Echoes (US Edition)

by Laura Tisdall

  ‘But we don’t know what it does.’

  ‘I know that.’ Mallory stretches out her fingers, the movement jerky, not likely to be missed by Warden. And it’s not like she doesn’t remember that most of Daedalus’s past viruses had been these nasty and destructive things, malicious even. If The Reckoning is supposed to be his greatest… ‘Doing this keeps us safe,’ she says, taking the watch off her wrist, the feel of it making her antsy. The Asker knows what he’s doing – he always does – and, like he said, there isn’t another choice.

  So how is that control? She shuts out the question.

  ‘That message will keep Jed and Roger safe,’ she goes on, almost like she’s trying to convince herself. ‘Doing this will keep us safe, and if the CoD still have the others – ’ She stops. The Asker is coming back, a big bag of pretzels and pack of cookies in his hands. He drops them on the table, next to the juice he’d already found.

  ‘All there is, I’m afraid. Any reply yet?’

  ‘No,’ Mallory answers. It’s still silent at her house, too. Warden could re-establish the connection to the club’s security feed, see what’s going on there now, but they’ve decided it’s safer not to. If the pincushion’s been found, whoever gave the CoD access to the system could be actively looking for a tap. The last thing they need is to be traced.

  ‘Are you ready then?’ says The Asker.

  Mallory glances at Warden, but his eyes are fixed on the table.

  He doesn’t think I should do it.

  She locks her jaw, blinking at the bolt of pain it brings.

  ‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘I’ll try.’ They don’t even know if she can do it yet – Warden’s right on that. The Asker himself couldn’t and, despite his faith in her, none of this is sure. But she might as well attempt it. Then, if she succeeds, they will know more about what they’re dealing with and they can make an informed decision and…

  She pulls the laptop towards her, the same code still scrolling across the screen. The Asker’s captors had left it running in the dark so it was all he could look at. They’d said maybe he’d get inspired. She shivers. Beside her, Warden’s watching the screen now, ignoring the food he’d requested, mouth pursed into a line. ‘Let me know if you notice anything,’ Mallory tells him. He just nods. She wants him to smile, to look at her – anything to say he’s with her on this – but he just keeps staring at the laptop.

  She taps the pattern once.

  Four, three, four, two. Focus. Come on, Echo.

  She tries to shut everything else out; close off her doubts and everything she’s worried about, forget everything that doesn’t make sense along with everything she thinks she knows. She focuses only on the code, letting the numbers wash over her, searching out the reason behind them, feeling herself becoming lost in it all…

  It’s the most complex thing she’s ever tried to get her head around and she probably doesn’t type anything for at least a half hour – she’s vaguely aware of Warden fidgeting beside her, eventually breaking into the pretzel bag – but it’s definitely not random. It seems that way, but it’s not, and her mind starts to see the patterns, see the correlations… numbers grouped in clusters, each cluster relating to the cluster next to it… and, crap, it’s a tricksy thing… but, slowly, slowly, the meaning of it starts to fall into place…

  ‘Hey, have you noticed – ’ Warden begins.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘But you said – ’

  ‘Yeah, shut up.’

  He goes silent and she fades back into the code…

  No, it’s not random… it’s just… it’s…

  It’s incomplete.

  At that thought, she suddenly understands why no one else has been able to crack the encryption. It’s not really an encryption at all, at least not in the traditional sense. It’s more like a puzzle. The numbers and letters form a sequence, but there are gaps in the code and it will only activate when each part of it is completed sufficiently to perform an assigned function. This is not about hacking your way into something, it’s not about finding a loophole or breaking something down, it’s about building it up.

  She begins typing.

  It’s exhilarating, mesmerizing. It makes her breathing go steady, makes her muscles loosen… And it’s working, starting to come together… And it’s something beautiful… And it’s something she understands, that is more comprehensible to her than all the people who have been after it and all of their convoluted whys and hows…

  She doesn’t know how long it takes, but she finally clicks the last piece of the puzzle into place. The screen goes blank.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Warden breathes. ‘You did it, you actually – ’ He cuts off. A new code flashes up on the screen. It takes a second for Mallory to see it’s like a variation of the last, but slightly altered, a little more complex.

