Cyber Dawn (A Ben Raine Novel)

by Adams, M. L.

  What is she doing here? How did she find my house? And why I am so excited to see her?

  I grabbed the handle, took a deep breath, and pulled the door open.

  Sarah stood on the porch shivering. She wore khaki cargo pants and a heavy blue jacket. A light layer of snow covered her shoulders and hair and a pair of stylish dark-rimmed glasses perfectly framed her brown eyes.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” she replied.

  We stared at each other. Finally, she said, “Um, can I come in?”

  “That depends, are you going to hit me again?”

  “Only if you don’t let me in.”

  I laughed and stepped aside. “Well, in that case . . .”

  Sarah walked into the entryway and looked around. “Nice house. Your parents home?”

  “Nope. They’re in Europe.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. My dad’s a professor. He’s teaching a class in England for two months. They’ll be back in a few weeks for Thanksgiving.”

  “That’s cool,” she said. “They leave you home alone?”

  “I wish. Our housekeeper, Sofia, lives here, too. But she’s out to dinner with a few friends tonight.”

  I motioned down the hall toward the kitchen. “Come on in. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “What do you got?”

  I walked to the fridge and opened it. “Mostly soda. Water, juice, milk, that sort of thing.”

  “Soda sounds good.”

  I pulled two cans out and handed one to her. We stood on opposite sides of the large kitchen island. Sarah picked up her soda and pretended to read the label. I desperately wanted her to say something. Tell me why she stopped by. Anything.

  When she stayed silent, I broke down, and asked, “So, what’s up?”

  “I felt bad about earlier,” she quickly replied. “Wanted to apologize.”

  “No problem,” I said. “But you could have just texted me. You didn’t have to drive over in a snowstorm.”

  Sarah focused on her soda can again. She seemed nervous. After a moment, she said, “You said you needed a hacker.”

  “You said you weren’t one.”

  “Well of course I did,” she said. A hint of her earlier anger returned, then faded. “Mrs. Watson was walking down the hall.”

  Way to go, Ben, I thought. You dork.

  Out loud, I said, “Oh. Sorry about that.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “So . . . you are one then?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  The room was silent again as we both sipped from our cans. Having never engaged a hacker before, I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Sarah remained quiet, again forcing me to drive the conversation.

  “So, how does this work?” I asked. “Like, how much do you charge?”

  She took a drink from her can and started talking. Fast. “Look, unlike most kids at school, I don’t have rich parents. So I get by how I can. My dad left my mom and me when I was nine.” She took a quick breath, then continued. “My mom works nights as a waitress. I work at a coffee shop. Combined, we can barely pay the bills.”

  “Sarah, it’s okay,” I interjected.

  “So I hack. I can make more in one job than my mom makes in a week from tips.” She stopped. “Wait, did you say it’s okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s cool. I get it.”

  Sarah blushed, and said, “Sorry. Guess I’m a little nervous. I can do just about anything with a computer, but asking for money? Not my strong point.”

  “No need to explain,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she replied, biting her lip. “To answer your question, I usually charge different amounts for different jobs. Depends on the risk. What are you looking for? Access to your parents’ email account? Want your history grade changed? Need to spy on Katherine’s Facebook page?”

  I groaned. Not her, too.

  “Sorry,” she chuckled. “Couldn’t resist.”

  “It seems nobody can,” I said. “But no, none of the above. I need . . .”

  In an instant, my confidence disappeared.

  My face must have betrayed that fact, because Sarah said, “Look, your secret is safe with me. What I do . . . well, let’s just say it’s usually not legal. So I’m putting trust in you to keep it a secret as well.”

  I still hesitated.

  Her eyes locked on mine.

  Well, that did the trick.

  Not wanting to disappoint the amazing brown eyes, I blurted out, “I need a copy of my medical record.”

  “Medical record?” Sarah said. “Why not just ask for it?”

  I explained the process. When I finished, she stared down at the kitchen island and picked at her soda can.

  After a few moments, she said, “Look Ben, I can’t help you. Hacking into a hospital network is . . . well, it’s too risky.”

  “Isn’t all hacking risky?”

  “Sure,” she said. “But I usually do simple stuff—mobile phones, social networks, email passwords, the occasional grade or two. Hacking into a hospital’s secure database is on another level.”

  “You can’t do it or you won’t do it?” I asked.

  “Won’t,” she snapped. After a long pause, she added, “Look, Ben, I’m sorry. I really am. I got kicked out of my last school for hacking. And I did a job recently where I almost got caught. I have to stick to the simple stuff. For now anyway.”

  “Kicked out?”

  “Yeah,” she replied with a shrug.

  “What’d you do?”

  “A kid who hired me to hack his sister’s iPhone got a little chatty with his friend. Who in turn got chatty with his parents. And, well, you can figure out the rest.”

  I nodded, then gazed out the kitchen window, lost in thought. The excitement of Sarah showing up at my door faded away. Frustration filled the void. The for-hire hacker thing still didn’t match the girl standing in my kitchen. Nor did her being expelled from school. But it didn’t change the fact that I needed her to help me. I could either stay frustrated. Or do something about it.

