ZerOes

by Chuck Wendig

  Of course, not finding anything out there haunted him, too. He saw something. He saw someone. Hollis put in a call early this morning to have a couple of guys go along the fence’s perimeter to see if they could find a breach—but he could hear that they were just giving him lip service. Like it was some kind of joke. And maybe it was. After an hour out in the woods not finding so much as a single footprint, Roach and Chen looked at him like he was some doddering old man.

  I just turned fifty, he thinks. I’m not old. But his leg cramps maybe tell him otherwise. So does the arthritis in his wrists. And his hips. Shit.

  He finishes his banana, looks up, sees the pod sitting around, looking mostly mopey, tired, confused. Scared, too. Everyone but Reagan—and, frankly, Hollis is starting to think that one doesn’t get scared. Maybe she’s a sociopath. The rest of them, though—hell, he suddenly hopes they all wash out today. Send ’em home so he can go home, too.

  Maybe I am getting too old for this, he thinks.

  Each of the smaller pod buildings is modular. Rounded corners. Eight-by-eight space. Not much there: a desk, a chair, an all-in-one desktop—no touch screen—with Ubuntu Linux as the OS. Mouse, keyboard, not much else. Behind the monitor is one camera. Behind the chair is the other. Both the operator and the monitor are therefore on camera. The five “Zeroes” are informed that every system is mirrored and tracked, and every aspect logged: every key tapped, every nudge of the mouse, even the ways that the eyes twitch.

  By each computer is a folder that contains written instructions for the day’s task.

  The five pods in this group are all within ten feet of one another. Hollis opens the doors to each, says that if they have an emergency, they just need to say something out loud—the microphone on the cameras will hear. Otherwise, he says, he’ll see them at lunch.

  They all step in. The doors lock behind them.

  And so begins their first day.

  Aleena opens the file folder. Inside is a single sheet of paper. On it, printed in bold Helvetica:

  PENETRATION TEST: CMG (CENTINAL MEDICAL GROUP)

  She reaches for the keyboard. Her fingers hover over the keys without touching them. Her skin feels cold, clammy, covered in pinpricks. This isn’t her. Working for this government? A government that doesn’t mind what it does to her people? To any people who don’t register as white, male, and, increasingly, upper class?

  She has an urge to just push it all away. Shove the computer onto the ground. Get up, walk out, tell Hollis what he can do with his pen test, then drop the metaphorical microphone and wait for them to pack her into an SUV.

  But then what? Will she go home and await the law? Will they just throw her into jail? Will it be a jail that people can visit, or will it be some Silence of the Lambs–style hole in the middle of nowhere, not on any map? The United States doesn’t have a very good reputation when it comes to dealing with those it considers enemies.

  And what will happen to her family? Ummi and Abbi—her mother and father? And oh gods, what about Nas? Nasir thinks he’s all tough—little pot-smoking thug in training, listening to Jay Z and Kanye, pretending like he doesn’t also sometimes watch My Little Pony when he gets really high. Prison would eat him up.

  This is no big deal, she tells herself. A penetration test on a—well, all she knows is what it says. Medical group.

  Then it’s fingers down on the keyboard, and she starts cutting through the dangling digital vines with the heft of her data-machete.

  Wade yawns, scratches his beard, scratches his balls, licks his chapped lips, looks up at the camera, smirks like a pissy little kid forcing a smile for the family photo, then reaches across and picks up the folder.

  PENETRATION TEST: PALISADE SYSTEMS & SERVICES

  He snorts. Speaks aloud, as much as to Them as to himself: “Really? You’ve got me trying to crack the shell on a defense contractor? You know I’m rusty at this, right?”

  This isn’t what he does anymore. He’d developed a pretty cozy routine, honestly—he was like the spider in the center of the web. He didn’t have to hunt; all the prey came to him. Servicemen, spies, embassy workers, techies inside the NSA or CIA or FBI—people sending him sensitive information that he could decrypt, re-encrypt, and post across a variety of sites across the world. WikiLeaks changed everything: it popularized what he already did, which made it easier, but also made it all so damn diffuse. Now the market for information is blown open—some folks want to torrent the latest Hollywood cock-buster of a movie, others want to torrent cables and wires leaking the corrupt practices of a variety of world governments.

