by Jeff Adams
I’d thought about that a lot too. They were actually pretty smart about it. It was on a stretch of road where there wasn’t a ton of traffic that time of day. Seeing the footage, they had me off the bike and in the van in less than twenty seconds. The van itself blocked the view from oncoming traffic. As fast as they moved, it could’ve looked like they were helping someone who had an accident.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing makes sense. Unless someone’s just grabbing teenagers.”
“I saw a documentary on PBS a few weeks ago about human trafficking,” said Iris. “Do you think they were going to ship you to some other country?”
That was an unexpected turn.
“But wouldn’t you go for someone who wouldn’t fight back?” Eddie asked.
“Right?” Mitch said. “He’s a hockey player. He knows how to fight and defend himself.”
“Not when they’ve got a gun,” I said quietly.
“What?” Eddie asked, flinching as he turned toward me.
Iris gasped.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. It was part of the official TOS report of course, but I didn’t know if they’d added it into the police report. Now that I’d told my friends, I guessed I’d have to make sure they did. Dammit.
“Dude? Serious?” Mitch asked, his tone somber.
I nodded. The shakes started to overtake me. I knew I was safe in this room with my friends, but the memory of having the gun on me was suddenly all I could see.
“Theo? You okay?” Eddie asked as he squeezed my hand.
I took a couple of deep breaths. This wasn’t the place to melt down. Not in front of these guys. Eddie already had enough going on. Mitch and Iris certainly didn’t need to watch me freak out. I thought I’d gotten past this last night. Around three I woke up in a cold sweat. I’d screamed, though possibly only in my dream. There was no going back to sleep, because every time I dozed off, the scene replayed.
Sometimes it ended like it had in reality.
Sometimes I got shot.
Sometimes I got to the Jeep and Eddie was dead.
“I need some water,” I said, bolting from the bed, and went to the bathroom across the hall from Eddie’s room.
I closed the door and looked at myself in the mirror. I was flushed, which was a weird look for my pale skin. I gripped the sink as I quaked even more. I was wide-awake, but I couldn’t push the scene out of my head.
What kind of an agent was I? Did Mom and Dad get this way after something happened to them? Did Lorenzo freak out after he was in the field?
I jumped at a knock on the door.
“Theo?” It was Mitch.
“Just a minute.”
“Theo, let me in.”
I really wanted to be alone, especially since I was on the edge of a meltdown. I also knew Mitch, much like Eddie, wouldn’t let this go. I opened the door.
Mitch looked concerned, more than I’d ever seen him before. This was one of the things that made Mitch a great team captain—he always knew what his players needed.
“First I know I’m not Eddie, but this is from him since we wouldn’t let him get up.”
Mitch wrapped me in a hug. He was right. He wasn’t Eddie. Mitch was my height so that was off, plus he didn’t put his hands in the same places Eddie did. It didn’t matter, though. The hug was perfect. I hugged him back and struggled not to cry. I didn’t want to cry on anyone. I knew he wouldn’t judge. He’d seen me cry before, just not in a long time—and it usually involved being hurt.
I was hurt. But it wasn’t like any injury I’d had before. It wasn’t physical.
I could’ve died yesterday.
“What can we do?” Mitch finally said as my shakes reduced.
“I don’t know.” That was true. I had no clue. “I guess it’s just a matter of time.”
“You should talk to someone? Mrs. Robbins, maybe?”
Mrs. Robbins was the school counselor. I suspected this was far outside her expertise. If I were pregnant, getting bullied, or failing classes, she’d be fine. Being captured and almost shot as part of a spy organization wasn’t in her wheelhouse.
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t say anything else.
“Or Coach? Eddie? Or me? You know you can tell me anything.”
I pulled out of his grip so I could grab a Kleenex. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it.”
“Dude, I can’t imagine what you’re going through. It was bad enough and then that thing with the gun. Jesus. That’s intense.”
“I’ll talk to my mom about it. She knows people.”
He nodded. “Do it,” he said. “I’m here. Eddie’s here. But you probably need more than we can help with.”
I stared at him and gave a slight smile. He was a good friend.
“Thanks, Mitch.” I offered a fist and he bumped it, but he pulled me into a quick hug too.
“If you need to get your mind off stuff, you can call too. Anytime.”
I took a deep breath.
“Let’s get back,” I said.
I checked myself in the mirror. Color had returned to my face so my freckles weren’t standing out on my skin anymore. My eyes were red, but at least I wasn’t crying. We crossed back into Eddie’s bedroom, and I settled back next to him.
“We’re gonna go,” Mitch said. “Let you two have some time.”
“Thanks, Mitch,” I said, “for everything.”
He nodded. Iris gave Eddie a kiss on the cheek and then came around the bed to do the same to me.
“You two take care of yourselves,” she said.
“See you later,” Eddie said.
After we heard the front door close, Eddie turned and kissed my forehead.
“Are you okay?”
“Better,” I said. “Too much going on in my head.”
“Why didn’t you mention the gun?”
