Williams bites her lip and hesitantly leans over. “This is the same gang you said killed your father,” she says. “Before you were hospitalized.”
I grab her hands. “Listen, I’m not crazy. They did kill my father. That was all true. You have to believe me. They’re going to kill Peter too.”
To my surprise, Williams doesn’t simply brush me off and call the ambulance.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
“Yes, let’s go check this out.”
“Really?” I sink into the chair. No sparkler-bombs. No sneaking into mansions.
“Come on, I trust your instincts,” she says and shoots to her feet. “You be my navigator.”
I trail behind her as we head for the stairs to the basement parking lot. In the passenger seat of the Crown Victoria police cruiser, my knee shakes. I can’t wait for us to pull up to those gates now. She punches the address I provide into her GPS unit and the car surges up the exit ramp.
“All right, Jan, tell me everything again, everything you know about Bitchain and what you’ve been up to. It’s very important that you leave nothing out.”
I’ve never actually burned rubber before but it’s so cool when she switches on her siren and my back presses into the seat.
#Shadownet With Det. will take down bad guys, JanusFlyTrap tweets.
Oh, thank the gods, Hairy replies.
In position with @Paradise57, Frannie–Hannah tweets.
“So, what’s the plan?” I ask, trying to focus. “We crashing the gate, pulling out that Glock of yours, and holding some gangster hostage? We’re gonna need backup.”
Williams sniffs. “Not quite. This is reconnaissance. Tell me all about what’s happening.”
The radio crackles and she picks it up.
“Williams here, going off shift,” she says.
At my frown, she replies. “Protecting you, Jan—wouldn’t want this to turn out to be nothing.”
And I had thought she believed me. Well, hopefully a field full of cars and Harley Davidson motorcycles will at least make her suspicious because that’s where we’re speeding.
“Yeah, okay, so when I was on that carding case, I asked some hackers on Darkslinger for some help.”
Williams interrupts: “How do you feel about carding now, Jan? You’d said once that stealing credit cards didn’t seem so terrible.”
I’m not sure where she’s headed with this. “Well, I can see how somebody has to pay for the fraud, right? Like you said.”
“Do you think what your dad was doing was wrong?” she asks.
“You mean using Assured Destruction as a front for Bitchain?”
“A man has to eat,” Williams adds.
“I suppose …” I glance out the window. The lampposts blur past.
“When I was your age, I had a mentor who took me in and showed me the ropes. Are you interested in a mentor?”
“Yeah.” I shift so that I’m sitting on my hands. I don’t really know why, but I do.
We’re on the bridge over the roiling Ottawa River and headed into Quebec. Our ETA is about fifteen minutes out. Maybe less at this speed.
“So explain how this fits in with the Zombie Worm,” Williams says.
“After the virus started, this guy on Darkslinger asked if I wanted to earn some extra money by distributing the anti-virus. He’s got the same avatar as the Bitchain skull so I’m pretty sure they’re linked.”
“Linked …” Williams smiles.
Once we’re on country roads, Williams shuts down the flashing lights and eases off on the accelerator.
“And do you think helping Sw1ftM3rcy was wrong?” she asks.
I can see where this is going. She’s acting as my mentor now, trying to put me back on the right track. But my working with Sw1ftM3rcy probably had more to do with my Acute Stress Disorder than anything else, that and my desire to figure out who was behind the virus. I shake my head: No. Before I have a chance to explain why, she asks me another question.
“Have I disappointed you?”
At first I’m confused, then I remember what the cop said about taking a crack at convincing her. My arms tighten, and my fingers try to form fists under my legs. “You’re the one who decided to keep me off the force,” I accuse. “Not Sergeant Haines or the captain.”
We’re close now. I can see the stone pillar gates. The fence.
“Most people don’t have as many chances as you have had, Janus. Most people only have one before they end up like your father.”
I’m not the quickest but I’m not stupid either. I’m having trouble piecing everything together. How’d she know Sw1ftM3rcy’s name, for instance? Or why does it sound as though she’s threatening me?
“This isn’t about getting back on the force, is it?” I ask.
“No, Jan, it isn’t.” Williams hits a FOB on her keychain and the gates to the mansion open. “Decision time.”
Chapter 32
Williams is a bad guy.
Terror flash freezes my guts. But I have to do something. We only have another hundred yards before we’re parked amongst the dozens of beamers, mercs, and Harleys. I have to keep her talking.
I can’t scramble for my phone or she’ll take it away. Instead I must use my special powers. That is, my complete knowledge of all the icons and keys on my phone. I must mind-meld with it.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“Right from the first time I met you, Jan,” she says, “I wanted you with us.” She smiles and her eyes glisten in reminiscence. “So much like me, and to think James’s daughter. It was poetic. Just like what you did to that stuck-up banker, Orsen. It’s what convinced the other members to keep working you, to set up a proper test.”
“Test? The McDonald’s franchise—using me to distribute the Zombie Worm anti-virus? You’re Sw1ftM3rcy!”
