by E. C. Myers
The ninety minutes flew by. In no time, Avery said, “Our last video question comes from Samir Gupta in Bakersfield, California.”
Pixels danced in the video box onscreen.
“I’m sorry. We’re having some technical—” Avery had one finger pressed to the earpiece in his left ear. Then the distorted pattern of blocks resolved into a face. “Oh, here we are.”
But the face wasn’t human: It was a sinister mask.
A bright light gave its bone-white surface a ghostly glow and plunged the background into shadows. It had a grotesque expression, with demonic eyes, a furrowed brow, and a horrible grimace.
Kids around Max gasped and murmured. Several students said the words that were also running through Max’s head: Dramatis Personai. The mask was reminiscent of the ones worn by members of the well-known hacker group when they addressed the public.
Avery turned to the technicians working in the wings. “That’s the wrong video,” he hissed off-mike.
“Hello?” the figure said. The voice was as unsettling as the mask, digitally altered to be flat and low-pitched.
The figure turned to the right and stared into the darkness for a moment. It wore a red-hooded sweatshirt, the hood drawn over the head.
Max’s heart beat faster and his palms prickled with anxiety.
The figure turned back to face the camera and took a deep breath. “My name is STOP.”
What? No.
STOP was Evan’s online handle.
STOP leaned closer to the camera and Max instinctively leaned closer too, trying to get a better look at him. There were twin glints behind the large, dark eyeholes of the mask, like light reflecting off lenses. Evan was practically blind without glasses.
It couldn’t be.
“What’s going on?” Avery asked in an exasperated voice.
“Do you really want to know?” STOP asked.
Evan, what are you doing?
“He answered me! Is this video live?” Avery looked at the screen with his hand cupped over his mike. “What do you mean, you don’t know where it’s coming from?”
“Just listen,” STOP said. Even through the audio filter, there was no mistaking the urgency and desperation in his voice. “Please listen.”
Three loud tones punctuated the audio. Max and his classmates flinched.
“I have a question.” STOP took a deep breath and looked straight into the camera. Max shivered. From where he was sitting, it was as if STOP was looking straight at him.
“What is the silence of six, and what are you going to do about it?” STOP pushed his hood back. Evan’s usually wispy brown hair was greasy and dull, matted against his head.
He reached off screen with his right hand and used his left to slowly lift his mask enough to reveal his nose and mouth. He had a few days’ growth of stubble and his pale skin glistened with sweat.
Max gripped the armrests of his seat. What the hell was he doing?
In his own undisguised voice, Evan mumbled. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . . .”
Light from the desk lamp flashed against something dark. It took Max a moment longer to figure out what Evan was holding in his right hand. It didn’t register immediately because it didn’t belong there. It didn’t belong in Evan’s mouth.
Shit, that’s a gun, Max thought.
The sharp pop of a gunshot tore through the quiet. The video jumped as Evan’s body jerked and fell backward into the shadows with a sickening, wet thud. Blood speckled the camera lens and the light turned red.
The audience gasped then fell quiet.
2
Max stared at the blank white screen. Hewanted to scream, but he could barely breathe. That couldn’t have happened. That couldn’t have been real.
Evan.
The auditorium was bright and the stage was empty but for a fallen bottle of water spreading a dark, wet stain on the crimson carpet. Like blood.
He had a vague recollection of the Secret Service agents whisking Tooms and Lovett into the wings. Courtney was standing in front of the stage, clutching her closed MacBook, while Bennett Avery talked to someone over his headset.
Some students hovered near the closed doors, which were still guarded by Secret Service agents. Most had stayed in their seats, typing on their phones, huddled with their arms around themselves. Kids talked loudly and over each other.
“Oh my God . . . .”
“Can you believe that?”
“What did he say? The ‘silence of six’?”
“Creepy.”
“Obviously delusional.”
“WTF.”
“I’m gonna need therapy.”
“This still isn’t loading. How’s yours?”
“Who was that loser?”
He was one of us! Max wanted to shout. He wasn’t just some stranger. His name was Evan Baxter. He was only seventeen years old. He walked the halls of Granville High with us. Not that any of you ever gave him the time of day.
Of course, Max hadn’t done much better lately.
Max closed his eyes, wishing he could shut out the sounds too. He saw blood and brains explode from the back of Evan’s skull in slow motion, like some over-the-top horror flick.
Max heaved. He tasted the chalky protein shake he’d guzzled following his afternoon run.
“Max? You don’t look so good,” Isaac said.
He swallowed and opened his eyes. He took deep breaths.
“We just watched someone die,” Max said.
Could people be so used to violence and gore that it didn’t affect them anymore? God, kids were actually taking selfies now.
“I can’t believe he did that on national television,” Isaac said.
Max squeezed his hands into fists. “That didn’t happen,” he said.
Evan would never kill himself. Where would he even have gotten a gun?
