The Dark Net

by Benjamin Percy

  The red priest tips his gaze to study her. His face is barely seen beneath the visor, but he appears young to Hannah, with long orange hair curling out from the helmet. She sees bruises and scabs, too, as if his body were spoiled. “This is your aunt’s fault, you know. That nosy cunt is the reason you’re here.”

  “I’m sorry. Please.” Hannah doesn’t want to ask—not knowing seems somehow better—but she can’t help herself. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “That depends on whether you tell us where to find the skull.”

  “I told you. I don’t know where it is. I don’t know anything.”

  A fly crawls from his nose and another few from his mouth when he opens it now. “So you say.” He taps one of the command screens on his gloves, and the televisions zap again, revealing an Internet browser, TOR. His fingers tock-tock-tock, typing out domain names, negotiating pop-ups, entering commands and encrypted logins and passwords. The wall of televisions changes rapidly. Some of the screens flash the same browser image; others stream with red code, everything shuffling quickly, like a hurried Rubik’s Cube, until all at once a vast picture takes form. A single image pieced together by the many screens. A red triangle. With an eye inside of it. Maybe it is the candlelight or maybe it is the shuddering screens—bothered by bursts of pixels—but the eye appears to gaze around the room, to find her there in the pentagram.

  Then the red priest kneels beside her. His gloves sizzle with electricity. He runs one of them along her face, beyond her ear, and there fingers the lightning port. A joint axis permits another input. He reaches behind his own head—and jerks his hand, as though plucking a hair—unplugging one of the cables. This he fits scrapingly into her. “You think this place is scary,” he says. “Just wait.”

  She remembers what Juniper said before. About how there are worse things than death. Hannah says, “Help me. Please help me. Please, please, please.” She speaks quickly, in tune to the rhythm of her pulse, swinging her head around, taking in the masks leaning toward her, not really believing that any one of them will help her, but stupidly hoping a kind face hides among them. “I don’t know where the skull is. I swear I don’t know.”

  “Let’s make certain.”

  Something happens then. When the red priest forces the cable into the port. Her whole body goes rigid. She sees too much, feels too much. This world and the other one streaming beneath. Double vision. It is as though a garden has suddenly pushed from a graveyard and unfurled all of its black petals. Or a secret library has knocked all of its books off its shelves at once to pages bearing the most gruesome illustrations and incantations. She has accessed the Internet—the Dark Net—and the eye on the screen is somehow peering inside her now, searching its way through every inch of her, looking for the skull.

  Every day, these past few years, she wished to see. Now she wishes she could go blind again, go back to the way things were. There is so much about the world better kept in the dark. If she could scream, she would, but her nerves feel out of her control. Her back arches. She nearly bites off her tongue. She can’t tell whether she is hallucinating or not, but high above her she spots a black shape—a crow—its wings beating the air as it circles the chamber and then vanishes through an open door.

  And then she hears a voice yell, “Stop!”

  The red priest yanks the cord out of her. She feels relieved, yes, but poisoned, mind-raped. She chokes back bile and tries to settle her breathing. To be free of that cable is to be free of a noose. The room reels and then settles, and only then does she see the woman, Sarin.

  Everyone stares at her. Her arms are outstretched, and she holds the skull in one hand and a live grenade in the other. Her leather jacket, where it flaps open, reveals a vest of dynamite, red and ribbed like the roof of a mouth.

  A man—a small man, no bigger than Hannah, with a shriveled face—approaches her. He speaks in a language Hannah cannot understand, and Sarin responds in kind. Then she spits. The small man looks as though he might lunge for her, but the red priest steadies him with a hand to the shoulder. “You’ve come,” he says. “We hoped you would.”

  “Untie the girl.”

  “And then you’ll give us the skull?”

  “Not until I know she’s safe.”

  “Of course.”

  The red priest makes a chopping motion with his hand, and the small man pulls a long blade from his belt and slinks toward Hannah. The blade hovers over her as if deciding which part of her to pierce.

