Zap!

by Martha Freeman

  The noise had come from the back of the house—somewhere near the kitchen. Someone definitely was inside, someone bumping and fumbling, someone without a flashlight, it seemed. Working flashlights were in short supply in Hampton.

  Luis moved on tiptoe to the top of the stairs and looked down into darkness as black as a pit. Had the driver of the car circled around to the back and entered there? It would have been easier to follow Luis through the front window.

  He heard another sound—not a thump but a crack from the front of the house. It sounded like wood splintering.

  Two people had been following him. Now were they both inside?

  Luis’s heart began to pound. The tension was terrible, but a strange urge made him smile. The idea of the two hunters colliding in the dark was funny.

  Then something truly surprising happened, something Luis had never counted on at all. Someone hollered: “Luis—hey, Luis?”

  It was a kid, a familiar voice from the neighborhood. Luis couldn’t identify it right away, and he never thought of answering. Safe in the dark, he intended to stay that way. He had to get back to Computer Genius. He had to protect himself. A few long seconds passed; then he heard another sound—this one terrible, the crack of something hard hitting bone, then a grunting, collapsing, depressing unh and the thud of a body hitting the floor.

  Luis didn’t know what had happened, but he knew one thing. He did not want it happening to him—and a flash of adrenaline flooded his brain. If he’d been right that calm under pressure made a hero, then never mind, he wasn’t one. He for sure could not think now. He descended the stairs, two at a tumble, and tripped, nearly making a swan dive to the filthy front-room floor.

  As it was, he grabbed what was left of the banister to catch himself, then landed sideways on his right ankle—ow! Add it to the injuries he’d already racked up that day, and keep going. He kept going. Operating on instinct, he made for what had been the kitchen. If one of the hunters had entered that way, then he—Luis—ought to be able to exit that way too.

  Darkness, speed, and size were his allies, along with his knowledge of the house. He avoided the overturned toilet—there was an overturned toilet in every abandoned house—the splintered entertainment center, the perilous assortment of pipes and wires and cans of dried-up paint.

  In the kitchen, the tiles had been swiped from the floor, and Luis moved carefully to keep from falling right through to the basement. The back door was in the corner, and he reached out blindly. The doorknob was gone—usually they were—but the hole it left was something to grab. He yanked and the door opened. In the next instant, he slipped outside, jumped down to ground level, ran a few steps, and shouldered his way through the broken slats of an old, tumble-down fence.

  He was in the alley, but not safe yet. Bad ankle, aching tailbone and all, he ran a block, cut through a vacant lot, then ran in the opposite direction. When he stopped, he listened, and the quiet was comforting. His heartbeat slowed; he took a moment to think.

  Running through the house, he had felt a hostile human presence—the hunter still on his feet. It was only luck that Luis had evaded him. If he hadn’t, he might have been knocked to the floor himself.

  And who was the kid who had called his name? The kid was the one who had come in the back, and the other one—most likely the driver—had come in the front.

  Luis imagined the voice again. Luis—hey, Luis? It was someone who knew him, but who? And why was he after Luis?

  The next question that came to mind was unwelcome: Is he okay?

  Luis tried to shake this off the way a dog shakes off water. I don’t have time to be rescuing kids, he thought. The power is more important.

  While Luis had run a zigzag route, he still knew where he was—three blocks from Larch Avenue. He tested his ankle and started walking. He could get his bike in the morning. He’d gone only a short distance when he stopped. He was thinking of the kid lying hurt on the filthy floor, an unknown kid, but even so, Luis couldn’t leave him there.

  Crap. I have to go back. The people of Hampton can wait a little longer for their lights and precious televisions.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Luis didn’t return to the corner house directly. Instead, he circled around and approached from the other direction. His bike was still locked where he’d left it. He didn’t see the hunter’s car. Could he still be prowling the neighborhood? Could he still be in the house?

  Not likely, Luis decided. He was after me, and he knows I ran. He won’t expect me to come back.

