Feral: An Our Cyber World Prequel

by Suastegui, Eduardo

  “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “You sure? You didn’t pay him any visits, leave any goodies floating around after you left?”

  “Jason was way over his head before I got there. Needed all the help he could get.”

  “And you helped yourself while you were at it.”

  She shook her head and looked away. No sense in diving into the dumpster with him. “Shall we focus on first things, Martin?”

  “Sure. First things. Like keeping you out of jail.” He re-aimed his index finger at the screen. It trembled. He opened his eyes wider and shot her an angry frown. “Get that through your head. You could work with this team, for me. Or you could go to jail. What’s the call, Sasha? What’s the no-brainer?”

  She sighed. “OK. You guys are right. They used my code to spoof those Ukrainians. But I didn’t lie when I said they were Ukrainians. They were.” She nudged her head toward the screens. “Just not those ones.”

  “That’s very coy, Sasha.”

  “Hey, I said Ukrainians. I had no idea those IPs we were poking were not the ones from the guys I played with. How could I?”

  “Because I would have.”

  “I wanted no part of their setup. Didn’t want to touch it.”

  “Just gave them the code.”

  “Yeah, so they left me alone.”

  “Sounds like a great deal. Why they came to crush you inside a Mini Cooper.”

  “That was different, Martin.”

  “How so?”

  “They weren’t after me.”

  A mix of incredulity and recognition flashed in his eyes. “Me?”

  She nodded. She knew she had him, then. And she wasn’t lying to him, either. They were after him, even if it he didn’t know it was the Iranians. Good thing they’d sent some white guys to do the deed.

  The fire in his eyes still burned, but his voice dropped a notch. “Same people that killed Jason?”

  “Why do you ask me? Can’t Cynthia and company tell?”

  That got him, too. Either he didn’t know the answer, or no one had seen fit to tell him. More than satisfy her, the thought saddened her. For all his intellect and value to the team, he stood as nothing more than pawn, another cogwheel for them to turn or snap out and replace. They told him what they thought he needed to know, and nothing more.

  Here he sat, staring her down, trying to squeeze whatever information he could pull out of her for them. But they were just using him, manipulating him, getting what they could out of him, and when they were done with that, they’d toss him aside. It might happen tomorrow, or in a year, or in a decade. But he’d soon sit somewhere wondering where all the glory had gone. And she would, too, unless she could get him to see it in time to escape this whole mess.

  “Hired help,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Those guys that attacked us. They were hired help. From the looks of them, clothes and such, European. Find some goons in Yugoslavia or Poland, and send them to do the dirty work. Even if you ID them, and I’m sure Cynthia and company will, if they haven’t already…” She paused there, to let him see her point—they hadn’t told him. “You’ll only have names of some street thugs, maybe with paramilitary background.”

  “My, my. Aren’t you savvy on all this stuff.”

  “It’s all on Wikipedia.”

  Martin leaned back in his chair, cupped his hands behind his neck, and aimed his face at the ceiling. Eyes closed, he sighed more than said, “God, Sasha. What am I going to do with you?”

  “Do we need a refresher on the birds and the bees?”

  Still with eyes closed, he laughed. Sasha didn’t quite know what to make of that. At least she could tell the conversation had come to an end—for now. That was good. She also wanted to believe his laughter meant positive things for her, perhaps even a reigniting of whatever heat they’d held between them. But the sound of it hinted of cynicism rather than the warmth she longed to detect.

  “Are we good here?” she asked.

  He held his pose for a moment before mimicking a sit up of sorts. “As soon as you tell me why they want me.”

  “Isn’t that obvious?”

  They held each other’s gaze for a few seconds. In the end, he nodded. In his eyes, she saw that flash of understanding. He didn’t really need to know everything. Neither should he want to. If she told him everything, they wouldn’t be able to stay together. Whatever dreams he had of shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration by the glow of computer screens—that would all vanish. He nodded again, and she nodded back.

  “Here’s a question for you,” she said. “Something to think about.” She paused, wanting him to respond.

  “OK?”

  “Where’s the funding for this new venture of yours coming from? When they stand you up with venture capital, what pot of gold are they tapping, and which rainbow does it flow from?”

  “I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

  “Can’t yet. But when I do, I won’t be surprised if we find a straight line to Jason’s death.”

  “You were there with him, weren’t you? Came by to visit dear Jason, and planted your hack?”

  She had to sigh. She also wanted to say something clever, but she left it at a sigh.

  “You killed him,” he said. “You know that, right? I hope you do. I hope it gives you pleasant dreams.”

  “I didn’t kill him, Martin.”

  “In what universe?”

  “In the one where I didn’t pull the trigger. The same one where he was alive, breathing, and coding before you showed up, but not one hour after.”

  He shook his head, gritted his teeth and looked away. She could tell he meant for the gesture to convey his disagreement and displeasure. But his gaze dropped, and she knew that meant something else—that he agreed with her, at least to a point. That deep down, even if he’d done his best to mask it—to avoid it—he’d held that understanding all along.

