Echoes (US Edition)

by Laura Tisdall

  No, he answers. You need to look, Echo. You need to look now. Mallory frowns.

  Which thread?

  You’ll see.

  Helpful as ever.

  She minimizes the box and heads to the boards. There have been fifty-two new posts since she was last on.

  What? That can’t be right.

  She looks down the list of bumped and new threads, and her stomach falls away. Warden is right; she does see what he means. She sees it right away.

  ‘Where is The Asker?’

  That’s the title of one of the new threads. It has thirty-seven responses and counting.

  No, Mallory thinks. No, no… Her eyes flick to the bottom right of the screen. The Asker’s name is in the second list, below Scarlet’s, written in the dull grey it has never worn before.

  For the very first time, he is offline.

  Offline

  It takes Mallory a moment to process.

  Offline.

  She stares at the screen, feeling as if the oxygen has been sucked out her lungs. The Asker is never offline. Do not disturb, yes, but he is always connected, always there in case anyone needs anything. She finally manages to breathe, a sharp intake of air.

  He doesn’t go offline.

  Except, that he is.

  Except, he is, and he’d been following a ‘lead’, looking into Daedalus…

  Just like Cyber Sneak.

  Just like Scarlet, and…

  No. Please, no, no, no… Stop it! Mallory tells herself. Just fricking stop it.

  She doesn’t know anything for sure. She clicks on the thread, looks at the time stamp. It was Jericho who posted first, at eight fifty-one – while she was watching the game. Eight fifty-one means The Asker logged out two hours and four minutes ago.

  That’s all, Mallory thinks, just two hours.

  Her mind starts whipping through numerous possibilities to explain the absence, each worse than the last. He’d said there was a location hack he’d wanted to do. That was why he’d needed her help and…

  Oh shit, oh shit…

  Why did she say no? Why the hell did she say no? Why didn’t she help? She tries to tell herself she had good reasons, but what if he got caught by security or the police, or something else happened because she hadn’t?

  Get a grip! She closes her eyes, steadying her breathing. Just calm the hell down. The Asker could just be offline in order to follow that very same lead. If it was a location specific hack, maybe he didn’t have access to a secure connection there. Maybe… He’d have told me. The words creep like ice inside her mind. He’d have told me if he was going offline… But maybe he didn’t know he wouldn’t have access there. So many things can go wrong on a location hack. You’d have to improvise, wouldn’t be able to plan for everything… Damn it. She really hates not knowing. There are so many variables that she isn’t even sure where to begin. She opens her eyes again. You have to work it out then.

  The Asker trusted her. Something like this is exactly where she needs to not let him down. The chat box with Warden is flashing like crazy, but she leaves it for the moment, eyes scanning down the thread, reading every single post. There are lots of questions, no answers. Most people are just wondering why The Asker is logged off – though a few sound a little nervous. A couple have mentioned Scarlet, and some, especially some of the later ones, are addressed directly to Mallory, to Echo Six. As the Forum’s other moderator, they’re asking what she knows. She clicks out of the thread. Later; she’ll deal with that later. The chat box from Warden is still flashing away, five new messages now. He never was very good at waiting.

  Do you know what’s going on?

  I’ve never seen The Asker gone before.

  This isn’t good, Echo. It’s not good.

  Don’t fob me off. I know something’s been weird these last couple of weeks.

  Please sodding answer!

  Mallory hesitates. She wants to tell him, but The Asker told her explicitly not to get anyone else involved. Does that still apply now the person who’s disappeared is him? Her stomach twists.

  You don’t know he’s missing, she tells herself. She needs to think. She needs to… Warden messages her again.

  I need to check a few things, she replies. Just shut it a moment. Which, of course, he doesn’t. If anything, it makes him message her all the more. She tunes it out.