My jaw must be resting in my lap. But how? My surprise is real, and it’s also a good chance to go for my phone. It’s a matter of a few inches from my hand, being beneath my butt. I do it without moving my elbow or shoulder so Williams doesn’t notice.
“Sw1ftM3rcy, at your service.” Her smile grows conniving. “And I’m sort of like your banker now too. You have a small debt to pay off. Some $185,000?” She chuckles.
I see what she’s doing. She’s recruiting. It’s what Peter had said. MICE. Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego. She has me on money. Does she have me on the rest?
“But I didn’t pass that test.”
“Well, you did sort of go bat-crazy, so that’s what we’re here to decide, aren’t we?” Her smile’s back to helpful-supportive mentor smile. The smile I’ve come to depend on, and the smile I want to make happy. “Did you give the cure away on purpose? Or was it due to the illness. Only one of those is the right answer.”
I remain silent, trying for repentant, but really working my phone.
“You know what you did to Orsen was illegal,” she continues. “Blackmailing a bank, accessory after the fact—I can take you in on these. A second offence, you might be tried as an adult. That means jail time.”
There it is—she has me on Coercion. If I don’t cooperate, she’ll charge me with blackmailing and obstructing an investigation. Once I’ve established which end of the phone is up, I very carefully tap what I hope is the Twitter icon and then enter a tweet, #Shadownet Plan go. Williams leak.
“You don’t want to do that,” Williams says with her hand at her holster and staring down toward where I fiddle with my phone.
But I do. I really do. I hit tweet.
“Sorry, force of habit,” I say and hold the power button to shut it down. Otherwise she’d see all my incoming tweets. I feign acquiescence and she holds her hand out, then I place it in her palm.
“Good girl.” She tosses my phone in the drink holder in-between us. “Think about what Sw1ftM3rcy can do, what I can teach you, and what we can achieve. You could be greater than me.”
I swallow.
“My people should talk to your people,” I say.
She pats me on the knee and regards me seriously. “So they should.”
Williams opens her door.
“Wait,” I say.
She pauses as the cold air rushes in.
“How’d you know everything? I had … protection.”
She looks at me and swings the door back shut again.
“Fenwick—” she says.
“Fenwick? The Estonian porn dude?” It’s confirmed and all starting to make sense. No wonder he and his partner got away—Williams never tried to catch him, just went through the motions. Bitchain has been vying to retrieve Assured Destruction and Williams has been here since the beginning. The community service hours were a perfect way to test me, and to potentially recruit another mole on to the force.
What would have happened to me if I hadn’t started the fire in Fenwick’s basement? Or if Peter hadn’t come to save me?
Which reminds me, I am supposed to be here to save him back and every second counts.
“Yes, the porn dude. He was to bring Assured Destruction back.” She grins. “But when you changed our plans, I convinced everyone to groom you. It wasn’t hard. You’d already shown yourself to be fairly gray hat.”
I couldn’t disagree with that. But people change. Decisions are made.
“And when we saw your emails to spammers, we decided to introduce you to Darkslinger.”
“A keylogger,” I say. “You have a keylogger on my network.”
“Fenwick,” she says.
I do have a lot to learn.
“And then when a certain Lolz started asking questions about the wireless keyboard, I knew we had the source of the credit card leak.”
“But why didn’t you stop me? Why take down carders anyways? Aren’t you on the same team?”
“We didn’t stop you because we wanted to see if you could do it. And these were carders trespassing in Bitchain territory. They had to go. Either by your hand or mine.”
“So as a detective in the High Tech Crime Unit …” She’s smiling like a proud parent as I work this through. “You can slam everyone who isn’t part of Bitchain, which makes it look like you’re on the good side while tipping off Bitchain whenever the cops get too close.”
“I’d rather not use terms like good or bad, but that about covers it.”
Something she said before finally makes it through my thick skull. She’d said James. Like she knew my father.
“Um … who was your mentor?” I ask.
Her grin fades. “Your father, Janus. My mentor was your father.”
Chapter 33
“Janus,” Williams says.
I’ve been sitting silent for a minute. If my dad was her mentor, did Williams pull the trigger on my dad? I try to keep my head in the game. I need to find Peter, free him, and then get us both out of here.
“Sorry,” I say, forcing a smile. “Let’s do this.”
The car doors open for a second time and I reach back to pluck the phone from the cup holder where she’d placed it. It’s too dangerous for me to try anything right now, but I may have a chance later.
What I do know is that I don’t want in. The gang offers mentorship, belonging, money, and a certain kind of education; I can see myself here—and that frightens me. I can also see my father here. But over the past couple of days my proudest moments were my friends coming together with me and, strangely enough, the creation of all the silly jewelry. What have I missed lately? Not Shadownet; in many ways, I’ve set it free. I’ve missed my mom. I’ve missed coding—creating.
It’s time to stop Williams, them, all of this.
