by Jeff Adams
According to Jamie’s tag, he was a goalie. He was my size and had his long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail.
The main program started, sparing us from any additional conversation. Over the next thirty minutes, they divided us up into teams. There were six, and it was a double-elimination tourney. Beyond the medals for winning the tournament, there were going to be most valuable player awards for forwards, defensemen, and goalies.
Right after the team assignments, the players and coaches gathered under the colored banner for their team. I was assigned to gold. There were sixteen of us—mostly juniors, although we had one senior. Jamie was our goalie, so I wasn’t completely among strangers.
“Nice to meet you all,” said our coach, Martin Bayliss. “I’ll be studying up on everyone tonight to make our initial lines. Our first game is tomorrow morning, and we have the potential to play twice each day, so recovery and rest between games is critical. We’ll meet for breakfast at seven to go over lines and strategy. In the meantime, enjoy the next hour or so and get to know each other before you hit the sack.”
A round of “yes, sir” and “yes, Coach” followed before he walked away.
“So how many points this season, Reese?” asked Donny, a winger from a school in Maine.
“I’ve played four games so far, and I’ve got seven.” I was glad I’d actually checked my stats before I left. I didn’t usually keep up, but Coach said I might need to know.
“Not bad.” Donny sounded smug. “I’ve got nine in four.”
Everyone started throwing out stats.
“Winger. Doctor Possible here. Need to talk when you can break free.”
How would it look if I walked out while we were still supposed to be bonding? I was mostly listening and only answering what I had to. But I was ready to go. Posturing over stats was boring.
Finally Donny put an end to what he’d started. “We seem pretty well balanced in stats. That should help us get some wins.”
“Stand by Winger. I’ll extract you.”
Even though it was jarring, there were clearly major benefits of the earpiece. Why didn’t everyone have these? It’d be so awesome to have a network with your friends to bail you out of situations without having to rely on a sly text message. You could simply say a code word, or someone else could step in. It’d be awesome.
“Not sure I’m thrilled that we ended up with two of the wild cards.” Donny’s commentary just kept going. “They should’ve evenly split them across the teams rather than landing two on one. That means there’s at least one team with none.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Jamie said. “I’ll have your backs.”
“Not you I’m worried about,” Donny continued. “I’ve researched everyone here as soon as the player list came out. It’s going to be a close tourney. All the players have a ton of great stats and press coverage showing their achievements. But even with his stats, it’s hard to find anything more on Reese.” I stared him down like I would if we were in a face-off. “I can read more about your work at MIT than I can about you on the ice. You sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable in a computer lab for the weekend?”
Great. I’d been Googled and most of what he found were my papers. It’s not my fault MIT had better search-engine rankings than my team’s website or the school newspaper. At least TOS had done a good job keeping the kidnapping thing out of the media so he didn’t find that too.
“You know my stats, so you know what I can do and that I hold my own in a strong division. If you researched as thoroughly as you say, you’d have seen a couple of vids of my scoring on YouTube. If that’s not enough, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
“Coach better not put you on my line,” he said.
“Sorry to interrupt, guys.” It was Coach Daly. “I need to borrow Theo to go over some stuff.”
As we walked away, I heard Donny continue to disparage me. Apparently he didn’t think a geek could play hockey.
“Good timing,” I said to Coach. “Otherwise we might’ve been trying to have a shootout in here.”
“You’ll show him tomorrow. I’m sure of that.”
“Doctor Possible. It’s Winger. Headed to my room if you want to start talking.” Whispering to myself was weird.
“Come to mine, Winger. It’ll be easier to show you here.”
“Got it.”
We headed to the elevators.
“Get your sleep tonight, okay?” Coach said and I nodded. “You’ll need it tomorrow, between the two games and the mission.”
“I will.”
“Good.” Coach got off at the floor our rooms were on. I stayed on and went up four more to where Lorenzo was and hoped he had some good things to show me.
Chapter Sixteen
I DIDN’T get to bed as early as I wanted, but I compensated by sleeping late and giving myself only twenty minutes to eat. It wasn’t like I had to look great since we were having breakfast and then going straight to the rink to get ready for the tourney’s first game.
I was up late with Lorenzo going over some new intel we had on what was under the rink. We were going to tap into the fiber-optic network that ran in the service corridor right behind the locker rooms. It would keep us from having to go into the sublevels. I also practiced making the tap into the network to ensure the connection would go unnoticed.
Luckily my lack of sleep didn’t impair me on the ice. The gold team was great to play with, although when Donny found out we were on the first line together, he groaned. He quickly changed his tune when I scored the first goal of the game. He found me even more useful in the second period when I set him up for a goal of his own. With less than ten minutes to go, the game was going brilliantly.
How long did it take agents to get used to the chatter in their head from the earpieces? The TOS agents were here watching the game because we had work to do right after. They were talking up a storm in the stands. Nothing related to the mission, of course, but their voices filled my head. It was fascinating because I could still hear everything around me on the ice, but what Mom, John, Coach, Yoshi, and Lorenzo said went straight into my brain. I had to work to keep my focus on the game.