  Think, think, think…

  Whatever’s going on, there’s not much she can do to help The Asker directly right now, all she can do is what he asked her to; keep the Forum safe. With him unaccounted for and knowing all that he does, the first thing she should check is security, watch for any attempted intrusion in case their secrecy has been compromised. She goes into the administration panel, pushing aside the prickle of fear that that thought brings, and searches the system logs. She looks through all the logins and log outs, scans every piece of data from around the time The Asker went offline. Then she moves on to the activity from afterwards, then from that afternoon, from that morning. She checks everything. Then she double checks it. There is nothing; nothing strange or odd or that would cause alarm.

  That’s good, she tells herself. It’s good.

  She wishes she’d had the courage to talk to The Asker earlier today. Maybe then she’d know something. She locks her jaw, then she looks through his account’s activity for the past few days; nothing untoward again. He’d even posted two more hack requests just last night. He wouldn’t have done that if something was badly wrong then. She looks at the clock; two hours, thirty-seven minutes now.

  Not that long, yet, not really, she thinks… But The Asker doesn’t go offline.

  It can’t just be a coincidence, not with everything that’s happened, but the question is why. Was it something he’d planned or intended… or was it something else?

  He’d have told me if it was planned. He’d have told me.

  Is it like Scarlet?

  Is he going to come back?

  Please come back…

  Other people are chat messaging her now, people who normally don’t try because they know she won’t respond. Warden’s box is flashing away too. She tries to settle her thoughts; they are running away with her and it’s not helping. She needs to order them. And she has to say something. She clicks out of the panel and back into the message boards, back into the new thread. The Asker didn’t want other people to know what was going on, didn’t want them looking into it. She has to stop this before it goes any further.

  What would Echo Six say? she thinks, because it doesn’t come naturally right then like it should. It would be blunt and simple, no room for argument. She starts typing.

  The Asker has something he needs to deal with in real life, Mallory writes, and, no, I’m not going to tell you what it is, so don’t ask. He’ll pass on any updates through me till he’s back. All hacks are suspended until then. Scarlet’s still sick; simple as that. Then she adds, If anyone shits around while either of them are gone, I WILL come after you. Same rules apply that always have. Don’t fucking push me.

  It won’t hold things forever, but it will buy some time.

  For what? Mallory asks herself. It’s not even been three hours. The Asker could come back… Please…

  Another new message flashes for attention from Warden. This time she clicks on it.

  Echo, he asks, what’s really going on? He hasn’t bought it, but then she never quite expected him to. She wavers only a second.

  I don’t know why The Asker’s offline, she says. It’s possible that he’s missing – her anxiety flares again as she writes it – and he’s not the only one. She sends it before she can really let herself think about it. She sends it because in that moment she needs him to know, because she is grasping and he is what she has to grasp on to.

  She tells him everything.

  He asks a lot of questions, curses a bit, talks a lot, then finally says, What are you going to do?

  I don’t know, she admits, hopelessness surfacing.


  This is bloody messed up, Warden replies. Maybe we should, I don’t know, call the police or something?

  Mallory’s heart lurches.

  Call them? she responds. Are you fricking high? And tell them what? The founder of our secret grey-hat hacker group hasn’t logged in for a few hours and we’re worried? Besides, all we have is speculation. Even about the others. We don’t even know that any of them are actually linked. In reality, we don’t know anything. I don’t know anything! Her fingers slam against the keys in a burst of frustration. She just feels so tense. She feels so damn tense…

  Okay, Echo, Warden responds. Okay.

  It’s not okay. It’s a pointless statement, but she says it anyway. The Forum is their escape, their refuge, the place where they all fit. Though she’s known intellectually that what they were doing there wasn’t exactly safe, it’s never felt at risk before. It was the set thing, like it was something that had always existed and always would. She takes a deliberately slow breath. All we can do is wait.

  And I hate it, I hate it, I hate it…

  Right now, she continues, that’s all there is. If he’s not on by tomorrow…

  An idea stirs.

