after each school year started, a familiar pattern would go into motion; as teachers discovered her “gifted” abilities, they’d rush to take her under their wing. She would quickly be awarded with heaps of extra homework or an invitation to join the Physics Club, something to “make the most of her potential.” Haylie had turned avoiding this extra work into a sport, bobbing and weaving, trying to stay one step ahead. A few months back, she had made the mistake of getting a perfect score on a national German language test, which awarded her an all-expense paid trip to Berlin for five days to study the geo-political advances since the Cold War. It had taken weeks to wiggle her way out of that one.

  It’s not that Haylie wasn’t up for a challenge, quite the opposite. She became a bit obsessed when she saw something on the other side of the fence—a website, a system, anything—and was told “you’re not allowed to go over there.” When she was problem-solving, she often found herself getting lost in the question, working through step after step, only to look up at the clock hours later to realize she had just lost a whole night. She knew she’d wasted countless hours figuring out how things worked, but it was a point of pride that she had never failed to get into a system when she had put her mind to it. Never.

  Haylie pulled her laptop from her backpack and cracked the lid open, blindly typing in her password and opening up her to-do list. Ok, focus. Get your work done so tonight you can –

  Suddenly, there was a loud ping that rang out of her computer’s speakers and echoed down into each corner of the library, shattering the hushed silence. Haylie scrambled to hit the mute button on her machine.

  Her grimace morphed into relief as she saw the author’s name— it was Vector, the big idiot, who she hadn’t chatted with in almost three waking hours. That might be a new record.

  VECTOR:> yo Crash. i’m organizing my media files again. should i go alphabetically or by sub-genre? i think the categories should change with my mood, tho.

  After thinking for a moment, her eyes looking up and to the left, a slow smile crept across her lips. She dove back into the screen, her fingers clicking methodically across the keyboard, chuckling under her breath.

  CRASH:> Good question. I feel like you’re one of those unrecognized geniuses but in your case, no one calls you a genius because you’re not actually all that smart. How does that feel? Does it feel bad?

  Vector, of course, wasn’t his real name. His online handle just became second nature to her over the years, just like the screen name she had chosen long ago on a whim: Crash.

  The chat window popped back onto the screen.

  VECTOR:> you’re hilarious. I’m two months younger than you, remember? I’m sure I’ll be on your heels in the next few weeks.

  VECTOR:> hey - btw, remember that ‘sparkstar’ python package you were going on about for network penetration testing? I can’t get it to install.

  VECTOR:> you said you got it working, ya?

  CRASH:> yeah. but you’ll probably need to upgrade virtualenv to the latest version. that worked for me.

  VECTOR:> ugh, that’s a pain in the arse. how’d you get so smart?

  CRASH:> I’m a girl, remember?

  VECTOR:> of course.

  VECTOR:> right, getting late, better crack on to my new gig. i’m done with the city of london work for now… but i landed that new project for the department of transport.

  CRASH:> Oh, sweet. What kind of stuff?

  VECTOR:> some logistics around air travel, rail, traffic, etc. can’t go on about it much past that yet.

  VECTOR:> cool data to play with. lots of python and SQL work. Should be a nice one.

  Haylie gazed off across the library with the glint of hope in her eye. That sounds so awesome—I can’t wait to get out of this place. With just a few months left, she was ready to run out the door as soon as it cracked open. At her parents’ request, she had applied early—and been accepted—to the University of Texas in Austin, one of the best computer science schools in the country. She was due to start in the fall, but hadn’t broken the news to her family that she had no intention of going. Haylie’s head was filled with too many things she wanted to do and plus, college felt like it was going to be just more of … this.

  VECTOR:> oh, sending you a link to a torrent of that old film, the one I was talking about that you have to see. Summer School, from the 80s.

  VECTOR:> i can’t stop watching it, it’s a whole thing.

  Smiling, Haylie sent him back a thumbs up. She couldn’t remember a time that she hadn’t known Vector. She knew his favorite cereal, the bands he listened to, and that he had graduated from school the previous year. He had skipped college—they call it “university” over in the UK, apparently—and dove right into starting his own consulting company in London. To Haylie, it all sounded like a dream come true.

  VECTOR:> so why did you bail on me last night? we were due to watch WarGames together. you left me hanging, mate.

  CRASH:> sorry. My mom had a dinner thing at our house for some local ‘leaders of industry’. I was asked to make an appearance.

  VECTOR:> ugh. your favorite.

  When it came to family, Haylie had been dealt a royal flush, at least from the outside looking in. Her parents were great, but just not around a lot. Her dad was some sort of business consultant—always on the road, always on the phone. Haylie loved the time she got to spend with him, but that time seemed to drift away more and more every year. Her mother was supportive and brilliant but increasingly distracted by work. A few years back, she had accepted an offer to become the CEO of a small firm and promised Haylie that the job wouldn’t change their lifestyle. But after the company grew to become one of the fastest growing startups in Austin, things just changed.