  Not much money in it, but Wade doesn’t care much for money. What Wade cares about is keeping the government out of people’s goddamn business. If the American people couldn’t have privacy, then neither could the American government.

  Now they’re asking him to crawl out of his web—difference between a garden spider waiting for its prey and a jumping spider who has to hunt down its food. He’s too old to go jumping around. Truth is, he’s rusty in more ways than one.

  He waggles his fingers. The knuckles hurt. His wrists ache. Arthritis.

  “You make me dance too hard,” he says, “I’m gonna up and break a hip.” He holds up the file folder again. “By the way, this some kinda joke? I remember these a-holes. Palisade. High-tech weapons and systems, got caught greasing too many wheels overseas.” They fell prey to the FCPA—the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A little bit of mostly smart legislation that keeps American companies from influencing other nations (largely through that time-honored tradition of bribery). The act allows for what they consider “grease” payments—money paid to officials and individuals under the auspices of getting things moving along. But once folks start getting Lamborghinis and fancy bottles of champagne that cost a thousand a pop and appear in whole cases, well, that goes beyond just lubricating gears.

  Wade didn’t even know Palisade was still around. “All right,” he says, waving the folder. “I’ll play. I’m curious.”

  On the piece of paper:

  PENETRATION TEST: UNTERIRDISCH ELEKTRIZITÄTSSYSTEM GMBH

  DeAndre leans back in his chair. “German, really? Aw hell.” He shakes the folder at the camera. “I don’t speak the Deutsch, okay?”

  The camera stares, implacable.

  “Whatever,” he says. “The work is the work.” It isn’t the human language he needs, anyway.

  PENETRATION TEST: ARCUS LAND DEVELOPMENT

  Reagan makes a sound like she’s dry-heaving. “Land development? What is that, real estate? Bo-ring. Fucking God. And what the shit, Big Government, where’s my coffee? If you want me to wear a white hat in service to your nonsense, then I at the very least require coffee. You know what happens when I don’t get coffee? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing happens. I sit here, I stare at the wall, then I fall asleep. You’re asking a car to drive a thousand miles but forgot to fill the tank, jerks. Jesus, God, crap.”

  She sighs.

  Waits.

  Stares.

  No coffee magically manifests. No elves bring it on a dogsled.

  She yawns. “Fine. This time, you win. No coffee. Next time: coffee, or I stab a bitch.”

  She gets to work. Arcus will be easy. The other job, though, the real job? That’s going to be a bit harder.

  Chance gnaws a thumbnail. Then some of the dry skin around the nail till it bleeds. Shit. His heart is beating same way it used to when he’d go into school knowing there was a quiz he forgot to study for or homework he didn’t do. It’s the kind of anxiety you get in a nightmare—one of those mundane nightmares where you show up late to something, or you end up naked, having to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in front of a girl you like, for some reason that makes sense only to the architects of the dream.

  The file folder sits, splayed open.

  PENETRATION TEST: HARRINGTON CON-GEN

  The computer sits, waiting.

  Look busy. Chance nudges the mouse, waking the system from s
leep. He knows this OS a little.

  He finds the web browser. Opens it up. On a lark, he types CNN.

  Blocked.

  Entertainment Weekly?

  Blocked.

  Gmail?

  He can practically hear the portcullis slamming down.

  In a search window he types in: “Harrington Con-Gen.”

  It’s some biotech company. Nice website, clean, bright, big fonts, all green and blue. And it’s ConGen, not Con-Gen, but whatever. Looks like it’s a company that genetically engineers—er, “modifies,” in their parlance—insects for “accelerated and adjusted function.” A few clicks deeper, he sees self-destructing mosquitoes, moths that spin spider silk, corn-eating pests that instead eat each other, some new honeybee. ConGen also specializes in the software necessary to genetically engineer plants and animals.

