Lolz: Sw1ftM3rcy?
Sw1ftM3rcy: Yep.
Lolz: Thanks.
And it’s odd, because I feel closer to Sw1ftM3rcy.
Sw1ftM3rcy: No prob. I used some of your code you posted in the iPhone forum. It’s pretty tight stuff. Couldn’t bum it at all.
Lolz: Cool.
Sw1ftM3rcy: Let me know how it goes.
Lolz: Thanks again.
Sw1ftM3rcy: That’s what I’m here for. Besides my script costs $50.
Lolz: Oh.
Sw1ftM3rcy: BTW—you’re definitely a chick. Over and out.
Sw1ftM3rcy has quit (Remote closed the connection)
With that, he’s gone, and I just had my first conversation with a real hacker and didn’t embarrass myself. Aside from that, all I can think about is that Sw1ftM3rcy is most definitely a boy, maybe a man, male anyways. I can see how Hannah ended up in trouble.
Despite the early hour, energy pumps through my veins and my eyes are wide. I don’t have a directional antenna but I do have an old CB radio I can modify to run on batteries. If I can hack and connect it to my laptop, I’ll be able to use Sw1ftM3rcy’s code to gather the data if not decrypt it. No one said this would be easy.
I login to Darkslinger. Everything has changed. The forum is still there, but I’ve changed. I’m a true member, not some outsider looking on. I’m in and I may still be a skiddie but this is a test. If I pass this, you never know. Soon I could be a full-fledged hacker.
In the menu a new tab has appeared, previously unavailable to me: Marketplace. I click on it.
I check over my shoulder and then return to the screen.
It’s laid out like eBay. Sellers and buyers have feedback ratings, reputations based on the number of items they’ve sold and comments like: Best router hack ever—ten times the signal! Now I can play wowc during my commute to work. Seriously.
These people are off even my geek scale. Every hack imaginable from phones, to cameras, to computers—everything is here. Many are free and have detailed instructions; others require a small fee like one million email addresses for $10. Or Spam your friends, $0.03 per thousand. Educational Purposes Only is posted everywhere. I can’t believe my eyes. It’s a digital criminal’s hardware store.
I search for Sw1ftM3rcy’s vendor profile. The guy’s a Darkslinger mogul with a thousand items for sale and a 98% approval rating from buyers. The eyes of his laughing skull avatar burn. Finding the hack he mentioned isn’t hard, because it looks like the guy just uploaded it.
I shake my head—the whole IRC chat—it was just to complete a sale. True to his word it’s up for fifty dollars, payable in Gcoins, which is some sort of virtual currency.
I register for a Gcoin account and finish the transaction.
If the police catch me doing this, I will never work for them again. But if I can prove my case, they’ll forever love me. I can’t wait for dawn. Already the basement feels brighter. But first I have to build my wireless-keyboard-sniffing masterpiece.
Chapter 18
Hours of community service remaining: 1988
<> Tule tweets.
SWF looking for SM, over seventy, for mall walking and other extreme sports, Heckleena tweets.
At 8 AM the mall food court still smells like French fries and it’s crowded. Starbucks knows who butters its toast in the morning; it’s doing brisk business with the gray-haired mall walkers in their sweat suits. Cinnabon has trays of blood-thickening gooeyness set out, and the bank has just unlocked its doors.
Although I’ve left my pregnancy belly at home, I’m in disguise. A blue hoodie hides my face, and I’ve let my hair slide down, a lock of it now dyed a shocking green color.
It took until 7 AM to convince the CB to both run on batteries and connect to my computer. Turns out I still needed an antenna, so now have a length of copper wire wrapped around my waist and running up my back to stick out the top of my sweatshirt. My laptop is open; the CB is on, and I’m sniffing for networks. Due to the increased sensitivity of the equipment, I’ve got a billion to sift through. Sw1ftM3rcy said that if I’m lucky rat-brain bank guy will be using an older keyboard operating on a 27.145MHz band. Sure enough, tuning in, I search the specific band—I have three. Two with nearly nonexistent signals, a third is weak.
Carefully, trying not to lose the weak signal, I slide one arm into the backpack strap and stand up. In my left hand I have the laptop; in the right, a crutch. I have to leave the other crutch behind.
I need to gather enough data if I hope to prove that hacking the wireless keyboard is possible, along with enough keystrokes to ensure I can crack the encryption. Maybe I’ll even land a credit card number or banking I.D. and prove without a doubt the source of the leak.
A gray hair in a red velour Adidas track suit barrels toward me as I move to cross the hall between the food court and bank. Who has right of way? The cripple or the senior? Evidently he thinks he does because he increases his pace, buttocks waggling and fists pumping with tiny weights. I pull up and he whisks past, knocking the laptop, which I barely hold on to.
“Gangster,” he says.
“Richard Simmons,” I reply.
