by Max Wyatt
Finn wished he could trade with one of them. Any of them.
He took a sip as the last of the people filed in and sat. The chair at the head of the table was conspicuously empty. General Thomson would make an entrance, pausing in the doorway, knowing full well that every eye in the place was on him. It was more than theatrics, though someone had to explain that to Finn before he’d understood the reasoning behind it. Arriving late meant everyone waited on the general’s pleasure. It reinforced the hierarchy and all the preliminary chatter that most corporate meetings endured so that everyone felt empowered and and were recognized as contributing could be dispensed with.
True to form, General Thomson stalked into the room as if he expected the very furniture to get out of his way. Finn expected it would, too. Everyone rose and came to attention as the senior officer strode through the door. As a civilian, Finn wasn’t obligated to stand for the man, but he’d always done so for respect. Almost always. He’d had his nose buried in papers a time or two and hadn’t noticed the man’s entrance, but he’d always apologized. Today he scrambled to his feet with the rest and watched as the General mounted the raised dais and sat down, a king deigning to grant the common folk a moment of his time, a noblesse oblige for the less fortunate.
That illustration evaporated from the moment the General opened his mouth.
“All right people, we do not have time to dick around. I want information and I want it fast. You’ve had two hours to assemble whatever facts you need, and we will cover them. Just keep in mind that we do not have the luxury of contemplating the little things. We need a high level overview and you will answer my questions succinctly and quickly.”
There were nearly a hundred people in the room and he was going to interrogate each and every one of them with a bright light and lit cigarette. Finn’s entire body broke into a cold sweat and he spilled a little of his coffee as he tried to hide his nervousness by taking a sip.
“Mr. Lawrence,” the General rasped, looking straight at him. “Let’s begin with you, as you are the one that discovered this leak.”
He’s starting with me? The swallow of coffee went down wrong, and he came up sputtering, looking the fool. “Yes, Sir,” He pulled a notebook to him hoping that no one could see he’d been doodling on it. At least he’d taken copious notes, like a diary, about the order in which the world had fallen off the spokes.
“At 2:03, excuse me, I mean zero-two zero-three hundred hours, I was running a routine usage scan against some of the backup servers and the telecom servers when one of the ports flagged for unusual activity…”
“Why was this flag not automatic?” the general asked, interrupting him with a glare that would have melted ice. “I was under the impression that this port was one that was closely regulated.”
“It was disabled, Sir. There should have been no activity at all on that port.”
“Then why was that alarm not given when the activity started? Why did it wait until your scan to throw an alert?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out.” Finn flipped through a few pages. “It’s as though the server ‘forgot’ that port existed. It didn’t flag it nor did it stop the data flow, because there was nothing there to monitor.”
“How does that happen?”
Finn’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he found his voice and could get the words out. “It…doesn’t. It can’t.”
“Mr. Lawrence, if you were to do that to a machine, how would you go about it?”
“I suppose…” Finn blew out the air in his cheeks. “I would, I suppose, reconfigure the…” Finn looked at the general as the realization struck him. He’d missed it. If ever a man had fucked up in the history of the world, this was it.
“I suggest you scour the logs, Mr. Lawrence. Your discovery seems to be of a second attack against our systems.”
Finn slammed back in his chair, curling around the notebook in his hand and already grabbing at a pen to make notes. He’d remotely reconfigured ports, disabled, enabled, protected…but that would mean it wasn’t just a hole someone stumbled upon and exploited. It meant that whoever was behind this created a hole for them to enter at a later date.
This was no smash and grab, this was a two-prong attack and they…he…was caught completely unaware.
“I will, Sir.”
The words were not casually spoken. In the last five minutes, this whole mess had taken on a more personal proportion. If there was indeed a hacker then he, Finn, would find him.
Or he’d die trying.
“Robert?” General Thomson’s basilisk stare switched to the next victim. It was like Sauron’s all seeing eye focusing elsewhere, Finn thought, able to begin breathing once more.
He shouldn’t have relaxed as soon as he had. “According to our records, we’ve been warned by the French government that our security was lacking for some time now.” Robert stole a glance at Finn. “Numerous citations of inadequate firewall protection, even sql string injections and malware. We are able to filter slightly over nine million spam email daily, we catch on order of three hundred thousand known viruses every day. Whoever did this, they have training and funding behind them.”