  Chance has no idea what any of this has to do with anything. All he knows is, he has nothing. He finds a couple of e-mail addresses, a few phone numbers. But there’s no intranet logon, no way into the company’s systems from here. If he were a real hacker he’d know, but he’s not a real hacker. He’s a fraud. A guy who knows how to do the bare-bones basics: a script kiddie who can crack some e-mails, scare up an FTP password now and again, maybe use keylogger software or download Wi-Fi WEP/WPA breakers. Hacking Ryan Bogardian’s e-mail was one of the easiest things he’d ever done. He got it on his third try—for God’s sake, the password was yellowjackets. The name of Ryan’s team. Then it was nothing to scroll through the dumb-ass’s e-mail until he found what he was looking for: a link to a cell-phone video taken by one of his teammates, a little scatback named Barry Lattner—aka “the Flash.”

  Even thinking about that video damn near makes Chance puke up what little breakfast he actually managed to eat.

  He took the e-mail, the video, forwarded it to every damn news station he could think of. Plus, Gawker, Jezebel, whoever, whatever. He found other incriminating e-mails, sent those, too. This wasn’t their first “posse.” They knew this rodeo all too well.

  Of course, he was still pissed—especially since all the local news refused to pick up the story. Protecting hometown football, probably. That’s when he bought one of those discount Scream masks and pretended to be a member of Faceless. He knew Faceless pretty well—had haunted the dead-chan forums, watched them do their thing. They’d been around a long time—since he was in high school—but they’d only recently started getting attention in the media as a group who could get things done, who could put pressure and move the needle when it needed to be moved. They went from trolls to warriors, from bullies to picking on bullies, and he dug that.

  Pretending to be part of Faceless worked. It got him on TV. Ranting behind a mask and a voice modulator.

  Now, here he is. He used his one trick.

  Above him, one of the cameras beeps once, then twice. The green light goes red. The other camera—this one over the computer—does the same thing.

  “Hello?” Chance asks aloud, feeling stupid for even saying it.

  His screen flashes. Then, out of nowhere—a series of installation progress bars. Software loading. Whoa. A chat window pops up. A user named “Dutch Jellyfart” appears with a bing.

  DUTCH JELLYFART: HEY DICK-KNOCKER

  The return cursor blinks.

  DUTCH JELLYFART: HELLOOOOOOOOO

  A graphic image shows on the screen: a breaching whale with its fin out of the water. Underneath: WHALE HELLO THERE.

  Chance pulls the keyboard close, types a response—

  GUEST: Who is this?

  DUTCH JELLYFART: Who the fuck do you think it is? IT IS I, SIDNEY FELDMAN.

  GUEST: What?

  DUTCH JELLYFART: Grosse Pointe Blank, wang-nozzle. Uh, only the best movie ever. John Cusack is my master now. Though these days he’s looking like a melting candle. It sucks when hot sexxxy people get old.

  Then up pops an emoji of a cute little piece of poop.

  So it’s Reagan, then.

  GUEST: I need help here.

  DUTCH JELLYFART: No shit, Cumberbatch. I’m going to take over your computer for a little bit. Pay attention to what I’m doing. TAKE NOTES. We good?

  Does he trust her? He winces. What choice does he have?

  GUEST: Okay.

  DUTCH JELLYFART: YALL READY FOR THIS

  That’s when Chance discovers that he is not, in fact, ready for this. And worse, he learns why he never should have trusted her in the first place.

  Aleena’s already hard-charging through the CMG infrastructure. With a pen she found in the drawer, she’s drawn up a loose network diagram. Found a few vulnerabilities in the code, too—sloppy work, leaving doors and windows open like that. A half hour in, she’s found bolt-holes into the company intranet, and once you’re in there, who knows what she might find? E-mails. Bank transactions. Employee information.

  She starts with contact lists, purchase orders, inventory requests.

  Already she’s starting to see that, for some goofy reason, their biggest client of the past twelve months is . . . the Department of Transportation in D.C.? Huh. Why would the DOT need medical equipment?

  Then she sees something else.

  The code is a mess. And someone is using that mess to their advantage. He or she is rerouting information to a bunch of different IP addresses. She follows the trail back out, expecting the hacker to have used a proxy, but doesn’t find one—whoever did this is cocky, either thinks he or she won’t get caught or just doesn’t care.

  The IP addresses to which the info is being rerouted are Chinese and South Korean. Huh. She’s about to dig deeper when she hears it—

  Someone nearby. Pounding on the pod walls. Yelling in alarm. It’s muffled—these things are pretty well insulated against sound. But it doesn’t mask it entirely.