We enter a broad foyer. The place is cool. Totally geeked out. A huge replica of the Millennium Falcon hangs where a chandelier should be. Lights under its fuselage shine down as if coming in for a landing. A full-size Storm Trooper stands beside a winding stairway, the ascending steps inlaid with circuit boards. In a border around the ceiling run lengths of chain. It’s like Geek Pinterest barfed everywhere. Scattered about the room on pedestals aren’t sculptures, but rather ancient computers, the first iPhone, and old model BlackBerries.
“Most of those are from your father,” Williams says.
“So cool.” I can’t help myself.
“Just wait until you see the NOC. Command and control for a botnet of almost a million machines.”
NOC—Network Operations Center. Jonny was right, there is more beneath here.
Williams leads me through a kitchen heaped with bags of chips, Cheezies, nachos, bottles of beer and alcohol, and stacks of pizza boxes from A ZaZa. Maybe they have a different recipe for orders from the mansion. And it is a mansion. Off the kitchen is an enormous living room with a stone fireplace. In the middle of the room, a massive stone chimney rises to the ceiling. I’d mistaken it for a turret. Central to the fireplace is a big spool of heavy chain and a bolt cutter. Chain of the same type left on the ground in front of Assured Destruction.
Around the fireplace, a motley group fills sofas and armchairs. Guys dressed in sharp suits. Bikers in leather, some muscled, others with heavy guts. And then the geeks in T-shirts and jeans. About one in ten is female, which is surprising; I figured it would have been all male. I spot Ponytail and he looks through me. Who I don’t see is Peter.
How am I going to escape my chaperon to search for him?
“Whoa,” I say, spotting the replica Iron Man armor. “I bet Halloween’s fun around here.”
Williams, placing her hand on my shoulder, announces: “Most of you have seen this one snooping around, but please officially welcome Janus Rose.”
Some people slow clap, a few raise beer steins. Others have their heads buried in phones or tablets.
A man in a silver suit, wearing Google Glass and sitting in a big, egg-shaped armchair, raises his arm and points at Williams. A gold chain, like the kind a mayor might wear as a signet of office, glints around his chest.
“Janus,” the mayor spreads his arms, “welcome to Bitchain.” I clench all my muscles, resisting the urge to shudder. “The chain,” he lifts his in his hands, “it represents more than the 1’s and 0’s of binary code.”
I almost blurt out—so that’s it! The answer to why the weird business names. You can make the letters A, U, Z, with 0–1 combinations using different lengths of chain.
“The chain,” the mayor continues, “is a binding. It’s an important day for all of us here. Today is when all the links of the chain come together. We are strong because we are linked and stay linked. There is no anonymity. Also, today, Williams earns a link on her chain. You.”
Williams shoots a cuff to show me a heavy gold bracelet like the mayor’s long necklace, but with only a few gold links.
“You are a part of her chain,” the mayor continues, “just as the links you earn will be a part of hers.”
“Sorta like that makeup company—Amway, right?” I ask. Or a pyramid scheme, I suppose, but I keep that to myself.
There’s silence and then suddenly half the links burst out in laughter.
“Yes, like Amway,” the mayor says, chuckling, but his eyes glint and the smile quickly fades. “There are reasons why Amway works. They form a family.”
The mayor’s hand sweeps his audience. “And today, Janus Rose, you have the opportunity to join this family.”
Blood rushes to my face. Too fast. This is happening too fast.
“Initially you’ll be asked to run errands, write simple exploits, and maintain equipment,” he explains. “Once you’ve earned your first link, you�
�ll begin generating your own revenue, which is shared with the chain.”
The future he sees whizzes by. I want to ask: And if I don’t become part of the family? If I don’t earn links? What happens then? But I already know the answer. He shuffles closer to me but never breaks eye contact as he speaks.
“Do you, Janus Rose, agree to keep Bitchain secret? To recruit new links and to think in terms of the entire chain and not simply your link?”
He stops abruptly.
OMG.
The silence lengthens. He wants my response.
“Wow,” I say and a few people snort. “Okay—”
A man stands and shakes his head. “No.”
If Williams hadn’t grabbed my shoulder, I’d have fallen over. It’s Fenwick. This is where he fled after I set his house on fire. He must have been pumping serious kettlebells because ropey muscle emerges from beneath his short sleeves.
“Jan, no trust,” he says in his broken English. “Father break chain.”
He’s not the only one unconvinced of my pledge. Maybe a dozen are nodding along.
“Hey … uh …” I gulp, and continue: “Some of you are probably thinking. This is James’s kid, didn’t he betray us? Well … I am his daughter, and the only reason he turned on you was to protect his family. I’m doing this to protect my family too. And …” MICE, I think. How can I use it to convince them? “And I’m tired of being poor. And scraping by. My school has turned me out. The police have turned me out. The bank can take Assured Destruction at the end of the month and I know you can put a stop to that.” The best lies are the truth.
“She worked with the spook,” a biker type says.
“I’m better than half of you, I bet,” I add.
“Take the spook to the farm,” snaps a man so large I’d mistaken him for a stuffed grizzly bear.
It only takes me three seconds to understand what he is talking about. I’ve been to this farm.
Assured Destruction: The Complete Series Page 46