  Outside the window, Luis took two deep breaths, then jumped up, pulled, pushed, and wiggled his way between the boards. It was easier this time. The hunter must have been a big guy. Going through, he had enlarged the entrance. Inside, Luis switched on the flashlight, reluctantly casting off his protective cloak of darkness and revealing the hard ugliness of his trashed surroundings . . . which included the body of a kid lying in the dust on the floor.

  Luis felt the breath rush out of his chest. Was he dead?

  Luis knelt and aimed the flashlight. “Hey, wake up! ¡Levántate!”

  The kid rolled onto his side and moaned. Not dead, then. And now that Luis saw who it was, he was just annoyed. He had come back to rescue Tony Cencerro?

  “Hey,” he said again. “You better be bad hurt, ’cause if you’re not, I’ll hurt you myself. What am I even doing here?”

  “Luis?” Tony opened one eye. “Jeezus.” He batted ineffectually at the flashlight. “Could you get that thing out of my face? What happened?”

  Luis knew he was supposed to say, “That’s what I want to know from you.” It would be the next line on a show or in a movie. But the fact was Luis didn’t especially care what Tony was doing there. Tony was a distraction. If he, Luis, was smart, he would abandon him again, leave right now.

  “Get up,” Luis said, but then he felt a little bad. “Can you?”

  “What, hue—no. I don’t know. My head hurts.”

  “Lemme see your face.” Luis ignored Tony’s protests and shone the flashlight into Tony’s eyes. The pupils, which had been wide open in the darkness, constricted just like nature intended. “You don’t have brain damage,” Luis announced, something he had learned on TV. “Get up,” he repeated, and this time he hooked his elbows under Tony’s armpits and tugged.

  More moaning. More groaning. Honestly, for a tough guy, this Tony was really a wimp. “Why are you making my life more difficult?” Luis asked as he struggled to lift Tony to his feet.

  “Did somebody hit me?” Tony said. “Is that why my head hurts?”

  “Yes, you dim bulb. Somebody hit you. I don’t know who, so don’t ask me. You can get home, right? There’s a bump on your head but no blood. In my professional opinion, you are gonna live.”

  “I can walk home. Jeez, you don’t have to be so rough,” Tony said. “What’s the hurry anyway? Wait—is the guy still here? The guy who hit me? I remember now. He was huge.”

  “Was he?” Luis tried to think of who he knew that was huge. Nobody came to mind. “He’s gone,” Luis said. “And I’ve got places to be myself.”

  “Listen to you.” Tony attempted to reclaim some dignity. “The puffed-up eleven-year-old big man. Hey”—he got a good look at Luis for the first time—“what happened to your face?”

  “You should see the other guy,” Luis said. “Come on, I’ll help you climb out.”

  Back on the street, Luis unlocked his bike with Tony watching and rubbing his head.

  “I heard you were carrying cash,” Tony said after a minute.

  Luis looked up. “What?”

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars. That’s why I came after you,” Tony said. “Plus I was mad about what happened at Señora Álvaro’s bodega. I didn’t like your attitude. I still don’t.”

  “Yours could use improvement,” Luis said.

  “And Carlos said you were carrying cash,” Tony went on. “So I thought, why not share and share alike.”

  Jeez
, Carlos—¡imbécil! Luis thought.

  “Uh, and how did this come up—the fact that I had money?” Luis asked.

  Tony shrugged. “You might say I ran into him . . . a couple of hours ago. I asked him about your plans for the day. He was happy to share information. I guess I was pretty convincing.”

  “Did you hurt him?” Luis asked.

  Tony shrugged. “Not really. I made it clear I could.”

  Suddenly Luis understood. Tony must have been the guy Carlos ran into earlier, the reason he was late getting to Computer Genius’s. Luis felt a surge of anger at the universe and everybody in it—Tony, Carlos, the hunter, whoever had turned out the lights, Maura’s grandfather. His face hurt. His butt hurt. He wanted to be home in bed like every other sixth grader. He wanted the streetlights and hot water back and the clock by his bedside table telling him the time. He wanted organic Pop-Tarts for breakfast. He wanted nothing to do with being a hero.