“Are you suggesting a foreign government?”
“It’s too early to draw conclusions, General. I wish I had more information for you. All I can tell you is, given the nature of the attack response when our countermeasures were detected…this is a pro and not just one man.”
“Mr. Lawrence, would you concur with that?” General Thomson’s gaze was back. Finn nodded miserably. Finn’s firm, of which he was the representative here, was hired as a civilian expert consultant for cyber security. It was formerly a position held by a military individual, Captain Robert Wells. He’d taken the replacement as a personal affront and Finn as the embodiment of that insult.
Double-checking with Finn to verify the captain’s expertise was going to exacerbate that friction and make Finn’s investigations that much more difficult.
Robert’s bland expression said nothing, but he certainly gave complete attentiveness to the proceeds of the meeting. But Finn could feel him gloating. And the damn bastard had a right to gloat.
The General glanced from Robert to Finn, his expression telling very little. “I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone the seriousness of this. This goes well beyond one person or department.”
Finn straightened up. How much of that rivalry did the general know about? It seemed a bit too on-the-nose to bring that up now.
“What I am about to say does not leave this room,” Thomson added, including the rest of the room in that stare. “But we are not alone. At the time of our intrusion, the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI were all attacked, and unknown perpetrators successfully entered and stole access to files under close security.”
There were some startled murmurs at this. Finn glanced around, realizing that until now no one had really understood the full nature of the threat. That realization was sinking in, and in any other gathering would manifest in a certain amount of panic. It was interesting to note how many people in the room squared their shoulders a little. How many chins came up as if preparing to be dealt another blow. These were professionals, but these were also soldiers. There wasn’t a man or woman here who wouldn’t put their full focus on their jobs after this meeting.
With the exception of the two civilians near the door. While the woman gave away very little of what she was feeling the other had gone pasty white. He kept patting his pocket, wanting his phone, Finn realized. No personal electronics had been allowed in the meeting room. That man needed to be watched before he leaked this whole mess to the world at large.
General Thomson continued. “At the moment, we are under a state of ransom. The United States government has been handed a ransom for control of their own systems for a staggering fifty Billion dollars. That’s ‘billion’ with a capital B.”
You could have heard a pin drop in the room. Finn wondered if the gover
nment even had access to fifty billion dollars.
“In less than six hours, not only were our agencies compromised, but others as well. I should tell you, this attack was not limited to the United States. The President is currently on his way to a meeting with some other heads of state who have had similar issues. I am not privy to the entire list of countries affected, nor am I at liberty to discuss those I do know. But we’re looking at a single organization that can slip through the security of not just one, but several first world governments, steal data, manipulate server farms and leave no trace.
“Keep in mind too, that so far the motivation of this mysterious group is money. There are no political demands, no prisoner releases, no removal of troops. Just the money.”
“What do they plan to do if they do not get the money, Sir?” A young lieutenant piped up from the sidelines, and then slapped a hand over his mouth plainly embarrassed to have asked it out loud.
The General’s mouth twitched a little. Amazing…the General laughs after all.
Such as it was.
“A good question.” The General addressed the room for the answer. “The ransom received by our government specified that a failure to comply would involve blackouts. Power blackouts across the country. In order to demonstrate their capability and their willingness to proceed, they have already initiated rolling blackouts along the eastern seaboard.”
He looked around the room, his eyes pausing on key players. Surprisingly enough he included Finn in this acknowledgement. “I do not know the threats used in other countries; perhaps they too are operating under the same threat. I have been informed,” he turned his baleful gaze on the captain, “that Paris is undergoing issues with their power grid, though that might very well be unrelated.”
Robert met his cold emotionless gaze with his bland acceptance and a sharp eye on his superior’s face.
Finn finished the rest of the cooling coffee and pulled a stack of printouts closer to him. The conference wore on with the grinding monotony of a meeting, but Finn was already mentally gone, rifling through the papers, searching for something that stuck in his mind like a mental thorn.
