The Internet and social media promised a great, open debate of ideas on an even playing field, but instead this age of technology had created a society more divided than any time in human history.
Crowne stepped from the car, pacing slowly towards the front entrance. As he approached the iconic doorway to 10 Downing, he thought of all the leaders that had walked through its door. Back during the war, Churchill had made a point of being seen right here on this spot a few times a week. He had wanted to remind the country—Churchill’s country —that the Nazis didn’t scare him.
This was the spot where countless foreign dignitaries had stopped and posed to show their strong partnerships with Britain over the years. And all for what? To watch their countries argue back and forth without action? To go to bed each night knowing that progress was impossible? To let extremist groups outmaneuver and outwit these once-powerful nations?
Crowne would declare his current position worthless if it were only that simple. But the reality was that modern leadership wasn’t just fruitless, it was worse. It was a great promise, unfulfilled.
It was a shame.
He gazed at the open door, the number hanging slightly crooked, just as it had been on the original frame. The knocker, in the form of a great lion’s head, stood proud and steadfast. He chuckled. “That must be nice,” he said under his breath, turning back for another look at the foggy, slick street.
“Sir?” the closest guard quickly inquired. The PM just forced a smile and walked inside.
Crowne passed the length of blood-red carpet laying across the checkered marble and paused at the base of the grand staircase. Most nights, he would have headed back to his office for a nightcap; but tonight, he was just done. Done with all of it. This house—this damn house. Built without logic, composed of hundreds of small rooms and hallways. There were two or three walls in any direction you faced, a sea of corners everywhere. It was a house that was past its prime. They should burn the whole thing down, just start over.
He leaned on the thick wood banister, pushing down with his hand to aid his movement up each stair, one at a time. On his left hung portraits of heroes from times past. Black frames, gold engravings. As he trudged on, his knees growing tired, the faces haunted him as his eyes marched from frame to frame. The ghosts of Downing Street watched him push his way towards his bed—some smiling, some judging. Walpole. Thatcher. Major. Lord Gray. Spencer Perceval, the only PM to be assassinated, shot dead right in the lobby of the House of Commons.
As he reached the third floor landing, he looked over to the small bust of Churchill that sat at the top of the stairs, guarding the entrance to the private residence. He slowly walked towards the statue and palmed the head, rubbing it for good luck. Over the next few days, he was going to need it.
He turned towards the master bedroom and his foot hit something soft, sounding off a tiny squeak. His eyes fell to the floor to find his son’s toy giraffe, a favorite over the past few years.
The giraffe was something of a family heirloom, having belonged to his daughter years ago. To anyone else, the toy would have appeared too faded and ragged for a Prime Minister’s son, but that’s exactly why they had kept it; the toy reminded them that they were a family, not just a picture on the wall. But the toy was something they kept private, as silly as that sounded; it was nobody’s business what his son played with, especially if it was made by a French brand that manufactured its products in China. Crowne didn’t feel like getting wrapped up in tariff discussions over a child’s plaything. Sometimes, it was better for people not to know.
Sometimes, not knowing just made things easier.
He moved inside, strolling past the guest bedrooms that littered the hallway. He walked into the master bedroom and stopped next to Lucy as she slept without a sound. Her eye mask couldn’t hide how she glowed with beauty, even in her clumsy sleep. She slept on her side, facing the window and safely out of the hall light’s reach, a light she left on for him each and every night.
As he changed out of his suit, he took his Blackberry from his pocket to do a final check of his priority mailbox. One new message from Martin Bell, Priority Red. He inspected the details—a few action items from the Iceland test, but everything else was a go. None of the other four recipients had replied, but that was expected. That was the protocol. Crowne knew that the absence of other messages meant only one thing: the others agreed.
The Prime Minister walked back into the bedroom and stood over his sleeping wife. He looked at the curtains covering the bulletproof window, glowing ever so slightly from the streetlights standing at attention outside. As his eyes rested on Lucy, he smiled.
Soon, I’ll be the change that everyone has been waiting for.
He was finally going to have the chance to lead, to break the world out of this political trench-warfare that had crippled its progress. They’d call him crazy if they knew what he was going to do; they’d say his plan was too severe. They’d lock him up. But that’s only because they didn’t understand what had to be done.
Crowne knew that a brief flash of pain across the planet would soon lead to a new direction for the world. There will be suffering, yes—but great steps forward require great sacrifice.
No one knew what was coming, but sometimes that was for the best.
Sometimes, not knowing just makes things easier.
CHAPTER SIX
The Suburbs of Austin, TX
March 6th, 9:48PM
Haylie sat perched above her laptop, getting lost in the depths of her favorite tech forum, CodeOverflow. She caught herself drifting off as she mindlessly clicked through link after link, thinking about her brother.
Maybe he just quit his job, had enough of the Sterling brothers for one lifetime. Maybe he solved the whole damn puzzle and found a pot of gold and a leprechaun at the end.