Out for one of my last shifts, I got a breakaway when the opposing team’s defense mishandled the puck. I wasted no time barreling down the ice. As I crossed into the offensive zone, a defenseman caught up to me. I saw him in my peripheral vision and noted I had no one to pass to. I got a shot off just before the D tripped me.
I spun out and ended up crashing the boards. There was a whistle, but as I turned over the ref didn’t have his hand up. The goalie, however, had the puck in his hand. Apparently none of the refs saw the trip, because there was no penalty call.
“Winger, you okay?” It was Mom.
Oh my God. I would have to mute the earpiece for the next game. The chatter was bad enough, but Mom asking questions was not cool. I was hoping they’d let me take it out for the games. After all, I didn’t want it flying out if things got physical. But apparently they’re designed to stay put even under the most extreme conditions.
“Yes,” I said quietly as I stood up.
I wasn’t really okay. That hit rattled everything that had been hurt during the kidnap attempt last week. No way I was going to admit that, though.
I shook it off and set up for the face-off, which was just to the right of the goalie.
“Okay?” our center asked.
“Yeah. Let’s do this.”
He nodded.
We won the face-off and got a shot on the goalie, which bounced off him and landed right on my stick. I made a low shot, sending it just between the goalie’s pad and the post. It was perfect.
The team piled on me. The score was five to three, and with that safety goal, the chances of us winning just went up considerably because there were less than five minutes on the clock.
As we headed back to the bench, from our net Jamie raised his stick in salute. The wild cards were proving pretty valuable so fa
r.
My last shift was a bust—lots of chances but no scoring. Their goalie kept us at bay even while his defense crumbled.
We’d won our first and now had a few hours off before we’d go again.
“Winger, let us know when you’re in position” came Yoshi’s voice before I even left the ice. “D-Man will meet you just inside the service entrance.”
“Yup.”
I tried Eddie again as soon as I got my locker open. He’d never been this angry. Was I going to have a boyfriend when I got home?
When I got to the showers, my teammates were dissecting everything about the game.
“Great job out there,” Jamie said as I took the stall to his left.
“Thanks. You too. Hell, we all did great, especially for that being our first time together.”
“At least we should have the wild card branding off us now.”
“Hope so. Be good to get through the rest of the weekend just being able to play.”
“Although you might have a different target on your back now after the points you racked up out there.”
“I’m okay with that.” I grinned. That was one target I could deal with.
The hot water was great, relaxing the muscles tense from the impact of that hit. I closed my eyes and let the water soothe me while the chatter of my teammates kept me engaged. The talk shifted to strategies we should use this afternoon.
“Winger, we’re all in position,” Yoshi said. “Snowbird is in the Starbucks two doors down, and Doctor Possible and I are in a van in the parking lot. No response required.”
I couldn’t delay any longer. I’d have to take care of the aches later.
“You wanna grab some lunch before the next game?” Jamie asked as I turned off the water. “We’re going to see what we can find nearby.”
“I’ll catch up with you later. Some of my family came in and are waiting for me.”
“Got it. See ya, Theo.”
I grabbed my towel from the hook just outside the shower room and dried off as I headed to my locker. I quickly stored my gear, hoping for the best drying possible before the next game, and got dressed.
After the last of the gold team headed out, I made for the service corridor that ran behind the locker rooms. Coach Daly met me just inside the door as planned. He had a gun drawn, which I hadn’t expected even though he was there to make sure I stayed safe while carrying out the mission.
I moved as if I knew exactly where I was going, which I did since I’d studied the maps. I also acted like I belonged here, looking authoritative and feeling the part. Coach and I went through the Employees Only door and closed it behind me. No one was in the corridor.
“Winger here. I’m in. Moving with D-Man to the designated point.”
“Copy that,” said Yoshi.
Okay, this was cool! Yeah, I’d had the earpiece in for a while now, but this was using it for real. And I was using my codename for more than phone calls. It was pretty badass.
“Doctor Possible here. We’re tracking you, Winger.”
We’d modified my phone and earpiece so the team would be able to monitor my movements.
There were a lot of conduits in here, far more than it seemed like the rink should need. Last year I had a behind-the-scenes tour of my rink at home. There were lots of refrigeration pipes to move coolant. But here there were far more electrical conduits for this three-rink facility than in our six-rink one. We walked for what amounted to a couple of blocks before we made a right turn where there was a steep set of stairs. Coach stayed at the top of the stairs to keep watch as I descended.
On the lower level, the conduits were larger and often marked as high voltage. There was a huge junction box about 150 feet ahead, which contained the fiber optics I was looking for.
As soon as I was in front of it, I took off my pack and pulled out my tool kit.
First thing I used was a device that affixed to the keypad on the front of the locked box. Given the display, the sequence was six numbers. I made sure the sensors went over the keys and then activated it. It figured out which keys were used most—using fingerprints and wear patterns—and then it rapidly pushed the buttons until the box popped open.