And I have to chuckle. The gray clique doesn’t want me invading their territory and they call me a gangster? The signal has improved, but the computer still struggles to collect consistent data. I reach the bank machine area, dodging another silver intra-mall missile before entering the ATM safe zone.
I glance up at the video camera and quickly look away. I shouldn’t be here.
Unfortunately the copper wire threaded up past my ear works best when pointed at the desired signal, so I’m left facing the wall with a laptop in one hand and a CB on my back. Nothing to see here.
“Ha!”
The first keystrokes appear on the screen and the program begins to gather them. Woot! I slowly rotate, tracking the wall. But then the data stops. The signal’s fine, just no content.
With a sudden realization, I understand the problem. I have to convince him to type … If he’s not typing, then there’s nothing for me to record.
I lose my second crutch and pull my iPhone. Worm-head banker is in my contacts and I tap him an email:
Hi, this is Janus from Assured Destruction, our mortgage payment is coming due and we’ve been hit with some seasonal fluctuation in revenues. Can we just double up the payment next month?
I send. If you don’t ask, you don’t get, and maybe my mom was wrong and he’ll be okay with this.
Another keystroke is recorded. Then another. And another.
“Can I help you?”
I shoulder check. Mall-cop. His only weapon is a radio to call the real cops. I need more time.
“No, thank you,” I say.
“What are you doing, ma’am?”
“I’m … inspecting the wall for mold.”
“Of course you are, ma’am. Turn around please.”
I twist my head.
“What’s in your hand?”
“A laptop to record my findings.”
I look down and see that I have everything I could want.
“This bank could use a good cleaning,” I say. “Green mold. Something is rotting inside.”
“Turn around.”
“Can’t you see I’m injured?”
His radio barks unintelligibly.
“I’ve got a possible 8–11 at the bank. Over,” he says into it.
“8–11, sounds like trouble.” I bend down to slip the laptop into the pack. As I crouch, the copper wire slides right out of the hood.
“What the—” the mall-cop says.
“Just a mold-o-meter,” I say and grab my crutch. He’s half-blocking the doorway bac
k into the food court. “Excuse me.”
“Open your bag, ma’am.”
“You think I have a bomb or something?”
His hand flies to his hip as if he’s expecting something useful to be there. He sputters.
“Yeah, I’ve got a bomb on me,” I yell. “Stay back.”
“Halt, drop to the ground, and place your hands on the floor.” He’s pointing a finger at me. And I wonder what to do. I can’t outrun him but if he finds the CB and the antenna, even he might put everything together.
“You again!”
I turn and there’s ferret-face banker himself.
“Mr. Orsen, we have a bomb threat, sir.”
“This?” Orsen asks.
Everyone is pointing at me. Orsen shakes his head. “She’s trouble but no terrorist.”
I attempt a curtsy and almost fall over.
“What are you doing here?”
“She said she was looking for mold,” the mall-cop replies.
Orsen’s eyes needle me.
“Not that you’re moldy—” I begin.
“What then?” he demands.
I can’t tell him what I’m really doing. If Haines found out, he would pound me into sludge while Chow laughed.
“I came to talk to you about … Assured Destruction.”
He blinks and then checks his phone. “You? But you just … wait, you’re Janus Rose? … Well, the answer is … ” Air whistles from his great nostrils as he reaches his decision. “No. We’ve given your mother enough breaks.”
“A mother who is bound to her wheelchair, her daughter crippled after taking down two felons? You’ve given us enough breaks? Please, just another month?”
“No. Never. Never ever.” His finger shifts to point to the exit. “You might consider finding a new bank.”
“Who would take us at this point?” We don’t have time to find a new bank and he knows it. With all my gear in my backpack, I’m not sticking around to argue.
Another butt jiggler is charging down the hall but I don’t care. I step right into his path, forcing him to veer sharply and careen into the security guard.
“You see that?” the man says to the wannabe cop.
“She’s just leaving.”
Once clear of the food court, I relax.
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it. Bob Hope, Gumps tweets.
The banker saved me from the mall police and he doesn’t even realize it. Time to give him a reason to regret it.
Chapter 19
Hours of community service remaining: 1987
<
I love it when a plan comes together, JanusFlyTrap tweets.
Pride goeth before the fall, Heckleena says.
Whatever.
Harry, aka Hairy on Shadownet, is in front of me in the principal’s office. I’d be a foot taller than the guy if not for the fuzzy fro capping his head. He looks like a microphone.
“I have the essay for boarding the students, ma’am,” Harry says.
“Just leave it in the basket with the others,” the secretary replies without looking up. “There’s lots of interest so I can’t say whether you’ll receive a student or not. The decision will be made tonight.”
“I really want to learn Chinese,” he says, and looks back at me, nodding. “Mandarin.”
“Save the ad for the essay, Mr. Giannopoulos,” the secretary says.
“There are easier ways to learn Chinese than boarding students,” I tell him.