She blinked her eyes a few times, bringing her brain back online, and rubbed her temples with her index fingers. Focus, Haylie. Focus.
Turning back to the forum, she dove into the Raven 2309 discussion area. Haylie sifted through posts from newbies begging for clues, seasoned Raven veterans posting full-on conspiracy theories, and a few fresh requests to assemble new teams.
This feels less like a puzzle and more like a treasure hunt.
She tilted back in her desk chair and checked the thread for the current year’s puzzle. Over four-hundred posts and counting, all discussing different aspects of Raven. She quickly learned that only four steps in the puzzle had been solved to date, with teams posting the solutions for others to study. The first two steps seemed pretty easy—basic substitution ciphers and messages hidden in metadata—while solving the third and fourth steps required more advanced techniques. It’s only going to get harder from here.
Haylie clicked on a section titled “Mainstream Press About Raven 2309.” The top post linked to an article about a college student in North Carolina claiming to have solved last year’s Raven. Two weeks after proclaiming he had reached the end of the puzzle, strange things had started happening to him. The man’s bank account, driving record, credit score, and college transcripts had all been mysteriously erased by a series of system breaches. Only then did the student admit that it was all a lie; he had tried his best to solve Raven, and failed.
A chat window popped up on the bottom right side of her screen.
VECTOR:> yo Crash - you there?
Haylie smiled, resting her chin on her palm and typing back with one lazy hand.
CRASH:> yeah, just working out some stuff.
VECTOR:> well, that’s really vague. good talk.
She laughed, pulling her hair back behind her ear and sticking her tongue out at the screen.
CRASH:> whatevs. ping you later.
Flipping back to the message board, she scanned the most popular threads for the current year’s puzzle. There were hundreds of topics ranging from Raven FAQs, threads on runes and numerology, and grand theories on how Raven would change the world.
As s
he lazily surfed the forum, one post caught her eye. It was titled “Why I finally decided to give up my Raven quest.” Clicking the link, she was taken to a blog post authored by a user named Samasito55. He identified himself as a top Norwegian cryptographer and network security analyst, and claimed to have spent months solving steps from Raven over nights and weekends. Haylie’s focus narrowed as she read.
The codes I broke weren’t any kind of joke, they were industrial-grade stuff. If the puzzles were designed to filter out individuals with certain skill sets, I can see why it would work. But the code breaking wasn’t the reason that I stopped.
I decided to stop for two reasons.
First, the puzzle’s steps became more difficult. I’m not talking about the math or code breaking techniques—the puzzle was changing. Twisting into riddles, ancient numerology, and breaking into physical locations. Stuff I wasn’t ready, or qualified, to do.
And then there were the messages. After about the fourth or fifth step, someone—I’m guessing the designers of Raven—began to send me messages. Not just hiding things in the framework of the puzzle like the first few steps, but actual notes directly to me. Texts, phone calls, chat windows within clues. Somehow they knew my name, and they were watching me as I tried to solve their puzzle.
I’ll be honest—I gave up on Raven because I was scared. During the early stages, I thought it would be a fun distraction, but that’s not where the puzzle took me. I started fearing for what the next step was going to mean for my life and my family. So I stopped, I closed the book on my Raven adventure.
And I haven’t heard from them since, thank God.
The desk lamp flickered for a second as Haylie stared into the screen. She pulled her glasses from her face and laid them carefully on the desk, rubbing her tired eyes.
Haylie’s mind raced as a phrase from the blog post resonated and echoed in her head. Closed the book on my Raven adventure. She flipped back over to her chat window, minimizing Vector’s message and bringing up Caesar’s last note.
Shelf 3. Take out book 2. 011173220512356128133
The Sterling brothers said they looked everywhere. They tried Caesar’s apartment’s bookshelves, his local bookstore, the library. But Caesar wouldn’t have been talking about a book near HIM. He’d be talking about a book near ME.
She rose to her feet and quietly made her way down the hall to Caesar’s room, the last door on the right. She turned the knob as a wave of musty, cold air hit her face. She flicked on the light and saw his room come to life, still arranged just like the day he had left.
Caesar’s bookcase took up most of the wall on the right-hand side of the room. She counted the shelves up—one-two-three—and then moved left to right—one-two—pulling the book under her hand from its place.
“Alice in Wonderland?” She flipped through the pages to look for any messages. “Maybe there’s a code hidden somewhere in here.” She searched the front and back cover for any kind of clue. There was nothing.
Her eyes fell down to the shelf, seeing volumes of computer science books—programming, data mining, and database design. Suddenly, she lowered the book in her hand and placed it back on the shelf.
I bet he’s counting like a programmer. Like a machine. Machines start counting at zero.
She looked down to the bottom shelf and counted again. One-two-three-four—and then went down the line of books—one-two-three—pulling out the resulting book. Checking the title, her eyes lit up.
“‘Understanding Fibonacci,’” she whispered. Thinking back to the message, she jumped up with a quick burst of excitement. “Of course!” She hurried back to her room, gripping the volume with both hands.