  “Careful,” Sarin says.

  The knife drops and Hannah nearly cries out. But no pain comes, only a tug as he saws through the rope that binds her wrists, her ankles. She opens and closes her hands, flexing some blood back into them. The small man waves to her impatiently. Hannah stands on uncertain legs.

  A hound growls when she starts forward. She stumbles over one of the skeletons. The bones clatter with the sound of an autumn forest. She sees the obsidian blade beside it and snatches it up and holds it before her, swinging it one way, then the other, though no one approaches her. They simply watch. The masks move aside, allowing her passage, but one narrow enough that their robes lick her.

  Sarin nods to her when she comes near. “You okay?”

  “I don’t know if that’s the right word for it.”

  “Now,” the red priest says, and extends his hands. His gloves spark with electricity. “The skull.”

  Something bites Hannah’s neck. The point of the knife held by the small man. His mouth arranges itself into what must be a smile, showing off corn kernel teeth. She’s surprised by the feeling that overtakes her. Not fear. But the want to drive the obsidian dagger into his face.

  “The skull,” the red priest says.

  Sarin bobs the hand holding the grenade. “You hurt her, we all get hurt.”

  “You let go of the skull and we let go of the girl. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Back up,” Sarin says. “Give me room.”

  The red priest does as she says, and Sarin keeps her eyes on him when she crouches and deposits the skull on the floor. It thunks the stone heavily like something five times the size. Then she says to the small man, “There’s no need for that anymore.”

  The knife point eases from Hannah’s neck, and the small man retreats from her.

  Sarin nods toward the doorway and says to Hannah, “Keep going.”

  “Where?”

  “Away from here. Fast as you can.”

  “But what about you?”

  “I’ll be right behind you. Just go.”

  It should be an easy decision, but something wars inside her. The scared kid wants to run home, lock the door, leap into bed, pull the covers over her head. But another part of her knows she will never feel safe again. No home awaits her. Nothing awaits her. She belongs here, beside Sarin, squaring her shoulders for a fight.

  “Go!” Sarin says, this time with enough force to seemingly shake the air and shove Hannah from the chamber, into an unlit tunnel, trading one darkness for another.

  ❖

  Hannah doesn’t see the red priest carry the skull to the pentagram and lovingly deposit it there. She doesn’t see the screens on the wall flare with red light. She doesn’t see the masked legion close around Sarin like a knot and wrest the grenade from her hand and the pistols from her holsters. Nor does she hear the red priest say, “Let’s finish what we started so long ago.”

  Sarin tries to fight, but there are too many of them, their hands on her, dragging her along like a current of black water. Her wrists are bound. Her body is dropped at the center of the pentagram. Her dynamite vest is torn from her chest and tossed aside. The room pulses red with the light hazing from the screens.

  “Why fight?” the priest says. “You must have come here knowing the fate that awaited you. It was either you or the girl after all. We need a worthy sacrifice for a night such as this.”

  They waste no time. The small man raises his knife, and the red priest raises his hands in benedict
ion. “With this sundering, I, Alastor, call on the dark. With this blood, I hallow this space. With this sacrifice, I open up the door. And so commences our first day, the Zero Day.”

  At that moment every flame in the room dampens. And the air stirs, as if gathering into a wind. There comes a fluttering sound. The hounds growl in response. The masked figures turn and mutter and seem not to know where to look. Then, from the doorway, a steady stream of crows appears. Dozens of them. A hundred, maybe more. All kak-kak-kaking and beating their wings and scratching their claws. They are not alone. The floor darkens and surges as if with their shadows. Rats. A tide of rats flowing forward, scrambling up legs, scratching, and biting. The threat is above and the threat is below.

  The red priest ducks down. The small man drops the ceremonial knife and it clatters to the ground, and he stumbles back into the desk and knocks a candle to the floor. A crow roosts on the antler of a mask and clacks its beak into the hollow of an eye. A man races by with a skirt of rats clinging to him.

