Tracker Hacker

by Jeff Adams

  “I’m gonna go out for a bit, just walk the lobby or something. I gotta process this.”

  “Don’t,” Dad said, stepping away from me. “I should let you rest. I can get out of here.”

  “Mom would probably like to get some time with you,” I said. “But I need to walk a bit, clear my head.”

  “Stay in the hotel?”

  “Yeah. The lobby’s big, plenty of space to walk around.”

  “Okay.” Dad and I both went for the door, but Dad stopped short. “I’m going to have Ranger keep an eye on you.”

  What? “I swear I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

  “I know.” His earnest expression came close to starting up my waterworks. “Defender knows that. Your dad, on the other hand—” He stopped himself, and he pulled me into a loose hug. “I almost lost you today. I know you need the walk and that you’ll actually be okay. But—” He paused again and I simply nodded. I couldn’t argue his choice. “I promise you won’t know he’s there.”

  “It’s okay.” We smiled. His smile was tired, and I suspected mine was too.

  In the hallway, we briefly hugged before going our separate ways. It was a bitter pill that I wasn’t playing tomorrow. Two weeks in a row, I was on the bench due to injury. Not to mention how badly I’d played for the gold team in the last two games. It was only in the first one that I showed what I could really do.

  Even though today was a win, it was hard not to feel like a loser.

  Dad’s been great with my emotional outbursts, but I seriously needed to be better than that. Maybe the counselor they were forcing me to see when we got home would help.

  What would really get me in a better mood would be to play tomorrow. The tourney wasn’t the point of the trip, but I needed to play. Skating helped get my aggression out and calmed me down. And I really owed the team more than I’d given them. At least they made it to the championship.

  The lobby of course was quiet and that was what I needed. Hanging out in the small room would’ve made me stir-crazy. Being in a tired-but-not-sleepy state sucked. Maybe I should’ve asked Eddie over, although in the mood I was in, it probably wouldn’t have ended well.

  I wandered around the cavernous lobby, window-shopping at some of the upscale stores. Who really buys a thousand-dollar bracelet at a hotel?

  “Reese?”

  I turned to find Donny sitting in one of the high-backed chairs, phone in his hand and buds in his ears. The chair obscured him as I walked by. Had I seen him, I’d have gone another direction, because I didn’t need his attitude.

  “Damn, man.” He pulled one of the earbuds out. “Coach told us what happened at dinner. Are you okay?”

  He sounded sympathetic and maybe a bit shocked. I must’ve looked even worse than I thought.

  “It’s rough. I’m pissed I can’t play tomorrow.”

  “Probably for the best, though. You don’t wanna mess around with concussions. It took my brother months to recover from one.”

  “He okay now?”

  “Yeah. And he’s not as aggressive in games anymore. He was a really hard-hitting defenseman, now he goes more for snatching pucks from the opposition than slamming them. Do you have one, or are they just playing it safe?”

  “If I do, it’s minor, but they don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Wanna sit?” he asked.

  What was happening? Maybe I really had a concussion and this was a hallucination. I had expected to find dick Donny in the chair because I’d messed up for the team more than once.

  “Might not get up if I do. Trying to stretch out and get myself sleepy before lying down.”

  He nodded, hit some keys on his phone, and stood up.

  “Want some company?”

  “Sure.” We started walking. He let me set the pace, and I just meandered past the storefronts and the glass that looked out over the closed outdoor pool. “What’s got you down here so late?”

  “I get nervous before big games, and since I’m rooming with my coach, I didn’t want to disturb him. I came down here and decided to watch some Mighty Ducks. Kinda my movie version of comfort food.”

  “Nice. I use Miracle for that.”

  “USA,” he said in a forceful whisper so as not to disturb anyone. He grinned and I did too. This was strangely what I needed—a moment with someone who wasn’t going to ask too many questions or ask too often how I was. “I’m sorry you’re not playing.”