  Damn tricksy… But she doesn’t feel annoyed. In fact, as she realizes what it is, she sort of wants to smile – which is a strange and stupid thing given everything else, everything that’s riding on this.

  ‘What’s going on?’ says The Asker.

  ‘It’s in levels,’ Mallory replies. ‘Each part of the code you complete loads up the next.’

  ‘How many levels?’

  ‘No way to tell.’ She is already typing again, catching the thread of it quicker this time. ‘It’ll take a while, though.’

  She gets through four more stages within the next hour. The patterns become both clearer and more intricate with every level; clearer because she knows what to look for – more intricate because all the elements she is completing are combining together, pieces of something bigger. As it builds, she begins to realize something else, too. The code in front of her isn’t just a security system Daedalus designed to protect his work – it actually is the virus. It’s just all twisted and jumbled up so it’s useless unless you untangle it through the levels.

  What she’s doing is completing it.

  And once she realizes that, she begins to see what it is actually designed to do and…

  No, she thinks. That can’t be right.

  She knows Daedalus was a genius, but this…

  The more she looks, though, the further she gets, the more she realizes that what she is guessing is exactly what it’s going to do. Daedalus wasn’t exaggerating when he claimed it would change the world. It will change everything, and…

  Shit… shit. Shit!

  ‘Echo,’ Warden hisses beside her.

  ‘Shut up,’ she snaps, still trying to work it through in her mind.

  ‘No, Echo,’ Warden repeats. ‘I need you to listen to me.’

  ‘Warden – ’

  ‘It’s important,’ he says, reaching out to her gloved hands and physically stilling the tapping of keys. Startled, her face flushes. He lets go quickly, but her reverie is broken. She turns to him – her skin needling beneath the fabric – ready to launch into a tirade about why he’s a stupid dick for interrupting because she really needs to think right now…

  His expression stops her.

  He looks scared, really damn scared. She glances around for The Asker, wondering what’s going on, but he’s not there. She vaguely remembers him going upstairs to the bathroom…

  ‘Echo,’ Warden says, drawing her attention back. He’s holding his phone out. ‘The Asker has been lying to us.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have a serious bloody problem.’

  Mallory stares at him, not quite processing the words. She rubs her eyes.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she asks.

  ‘The name on the mailbox,’ he replies. ‘It had been bugging me.’

  ‘Angeline Garcia?’ She remembers him frowning when they first saw it, but he’d said that was from a headache.

  ‘Does that surname mean anything to you?’ he asks now.

  ‘Not really,’ she says, ‘a lot of people have that name.’ The relative calm she’d felt while hacking is very quickly dissipating. ‘What do you mean The Asker
’s been lying?’

  ‘What about Apollonian, then?’ Warden persists. ‘Recognize that?’

  ‘Of course,’ she answers. ‘He co-founded Finders Reapers with Daedalus, got arrested in 2005. You researched it and told me. Look, I don’t get what this has to do with – ’ She stops, something clicking horribly somewhere between Warden’s intense expression and what he’s just said. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I know Garcia is a common name, but when I saw it on that mailbox… I knew I’d heard it before, in connection with Daedalus.’ He hands her the phone. It’s open on an article from 2005 about the trial of the Finders Reapers. ‘I’d read it here. Apollonian’s real name was Nathan Garcia.’

  Mallory stares down at the picture in the article, at the picture that is unmistakably the man upstairs, only younger, clean shaven and with shorter hair.

  ‘No,’ she says simply.

  ‘He was released from prison in 2008,’ Warden goes on, ‘a year before the Forum opened, which about matches up with when his parole would have ended. Echo, everyone was someone else before the Forum – The Runt, Sandman. What I’m saying is that The Asker was Apollonian, is Nathan Garcia. I’m saying The Asker knew Daedalus.’

  Ghosts from the Past

  Mallory feels dazed. She hands the phone back to Warden, questions filling her mind.

  ‘He lied to us,’ Warden repeats. And it wasn’t about a small thing, either, it was about having known, in person, the hacker at the center of all of this. Surely that’s something you would mention.