  Mallory stops. It’s an idea she really, really doesn’t like the sound of, so she pushes it away and she doesn’t even write it down.

  If he’s not on by tomorrow night… She looks down at the words. If it’s not just a temporary absence, explained by the location hack, or any number of ordinary, okay things…

  She doesn’t want to think about it…

  She doesn’t want to…

  We just have to wait, she repeats, and she makes a decision. Twenty-four hours. She’ll give him twenty-four hours to come back. Then, she’ll go looking.

  Trail

  ‘So that one’s the adverb then?’ Jed asks. Mallory places the potato she’s peeling into the pan and walks over. She glances down at the workbook in front of him on the table.

  ‘That’s right,’ she says. He’s finally got it. He smiles and it breaks through some of her nervousness. ‘You got this. Next set?’

  He looks down at the page again, forehead creasing as he concentrates. He tries so hard.

  That’s good, Mallory thinks. It’s good.

  She turns back to the cooking; potato and bean pot pie today, page nineteen. She tries to focus on the chopping and the measuring and the simmering, letting the rhythm and detail of it fill her mind instead of all the worries that have been swirling around since last night. She had stayed up way past midnight, hoping and hoping, and then she’d logged in again early before school, but The Asker hadn’t come back online. Neither had Scarlet – although she wasn’t really expecting that any more. It made her antsy to consider it but, just to be thorough, she’d also checked local NYC news sites for stories of arrests. Thankfully, nothing had remotely matched. By the time she’d checked the Forum again after school, before her shift, most members seemed to have accepted the explanations in her post – or they were too afraid of Echo Six to argue. Either is fine, for now. Warden seems to have taken it upon himself to personally berate anyone who has even vaguely challenged her. She’s glad she told him. They had talked for a long while afterwards – gone through options, shot down most of the ridiculous theories fizzing round in her brain – and it had helped to calm her a little. He seems to be increasingly good at that.

  She glances at the clock – five past eight; twenty-three hours, fourteen minutes since The Asker went offline. The idea she had yesterday flutters up again. Warden won’t be happy about what she’s planning on doing… but then, there’s not exactly anything he could do to stop her. As it is, they just don’t know enough. They’re sitting blind. It makes her want to hit something. Very hard. She throws the next potato into the pan. It’s not like she wants to do it. She’s fully aware of the repercussions, and there’s a flicker of fear beyond just her Forum concerns, a fear she tries to quash because it asks what she could really be getting herself into by doing this… but it’s for The Asker, and if he isn’t on by the time she logs back in later, she can’t hesitate.

  ***

  You’re going to do what? Warden writes. She can almost hear the shocked tone of his voice.

  I’m going to hack The Asker, Mallory repeats.

  But you can’t, Echo.

  I can’t?

  No, Warden replies, I don’t mean you can’t as in you’re not able to – please DO NOT take that as a challenge; let’s put it this way, you’re the person I’d least like to attempt hacking me – but if you’re wrong about all of this and he comes back…

  Mallory’s insides knot. You try to hack another member and you’re out, no exceptions. It’s only happened twice in the whole time she’s been in the Forum. The last time, she was actually the target; a newbie called Igor had tried to hack her account back at the start of term. He hadn’t got very far before Mallory had stopped him and counter-traced – some kid out in Pennsylvania misguidedly attempting to gain a shedload of prestige by breaking Echo Six – but The Asker had been furious when she’d told him. He’d apologized to her, over and over – he usually vetted newbies so well, watching them for months before he left them that first trail in. Igor had been permanently banned with a warning that his true identity, along with enough evidence of his illegal hacks to send him to jail, would be leaked on the internet if he ever revealed the Forum’s existence. The login trail was reset too, so he could never find it again.