  “What about $500?” I asked, turning back around to face her. “That enough compensation for the risk?”

  A look of shock flashed across her face. “Did you say . . . $500?”

  If her reaction to my offer was any indication, I had just become her best customer.

  “You’re serious?” she said.

  “Half now, half when I have the records.”

  She still hesitated, but I could tell she was now on the fence. I just needed to get her to climb all the way over. “Be right back,” I said.

  I hurried down the hall to my dad’s office. My parents had left Sofia and me an emergency fund of cash in the office safe. As long as I replaced it with money from my savings account, neither my parents nor Sofia would find out. I unlocked the safe, pulled out three one-hundred-dollar bills, and closed it.

  When I stepped back into the kitchen, I noticed Sarah now sat at the table. She had taken off her jacket and was reaching down to pull a laptop from her bag. She wore a white t-shirt that said GOT LINUX? in black letters on the front. I stared at the words trying to figure out what Linux was. I also didn’t fail to notice her very curvy figure.

  “Can I help you?”

  I looked up, eyes wide. “Um, I was . . . just wondering what Linux was.”

  A corner of her mouth rose. “Uh huh.”

  You idiot, I thought.

  “Um, I wasn’t . . .”

  “Oh calm down, Romeo,” she said, shaking her head. “A teenage boy looking at a teenage girl’s chest. Big shocker.”

  I sat down in the chair across from her, unsure if I should run away or start laughing.

  “Sorry,” I said instead. I set the money on the table. “Is that going to cost me extra?”

  She stared at the money for a moment. “Nah, I don’t charge for looking.”

  If my eyes could grow any wider, they would have.

  Sarah la
ughed. “I’m kidding, Ben. Lighten up.”

  Cute, confident, and a great sense of humor. This is not helping, I thought. Focus, Ben—this is about Megan.

  You never had cancer.

  Sarah opened the lid on her laptop and turned it on. While it booted, she said, “You must really want these records.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Which hospital?”

  “Colorado Pediatric.”

  A half-minute later, she turned her laptop so I could see the screen. A browser window displayed the CPH homepage, the same one I visited the day before.

  “This it?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  She turned the laptop back around and started typing.

  “You’re . . . not hacking in now are you?”

  “No, just looking around a bit,” she laughed. “Besides, if—and that’s still a big if—I decide to do this, I wouldn’t do it from your kitchen table. In the unlikely event I messed up, they might trace the hack back to your house.”

  “They can do that?” A hint of panic crept into my mind.

  She looked over the laptop lid. Her face formed a well duh expression. Something I was used to when discussing computers. “Uh, yeah, that’s sort of the trick with hacking,” she said. “Being traced.”

  I suddenly realized I should have put more thought into the process. I let my eagerness to solve Megan’s riddle get the best of me.

  After another few moments of working on her laptop, Sarah stopped and leaned back in her chair. “Okay, Ben. I need you to tell me why you need your record.”

  I grimaced. Something else I didn’t think about.

  “Look, I know it’s none of my business,” she continued. “Normally I don’t ask. But if I help you, I’m taking a pretty big risk. And honestly, so are you. We have to trust each other. If that’s too much to ask, I get it. But you’ll need to find someone else.”

  When I didn’t answer right away, she shrugged, closed the lid on her laptop, and placed it in her bag. She stood.

  My eyes moistened. I had refused to cry in front of anyone. Not Megan. Not Sofia. Not the police. And yet, here I was, starting to tear up in front of Sarah—someone I barely knew. Why her and why then, I didn’t know.

  She noticed. “Ben?”

  “It’s sort of a long story,” I said. “I have to go back a few years for you to understand.”

  She rested her bag back on the floor, looked at me, and nodded.

  I took in a deep breath and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. My brain told me to keep my mouth shut. That there was no way I could tell an almost total stranger my secret. Especially not after what happened the weekend before. But it had been two days since Megan’s death and I was no closer to figuring out what she’d meant. I needed help.

  I stared at Sarah.

  Damn, those brown eyes.

  She stared back at me and smiled.

  It was the eyes that did me in. The eyes that changed my life.

  CyberLife and its army of lawyers can go to hell.

  15

  I started from the time I was diagnosed and finished with seeing Megan on Monday morning. I told Sarah much more than she needed to know. But once I started, I couldn’t stop. Six years of secret-keeping had gotten the best of me.

  Throughout the story, Sarah kept quiet and listened intently. By the time I finished, thirty minutes later, she was the one with tears in her eyes.

  “That’s a pretty amazing story, Ben,” she said quietly.

  “Probably a little hard to believe.”

  She wiped the tears away and shook her head. “I believe you.”

  “Want to see it?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  I moved my chair around to her side of the table, bent down, and pulled my pant leg up.

  Sarah leaned over and inspected it. “It looks so real,” she observed. “No wonder nobody knows about it.”

  “The synthetic skin they use is very lifelike,” I said. “Hair and everything. I can even feel hot and cold with it.” I reached out, took her hand, and pressed her fingers into the skin of my knee. “Feel the difference?”