  Oh no. Is that—

  Is that Chance yelling?

  Wade’s gotta take a break. He’s frustrated. Pissed off enough he’s thinking of taking the keyboard and cracking it over his knee like a rotten stick. Palisade is still up and running. They’re either ironclad or he’s too soft to make a dent. If it’s the former, hey, he’s good. If it’s the latter? He doesn’t know what happens then. But he damn sure doesn’t want to wash out of here.

  He can’t handle their telling Rebecca all about him. That girl’s been through a hard enough life not having a father, let alone discovering that the one she never met is some kind of—well, he knows how they’ll spin him. Doomsday-prepping libertarian half-a-hippie conspiracy nut. Might throw domestic terrorist in there somewhere. Traitor to the stars-and-stripes. Treasonous old windbag—like Snowden without the sex appeal.

  So, he’s gotta get this right. He’s about to go back to the keyboard when—

  Somewhere nearby: thumping, yelling, and then a crash.

  DeAndre has this problem. He wants what he can’t have. That’s always been true, really—it started as a collector’s mind-set. Like, when he was playing Magic: The Gathering or Pokémon, he’d covet those rare cards—with Pokémon, Shining Charizard, or even better, the first-edition Charizard. For Magic he finally got himself one of those Beta Black Lotuses, but shit, he wanted an Alpha Black Lotus something fierce. Of course they only made eleven hundred of those bad boys, and they went for ten grand or more. It was the same thing with rare toys—the original Optimus Prime, or the first Storm Shadow figure (v1: “Cobra Ninja”). Both those were expensive, too.

  And that’s how a collector mind-set turns into a thief mind-set. Thing was, he was too chickenshit to steal things off shelves—and, for the most part, all the rare, collectible stuff wasn’t on a shelf anyway, it was on eBay or locked away in the back room of some comic book or game store.

  So he started stealing money instead. Online. Hacking PayPal accounts or picking up credit card numbers here and there. The slope wasn’t just slippery: it was damn near frictionless. And now, here he is, trapped in a room, working for Mr. Government because he couldn’t keep his hand out of the cook
ie jar—not ’cause he likes cookies but because he can’t stand not having any.

  And here, once again, he’s confronted by that old demon: that old collector spirit that sees something he can’t have, which makes him want it all the more. This time it’s a little part of the Unterirdisch Elektrizitätssystem network structure. Everything else is pretty open and, truthfully, poorly defended—this is some Swiss cheese coding, right here. No need to penetrate at all—just stick your finger in and waggle it around like a worm. But then, buried in a tangle of subfolders—

  It’s lockdown. A series of folders buttoned up tight. Encrypted with bulletproof algorithms.

  The company is a geothermal energy company. That’s it. Nothing fancy, nothing exciting. They help design systems that draw energy from below the ground. Total snooze-fest. Which makes this all the more tantalizing—it’s like playing a role-playing game and finding some platinum chest locked tight in a farmer’s bedroom. Makes you want to bust that lock, see what’s inside.

  He needs to up his game. Dive down into the Deep Web and—

  His pod shudders. Muted yelling. A crash.

  What the hell?

  Soon as Chance tells Reagan to go, she goes. She goes right to CNN. Or tries, but can’t, because it’s blocked.

  It’s blocked, until it isn’t. More windows pop up faster than Chance can study them to see what they are, and next thing he knows, CNN is coming up. He catches a quick glimpse of news: something about North Korean aggression, Iran nuclear programs, a cat that called 911—

  Then it’s gone and replaced with back-end software. Almost like blog software—like WordPress except fancier—and he realizes with cold horror it’s CNN’s back end. Reagan pops open a window and starts writing an article same way you’d pen a blog post—title: “Agent Hollis Copper Found Fornicating Cows”—then backspaces and adds a “with” between “fornicating” and “cows.”

  Chance, out loud, starts to protest: “No, no, no, oh, c’mon now, stop—” He grabs the mouse, but the cursor isn’t his. The keyboard doesn’t respond either. “Shit! Damn.” A chill sweeps over him. She’s hacking him so it looks like he’s hacking CNN.