  Still, when he spoke he kept his voice even. “I hope you’re not expecting me to hand over any money now,” he said.

  Tony shrugged. “You didn’t have to come back and help me. You know who knocked me out?”

  “I think the guy was after me. I don’t know who he is.”

  “Somebody who wanted your money?” Tony asked. Then he made a face. “My head hurts.”

  “Yeah, you said that. So go home—vete. The walk’ll be good for you. I saw somewhere you’re not supposed to go to sleep right after you get hit on the head.”

  “I owe you,” Tony said.

  “Verdad,” said Luis. “Buenas noches.”

  Luis’s bike was unlocked and ready to go, but now he hesitated to jump on. If the hunter came back, he’d see it was gone and know Luis had come back for it. Heck with him, Luis thought. I need my wheels. A few minutes later, he rode up to 316 Larch, locked the bike to the railing, and hurried inside.

  “Genius?” he called as soon as he’d pulled the door closed. “Are you decent?”

  “Some would say so,” came the reply.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Itrex—I-T-R-E-X.” Computer Genius typed it into search.

  “Aren’t you curious about my face?” Luis asked. “Don’t you want to know where I was? There was this hunter guy, and he knocked out Tony, and—”

  Computer Genius looked up from his computer. He was frowning. “Do we need to talk about this now?”

  “Uh, I guess not,” Luis said. “I just thought—”

  “I have a job to do,” Computer Genius said.

  “Okay.” Luis had thought he was tired of people asking about his face, but the genius’s lack of interest was disappointing. Wasn’t he important too? But maybe he wasn’t, not at this moment. “So, uh, what are you going to do next?”

  “I studied up while you were gone,” the genius said, still tapping away at his laptop. “Smart meters communicate with each other. And they communicate with the operations center at New Jersey Light too—only in that case, the communication goes both ways. Pretty regularly, the ops center sends the meters software updates, same as you get on your home computer. And the meters accept the updates, reconfigure themselves, and go on doing the job. Do you get my drift?”

  Luis thought for a second. The adrenaline shot was over. He felt tired and dull. He yawned. “No,” he admitted.

  “Can you stop yawning?” the genius asked. “It’s distracting.”

  “Sorry,” Luis said.

  “Do you want me to explain?” the genius asked.

  Luis nodded.

  “All right, then,” the genius said. “So I think what happened here is our hacker hooked the NJL server and dropped in an update of his own. The server sent it out to the PLC—”

  “PLC?” Luis repeated.

  “Programmable logic controller. It’s like a simple computer designed for a particular job—like talking to electric meters. The PLC relayed the software update to the meter. This one didn’t tell the meter how to add up the billing or the kilowatt hours; it said something else. It said—”

  “—shut off the power,” Luis said.

  The genius pointed at Luis’s nose. “Got it. I guess you’re not as dumb as you look.”

  “Gracias,” said Luis.

  Computer Genius ducked his chin, a nod of approval. “Then one by one by one by one, obedient little meters here, there, and everywhere did as they were told.”

  Luis shook his head. The idea was freaky—a harmless gadget in your house going rogue. “It’s like your microwave attacks you, or your fridge,” he said. “I never knew it was possible.”

  “Get used to it,” the genius said. “Cars talk to the Internet too, you know.”

  Luis shook his head. “Don’t tell me that, hue. I don’t even want to think about that.”

  “Yeah.” The genius looked back at the screen and hit enter. “I’d stick to a bike if I were you. Okay—here we go. Look at this. Is that it?”

  Luis leaned in to look at the genius’s laptop. On the screen was a photo of an electric meter. “Yes,” he said.

  “The model numbers match,” Computer Genius said. “Let’s see if I can find the manual.”

  A few key strikes later, a PDF file appeared—page after page of small print describing the inner life and working of the ITREX 2653589.

  “I’ll just search remote disconnect relay”—the genius narrated his actions—“and when I find it, maybe I can identify the relevant lines of code.”

  “And reverse the command?” Luis said.