Caesar had taught Haylie all about the Fibonacci sequence when they were younger. She remembered that each number in the sequence was calculated by adding up the two previous numbers. Caesar and Haylie had used the patterns to build cool, spiral Lego structures back in the day, but she knew there were lots of uses for the math—everywhere from computer science to biology.
“I should have noticed this when I first saw the code. Stupid, stupid, stupid.” She typed out the first ten numbers from the Fibonacci sequence in a TextEdit window.
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89
Haylie then pasted the number from Caesar’s message directly below.
011173220512356128133
“Take out Book 2.” I’ll just remove each Fibonacci number from Caesar’s code.
Working left to right, she deleted the digits from the first group of numbers out of the second group, one by one, and sat back to check the result.
173205126123
What is this? It’s too long for a phone number. It can’t be a–
She leaned in and typed three sharp keystrokes with her index finger.
173.205.126.123
I got you, Caesar. It’s an IP address. She copied the numbers into a browser window and hit enter. As the website loaded, she studied the image staring back at her and a grin grew across her lips.
She turned to her bag, pulling out her phone and placing it on the desk with a firm click. She fished Walter’s crumpled business card out of her pocket and bent it back into shape, holding it up to eye level and squinting to make out the number printed on the thick paper stock.
I can’t believe I’m actually going to do this.
She picked up her phone and began to type.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Champion Drive - Austin, TX
March 7th, 6:45AM
As the cab rolled slowly down the twisting web of country roads, both Haylie and the driver searched for any hint of their destination. The cab’s GPS pointed to a small airport just up the way, but Haylie couldn’t see any trace of one. All she could see were fields and mailboxes and dirt tracks with makeshift, wooden signs reading “No Trespassing,” sometimes even spelled correctly. They were only fifteen minutes from downtown Austin, but Haylie still felt plopped down in the middle of nowhere.
Haylie yawned as she checked Google Maps on her phone. “It should be right up here,” she said, rolling down her steam-caked window for a better view. The morning air flooded the car, along with the sound of crunching tires rolling over damp gravel, as the cab pulled over to the side of the road.
“Wait a minute, lady. I see something here,” said the cab driver through his thick accent. He cycled the wipers on and off to clear the condensation from the windshield, revealing a few distant lights past an upcoming bend of the road. “I think it’s up this way.”
The cab glided in around the bend as a collection of buildings and private planes came into view. An airstrip, locked securely behind a long razor-wire fence, stretched out as far as she could see.
Haylie’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She looked down to see a message from her mom, who was just about to take off on her flight to Singapore. She shot a quick note back, then slid the phone back into her pocket.
She paid the driver and stepped out onto the side of the road. The cool morning mist fell across the back of her neck. Zipping her field jacket all the way up with a shrug, she walked towards the airstrip, her backpack across her shoulders and a small duffle bag clutched in her left hand.
She followed the curved cement road leading to a group of four buildings, each in the shape of a perfect square. Outside of the farthest building, Haylie could see two men dressed in black with their hands folded across their chests. They stood on either side of a single door. This must be the place. Haylie did her best to appear calm, like she had done this before.
The guards weren’t just men; they were beasts. Huge, bald, thick, and stone-faced. As Haylie stepped towards the building, the guard on the right extended a hand keeping her a few feet away. As she came to a complete stop, he scanned the horizon, speaking lightly into his sleeve. The guard on the left knocked three times and, without saying a word, opened the door wide for Haylie to walk through.
She entered and looked up to take in a full view of the hangar’s interior. The main ro
om had the feel of a warehouse—plain white walls with a closed, unmarked door on the far side. A sleek private jet commanded the middle of the room, its nose facing a large sliding door that took up the entire wall. A single spotlight hung down from the center of the ceiling, highlighting the subtle curves of the wings and fuselage. The corners of the hangar were stacked with aviation equipment—hoses, gas tanks, tools, and other machinery.
As she gazed in awe at the jet, she heard a familiar voice from behind her.
“There she is!”
Haylie turned to find a strangely comfortable set-up in the corner where Benjamin and Walter stood, sipping their morning coffee. The sitting area included two cream-white couches arranged with a table in the middle and a checkered green rug beneath. The scene would have looked like a Pottery Barn catalog if it weren’t for the long table against one of the walls covered in a full assortment of breakfast foods, coffee, orange juice on ice, and energy drinks.
Walter stood with his back to Haylie, speaking with Marco and gesturing to the other side of the hangar. Marco’s wrinkled shirt and stressed expression hinted that he had already enjoyed a full day of work.
“I like her already, Walter,” Benjamin said. “She goes home and says ‘I’ll think about it,’ and comes back the next morning already having solved the first step. Love it.”
“Morning,” Haylie said.
“What can we get for you?” Benjamin asked. “We have an assortment of all the finest–”
Crash Alive (The Haylie Black Series Book 1) Page 5