“Because it’s so surreal. Frankly I think I was trying to forget about it. The whole thing’s insane anyway.”
He adjusted himself on the bed so he was up against me. Each move came with a grunt, and those felt like a punch in my gut. It was worse than anything that happened yesterday. Eddie resumed holding my hand as he leaned his head against mine. Since I was shorter, my head was sort of a pillow for him.
As much as I needed to get home to work on some more tracker analysis, this felt so good. Just us trying to heal each other from all that had gone down. Plus I hadn’t heard anything from Lorenzo since this morning, so it was a safe bet he had nothing new.
Eddie’s breathing shifted, and it seemed like he was asleep. No way was I disturbing him now. I’d work later. I let my eyes close and hoped I could rest without any more freak-outs.
Chapter Seven
EDDIE AND I ended up resting for a couple of hours until his mom woke us so he could take some medication. Luckily she politely sent me home so he could rest on his own. I was glad she did. As much as I wanted to stay, I needed to work.
I’d woken up with some ideas I was eager to check out. I had all afternoon and into the evening to do whatever I wanted.
As I pulled Dad’s car into the garage, I saw my bike. They must’ve gotten all the information from it they could and sent it back. Trashed didn’t begin to cover how damaged it was. I gave it a quick once-over since it was already on the rack—bent wheels, dented frame and even a severed brake cable.
“Talk about a mess,” I said to no one.
I pulled out my phone and made some notes. I’d need parts to get this fixed so I wanted to get the order in. The sooner I had it fixed the better, because I already missed my bike.
As I was typing, my phone vibrated with a TOS call.
“Winger. Defender here.”
It was Dad!
“Hi. I…. Thanks for calling. I don’t know where you are but thanks.”
“Snowbird was able to reach me and told me what happened. Are you okay?”
“Um, yeah.”
The silence lingered. I knew I didn’t sell my co
ndition well enough.
“No,” I finally admitted.
“Are you secure? Can we go video?”
“Sure,” I said and activated my video connection.
Dad’s face filled the screen. I couldn’t tell where he was, but it was good to see him.
“Winger, tell me.”
He sounded like he always did when he knew I was holding back. He’d used the voice on me when I was eight and terrified of going back on the ice after I broke my leg. He’d used it when I was thirteen and trying to tell him I was gay. And here it was again. Of all the people I could talk to about this, Dad was the best because he got me so completely. And he always set me on the right path.
“I keep reliving yesterday. Crashing my bike into the van. The gun aimed at me. Eddie in the crushed Jeep.” I sat on the hood of the car. “Sometimes it ends differently—with one of us dead.”
“I’m so sorry. That shouldn’t have happened to you. When you started working for TOS, we didn’t like the idea of you getting too involved, but I don’t think we envisioned anything like this.”
“I didn’t either,” I said quietly. “I tried to fight back, as best I could, Da—”
“I have no doubt.” He cut me off before I could call him Dad, which I desperately wanted to do right then. “If you need to walk away from this, I think we’d all understand.”
“No. I can’t. Too many years helping on too many projects. Besides I want to make sure no one else gets picked off like I did. Even with your training, getting abducted still can’t be easy.”
“You’re pretty amazing, Winger. I don’t know if I’d have felt the same way at your age. Take care of yourself. I’ll be home in a few days, but if you need anything, pick up the phone. Okay?”
“I will.”
“Good. I gotta go.”
Dad put his hand on the screen and a wave of nostalgia crashed over me. He’d done this when I was younger as a way to hug me via video chat. I placed my hand over his.
“I love you, Winger.”
“Love you too, Defender. Thanks.”
The call disconnected. Even though my phone’s home screen was peeking out behind my hand, I left it against the glass as if it could soak up any remnants of Dad’s presence.
After a couple more notes about the bike, I went inside. Mom was in the kitchen making coffee. I gave her a hug, which she returned gently.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I just talked to Dad.”
“Good. We’re both worried about you, you know?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed hard. “I’m a little worried about me too. I don’t even really know how to describe it. I’ve had dozens of hockey injuries, but I don’t have dreams about those.”
“It’s bad?”
I shrugged. I was doing that a lot lately. “It’s weird more than anything. It’s so vivid. Like I’m there all over again.”
“Do you want to talk to one of TOS’s counselors? They’re really good. I had one a couple of years ago who helped me.”
“You?”
She gestured to the island and we sat on the stools. “I’m not usually in a position to have to fire a weapon. Even when I am, I try to injure not kill. But I ended up killing someone, and that was difficult for me. It didn’t matter that there was no choice. I couldn’t figure out how to talk to your father about it, but TOS provided someone. You can make the call or I can.”
“Is there a manual for this stuff?” I asked.
How was I supposed to know there were counselors? I only know how to contact computer folks like Lorenzo, plus Mom, Dad, and John.
She gave a small laugh, which was one of the best things I’d heard all day.
“How’s Eddie?” she asked, diverting the conversation.
“Hangin’ in. He hurts. But he’s tough. I’m glad we hung out. I think it was good for both of us really. I’m gonna go up and work for a while.”