  I stopped, and it took Donny a moment before he did the same. “I figured you’d be happy after that crap third game.”

  “Well, that was pretty bad shit. But I loved our flow in the first game and even the second. I was hoping it’d be that guy who showed up for the championship. Plus I looked at some of the vids. You’ve got good moves. I can see why you’d get invited here. How do you write those crazy technical papers?”

  I chuckled. That was a question I got a lot when people found out about my dual identities between high school hockey player and MIT student. “Just the way my brain’s built, I guess.”

  As we came up on the only open shop, we saw Jamie going inside.

  “And even more of the team is up and around,” Donny said.

  Jamie was looking at the ice cream freezer when we came up behind him.

  “Shouldn’t our goalie at least be asleep?” Donny put his arm across Jamie’s shoulders.

  “Hey, guys.” He had a guilty expression. “I woke up, couldn’t go back to sleep because I wanted some ice cream.” He turned toward me. “Theo, man, it’s good to see you. Dude, that’s a major bruise.” He raised his hand to my face but didn’t touch me.

  I nodded. “Ice cream. That’s an excellent idea.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Donny said.

  We each got a different bar, and once we’d paid, we plopped down in chairs in the lobby.

  “You’re really not playing?” Jamie asked.

  “Yeah. The doc and my parents aren’t letting me. So I’ll be the loud one in the stands, cheering.”

  “Gold. Gold. Gold.” Jamie started the quiet chant and Donny and I joined in. We got one odd look from someone headed to the elevators, and that was okay. We hung out for about a half an hour before we headed to our rooms. Talking hockey with these guys thankfully got my mind to disengage so I could actually sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “I’M WORKING as fast as I can,” I said, staring down the barrel of Raven’s gun while Dad held his against my back.

  “It’s not fast enough!” he bellowed. “I’ve got a schedule to keep.”

  I tried to type faster than I already was.

  “What are you writing?” Westside said. “This isn’t decryption code.”

  He studied his screen. Had my deception failed? That couldn’t be. I brought it up on another monitor in front of me. It looked like it was still running. Did I mess it up? I rapidly read through the lines of code.

  “You’re trying to wipe our system!” Westside shouted as he pushed me away from the keyboard. The chair couldn’t roll far because Dad was right behind me.

  “This is what happens when people play games.” Raven was no longer yelling but spoke with an eerie calmness.

  He fired.

  I heard the bullet whiz past me.

  Dad cried out. I turned as he hit the floor.

  “No!”

  “No! Dad!” I sat up, looking around. In the soft glow of my monitors’ screen savers, I could see I was in my room.

  We got back from Denver late. Mom and Dad had sat with Eddie and me at the championship game, which the gold team won. Jamie even got the tournament MVP for his work in the net. He also got positive feedback from two scouts who were there. Donny got some interest as well. I was very happy for them.

  I’d slept through most of the plane ride. Eddie got home a couple of hours after we did, and I’d hung out with him and we caught up on homework. We were quite a sight since I had pretty fresh injuries and his were still fading.

  My p
arents said I didn’t have to go to school tomorrow, but I was always the kid who hated skipping. Plus I got cleared for noncontact hockey practice, and I definitely wanted to skate. MIT class was in the afternoon too. Since that class was my favorite, I didn’t want to miss it.

  If I didn’t go to sleep, it was going to be a rough Monday. But because I wasn’t sleeping at the moment, I decided to sift through some of the data we’d recovered from the Blackbird cloud drive backup.

  It’d been about thirty-six hours since I’d crashed the system, and we still didn’t know who Raven really was. He wasn’t talking. As soon as he was out of the hospital, he’d go to a holding facility for more interrogation. I didn’t want to think about what that meant.

  Angel was more cooperative and said that she’d heard the intel Blackbird used came from someone who was formerly with TOS, but she didn’t have a name. We were looking for clues about who it was in the mountain of data we had, as well as for how they’d broken through TOS’s defenses. Westside, meanwhile, was being defiantly quiet.