  Through all of this, a black hooded figure pushes toward Sarin. His wart-dappled hands grip her by the shoulders. “Are you all right?” Lump says in a froggy voice, and she says, “Neither of us will be if you don’t hurry.” Beneath his hood she sees his face is a cauliflower mass of growths. He fumbles out a knife and works at her restraints.

  But before he can sever them, a hound bounds toward them. Sarin cries out, and he turns and tosses the knife into its breast. It contorts its body in the air, gives a yelp, and falls in a heap with its legs still kicking. Seconds later it is gone from sight, the rats clambering onto it, squealing and feeding.

  But Lump never gets a chance to return to her. The red priest backhands him, his glove sizzling with electricity, and Lump falls dazed to the floor.

  “Run, Lump!” she says. “Just run. There’s not enough time.”

  Sarin tries to worm away, but the red priest is already on top of her, pinning her. With one hand he grips her neck and with the other the ceremonial knife. “You’re absolutely right.” With that the blade arcs downward, nocking her between her ribs, entering her. “Your time has run out.”

  A hot ache spreads from the wound. Blood gushes, as if sucked, drawn greedily from her. It puddles and then follows the channels chalked on the floor, rippling toward the five skeletons. A red light sparks inside the socket of one. The same skull Sarin carried here. She cannot help but smile.

  The red priest stands and regards her. “What’s so funny?”

  She can barely draw a breath to speak when she says, “Alastor.”

  He follows her gaze to the skull. The red light blinks now, faster.

  The red priest swings his gaze between her and the skull. The red light inside of it blinks faster and faster, counting its way down to detonation. Every hollow of it is packed with C-4. She activated the detonation timer just before entering the chamber. “No.” The red priest doesn’t seem to know where to go, stepping on a rat, dodging a crow, chasing away from her, the pentagram.

  “With your blood,” she says, interrupted by a wet cough, “I consecrate this space in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy motherfucking Spirit.”

  The priest is backlit by the wall of televisions. The giant eye projected there is red-rimmed. It rolls around in its socket in fury or panic or excitement. The priest’s helmet and gloves zap and string with electricity. “You’re too late! It’s already started,” he screams. “It’s already begun!”

  Chapter 22

  USED TO BE, to open a door, you rolled aside a stone. Centuries later, you lifted a latch. Then you fitted a key, turned a knob. Now you can open a door with a phone or a fingerprint or a voice command. Times change. The ways of entry change. But you still have to open the door. On this October 31—Samhain, All Saints’ Eve, All Hallows’ Eve, Halloween, the fall climax, when the division between this world and the other frails—they open the door.

  For the past few years, Undertown has been busy harvesting information. Eighty million accounts from Anthem and seventy million from Target. Fifty-six million from Home Depot. Seventy-six million from JP Morgan Chase. Ashley Madison, AOL, British Airways, Living Social, Adobe. UPS and eBay and Blizzard and Domino’s. And more. So many more. Amassing information for a cyberwar. Every time news broke about a data hack, people panicked, worrying over their credit cards and bank accounts especially. But when nothing happened—when no mysterious charges appeared, when no one applied for a credit card or a loan in their name—they forgot.

  They only worried about money, as though money were the only thing worth stealing. But Undertown wanted usernames and passcodes, the more subtle but severely damaging information. Because that is the way in; the ciphered connection between your fingertips and keyboard jimmies open the lock between the physical and digital. This is what everyone should be worried about. Not their accounts, but their identity. Snowden leaks the NSA files. Hackers leak the Sony emails. Facebook and Google track your browsing habits, your buying habits, your location, your race, gender, religion, age, orientation, and custom-fit their ads accordingly. DNA has been replaced by streams of data integrated into databases. And it has become dangerously clear how your digital footprint can come back to haunt you, with so much of your life online. Just like that—you can be erased, possessed.

  For now Portland is the target. Portland is the focus group. Portland is the door.