  It wasn’t uncommon for Haylie to walk into her house to find a networking event in progress, with suits everywhere and catered dinners being served from her kitchen. That scenario, year after year, was a great way to make a seventeen-year old feel like a stranger in her own home.

  Even worse, she was often paraded around the party, counting the minutes in her head as each local dignitary asked if Haylie wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps. All the conversations, all the people, all the names—it was just too much for her. She never felt as alone as when she was surrounded by a group of people.

  VECTOR:> so what was your plan this time around to sneak out early? another night hiding in the bathroom?

  CRASH:> Nah. Faked a sprained ankle.

  VECTOR:> brilliant.

  Haylie cracked her MacBook’s lid and reached into her bag, fumbling past a collection of assorted gadgets, loose wires, and tools, searching for her headphones. Over the past few years, she had built up a collection of devices that would make any hacker jealous. Her bedroom was a graveyard of circuit boards, soldering irons and cords—so many cords, everywhere.

  Haylie finally found the headphones, untangling the jack from the knotted mess of everything with a silent curse under her breath. The cord pulled a folded piece of paper out of her bag behind it. What the hell is this? She held the note up for a moment, unfolding and stretching it out with both hands. She furrowed her brow as she recognized her mother’s handwriting.

  TRY TO MAKE FRIENDS TODAY!

  LOVE, MOM

  Haylie crumpled the paper into a ball as she felt the heat of embarrassment climb up her neck, quickly checking the room to make sure she didn’t need to do any damage control.

  Placin
g the cups of her headphones over her ears, she gave the volume button a few taps and cranked up a classic Daft Punk mix. She opened her chat application to find no new messages, but clicked over to a recent thread that had gone cold for the past eight days—a three-year-old, twisting and turning chat conversation with her brother, Caesar.

  If there was one saving grace for a close connection in her family, it was her older brother. They had grown up together just a few years apart, and definitely operated as a pair of “inside-the-house” kids. Together, they worked on writing computer programs, hacking hardware, and trying their best to stay out of trouble. In most families, the day that a radio or video game controller stopped working was one filled with frustration, but not in the Black household. When something broke, that meant Caesar and Haylie got to crack it open, take it apart and see what was inside. Sometimes they’d even be able to fix it. Not always, but sometimes.

  Haylie clicked into the chat thread and scrolled down through the history—scanning messages from the past few years, ever since Caesar had left for New York City to become a hotshot programmer and darling of the tech scene. She missed having him around, but they had racked up enough chat messages back and forth that sometimes she forgot that he had even left home. They pinged each other with a frequency that ebbed and flowed with the activity in their lives—sometimes the messages flew back and forth in volleys of hundreds per day. Other times they would go a few days without any word. The current stretch of silence was the longest Haylie could remember, but she also knew that was her fault—he was waiting on her response.

  She slid her finger across the trackpad, clicking on Caesar’s last message. She removed her glasses, leaning in closer to the screen, hands pressed against her temples, thinking. The message read:

  Shelf 3. Take out book 2.

  011173220512356128133

  Beyond just chatting about Caesar’s job, what it’s like to live in New York City, and news from the tech world, Caesar also enjoyed sending over cryptic messages for Haylie to solve from time to time. She didn’t remember how or when it started, but now it had become a whole thing. Two or three times every month, Haylie would open a new chat message from Caesar to find only a puzzle; a few lines of cryptic … something. There was one rule that Caesar always stuck by: until she solved the puzzle, there would be no other messages from him.

  You’re such a weirdo, Caesar.

  Over the years, the clues from her brother had led her into a mix of annoying and fascinating subjects. Some had been eye-opening, introducing her to entire fields of study like cryptography, network hacking, and geolocation. Others—obscure references to Zen Buddhism, magic square math, and super-boring binary code translation—were just, like, c’mon, dude. Over the past week, Haylie had been too busy with her math exam hack to give any time to the latest puzzle.

  She switched her music over to a new channel and stared at the message. Ok, let’s see what this is all about. Shelf 3 … I have no idea what that means. And that long number at the end, it must be coded, but where would I start with–

  A loud noise overpowered her music and broke Haylie’s concentration. She pulled the headphones down around her neck to hear a round of laughter coming from the table she had almost joined a few minutes earlier. She smiled as she watched the group make faces at each other, whispering with mischievous eyes. It looked like a blast, much better than her self-imposed beanbag solitary confinement, that was for sure.

  The laughter was cut by a long, extended “Shhhhhh” from the librarian’s desk. The group covered their mouths, hunched over and giggling.

  I wonder what they’re talking about.

  Haylie angled an ear forward, straining to hear the details of the whispers, but they had moved their conversation online, now pointing to chat windows on each other’s screens, frantically typing as she sat in her corner, alone. Haylie’s eyes narrowed and flicked down to her bag, then back to the group.

