by Willow Rose
“That was when you began swatting,” I said. “Seeing how it hurt the officers and discredited them, showing the world what was happening by choosing victims that were live broadcasting while gaming and who were famous and had millions of followers who would be angered by this and maybe one day take it to the streets. That is what you wanted, right? To change the system by breaking it apart. But what I really want to know is how did you do it? When I found out that you fit the profile almost perfectly, I kept going back to that one thing that didn’t fit.”
Liam gave me a look. “And what was that?”
“Your age,” I said. “I was so sure the Swatter was a man in his early twenties or maybe late teens, not a man in his late forties. How did you even think of swatting? How did you learn how to do it so you weren’t traceable? My profile was a hacker and a gamer, and I’ve seen you with a computer. That, you are not.”
Faster than I could react, Liam rose to his feet and rushed toward me. He slapped me across the face with the gun. I fell backward, sliding across the tiles until I hit the wall behind me with a deep moan. Blood filled my mouth. Tasting it, I panicked. I rose to my feet, stumbling behind curtains of blood in my eyes, biting back the pain. I tried to run forward, to get away from him, but my head snapped back so hard my feet flew out in front of me. Liam had grabbed me by my ponytail, yanking me toward him, and was dragging me across the floor toward a door. He opened it, slamming it against the wall behind it, and a staircase leading down appeared. He dragged me by the hair downward, my back bumping on every step, me screaming for him to stop.
He reached a door in the basement, then grabbed the handle and pulled me up, so he could look into my eyes. His words came hissing between his teeth.
“I have something to show you.”
Chapter 96
THEN:
Hunter Perry, aka DeVilSQuaD666, stared at his computer screen. His fingers touched the keyboard lightly, but then he removed them. He hadn’t been on that darn thing for weeks now. After his last conversation with FanTAUstic345, he hadn’t dared even to log on. He was so terrified that the police might be able to trace him.
It had gone wrong. What was supposed to be a prank had gone so terribly wrong, and it was all his fault. He hadn’t meant for the guy to get shot; he had just wanted to scare him a little and make a thousand dollars. But the guy had been shot, and that terrified him. Because now they were calling him a murderer.
He had watched them say it on the news when he was upstairs with his grandmother. Hunter lived with her since his own mom couldn’t afford to take care of both him and his younger sister. She worked two jobs, and yet it was barely enough for one child. He had never known his father.
“Whoever made the call might be charged with murder,” the reporters had said over and over again.
“Swatting is no prank,” some guy in a suit had said. The text below him told Hunter that he was the US Attorney for the District of Oregon. “Sending police and emergency responders rushing to anyone’s home based on utterly false information as some kind of joke shows an incredible disregard for the safety of other people. In this case, it resulted in murder and should call for a prison sentence.”
“Prison,” Hunter now said to himself, sitting in his room. He shook his head violently and felt tears in his eyes. He was fifteen for crying out loud. How could he go to prison? It was just a joke?
Hunter felt his eyes burn from all the crying he had done the past weeks. His grandma wasn’t home, so he stood up and walked upstairs to the kitchen, where he found a pack of donuts that he opened and began to eat. The house was dark and empty, and Hunter didn’t like it. He didn’t feel safe anywhere these days, and every day, when he went to school, he was terrified of being picked up by the police. If he saw a cruiser, he’d run. He felt like everyone knew what he had done; all eyes were staring at him no matter where he went. But worst of all, he hated that he’d probably hurt his grandma. She’d be so disappointed once she found out what had happened. It would all be revealed. Not just the swat that led to a man dying, but also all the others. The bomb threats to his school, the times he’d cleared out conferences far away, like the Comicon in Chicago, but also all the others. People online had paid him to call in bomb threats to their school so they’d get time off. Some had even paid him to swat other gamers because they killed them in the game. Hunter had never thought someone would actually get killed from it. Especially not some stranger that wasn’t even the person he was trying to swat.
Hunter sighed and swallowed the rest of his donut. He felt awful. But he couldn’t really tell anyone what he had done, could he? He’d end up in jail.
Hunter heard a noise coming from outside and gasped. He walked to the window and looked out into the street. A trash can had tipped over on the pavement. That was probably the loud noise.
It’s okay, Hunter. You’re fine. You’re safe. The guy was killed in Oregon. It’s so far away from California. They’ll never find you. Stop worrying.
Hunter heaved a sigh of relief, then walked away from the window. He wanted to play on his computer so badly but still didn’t dare. He then spotted his old PlayStation and decided he’d just revive some of the old games. He’d missed playing them anyway.
Hunter grabbed the controller in his hand and started up the PlayStation when there was a knock on his door.
He looked at the clock. It was five to nine. Who could it be at this hour?
Maybe Grandma forgot her key.
Hunter chuckled when thinking about how forgetful his grandma had been lately, then opened the door. But it wasn’t his grandma who stood outside; it was a man, a big man wearing a hoodie.
“Yes?”
The man smiled. “Can I come in?”
Hunter shook his head. “No.”
The man looked like he wasn’t going to go away and wouldn’t take no for an answer, so Hunter tried again.