  A trucker named Theo Ayala keys the ignition to his semi and pulls away from the loading zone at a bar. He thumbs open Google Maps to call up the directions for his next delivery. His trailer is full of Budweiser that will never be drunk. The screen of his phone streams with red code that finds a reflection in his eyes. He drops the phone, and its screen spiderwebs with fissures. His right hand falls to his custom-made, silver-skulled gearshift. He cranks the truck from second to third and then fourth gear as he swings the wrong way onto an entry ramp and merges onto I-5. At first the oncoming traffic zippers out of his way, wailing their horns, swinging onto the shoulder, crashing into the meridian, but then the cars come thick enough that they cannot escape him. His grille cleaves a Prius in two. A Harley gets eaten up beneath his tires. And then comes a fast, steel-screeching, glass-shattering series of impacts, sedans and station wagons and trucks and SUVs knocked aside. Tires pop. Horns honk. Hoods crumple. Sparks light up the night. Their screaming faces are lit by the wash of his headlights.

  In the living room of their seventh-floor apartment, Stephen Vos and Jackie Eastman kick back on the couch and call up Netflix on their tablet. They’re getting married in a few months—a New Year’s wedding—and the coffee table is littered with seating charts, a DJ playlist, catering requests. They’re sick of arguing over where to seat pervy Uncle Milton and whether they should order flower centerpieces for every table, so they take a break. A bottle of red, a scary movie on Netflix, and then—maybe, probably, since they can’t seem to get enough of each other these days—they’ll peel off each other’s clothes. But something happens when Stephen logs in. The screen streams red. At first they believe it’s some glitch—some pixelated version of the Netflix home screen—and then their mouths go slack, and they stand from the couch and walk into the kitchen and slide steak knives from the drawer and methodically work their way from apartment to apartment. Everyone opens their door with a bowl of candy and a smile that doesn’t last.

  At the Portland International Airport, people cluster before the monitors for arrivals, departures, baggage claim, all of the screens streaming red. A backpack sags to the floor. Then a purse. A satchel. Nothing matters anymore—not their pills or their money or their passports—because who they are has been flouted, hacked, raped. A Starbucks barista hurls scalding water into the face of a customer waiting for an Americano. A girl with pigtails bites the neck of a man snoozing on a bench. A Port Authority policeman unholsters his pistol and opens fire on a group of passengers lined up to board their flight. While out on the tarmac, a jet rolls suddenly off course and picks up speed as
it bullets toward the airport. The atrium is like a glass cathedral, high-ceilinged and busy with potted plants and padded chairs. People flip through novels and gulp bottled water and poke at their phones. They don’t see the jet coming, but when it noses through the vast window, they all stand suddenly. The fuselage sends up a wave of sparks and the tile buckles. Thousands of shards of glass sparkle the air and skitter the floor and jaggedly pierce skin. One man looks like a plate-backed dinosaur from the glass stabbing his spine. Another is blinded with two icicle-sized slivers jutting from his eyes. “Help,” people cry. “Help!” But no one answers. There is only more screaming, a different threat in every direction.

  There are no stars over Portland. There never are. The light pollution is too severe, thrown by the millions of streetlamps, headlights, stadium lights, porch lights, storefronts that glow even when closed. No one ever looks up anymore and feels awed and dwarfed by the infinite, aware only of the globe of light they are trapped in, where the only star is the red star of the Texaco station.

  The moths are out, battering the overhead fluorescents at the gas island. A man with a black goatee and a pitchfork tattoo on his forearm moves among the pumps, filling tanks with unleaded, super unleaded, diesel, running credit cards, handing back receipts, saying, “Have a good one, have a good one.”

  Halloween, he deals with a lot of drunks, like this white Jeep Grand Cherokee that pulls up, the windows down, the stereo blasting hip-hop. Four white boys, late teens, early twenties, with gelled hair, polo shirts with the collars popped, their faces painted to look like skeletons. Probably from Lake Oswego, downtown to hit the bars. The driver—a pouty-faced kid with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth—kills the engine and the stereo dies.