With a quirky smile he lifts his hand and goes on his tippy toes to whisper in my ear: “Not at five hundred dollars for the month, though, right?”
I stand there stunned as he leaves, head bouncing like one of those balls in a cartoon sing-a-long. Five hundred dollars a month?
It’s a sign.
“What is it, Miss Rose?”
“Exploitation …?” I wonder aloud.
“Miss Rose?”
“Yes?”
“I asked you what you need.”
“How many Chinese people can I get?”
She cracks her neck. “This is not like ordering egg rolls for takeout.”
“Sorry, no, no, I only mean, we have lots of space at my home. Can we put up more than one student?” I almost said work instead of home.
“I don’t see why not.” She says this slowly as if trying to think of an objection. “Aren’t you suspended?”
“Can I request a student too, please?”
“The principal needs a hundred words on why they’d prefer your home by five o’clock this evening.” She nods to the stack of essays beside the wire basket into which Harry had slipped his, then goes back to studying her calendar.
“That’s what I’m here for,” I say.
She sighs. “The essay?”
“To stop the suspension.” I point to the principal’s door. “I need to see Principal Wolzowski.”
The secretary always treats the man like he’s in the Oval Office.
“Do you have a meeting scheduled?” she asks, checking the agenda again but now with apparent purpose. She catches my eye-roll and adds: “I’ve spent all day today fixing your mess. At least paper calendars can’t be hacked.”
Now I understand why she’s so impatient with me. Sure they can be hacked, I want to say. I’m hacking yours right now. I can read upside down and can see that the principal doesn’t have a single appointment scheduled—old people have no clue what hacking even means. If I can learn your password by asking you the name of your dog and it works, that’s a hack too. It’s called social engineering. Just like phishing depends on chumps divulging passwords through a fake website or bank info to collect lotto winnings, a hack doesn’t have to take place over email or the Internet at all. Hacking’s a state of mind.
I swallow, realizing I’m thinking like Peter.
“The principal told me to come back when I had some proof that I didn’t do it,” I say.
“What proof?”
“None of—”
The corner of her lip lifts and I realize this woman may be only the school secretary but she can ruin my life, as well as round me up a gang of Chinese students. “I have proof of someone else admitting to the school hack.”
Her eyebrow arches. “The principal has a brief opening in fifteen minutes.”
Fifteen minutes. I don’t argue. It’s enough time for me to wander down the hall and post what I recorded from the bank on the Darkslinger forum. There’s no time to figure out how to decrypt the data. Time to lean on the members.
After cutting and pasting everything, I post the successful hack in my thread, explaining how I rigged the CB to the computer and the antenna, thanking Sw1ftM3rcy for his part and awarding him a 5-star vendor rating from another satisfied customer.
The bell rings, signaling the end of class and I pull the USB ghost key. Doors burst open and halls flood as I jostle back toward the principal’s office; students keep patting me on the back for the A+ hack that I’m about to prove I didn’t do. Jonny swings past and I shove him up against a locker for a make-out session. He breaks off mid-kiss.
“Are you going back?” he asks, voice hushed so I know he’s talking about creep’s apartment.
“Maybe,” I say. “I need to download the file from the webcam before it grows too big.”
He looks around, but those within earshot are gabbing away or checking phones while half buried in lockers. “Want some company?”
“I do, but I’m not sure I’ll have time to pick you up.”
“You shouldn’t be driving.”
I shrug. “I know.”
&nbs
p; Something’s changed from yesterday to today, his gaze lingers on me and the bustle of the hall slowly fades away.
“I’m worried about it all,” he says, “but I think what you’re doing is really cool.”
This time when our lips meet, it’s not a collision, it’s a melding of flesh and my tongue wants nothing more than to spoon with his.
Together we slide down the locker. This time, I’m the one to break away.
“Have to crutch,” I say softly.
His eyes follow me, and I’m beaming when I check over my shoulder to see him still watching as I open the door to the Combine.
“Janus Rose,” Principal Wolzowski says as I enter his office. A new painting hangs behind him. I snigger. It’s a portrait of him leaning forward like he is now with his hands clasped on the desk, except the dome of his head is as polished as an apple in the painting.
Without speaking I move to stand before the cherry wood veneer. This time it’s my turn to sigh and then clear my throat. When he begins to redden, I slide the printout of the IRC log under his snout.
“I don’t appreciate being accused of everything bad that goes on at Hopewell,” I say.
He doesn’t respond, reading through the portion of the chat I saved and then tapping part with his pen.
“If you weren’t here, would the school have been hacked?” he asks.
I work it through. “Most likely not.”
“Then if you don’t like being accused, then you have to stop playing a role in it.” He pauses to underline Sw1ftM3rcy’s name. “I want where he or she lives, their phone number, and real name.”
I laugh and the principal stares at me. “How do I know you didn’t just talk to yourself here?”
Assured Destruction: The Complete Series Page 27