  And if he lied about that, what else…? Her thoughts recoil from it.

  ‘But it’s The Asker,’ she mutters uselessly, as if that precludes it from having happened. ‘The Asker. We can trust him. We’ve always been able to trust him.’

  ‘Then why didn’t he tell us this?’ Warden responds. ‘What else hasn’t he told us?’

  ‘How’s it coming along?’ They both jump as The Asker re-enters the kitchen. He’s changed out of the dirty shirt and suit pants, and is now dressed in a faded grey tracksuit that looks too small for him. He really is very tall, his head almost reaching the door frame.

  What else hasn’t he told us? Warden’s words echo inside Mallory’s mind. She thinks of what she’s realized about the virus, about what it does, and her blood goes cold. Did he know?

  ‘Fourteenth level,’ she says, finally managing to answer him. Her voice sounds shaky, even to her.

  Get a grip, she thinks.

  ‘You okay?’ says The Asker. She nods.

  It’s The Asker. He’s still The Asker.

  ‘You startled me,’ she explains. ‘When I get into the code, I’m not really aware of other things. You made me jump.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he replies. ‘Level fourteen, huh?’ He smiles a little. ‘How many of these things did the guy leave?’ Mallory’s insides squirm. That felt like a lie right there. Not just some guy – a guy he knew. The Asker crosses the room, leans over the laptop to look at the code. Mallory shrinks into herself. The Asker notices. He hesitates.

  Shit, shit, shit… Oh fricking shut up! she tells herself. She’s starting to panic – and she can’t panic. It’s a pointless thing to do. It’s still The Asker, she thinks again, whoever he was before. Whatever he knows or doesn’t know, it’s still him.

  And she trusts him.

  She trusts…

  She tries to speak, but her jaw seems glued.

  ‘She doesn’t like it when people come too near her,’ Warden intervenes. ‘Haphephobia.’ Mallory glances at him. ‘I googled it,’ he adds.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ The Asker says again, leaning back like he genuinely is.

  And why wouldn’t he be? He’s The Asker and he cares about us. He’s always…

  The Asker stops. His eyes are fixed on the phone in Warden’s hand. The color seems to drain from Warden’s face, quicker than it should be able to.

  ‘You haven’t been contacting anyone, have you?’ The Asker says. ‘It’s not safe.’

  Warden shakes his head for no, at the same time as he stammers, ‘Just my mother.’ Then, ‘She worries when I’m away. I have to text her every few hours or she – ’

  The Asker steps around Mallory and takes the phone before Warden even thinks to close his fingers around it. Mallory’s whole body tenses as he looks at the screen.

  ‘Oh,’ he says simply.

  Everything seems to go still, the room very silent, yet at the same time blood is rushing through Mallory’s ears like a torrent so loud it makes her want to clamp her hands down on them.

  ‘Asker?’ she says, and her voice sounds smaller than it should. He looks down at her. ‘Have you lied to us?’ Something inside of her cracks a little at the words, and he looks… he looks sad.

  ‘It’s not what you think – ’ he begins.

  ‘Do you know what the virus does?’ asks Warden, interrupting – and he sounds angry, angry in a way Mallory’s not heard him be before. ‘That’s what all this has been about,’ he goes on, ‘Daedalus’s last virus – and Daedalus founded the Finders Reapers with you, so surely you’d know what it would do. What are you trying to get Echo to do?’

  ‘Hold on,’ The Asker says. ‘It’s not like that. I meant everything I said before. This is the best way to keep everyone safe from the CoD.’

  ‘Really?’ replies Warden. ‘And how do we know that’s the truth?’

  ‘Because Daedalus was an asshole,’ says The Asker. ‘And I am categorically not in any group named after him. Yes, I knew him, but that was a long time ago. We started out as friends, but we certainly didn’t end that way. Call it a difference of ideology. I hadn’t spoken to him for years before he died. That’s why I never mentioned our connection. It was history.’

  ‘You still didn’t answer my first question,’ says Warden. ‘Do you know what it does?’

  The Asker seems to hesitate, running a hand through his hair.