“Listen, mister, I don’t know who you are, and it’s late so…”
He tried to close the door, but the man placed a hand in the opening and pushed it open. As he stepped into the light, Hunter suddenly recognized him. It was that guy from the cooking show, the one who yelled at everyone and was meaner than his grandma when she got angry at Hunter.
“That may be,” Liam Berkeley said, “but I know what you’ve done.”
Chapter 97
I stared into the small dark room. Liam had opened the door and forced me to look. Five huge computer screens, a desk, and an office chair. On the chair sat a young boy, probably no more than the age of Olivia. He was gagged and tied to the armrest. His fear-struck eyes stared back at me, and he groaned behind the gag like he was trying to warn me.
“Hunter, meet Eva Rae Thomas. Eva Rae Thomas, this is Hunter Perry, also known as DeVilSQuaD666, back in the day.”
Liam dragged me inside and slammed the door shut behind us. I stared at the young boy whose eyes glared back at me like he wanted to scream at me to get the hell out now!
“Now you’ll know him as FaZeYourFeaRs,” Liam continued. “Hunter here does all the work for me. He’s the one who records the calls and makes sure no one can track them. He’s the one who taught me everything I needed to know, including who the important people are in the world of gaming, who has the most followers, and so on. The thing is, Hunter did something bad one time, and he knows that if he doesn’t do as I tell him to, I’ll tell the police what he did. It was Tim who told me he even existed. He had heard about this guy who would swat people for money, or call in a bomb threat at your school for money. He told me this over dinner one night after Anna had passed away. It caught my interest, and I had Tim help me write to him. So I started chatting with him, calling myself FanTAUstic345. I followed what he did with great interest as he would often brag about it afterward in the chatrooms. I then told him I’d pay him to swat someone for me, and he did. The guy ended up being shot by the police in his own home. And the best part was that it wasn’t even the right guy. It was someone comple
tely random.”
“And that fit your mission perfectly, I suspect,” I said, wincing in pain. He was holding my ponytail so tight it felt like a screaming headache.
“It gave me the idea,” Liam said, “of how I could tell the world about the injustice being performed constantly by our very own law enforcement. This was my way of breaking them down. Keep swatting till they messed up, and boy did they mess up. Again and again, it was beautiful. I kept at it, knowing that if this continued, the anger toward the police would get me the result I wanted, what we all needed. A revolution.”
“Are you really so crazy that you would sacrifice your own son for this cause?” I asked as he finally let go of my hair and I could fall to my knees.
Liam smiled. “Tim wasn’t really my son. He was Anna’s when we met. I adopted him, but never cared much for him, and the feeling was mutual. He hated my guts.”
“You called it in on him to prove a point. You sacrificed him. He was dispensable to you. Did he really mean so little? The son of the woman you loved?”
“I didn’t know he’d get killed. I didn’t know what would happen. That was the beauty of it. They might as well have killed me on that night. But yes, his death became a means to an end. Swatting myself and losing my step-son sure made headlines. It also served as a way to keep the focus away from me. I had a feeling I was being watched—that someone was onto me, and the day you came to me, I knew I was right. It was also the time I learned that Hunter here had been going behind my back.”
“You didn’t know he was playing Call of Duty with the victims?” I asked. I looked at the boy. “Because he was trying to warn them. That was why.”
“Yeah, well, he tried to chat with them in the game and tell them they were in danger since he knew I would never see it in there. But you told me this when I came to you, and I put a stop to that. Instead, I used it to get you to where I wanted you. But he endangered the entire mission.”
“And so did I,” I said. “That was why you kept close to me. You kept showing up at my house, wanting to be close to the investigation. I should have seen it then. You were only there to make sure I wasn’t getting too close to the truth. And you arranged all the bombs before Orlando happened. But who shot at the police if you were in my car?”
“It’s not hard to find help when you’re fighting injustice,” Liam said. “I have a network of people online who have joined the revolution. They helped me shoot in Orlando, and they helped me start the revolt in D.C. After what happened to Amal Bukhari on the airplane, it wasn’t hard to recruit people.”
“Did you shoot her?” I asked. “Amal Bukhari? Was it you on that rooftop?”
“Yes,” Liam said. “I wanted to do that one by myself. It was so important, like the shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo in 1914, that started the First World War. I wanted it to have the same significance. I wanted the world to look back at the shot as the beginning of the revolution.”
“And since you served two tours in Afghanistan, I read this in your files last night, you knew about explosives and were a trained sniper,” I said.
Liam smiled. “I can do more than just cook, you know.”
Chapter 98
Liam grabbed an office chair and rolled it toward me. Then he grabbed me by the collar and pulled me up from the ground. Blood and spit were dripping from my broken lip onto the floor. I slid into the seat, and he tied my hands to the armrests using black strips.
He then walked to the desk and found a piece of paper that he handed to me.
“Here, read this. I need you to know it well before we record it.”
“What is this?” I asked, looking at what was written. The letters were dancing, and I couldn’t focus properly on the words.