Next I used the wire stripper to remove the casing from the fiber optics. I carefully did the work like I’d practiced with Lorenzo—making sure not to damage any of the fibers, but giving me easy access to them. My hands started shaking as I handled the thick casing that wrapped the fibers. I tried pretending this was just another practice.
“I’ve got the casing open, and I’m ready to apply the fiber tap.”
I swapped tools for the TOS-designed fiber tap I got last night. It automatically sliced into the fibers, provided the tap I’d plug into, and maintained the fiber connection so it’d appear uninterrupted even as it made the connections.
As soon as the tap device was near the wires, it began whirring. It practically jumped from my hand as it grabbed the wires and began its specialized task. It was a simple-looking device with only three lights on top. Currently the yellow light showed, meaning it was doing its job. I waited for the green one to illuminate, because if it went red, things were going to get messy.
I took the tablet from the pack, along with the cord that would allow me to plug into the tap. Lorenzo and I had made modifications to the tablet last night to make sure it could handle the speed of the data flow. Luckily Lorenzo traveled with a lot of extra tools and parts.
The tap was taking longer than expected.
“The tap isn’t done. Doc, are you able to track its progress?”
“No. Damn. We should’ve added that function to the tablet.”
“It’s still yellow, so I guess it’s okay.”
Suddenly it snapped into place and the green light popped on. The snap reverberated in the corridor, making me cringe. I shouldn’t worry. The likelihood the sound alerted anyone was minimal. Plus D-Man was standing ready to take care of anyone who showed up.
“Got it. Tap complete. Stand by. Hooking tablet into the data stream.”
We’d modified the tablet to feed Lorenzo everything via the same frequency the earpieces traveled on, so we weren’t reliant on Wi-Fi or cell networks.
I plugged the tablet in and went to the app to get onto the fiber network. I had access, which meant the tap had done its job perfectly.
“Starting the search to see what’s on the network.”
I brought up another app, this one of my design, so I could analyze the traffic on the network. This was serious stuff, because everything was hard-core encrypted. But I knew exactly what I was looking for, based on my knowledge about the tracker chips. It only took a few seconds to see we were in the right place.
I found the firewall—the one we couldn’t see from the outside because of its masking. Inside its home network, though, it wasn’t hidden.
“Starting the firewall breach.”
Using another program of my creation—which I’d used to show TOS the vulnerabilities in its own network, I started pushing on the firewall, looking for vulnerabilities I could exploit. All I needed was one way in, and then I should be able to force a door to stay open for me.
“Time check, Winger,” Yoshi said. “You’ve been down there twenty minutes now.”
“Copy that. It shouldn’t be too much longer.”
Different versions of my algorithms continued to bombard the security measures, and I added new variations as I saw the results. This was fun. I hadn’t hacked a firewall like this in a long while, and it was more exciting than I remembered—changing things up to look for the security holes as authorized data moved through the firewall, but I was being turned away.
“Winger, I’m seeing some odd data streams coming through the tap. Are you seeing them? Started about thirty seconds ago.”
I moved from the firewall program to a program where I could see the data flow. It appeared data was being sent straight to the tablet as an attack. Something was wrong. The tablet shouldn’t be vi
sible to anyone monitoring the datastream. Lorenzo and I had customized our attack to stay in the background. This incoming data to the tablet was acting almost like antibodies coming after a parasite.
“What the hell? I’ve never seen anything like this. Are you capturing, Doc?”
“Yeah and working to analyze.”
The tablet flashed a notification that the program found a way through the firewall and was establishing a connection on the other side.
“I’m in. Doc, watch those odd flows. It seems like the tablet is being flooded, from what I can see. I’m going to try—”
Suddenly the display pixelated. I worked the small keyboard, as I accessed the tablet’s root functions. I needed to insulate it from the incoming attack.
“Ahhhhh!” I couldn’t stop the scream, even though I needed to be quiet.
My body spasmed.
I couldn’t let go of the tablet.
“Winger!”
“D-man? What’s happening?”
I couldn’t respond. My body wasn’t listening to my brain.
Even though I heard Coach say something in the earpiece, I couldn’t understand.
The tablet shattered in my hands just before I slumped to the cold floor.
Chapter Seventeen
I OPENED my eyes and tried to focus.
“Theo? It’s Mom. Can you see me?”
“Blurry” was all I could say.
My body shifted as the surface moved beneath me. I must’ve been on a bed and someone had sat down. A hand ruffled my hair. That was definitely Mom.
I blinked, and she came into focus, along with the room behind her.
I was back in the hotel.
How’d I get here?
Behind Mom stood John, Coach, Lorenzo, and Yoshi. Everyone crammed into my room.
I was getting past the firewall and then….
I jerked and sat up.
“They were ready for us. They zapped my—”
“Easy, Theo.” Mom used her mom voice as she pushed me back.