  Wait - I can find out what they’re talking about. That’s easy.

  Haylie reached deep into the main section of her backpack and searched for one of her favorite new toys. She finally found the battery-powered router she was looking for—a small black box about the size of a deck of cards. As her thumb located the raised switch and slid it into the ‘ON’ position, the device came to life with a subtle click and a single blinking green light.

  Earlier in the year, Haylie had realized that not only was the library’s router administration panel accessible through a web interface, they had also left the default password of “admin” intact when installing it. That meant she could get full access to the router any time she wanted.

  Sorry about this, everybody. I just need to reboot the Wi-Fi real quick.

  As the library’s Internet access went dark, she looked up to watch students across the room spin, flailing to figure out what was going on. Whispers filled the room as everyone tried in vain to refresh browser tabs, watching with mild panic as their chat messages and web searches went dark.

  “Shhhhhhh!” the librarian repeated, standing from her desk for a moment, and then returning back to her work.

  The small black device, now active in Haylie’s bag, was a Grapefr00t Wi-Fi router she’d picked up recently. It had a very specific purpose; to conduct a “man-in-the-middle” network attack, which was a simple, but very effective, form of network hacking.

  Because the school’s network wasn’t encrypted—and they were dumb enough to not change the admin password—Haylie had been able to reset all connections to the library’s Wi-Fi. As the students came back online, each was now routing all their network traffic through Haylie’s device. She could see every web site they visited, every chat message; anything they typed. And no one had a clue that it was happening.

  Haylie brought up the Grapefr00t web interface and quickly found device names that had a high probability of matching the kids at the table—she had six out of the seven identified for sure with names like ‘AllisonMac’ and ‘SteveIsAwesome.’ She sat and watched the activity flow between the devices.

  MARC:> Woah, that was a close one.

  RACH:> I know, we almost had to, like, talk to each other.

  STEVE-O:> no way, I just would have left the room.

  The table chuckled as Haylie smiled, sneaking in closer to her screen. She pulled her headphones back over her ears, leaned in to rest her chin on her palm, and soaked it in. The group’s chat flowed with three different subjects at a time: stories from lunch, plans for the weekend, and how boring the library was. As the minutes went by, Haylie found herself getting sucked in to the conversation.

  ALLIE:> so who has the Algebra answers? Rach- I’m guessing you got it done already

  RACH:> no way you get those again, cheater. Get your own 100s.

  STEVE-O:> I’ve got it done over here

  ALLIE:> no thanks, Stevie. You suck at… everything

  Haylie looked up to see everyone at the table holding in their laughter. She shifted in her beanbag, realizing her stomach pains had all but disappeared. C’mon, Steve. Don’t let her walk all over you–

  STEVE-O:> um, no I don’t.

  Shaking her head, Haylie held back her laughter. That’s not going to do it, Steve. She waited, watching the Grapefr00t log to see who would respond first.

  RACH:> great comeback, Steve. Nailed it.

  Oh my God, that was classic. She brought her laptop closer to her chest, waiting for the pile-on to begin, as her hand covered her smile. This is going to be brutal! She wiggled in her seat, watching the blinking cursor, waiting for them to let him have it. Out of her peripherals, Haylie suddenly saw the heads at the table whip around at her.

  Oh no.

  With her eyes wide, she pulled her headphones off, realizing what she had just done. She couldn’t hear her own stupid giggling through her headphones. She had laughed, out loud, along with the rest of the table as the rest of the library sat in silence. Her eyes jumped between each member of the group, seeing a collection o
f shocked faces staring back at her.

  Just then, the library filled with the harsh, metallic ringing of the bell, marking the end of study hall and the completion of the school day. That was fun—gotta go. Haylie shoved her headphones back into her bag, snapped her laptop shut, and jumped up from her chair. She gave the table a quick wave as she made her way towards the exit, feeling her face grow redder with each step.

  Haylie pushed the double doors open and let them fall closed behind her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Houndstooth Coffee House

  Austin, TX

  March 6th, 4:55PM

  Haylie rolled to a stop under a rare patch of shade and tucked her car into the back corner of the parking lot. Her heart was still pounding as flashbacks to the library sparked through her head. She gripped the worn steering wheel with both hands, twisting her fingers around the cheap, cracked plastic as she breathed in and out, in and out.

  She felt a warm rush of comfort as she looked up to the coffee shop, sitting right where she found it every afternoon: across the gravel lot and up a short set of cement stairs. Houndstooth Coffee House was her after-school home base, a place where she knew the name of one—no, wait, two—of the baristas behind the counter and could grab her familiar table almost every afternoon. Leaning back into the driver’s seat, taking off her glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose, her pulse found its way back towards its normal rhythm.

  Cracking the car door open, Haylie felt the warm Texas air flood over her. She grabbed her bag from the passenger seat and made her way across the lot, crunching gravel with each step.