  21» Business Rhythm

  Cynthia had to admit that besides his innovative intelligence, Martin possessed a deft touch, a way to navigate through a thorny situation without getting pricked. In this case, he also avoided letting others get pricked. He succeeded in letting things cool down for a couple of days. Sasha’s story didn’t so much placate concerns about her as they neutralized objections through her ability to cast doubts and uncertainty on forensic findings. Her claims remained as plausible as the purported circumstantial evidence against her. Add to that Martin’s insistence that he required her expertise, and the situation had reached an uneasy, fragile equilibrium.

  Two weeks later, with final cleanup of the Chinese financial crisis behind them, Martin, Sasha, Dennis, Cynthia, Stan Beloski, and a couple of other team members met Robert Odehl and a “prep team” of ITAA operatives in Milpitas, California. They gathered at the still under construction but by now partially operational new InfoStream headquarters. Upon seeing the company’s name emblazoned along the top of the third floor, alongside the I-stabbing-the-S logo, Martin’s chest swelled. Cynthia took his reaction not so much as pride as of a hope for his new future.

  Her father welcomed them in the lobby. Odehl stood there, feet atop a black circular rug with the same InfoStream logo, and the company name and motto running along its circumference. With arms extended, he flashed a vibrant smile at Martin. Martin smiled back.

  “What do you think?” Odehl asked.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  Everyone laughed, except for Sasha, whose smile conveyed a mixture of reluctance and apprehension.

  Odehl stepped toward a set of wood doors while he pointed at a smaller side door. “Except for that conference room and this lobby, the facility is fully secured.” He gestured at a set of small, square lockers, attached like a silver hive to the wall next to the double doors. “If you have any electronics, phones, music players, etc. They go in there, or you can leave them with the guard.”

  A uniformed, muscular Hispanic man wave
d from behind the reception desk.

  Cynthia had left all her electronic toys back in the car. Martin had done likewise. But Sasha, who’d ridden in the back seat with them, stepped up to the locker and stashed not one, but three cellphones. She tried to handle them in a way that wouldn’t let on the quantity of devices, but from where she stood, Cynthia could see them—one, two, three—plain enough. She made a mental note of that.

  “You could leave them with the guard,” she told Sasha.

  Already taking the key from the locked door, Sasha shrugged. “This is fine.”

  Cynthia noted that, too, along with a question. Should she try to come out and get a master key from the guard to get a closer look at those phones? Maybe if an opportune time opened up she would do just that.

  At the desk, the guard passed out their badges. Once inside, they would receive their unique cipher lock codes, Odehl promised. For now, he used his own badge and code to let them all in. Yes, all of them, including a foreign national. The thought of Sasha going into this facility made Cynthia’s skin tingle. Oh, they’d made provisions to safeguard the jewels of the kingdom. And of course, since the facility hadn’t reached full operational, certified status, Sasha wouldn’t have much snooping at her disposal. Still, she had no business going in there.

  Cynthia tried her best to tamp down her apprehension. All quite above her paygrade, anyway. And in this case, Daddy made the call. Part of her hoped it would backfire on him, or at least that he would arrive at the admission that Cynthia had made the more accurate situational assessment.

  They all went in, with Odehl holding the door. Sasha stepped up to the threshold last. But she stopped there, as if hesitation became for her a transparent, yet impassable wall.

  Well, Cynthia wanted to see it that way. Sasha raised her right foot and dispelled that.

  “This is a piece of electronics.” She wiggled her leg until her pant leg dislodged enough to reveal the ankle bracelet. “A transmitter, no less.”

  She left it there, and the implied question that now hung in the air.

  “That is an approved device,” Robert Odehl noted.

  “Fantastic.” Sasha entered with nonchalant defiance written all over her face.

  Odehl led them through a long corridor. Heavy, large framed posters featuring a slew of patriotic mission/vision statements lined the walls under focused, art gallery styled lamps. Odehl said something or other about them that Cynthia ignored. Those three phones—she had to find a way to get at them somehow.

  They came to the end of the hallway and faced another set of double doors. These two required badge swipe and coded entry.

  Odehl pointed to Sasha. “You can come in for now. But when we reach full certification status, this area will be off limits to you.” He exchanged a quick glance with Cynthia. “Your office is down the hall,” he added once he’d returned his gaze to Sasha. “You’ll be able to do all your work there.”

  “My own office?” Sasha asked with an undeniable edge of sarcasm in her voice.

  “Yes. And with sole occupancy.”

  “Wow. And how thick are the iron bars?”

  Sasha played along as they showed her around the massive computer room. They walked her through row after row after row of blinking equipment racks that extended from floor to ceiling. With her there, they waved at computer screens that displayed nothing but that stupid, graphically-challenged InfoStream logo. God! Who did they have concoct that thing? Some kid with a 1980’s pixelated computer?

  OK, OK. So the pixelated part meant to represent the streaming part in the company name. But it still sucked. Not to mention this cave they called a lab. Really, they expected people to be creative inside this humming, flickering dungeon? No way anyone should have to form an inventive thought in the absence of sunlight.

  Sasha was still self-muttering about these things when the tour conversation came to an abrupt, awkward halt. She got why. At this point, the show needed to move on to specifics. They needed to talk about how things actually worked, what plugged into what, what software ran here or there, maybe even bring up some of the main displays and run a demo.