  My desk was a mess. As much as I use computers, I had a habit of scribbling notes on paper, and it was everywhere. I shuffled the sheets around looking for stuff I’d written while I initially tried to fix the intrusion.

  What I found was the envelope Cullen had given me.

  I sighed.

  It’d be so easy just to fix his problem. But it seemed pointless if someone could just do it again?

  A light knock on my slightly open door startled me far more than it should’ve.

  “Come in,” I said softly.

  “I saw the light.” Dad whispered too. “You okay?”

  I shrugged. “Nightmare, and I haven’t been able to go back to sleep yet, so I thought I’d do some work.”

  I didn’t hide my issues from Mom and Dad. There was no need. I had an appointment with a TOS counselor after my afternoon class.

  Dad sat on the corner of my bed. “I never planned this for you. Neither of us did. Over the years, I’ve rethought a lot about whether you should be doing all this TOS work. It’s always turned out for the best. This time I’m pretty sure it didn’t.”

  I leaned back in my swivel chair. Dad and I were strangely alike right now, both in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. His red hair as askew as mine probably was—actually his looked like my idea of styled, so I’m sure I looked worse. He had the same dark circles I’d seen under my eyes before I went to bed.

  “I don’t know what the right answer is. Getting in there and stopping that, I did what I had to. As scary as it was, I keep asking myself what would’ve happened if I hadn’t been able to do it.” I lowered my voice so it was even quieter. “I don’t usually like the answer.”

  Mom appeared in the doorway.

  “Is this a guys-only meeting?”

  I smiled. Mom was amazing. So many choices I’d made upset her, but the only talking-to I got was about Eddie, safe sex, and being aware of what his parents would not approve of, and so on. It was a very mom thing.

  We didn’t talk about my decisions or the way I acted as a TOS agent. I was due to debrief with Joanna on Tuesday. She was giving me some time to decompress while she gathered other reports. I’d filed my written report while we were sitting in the Denver airport.

  “Just a meeting of people who aren’t sleeping,” I said. “Come on in.”

  “Nightmare?”

  I nodded.

  “Me too,” Dad said.

  I looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Really?”

  This time he nodded. “Yeah. They don’t necessarily go away when you get older. I remember everything. Shooting Coach.” A pained look crossed Dad’s face, unlike any I’d seen before. I thought he might cry. “Hurting you. Putting a gun to your back.”

  Mom sat next to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

  “We’re certainly a different kind of family.” I cracked myself up a bit.

  When Dad chuckled, the tension broke and we all laughed. It wasn’t a belly laugh or anything, but we were able to find a joke in a bad situation.

  “What got you up?” Dad asked Mom.

  “I just needed a drink of water. When you were gone, I went looking.”

  “Are we…?” I paused. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask.

  “What?” Dad asked. “I think you’ve earned the right to ask questions. You’ve grown up at least five or ten years over the weekend.”

  “Are we helping the right people?”

  I kinda couldn’t believe I said that. I’d often wondered where TOS fit into the world, and I knew it was mostly on a need-to-know basis. Given what I’d just gone through, I wanted to make sure I was on the right side. At the same time, I didn’t know what I’d do if I didn’t like the answer.

  Mom and Dad looked at each other. It was one of those moments where they said a lot, but I wasn’t in on the silent communication.

  “TOS is an unofficial organization that’s funded by several governments around the world.” Dad didn’t seem upset by my question. “We do things the government can’t officially do, although sometimes we work with agencies like the CIA, NSA, and MI-6. No government would ever admit that we worked for them.”

  “More like Mission: Impossible than James Bond?” I asked.

  “I guess that works.” Mom shrugged. “I can’t think of another fictional organization to compare it to. So we do what’s necessary to keep the US and its allies safe in ways a more official organization couldn’t do.”

  I nodded. It seemed like we were the good guys.