  She moved her fingers around and nodded. “It’s more . . . I don’t know . . . rubbery than real skin though.”

  “It’s elastic so it doesn’t tear.”

  “I can feel the metal under there,” she said. She continued poking her fingers around. “Seriously, Ben. This is like the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I just wish I could tell more people about it. Keeping it a secret sucks.”

  “Mason and Jessica don’t even know?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, at least you have your friend Megan to talk to about it. That has to help a little. Sounds like you two are good friends.”

  I swallowed hard. “We were good friends,” I said. “She knew more about me than anyone. Well, until now.”

  Sarah frowned. “Why do you keep talking about her in the past tense? Did she quit CyberLife or something?”

  Before responding, I walked around the kitchen island and grabbed my iPad off the counter. I opened the photo of Megan and handed the tablet to Sarah.

  “She . . . died,” I said softly.

  Sarah stared at the photo of Megan, eyes unblinking. Her hands began to tremble. “She’s dead?”

  I nodded and told her about Monday night. When I got to the part about finding Megan bleeding on the floor of her apartment, Sarah’s hand shot to her mouth and she inhaled sharply.

  “Sh–shot?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The police think it was a home invasion.”

  “And you . . . found her?”

  Again, I nodded. “She was still alive when I got there. Just barely,” I said. “I still don’t know the reason, but before she died she gave me a message.”

  Sarah stopped sniffing long enough to ask, “What message?”

  “She told me that I never had cancer.”

  “Why would she say that?”

  I shrugged and took my iPad from her. I stared at the picture. “I have no idea. I’ve been trying to figure it out ever since. It doesn’t make sense. It’s why I want to see my records.”

  “You said this happened on Monday?”

  “Yeah”

  “And you saw her on Monday morning, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sarah turned away and stared out the kitchen window. Tears streamed down each cheek. For several minutes, neither of us spoke.

  “Sarah?”

  She didn’t answer.

  You idiot, I said to myself. Shouldn’t have told her about Megan.

  “I’m so sorry, Sarah,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She stood and ran down the hall to the bathroom. She shut the door and I heard running water. It took the sound of the garage door to pull my eyes from the closed door. Sofia was home.

  “Hi, Benjamin,” Sofia said as she walked into the kitchen a moment later.

  “Hey, Sofia,” I replied. “How was dinner?”

  “It was great. Thanks for letting me borrow your Jeep.”

  “No problem.”

  Sofia dropped her purse on the counter and surveyed the room. “Do you know why there is a car parked in front of the house?” Her eyes fell on the chair with Sarah’s jacket and bag. “Is someone here?”

  I was about to answer when the bathroom door opened. Sarah walked out, eyelashes and hair damp from water she had splashed on her face. She momentarily froze when she saw Sofia. Her expression quickly changed, however, and with a smile, she said, “Hi, you must be Sofia.”

  Sofia glanced at me and then back to Sarah. “Hi, yes.”

  They shook hands.

  Sofia frowned when she saw Sarah’s red cheeks and puffy eyes. “Is everything ok?” she asked.

  I was about to answer, but Sarah beat me to it. “Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “Just really stressed about this project we’re working on. It’s been a long week. What,
with midterms and everything.”

  Sofia smiled ear-to-ear. “Oh I’m sure. Ben has been stressed, too.”

  Sarah took in a deep breath, then walked back to the table. She picked up her bag and turned to face me. “I better go, Ben,” she said. “Before the roads get much worse.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “It was nice to meet you,” Sarah said.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Sofia replied.

  I glanced at Sofia as we walked by. Her eyes lit up and she mouthed, “She’s cute.”

  “I know,” I mouthed back.

  We walked down the steps and to the street in silence. A thin layer of snow had collected on the grass. The concrete walkway was just wet. There were two cars parked out front. Across the street was a black SUV. Directly in front of my house was an old Honda Accord. I assumed the Honda was Sarah’s.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “It’s my fault, Ben,” she said as she stopped at the Honda. “I pretty much forced you to tell me.”

  I stepped in front of her and searched for the right words. They didn’t come to me. Sarah shivered. Part of her hair fell down over her face and, without thinking, I reached out and pushed the loose strand behind her ear. She looked up and stared into my eyes. Her mouth started to open as if she was going to say something. But she didn’t. Instead, she turned and climbed into the car.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow at school,” she said as she pulled the door shut.

  Sarah started the car and pulled away. I watched until the red taillights disappeared, around the corner, down the street, wondering how badly I just messed things up with her. After several minutes passed, I turned around and headed back inside.

  Sofia was still in the kitchen, leaning against the island. Her arms were crossed and her lips were pursed together.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Her eyes shifted to the table.

  I looked down and my heart stopped. Sitting on the table were the three hundred-dollar bills.

  16

  On Friday morning, I waited in the drive-through line at Starbucks. I stared straight out my Jeep’s windshield, barely able to comprehend my week. And technically, with one midterm left and a history assignment due, it wasn’t over yet. Of course, instead of being focused on schoolwork, my mind bounced back and forth between Megan and Sarah.