  That part she would have to imagine because, of course, she would see none of it. They wouldn’t as much as suggest what goodies they would play with next.

  A polite gesture and an escorted walk down a hallway brought Sasha her new office. Two monitors stood before her. They showed that same hideous InfoStream logo in motion, bouncing from edge to edge, twirling on its side, then end over end. She tapped on the keyboard to make it stop.

  The login screen came up, adding further insult. They hadn’t given her an account yet.

  Alone, sitting on her plush chair, she let her eyes glaze at the faux grandeur of it all. The honey maple desk, the matching crown molding spanning along the top edge of each wall and ceiling, the couch along the wall to her right, and the plush carpet under her sandaled feet. At least the room had walls, blank for now, but she could do something with them. She visualized a few beach and mountain photos hanging here and there. Maybe she would mount frames over them to complete the fantasy.

  She bent down to remove her sandals when an itch under the ankle bracelet diverted her hand there.

  Jail, that’s where she had landed. If she doubted it, if she had any dreams of making this work, the ankle bracelet set her straight. It did it so with stiff, tight cruelty.

  A knock on the door brought her back. A second later, Martin poked his head through the door.

  “You don’t have to ask for permission,” she said.

  He came in with a smile. With three long strides he approached the desk and stood at her side. “Here.” He handed her a piece of paper. “Username and password. I set it up myself.”

  “With lots of supervision.”

  “What supervision? I own the place, remember?”

  “Uh-huh.” She set the paper next to her keyboard and brought up the login prompt again. A few keystrokes later, the screen was asking her to set a new password. She turned to make a face at Martin. “I think this is where you look away, right?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  He grabbed the piece of paper and went over to the shredder to drop it there. While it ground and spun with a sharp whine, she entered her new password twice. When she looked up, he was standing across from her, grinning over the two monitors.

  “All set?”

  She smiled and made a curled finger come hither gesture.

  He smiled back as he made his way around the desk. “Let me show you a few things.”

  “Where’s everyone else?”

  “Tour’s over, so everyone’s playing with their new accounts. Time for you to join the fun.” He started to point something out on her desktop.

  “Cynthia, too? I didn’t take her for the computer enthusiast type.”

  “Oh, her?” He shrugged. “Who knows where she is? Had something or other to do.” He shrugged again.

  Sasha liked the way he shrugged. Like Cynthia didn’t matter to him. Like all that mattered to him now resided on that computer desktop—her desktop—and impressing her with it. Or at least she wanted to see it that way. She did. Very much so. But her imagination took her to the lobby, and to Cynthia digging out three cellphones to see what manner of deception Sasha had deposited there. Fine. Let her look there. So long as she didn’t go back to the rental car to rummage through Sasha’s overnight bag to find, somewhere between the makeup bag and the deodorant, another phone. The one that mattered.

  The one Sasha would use to call Chana whenever she got a second of real, snoop-free privacy.

  “I take it you’re in,” Chana said on the other side of the line.

  “Well, at the moment I’m sitting by a lovely water feature here in this condo complex where my new benefactors have set me up. You know, the white noise thing.”

  “I can hear it.”

  “And if your training proves true, my benefactors can’t.”

  “Line of sight?”

&nb
sp; “Clear.”

  “How far in have you managed to get?”

  “This apartment complex is quite the nice place. Full of young, up and coming Asian families, and with quite the sticker price. You’ve done well by me, but this? It’s got me thinking.”

  “Extravagance draws attention.”

  “Apparently for the ones securing the land of the free, going unnoticed is not so high a priority. Oh, and did I tell you they’re taking me car shopping tomorrow? I’m thinking Lexus or Acura.”

  Chana drew out a brief stint of silence, no doubt considering how to return to her question. “External accommodations are encouraging. It sounds like you have made significant inroads.”

  “Which I must walk while wearing pants. The lack of skirts is killing my fashion sense, but my naked ankle bothers me more.”

  “They’ll take off that bracelet soon enough.”

  “When they do, I’ll send you a selfie to prove it.”

  “How are you doing?” Chana said, with a lower intonation of her voice.

  “What is it? Do you detect dejection or desperation in my voice?”

  “I’ve been where you are right now. It’s normal. You have to build their trust. It will happen in due time.”

  “You sound awful sure.”

  “Of course. Because they have no better alternative.”

  “You mean because of Martin.”

  “That is the epicenter of the whole thing, isn’t it?”

  Yes, it was. Or Chana certainly deemed it so. Sasha pulled the phone away so that Chana couldn’t hear her sighing. Should she tell her about Martin now? Martin and Cynthia, to be more precise? Should she mention how Cynthia’s well-justified skepticism and perhaps even her personal interest in Martin threatened to undo whatever seductive hooks Sasha might have in Martin? What would Chana say to that?

  Sasha could almost hear it. “Neutralize the threat.”

  Sasha opted to bring up none of that, not because of the tactical ramifications, but to conceal her own jealousy. Chana didn’t need to know that. Oh, she would have loved to have that bit of insight, but Sasha wasn’t about to hand it over.