  Would it be the same for me? Mallory wonders. Surely it wouldn’t, not if she did it for The Asker, not if it was because she was worried about him. He’d given her control of the Forum, after all, had asked for her help in person. He wouldn’t throw me out, she thinks. He wouldn’t…

  She’s not sure, though. If she’s honest, she’s not completely sure. You don’t hack another member. It’s their first and most important rule. If she attempts to hack The Asker, even for a good reason… But then, if she’s right about something being wrong, what does it matter what the rules or punishments are?

  Whatever happened to Cyber Sneak, she replies, whether she went off the grid by her own design or… or because of something else, she’s been gone well over three weeks. Mallory doesn’t have The Asker’s connections, but she’s been checking various grey and black-hat forums to see what she can find out about the first three missing hackers – not much, other than that they don’t seem to have resurfaced and more people are starting to notice their absences now. What if The Asker never comes back? she goes on, this hideous dread of it rushing over her even as she types it. What does it matter if I’d get kicked out, if he isn’t even here anyway? There is no Forum without him, Warden. He finds the hacks, finds the new members, gives what they can all do purpose. None of this means anything without him!

  And there it is, out in the open, the selfish fear underlying everything else. If she loses The Asker, she loses the one thing that is her escape. It would be like falling with nothing to hold on to, and it wouldn’t just be losing him; she’d lose all of it, lose this whole half of her life that feels just as real as the part outside her room. She’d lose the Forum, lose Echo, lose Warden himself – can’t he see that? He goes quiet for a long while.

  So, he finally answers, say you do it, and you get his last login location – which is probably all you’ll get, if you manage it at all, again, NOT a challenge – what are you going to do with it? From the things you’ve said before, I assume you’re somewhere in the US – well, what if the trace leads to Hong Kong, or Delhi, or London? She doesn’t think it will, though, she thinks it’ll be New York City, where The Asker had asked her to meet him. And, you know what, Warden continues, say you even do get there, what can you do? It’s like you said with the police, you can’t exactly waltz up and say, ‘Hello, my secret hacker friend went missing a couple of days ago. I don’t know his name or what he looks like, but have you seen him?’

  Mallory’s jaw clenches in frustration. Her finger taps against the desk.

 
Of course I wouldn’t, she writes, almost hitting the keys because he’s right, isn’t he? He’s right and she knows that and she’s thought about it too, of course she has, but she doesn’t have another option. So we should just leave him? she asks. Hope he reappears? Scarlet may have flitted off to goodness knows where without telling anyone, but The Asker wouldn’t. He spent four years building up the Forum. It means too much to him.

  No, Warden answers. I mean, I don’t know.

  Well, that’s great, very helpful. You don’t know if we should leave him?

  No, he repeats, of course I don’t mean that, it’s just…

  Just what? Mallory asks, when he stops typing.

  Just that you’d be risking a sodding lot for someone you’ve never met, he responds. I care about him too, but people have disappeared, Echo. Real people. Cyber Sneak, Weevil, Tower, Queen Scarlet – there’s a real person behind every one of those names and we have no idea what’s happened to them. This isn’t some online hack or game you can just outsmart because you’re cleverer than everyone else.

  Mallory’s cheeks flush, but it stops her cold. It full well stops her cold, because he’s right there too, though she tries not to let herself feel it, tries not to feel what those sentences really mean, what they imply. They’ve been using this word disappear, but skirting around voicing what it could mean for the missing hacker themselves, skirting it because there is one very important distinction they don’t know; was it their choice, whatever the reason – or did something happen to them? Mallory bites hard on her lip.

  Four, three, four, two.

  Four, three, four, two.

  But it’s The Asker, she types, like that’s an answer, because even in spite of all that, she can’t let him go. The Forum saved her. He saved her, when she was at the lowest point she had ever been. He believed in her, gave her back control when her life was spiraling. She has to know that he’s all right.

  Exactly, replies Warden, and whatever is going on, he couldn’t avoid getting caught up in it – The Asker, Echo. Whatever safeguards he put in place looking into this stuff, they weren’t enough. What if, he pauses, what if Echo Six is the next name to disappear?