He remembered: Mr. Baxter hid a gun under a loose floorboard in the master bedroom closet. Evan had discovered it years ago while looking for Christmas presents. He and Max took turns holding it and pretending to be CIA agents tracking down terrorists. Dumb, but Evan had at least made sure the gun wasn’t loaded and that there were no bullets in the chamber.
So Evan wasn’t stupid enough to kill himself.
“It wasn’t real,” Max said. “Videos can be faked.”
Evan was good at that sort of thing, special effects. If it could be done with a computer, Evan could pull it off.
“It looked real,” Isaac said.
“It happens,” Walt said. “Things get bad, people can’t deal anymore. It’s a shame.”
Max pressed his lips together. They didn’t know it was Evan. They didn’t know how impossible all this was. Evan was often depressed, but his hacking activities and friendship with Max kept him in check.
Only Max didn’t know how bad it might have gotten, or how his medication might have affected him, because they hadn’t talked in a while. The Evan that Max knew wouldn’t have done this, but maybe he hadn’t been the same Evan.
Max pulled his phone out of his pocket. He turned it on and swiftly tapped in his twenty-digit PIN to unlock it. That last text message from Evan had to mean something. It had to tell him why.
“Don’t bother. No signal. Must be overloaded or something,” Walt said.
Max checked his signal strength and saw the phone was in roaming mode and had zero bars. He had no internet access either. “What the hell?” he said.
“My Panjea note still hasn’t gone through,” Isaac said. He showed his phone screen to Max. The progress circle in the center of the Panjea app kept spinning around and around.
“Everyone’s having the same trouble?” Max asked.
“Seems like.”
“Hmm.” Max noticed that the doors around the auditorium were still close
d and guarded, which didn’t make any sense. The gun hadn’t been in the school, and they didn’t even know that the masked caller was a Granville student. So why were they acting like there was some immediate threat?
“What?” Isaac asked.
Max lowered his voice. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone’s using a frequency jammer to block our phone signals.”
“Like, terrorists?” Panic crept into Isaac’s voice.
“I don’t think so,” Max said. “Frequency jammers are illegal, but the government sometimes uses them during protests and in prisons, that kind of thing.”
Max switched on the wireless radio on his phone. The student Wi-Fi network had been disabled, but the faculty network was active. The agents might need that one to keep their computers online. Or maybe they just neglected to turn it off.
“Why would they jam us?” Isaac asked.
“That’s the question. Maybe something’s going on out there they don’t want us to know about. Or they don’t want anyone out there to know what’s happening here.” Max nodded at their teachers, who kept trying to make calls.
“Come on, man,” Isaac said. “This is getting freaky.”
Having something to do, a problem to solve, would help Max deal with what he’d just seen. It was either this or shut down.
Max connected his phone to “Granville_FAC.” The administration thought it was secure enough, but he and Evan had figured the password out on their first day of school. The router’s default factory settings had never been changed: username “admin,” password “00000.” Brilliant.
He was online. He opened his browser to CNN and read the headline: “Breaking News: Presidential Debate Hacked,” with a still of Evan in his mask. Max skimmed through the transcript below the news video:
“Moments ago, tonight’s presidential debate at Granville High School in Granville, California was interrupted by a pirate video transmission from a hacker who identified himself only as ‘Stop’. . .”
“You’re online?” Isaac leaned over Max’s shoulder.
“Shh.” Max lowered his phone and looked around. No one was paying attention to them so far.
Max opened the Panjea app on his phone. People were going wild on social media with speculations on what was happening inside the school and what Evan’s video had meant. The #webdeb hashtag had been joined by #Granville, #WhatIsTheSilenceOfSix, #STOP, and #coverup. The messages scrolled up like movie credits, almost too fast to read.
“No one’s talking about the suicide,” Max said. “You’d think they’d be all over that.”
“Can I borrow that?” Walt asked. “My family’s gotta be worried.”
Max shook his head. “I only have an internet connection. My phone signal is still blocked.”
Max could call out over the internet using his VoIP account, but Walt would draw attention if he were the only person talking on a cell phone.
Max looked around again and froze when he noticed someone watching him from the stage’s left wing: a man in a gray turtleneck, black jeans, and white tennis shoes. Kevin Sharpe.
His grizzled face had recently graced the covers of TIME and Wired, where they referred to him as “the Architect” who masterminded Lovett’s entire online campaign. Of course he was here tonight, but why hadn’t he left with her? And why was he interested in Max?
Max casually slipped his phone into his pocket. Sharpe tapped on his tablet and disappeared into the shadows backstage.
“Now what?” Isaac said.
A stern-faced Asian man with thinning gray hair and a paunch walked on stage.
“I’m Agent Richard Kwon, with the FBI.” A badge dangled from a chain around his neck.
“What’s happening? Why can’t we leave?” That was Jenny McIntyre from Max’s social studies class. “Why don’t our phones work?”