  “Blackbird often works to undermine commerce and destabilize parts of the world in ways that would benefit its own interests,” Dad continued. “It would’ve been devastating if they’d put a lot of our agents under their control or killed them. As it is, TOS is going to have to change a lot of protocols because of possible breaches that our agents may have given Blackbird.”

  I knew about that. Between analyzing the data we had, Lorenzo and I along with a lot of TOS techs were planning a massive overhaul. It was a big job that would take weeks. I was also working with another team on a new network-encryption system that would be less susceptible to any individuals leaving the fold. It was a wicked cool project that I wished I could turn in for an MIT class.

  “Okay.” I thought over this information for a bit, and Mom and Dad waited patiently. “Do we ever help individuals?”

  “Sometimes,” Dad said. “Though we usually work on a larger scale. Why?”

  I told them about Cullen and handed them the information he’d given me.

  “I know I could just fix this,” I said after I finished the story. “But then I’m just as illegal as what happened in the first place. He needs a permanent, legit fix.”

  “This kid a friend?” Mom asked.

  “No. He heard I’m good with computers and came hoping I could help. I really didn’t want to know, but he snuck the envelope into my pack, and I haven’t figured out what to do with it.”

  “Let me talk to some people.” Mom took the envelope. “I think we can check this out and make sure he’s where he’s supposed to be.”

  I smiled. That was good.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You should get back to sleep,” she said. “Your alarm will go off before you know it.”

  “Yeah.” I gave the clock an evil look.

  “You could stay home and get some rest,” Dad said. “That’s still okay with us.”

  “I’ll power through.”

  “I wish you’d reconsider,” Mom said. “I’m keeping an eye on you, and if I think you’re struggling, I’ll pull a mom on you.”

  “Understood.”

  She came over, leaned down, and kissed me on the forehead.

  Before she could walk away, I reached for her hand and stood up. I wrapped her in a hug, which she gently returned.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “Love you too, Theo.”

  I released her and went to Dad. He stood, no doubt sensing wha
t was coming.

  “Love you, Dad.”

  His embrace wasn’t as gentle, but it felt safe, like the hug he’d given me in the van. Even though it was a tighter embrace, it helped more than it hurt.

  “You too, Theo.”

  We stepped apart, and he put a hand on my shoulder.

  “I was going to talk about this after you debriefed with Joanna, but I’ll put it out there now. If you want to quit TOS, you have to know that your mom and I will support you in that decision. We’d actually prefer that you did, but it’s one hundred percent your choice. We won’t think less of you if you want to just be a smart teenager.”

  “Thanks.” I hugged Dad one more time. “It’s been on my mind. I know I’m in at least until we get the security protocols updated, but yeah, I’m thinking about where to go from here.”

  “Good.”

  “Night, Theo,” Mom said as they left the room.

  I dropped into my chair and spun around a few times, suddenly feeling like I was eight and twirled in Dad’s chair.

  There was a lot to think about. Meanwhile, I went back to looking for the papers I’d been searching for, so I could get back to my analysis, which would hopefully make me sleepy.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  EDDIE CAME over when he got out of school and we were in the garage where he was sort of helping me work on my bike. Even though I went to school Monday and Tuesday, I’d stayed home today because I felt horrible this morning. I think I finally exhausted myself enough that my body switched off my brain and let me sleep uninterrupted Tuesday night. It was clear from the sluggish way I woke up that I needed more, so I mostly snoozed until hunger forced me up for lunch.

  Holed up in the garage and working on the bike was another form of therapy. Getting the bike back on the road was a big step in life returning to normal.

  I’d spent the afternoon rebuilding everything from the ground up, and it was nearly done. Eddie was cute trying to help. He was science-smart, but he had no idea about tools or how to assemble a bike. The cluelessness was adorable.

  “I like that you’re not flinching when you move.” Eddie sat on the hood of Mom’s car. “The day off looks like it was a great idea.”