  “Depends on how smart our hacker was,” the genius said. “We can only hope it’s gonna be that simple. Go ahead and get comfortable. This may take a while.”

  Copying the genius, Luis sat himself down cross-legged on the floor. Up till this point, he had been too focused on the job to look around. Now he did—and he was astonished. It had been only a few hours since he and Maura and Carlos had found Computer Genius holed up in the dark and the cold and the grime, right? But in that time the space had transformed.

  The mattress had been plumped, sheets shaken out, blankets folded. Remnants of curtains hung over the windows. If you squinted, you could pretend the tatters were lace. The toothbrush Carlos (that traitor!) had supplied stood upright in a jam jar on the windowsill.

  Was Luis imagining it? Or did he smell mint?

  In daylight, the leftover streaks, stains, and crumbs might have revealed themselves, but for now—in the forgiving glow of lanterns and flashlights—the place looked downright homey.

  Luis turned his focus back to the genius and got another surprise. The formerly scraggly hair had been pulled back and secured with a more-or-less clean bandana. The face and hands were clean, the T-shirt tucked neatly into the plaid pajama bottoms. All the genius lacked was a bow tie.

  Luis knew better than to comment. The genius was deep in concentration, and for a few minutes the only sounds were clicking keystrokes. Had the genius cleaned up because he had work to do? He remembered the comment about being in hibernation. Well, the genius wasn’t hibernating now.

  Luis, in contrast, had nothing to do, so he gave in to exhaustion and dozed. What finally woke him was the quiet when Computer Genius stopped typing. Luis opened his eyes and saw him pulling off his headphones, rubbing his ears, lolling his head to stretch his neck.

  “The guy’s not even that smart,” the genius said. “I’d be embarrassed if my hack was that kludgy. The man-in-the-middle part, though, that was pretty good.”

  “Man-in-the-middle?” Luis repeated. “What guy?”

  “Whoever did the actual hack. I think I might know the kid. Hacking circles aren’t that big, you know. And every hacker has his own digital fingerprint.”

  “What do you mean?” Luis asked.

  “Particular lines of code they like to use, ways of doing things,” the genius said. “The man-in-the-middle was a nice touch, like an add-on.”

  “You know I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Luis said.

  “Of course I
know,” Computer Genius said.

  “So would you mind enlightening me?” Luis asked. “Por favor.”

  “Okay, since you said ‘please,’ ” the genius said. “Our bad actors, they wanted to keep their interference a secret as long as possible, give the outage time to take off. So they set up their malware to make a copy of normal operations and then, when the time came, play the copy back on the monitors being watched by dispatchers in the operations center.”

  Luis understood at once. “I saw something like that in a movie,” Luis said. “Robbers broke into a bank, but they fixed the security monitors so they played a videotape of the empty vault instead of the real picture from the cameras, the one that showed them stealing the money. To the guards looking at the TV screen, it looked like everything was fine.”

  “Same idea,” Computer Genius said. “The operators thought it was a normal day.”

  Luis remembered something else. “They’re not called ‘operators.’ They’re called ‘dispatchers,’ ” he said. “That’s Maura’s mom’s job, and she got in trouble because she didn’t see the outage as it happened.”

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Computer Genius said. “It was part of the plan.”

  “But wait—” Luis shook his head to clear the drowsiness. “Does that mean you fixed it? Are the lights on?”

  “I’m still working on it,” Computer Genius said. “Can’t a guy take a break?”

  “Sure,” Luis said. “Sorry.”

  “Somebody on the inside must have provided the bad guys with the encryption key so they could read the data on the meters,” he said. “The easiest way would have been to give over one of the NJL technicians’ laptops. All the information is in there. The meters are such a big attack surface—it’s almost surprising nobody has tried this before.”

  “Maybe nobody wanted to turn out the lights before,” Luis said.

  The genius nodded. “That could be it exactly. Why turn out the lights in a Podunk town like this? It makes no sense. There’s no military base here. No giant corporation to pay big money to get back in business. There’s just a bunch of people like you and me. Who even cares enough to shut us down?”