Agent Kwon held up a hand. “We have just experienced a serious security breach. We are locking down all network traffic while we attempt to trace the transmission. We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding as we deal with this. We are going to send you home shortly.” He nodded and the doors at the back of the room opened. “However, as this is an ongoing federal investigation, you are prohibited from discussing this on social media of any kind. Anyone who posts about what happened here tonight will be prosecuted for obstructing justice.”
Students began muttering.
“Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll begin dismissing you from the back forward,” Kwon said.
The students in the last row lined up in front of the doors and were escorted out of the auditorium.
Soon Max heard raised voices in the hallway outside, but he couldn’t tell what they were arguing about. Finally it was Max’s turn to line up, and as his row approached the hallway, they learned what the hold-up was.
“They’re taking people’s cell phones,” Isaac whispered.
Max squeezed the phone in his pocket. He was suddenly acutely aware that he had received a text message from the very hacker who had interrupted the debate moments before killing himself. Even encrypted, the message would invite uncomfortable questions. It was only a matter of time before they connected STOP to Evan and back to Max.
Kwon had just said that anyone interfering with the investigation would be punished. Could Max be charged with withholding information if he didn’t come forward with what he knew? He was probably the only person who could tell them who STOP was. Maybe that made it his responsibility to help, and sharing what he knew with Kwon could help Max understand why his friend had done this.
Damn it, Evan, Max thought. Why did you send me that? What did you send?
In retrospect, the message—the first communication between them in months—should have told Max that something was wrong. Maybe Evan had been reaching out for help, and Max had shrugged it off. If he had called his friend back, perhaps he could have stopped him from killing himself.
“They aren’t getting my phone without a warrant,” Walt said. He set his jaw and went through the doors ahead of them.
Shit. Just the fact that Max had encryption software was going to raise red flags. They would probably be able to crack the algorithm eventually.
An agent beckoned Isaac out of the auditorium. Max was next.
He pulled his phone out. Too late to remove the SIM card. He didn’t even have time to wipe its contents. If only he’d deleted Evan’s message as soon as he memorized it, but he’d been waiting for some kind of explanation from his friend. As the agent nodded to Max, he did the only thing he could.
He thumbed the power switch and turned off his phone. When they turned it on, it would require his twenty-digit password to unlock it. There were ways around phone security, but it would delay their access to its contents. Max was embarrassed that he hadn’t gotten around to installing kill switch software to wipe the phone remotely. He had been more focused on winning soccer games than having his phone seized by government agents.
The agent led Max to a security station where they had a plastic bin filled with student cell phones in zipped baggies labeled with their names and school ID numbers.
“We need your cell phone,” she said.
“What for?” Max asked.
“We’re reviewing all the pictures and videos taken during the debate for our investigation.”
Max remembered what Walt had said and wondered if it had worked for him. “Don’t you need a warrant?”
“You signed a waiver when you consented to be in the audience,” the agent said.
He should have read that form more closely—not that the school had given students a choice in attending.
Max forced himself to keep an even tone. “I didn’t record anything. I didn’t even update Panjea. Will I get my phone back? Will my data be secure?” He almost couldn’t keep a straight face while asking that of a government em
ployee.
“You’ll have it back as soon as we’re done with it. Everything will still be there,” she said.
“As long as it doesn’t have anything to do with that weird video, right?” Max asked.
She looked surprised. That was interesting.
“I know it’s an inconvenience, but this is a matter of national security.”
She held a plastic baggie open for Max’s phone.
“National security? Because of that depressed, crazy conspiracy nut?” Max felt a twinge of guilt. “What’s to investigate?”
“Do you have something to hide?” she asked.
“No, and you know that’s beside the point,” Max said.
I should just tell them, Max thought. They were going to find out he was lying anyway. He just didn’t know how he could best help Evan, if he wasn’t already beyond help.
“We can always hold you and go through the phone’s contents together after everyone else has been dismissed in five, six hours. Maybe longer,” she said.
Evan had sent him that text for a reason. Max would never have the chance to figure it out if he told them everything now. He should try to find out more on his own first. When he knew what he was dealing with, he could still come forward if he had to. Say he was afraid, or shocked, or something. That much was true.
The agent made eye contact with someone behind Max. He didn’t turn around.
He didn’t need the phone. Handing it over would be a sign of cooperation.
He offered it to her. She held out the baggie again. If she wouldn’t touch it, they were probably interested in lifting fingerprints, too. In Isaac’s words, this was getting freaky.
Max dropped his phone into the baggie.
“Thank you.” She smoothly sealed the bag and uncapped a blue Sharpie. “Student ID number?”
“Two-four-six-oh-one,” Max lied.
She raised an eyebrow, but then she scribbled the number on the bag and placed it in the box.
“Have a good night.” Her tone suggested he should consider himself lucky. “Go straight home. Don’t loiter on school grounds.”