“I wrote this before it all began, and I want you to read it while I record it,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“Liam,” I said, staring at the text. I blinked and blinked, but it made no sense. “I…I…can’t…”
“READ IT!” he screamed directly into my ear. It sent a spike of pain through my head and down my back. The scream was followed by a punch directly on my nose. My head was yanked backward, and I felt dizzy, fighting not to pass out. As my head bopped back up, Liam gave me a look.
“Read it.”
I stared at the paper. More blood dripped from my nose down onto it. I cleared my throat and tried to say the words, sounding them out, almost like a Kindergartener before cracking the reading code.
“I…It’s t-time…t-to…”
Liam pulled the paper from my hand. “It’s time to create…” he said, reading it. He continued:
“…a substantial change within the American police force.”
He looked at me like it was the easiest thing in the world, which it was to him, but not to me. Not in my condition.
He handed me back the paper. “Read it again.”
I looked down. The words seemed clearer now. Liam grabbed his phone and began recording me. I glanced briefly at Hunter. He was crying behind the gag. I wanted to tell him I was going to get us both out of there, but I was no longer convinced myself. Liam slapped me again, and it burned my cheek and eye.
“Read it.”
I blinked a few times again, then started all over.
“I-It’s time to c-create a substantial change within the American police force. The big problem is that people don’t believe a revolution is possible…” I paused to catch my breath, biting back the pain, then continued. “And it is not going to happen precisely because they do not believe it is possible. To a large extent, I think the Black Lives Matter movement has achieved many great things, but I don’t think they’re going far enough. They need to go further if anything is to change. I think what has to be done is not try to persuade the majority of people that we are right. I believe we must try to increase tension in society to the point where things start to break down and finally collapse. To create a reality where people get angry and scared enough that they’re going to rise against the injustice being done to them. The question is, how do you increase those tensions? How do you reach that level of anger in a population?”
I looked up at Liam, who tapped on his phone, then smiled. “There you go. Now the whole world will think you are the one who started it all, that you are the Swatter. I’ve left a written confession on your Facebook and Instagram profiles along with this audio file that I just recorded and will upload…now. There we go. Now, it won’t be long before the police will look for you, and when they do, they’ll track your phone that I’ll leave right here on the desk. Once they get here…guess what?”
“What?” I asked, spitting out blood.
He leaned forward, putting his face very close to mine.
“Kaboom,” he said. “All gone. You, Hunter, all the police officers who come in here looking for you. All are gone. They’ll think I died here too. Blown to pieces like the rest of you.”
Chapter 99
I stared up at him, nostrils flaring. I felt so stupid for not seeing this earlier, for trusting this guy. Matt had been suspicious of him from the beginning. I should have known better than just to brush him off as being jealous. I should have at least figured it out when he found Jamal at the restaurant. I was the only one the boy had told where he was, and Liam was with me when I received the text. He could easily have read it while I was doing something else or when I briefly left the room.
“Tell me one last thing.”
“Yes?” he said.
“Why the atheists? Why did you prefer them? You’re not religious yourself.”
“I’m not, but Anna was a devout Muslim. She always said that atheists had no honor. To her, religion is the foundation upon which family, community, morality, and identity are built. I chose them to honor her. It’s as simple as that.”
Liam shrugged. He leaned forward and came close to me, placing his hands on the armrests of the chair. He stared down at me, breathing heavily.
“It’s too bad you�
�re one of them, you know. I was quite attracted to you. It was the first time I’d felt drawn to a woman since Anna. And I know you probably won’t admit it now, but I had a feeling you were quite attracted to me as well, am I right?”
He was right about the part that I would never admit it; that was for sure. I didn’t say anything. I just stared at him; every part of my body throbbing in pain. His eyes locked with mine, and he bent forward further, leaning in for a kiss.
Big mistake.
I moved fast. I lifted both my legs in a V shape. Seeing this, Liam tried to pull away, but I was too fast. My strong legs wrapped around his neck and held him tight, holding him in a Triangle Choke. I then squeezed as hard as I could, holding him tight, making it impossible for him to move. Liam’s face turned strained; a vein popped out in his forehead. He sputtered and coughed and grabbed my legs while trying to pull them apart, but with no such luck. I kept him in this position till his eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness. Then I let him slide to the floor and, panting for air, I pushed my chair to the desk where my phone was. Pushing it with the tip of my nose, I managed to get it close enough to my hand so I could grab it with the tips of my fingers. I tapped it a couple of times and managed to make a call.
“Eva Rae?”
“Isabella…I…”
I didn’t make it further before someone grabbed my leg and pulled me forcefully. I screamed as I jolted across the room, looking down at Liam, who was pulling on my leg.
“Eva Rae?” I heard Isabella yell.
Liam was on his feet, moving fast, and slammed a fist into my face. My head flew backward, and I heard a loud ringing in my ears. Liam grunted loudly and panted for breath while I fought to remain conscious. A sea of stars tried to lure me in, and it was hard not to give in. I blinked my eyes to see through it, then spotted Liam grabbing the gun. He walked to me and placed it on my forehead. I kicked him in the stomach, hard, and he flew backward, landing against the wall. Grunting angrily, he slid to the floor, but was up on his feet fast, storming toward me, finger moving on the trigger. I closed my eyes, waiting for it all to end here.