“Okay. Just don’t overdo.”
I nodded and took off.
In my room I shut the door and fired up all the computers to get down to business. First things first I dialed the bike shop to order the parts. As I talked to Monty, my favorite mechanic, I got the new chip out of my locked desk drawer.
Once I finished the order, I hung up and got to work.
I accessed the tracking system and narrowed down to our street. There were two blips in our house. TOS cleared me to view four chips while I was testing. The test one, as well as the devices in me, Mom, and John. Since Dad was on a mission, I couldn’t access his, but that was okay.
They were all ID’d with numbers. Mom’s and the new chip were here. As Lorenzo had said, mine was missing from the TOS system. I entered John’s ID and found him across town. Why was mine missing? What had changed?
I was curious about the logs from the Wi-Fi in the house. I had my own hub, separate and more secure from the Wi-Fi in the rest of the house. Mom and Dad used two other hubs—one for TOS work and the other a regular one from the cable company.
But the logs for all of them could be interesting. The trackers would ping off of all three at different times. Given my computers could see a dozen Wi-Fi networks from surrounding houses, they were probably pinging off those occasionally as well.
I started with the least used network. Sure enough, there were dozens of log entries over the past day. Some of these had to be the chips, although it all simply looked like phones denied access to get on a network.
The trick was, not even TOS had a way to identify what a tracker ping looked like in a Wi-Fi log. Nothing transmitted would give away what it actually was.
How could I filter out real phones? Maybe I didn’t need to.
My hands flew over my keyboard.
I loved it when an idea popped into my head. I had been going about this the wrong way. The system kept track of what the trackers pinged against to know the location.
In the tracker system, I looked up the test chip and saw where it had been pinging from. Dozens of its connections today came from my router, the others in the house, and the neighbors’ too. It was all spelled out right there—the name of the router, the IP address, date, time, and GPS coordinates.
I wrote a quick program to match up the tracking system data against the logs from the three routers in the house.
The router data was fascinating. Each time the test chip pinged, in addition to masking itself as a phone, a long string of what looked like encrypted data went with it. This information transmitted in the background, not needing to be an authorized device. Very clever. It was the same concept as being on a plane and able to look at the airline’s website even if you didn’t buy the Wi-Fi. The encrypted string must have something in it that would convince routers to let it through.
The string was always the same, though. The only thing that changed was the device the router thought was trying to connect.
Quickly expanding my data to look at the other chips in the house, I saw the same pattern.
Most disturbing was that my chip was still pinging. While the TOS system hadn’t heard from my tracker in over twenty-four hours, it was still active. It had signaled the router downstairs just a few minutes ago.
Where was the data from my chip going?
There was nothing I could see in the tracker’s user interface to reactivate chips that were removed from the system.
What if I tried to bring it back online myself? Add it as a new agent just like I’d done when I received the test chip.
I went through the simple steps, which only involved adding its ID number and my codename.
ID 2739. Winger. Added
Current location: 42 23.083, -71 7.095.
That was easy.
It didn’t answer how my chip got removed from the system in the first place. I stared at the screen as if it would offer the answer on its own.
ID 2739. Deleted.
What?
How had that happened? I pulled up the access logs for the tracker system and saw all the ch
ip activity coming in as well as when I’d just added it. There it was. Something took my chip off the grid.
The log line disappeared.
Damn. There was an active breach in the system.
I spun my chair to another keyboard and pulled up the same log. My system automatically made a mirror copy of everything I looked at or worked with. Logs captured all the changes I made too. It was a safety protocol in case anything unexpected happened while I worked.
I called Lorenzo on video chat and made my screens visible to him.
“Doctor Possible. Winger here,” I said as soon as he connected.
“Winger. Good to hear from you, and kinda chipper. How’re you feeling?” As he spoke his face popped on to one of my screens.
“Better,” I said. Lorenzo didn’t need to know about the issues I was having. “Listen, I think I’m onto something.”
I stepped him through what I’d seen.
“Good work, Winger. No wonder we couldn’t see anything.”
“But they’re onto us. There’s no computer attached to the IP in the logs. It never resolves. But it seems the user got in through our system in the first place. Look at this.”
I put the emphasis on one of the screens I shared.
“Here’s how they got in. The logs write out to a directory that has no security on it. From there they can get into the user interface. For some reason there’s an assumption that if you’re looking at logs, you got authorized at some previous point.”
My hands were running over the keyboard, almost on autopilot, as I talked. I already had an idea for a patch, and I was coding right now. The logs had to be locked down. There also needed to be a locked door for anyone who accessed the tracker system to ensure they went through log-in. No more auto-log-in functions.
“Who wrote this code?” I asked as I typed. “I’ve never seen anything so sloppy in terms of security.”
“Stand by,” Doc said. “I’m adding Red Hat.”
He turned away from his cam for a second as he placed another video call.
“Red Hat,” he said. “Doctor Possible and Winger here.”
Joanna’s face split the screen with Lorenzo’s.