  ‘I know what it does,’ Mallory hears herself say, breaking the silence. ‘The code isn’t just an encryption, it’s the virus itself, all hidden and jumbled up and incomplete. Each level is a section that relates to the last, but you’ll never see the whole thing until it’s finished, until you reach the last level. I’m not there yet, but I’ve seen enough to figure out where it’s headed.’ They’re both staring at her. ‘Daedalus worked out a method of cracking common internet encryptions, like RSA,’ she says, ‘in minutes.’

  ‘What the…’ is all Warden manages, apparently rendered speechless for once.

  The protection of every single piece of data on the internet – be that emails, bank records, web browsers – relies on commonly-used internet encryption protocols. These codes are built in at a base level and require specific, mathematically-generated keys in order to be decrypted. Without them, nothing on the web would be authenticated, or secure. The keys themselves are usually just very large prime numbers and, theoretically, could be calculated by a malicious third party. The reason they aren’t is that the calculation required would be so big you would need an absurd amount of computing power to achieve it and, even then, it would take years to complete. For decades, people have been looking for mathematical ways to do it faster – from black-hats, to Harvard professors, to the NSA – because if anyone did crack it, it would catastrophically undermine the security of the entire web, allowing the user access to pretty much any data they desired. You could break into anything, take or destroy anything. People have hacked security companies to steal information on specific existing keys before, but writing an algorithm that can actually calculate them within a reasonable time frame? No one’s ever done that.

  No one before Daedalus.

  No, he didn’t lie when he said The Reckoning would change the world.

  ‘He created an algorithm that can crack base internet encryptions quickly,’ Mallory explains. ‘The Reckoning is that algorithm, encoded within a computer virus that acts like a distributor for it. If it’s released, it will disable security on whatev
er it encounters, leaving it vulnerable to attack. Nothing will be able to stop it from spreading and nothing will be able to stand up against it.’

  ‘Right,’ whispers Warden. ‘Wow, I mean, shit.’ Mallory looks up at The Asker, an underlying hope that he has an explanation still clawing in amongst everything else. He hasn’t said anything, his face unreadable.

  ‘I think you should answer Warden’s question now,’ she says, both wanting and not wanting him to. ‘Did you know what The Reckoning would do? Did you know, when you said I should give it to the CoD?’

  The Asker licks his lips, then, ‘Yes,’ he answers, and her heart drops. ‘Or I guessed, when I saw the laptop.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ mutters Warden. ‘And you still wanted Echo to do it? Just give something like that to a bunch of his nutter followers to release – because you know that’s what they’d do with it, and you know it would cause utter chaos. Security would start failing all over the internet and it would be a free-for-all on anything from email accounts to bank details.’

  Another silence.

  Then, ‘At least it would level things up,’ says The Asker. His voice is clear, but quiet. Warden stiffens in his chair. The Asker is looking at Mallory now, his eyes holding her so tight she can’t let go. There is an urgency behind them, the fire she had glimpsed before. ‘Do you know what I was arrested for in the end, back in 2005?’ he says. ‘I leaked documents from six different oil companies, exposing a price fixing ring that was crippling ordinary people. I was doing what we do in the Forum. We find truth. We share it where it needs to be heard. Yes, I was Apollonian before I called myself The Asker, but my goal has always been the same; the dissemination of necessary truth, where lies have caused harm – where people have a right to know. You’ve both seen the corruption that is out there; in individuals, in corporations, in governments. Have I ever asked either of you to do a single hack that wasn’t to expose something rotten, to try and make things better?’

  Neither of them speaks. Neither counters on that point. Mallory isn’t sure she could, even if she knew what to say.

  ‘That’s why I set up the Forum after I got out,’ The Asker goes on. ‘I couldn’t be Apollonian any more, so I became The Asker, the one who called out the people no one else was holding to account. I found others who felt the same and for four years we’ve been fighting against every piece of dirt and lies and greed that I can find. Four years and you know what we’ve achieved? Almost nothing,’ he says. ‘The more we uncover, the more I realize there is to find. We could release ten thousand hacks a month and still only be a drop in the ocean.