Something wasn’t making sense, despite all that money, it just…needed to be found. He figured the answer was in there, that somewhere in all that tracking log gibberish was the diamond that would make this all come together. This wasn’t just some nebulous idea of the world being at stake, though it was. This was a terrorist attack as harrowing as any shooting, as destructive as a bomb. This meant his mother was sitting at home in the dark while riots erupted outside her window. This was his best friend’s livelihood and even life in danger. This was every person he’d ever known suffering for every minute that this attacker continued playing with the power grid like it was a child’s toy.
Long after the meeting was over, Finn remained where he was, searching through the stacks of paper. Eventually he roused enough to bring the papers back to his desk, get another cup and run the analysis on the port logs.
Prevention hadn’t worked, they’d gotten around him. Protection hadn’t worked, they’d thrown off everything anyone could throw at them.
And people out there needed to know. People he cared about. He stared at his phone for a long time. How many people from that same meeting were having these selfsame feelings right now? How many people were fighting with themselves to not call home? How could he not warn them that things were going to get a whole lot worse before they got better.
No. This wasn’t the way to fight that battle.
Finn looked at the pages he’d marked, at the sticky notes that had blossomed all over his work station. Cryptic messages that only he understood as he put down his head and resolved to get back to work.
Finn was out for revenge. Even Robert and his snide asides meant nothing, not anymore. Finn would not rest, ever, until he found and exposed these…these vermin… No matter how hard he had to chase through the ether, he would destroy them.
Chapter Five
Harper
“Hey doofus, what’s up?”
Harper was half-distracted as she answered her phone, eating ramen and watching some crime show on TV that she was fairly sure she’d already seen. Either the scriptwriters had come up with a duplicate plot line or the funny looking guy with the big nose was about to hold the mayor of the city hostage. Yep, she’d seen it.
“Harper, I need you to listen to me.”
“Erik, I am listening.”
“No, you’re not. You’re watching Crime in the City though God knows why. Turn off the TV and listen to me.”
Harper frowned and hit the remote, muting the show and shifting so that she wasn’t watching the action on the screen…well…much. “You sound upset. What’s going on? Girl trouble again?”
“Finn called.”
Finn calling wasn’t exactly breaking news. Finn and Erik had been best friends all through high school and had kept in touch while going their separate ways. Typically, Finn was the more laid back of the duo, the clearer head in a crisis. Finn calling should not be something to get worked up over. “I turned off a movie I wasn’t watching for this?”
“Will you shut up and listen to me? Have you guys been having power outages? Stuff that doesn’t last long?”
“It spoiled lunch with Tara,” Harper muttered, setting down the ramen which had grown cold ages ago and was looking less and less palatable by the minute. She tried to think what else she had that was quick and easy.
“Is your phone charged?”
“Erik, you’re weirding me out.” She huffed, really not in the mood for Erik’s games. Erik had to run out of steam on his own. “Why all the questions? No, it’s not charged. I plug it in when I go to bed, you know that. I have enough power for this phone call, if that’s what you mean.”
“First I want you to find your charger and get your phone full and keep it full. Do you have one of those portable chargers that you don’t need to plug into the wall? If not, then you’re going to get one. In fact, make a list. I want you to go shopping—”
“No can do, big brother. I’m out of money until payday. Unless I’m doing it on your dime, I’m not going anywhere except to work and back.”
“Then get Tara, she’s got money.”
“What do you mean Tara has money? How do you know she hasn’t spent it all on an absolutely gorgeous orange…I mean green sweater and matching shoes?” Harper eyed the stack of shopping bags on the chair next to the door.
“Because Tara’s more careful than you with her budget.”
Harper threw a pillow across the room, hitting the TV. It was a poor substitute – right now she’d have preferred hitting Erik, only he wasn’t there. He still knew where her buttons were. The TV wobbled a little bit and she held her breath, wondering if maybe she should have anchored it to the wall after all instead of using the flimsy stand that had been so much easier…and cheaper…to use. The TV wavered and then righted itself. On TV the actor playing the bad guy looked ridiculous in a clown suit as he dragged the mayor out of his own office and out into the street.
The show took place in New York City. No one so much as batted an eye. “Erik have you seen this movie? The one with the clown kidnaps the mayor of New York?”
“Harper, listen to me. When Finn called he said some super crazy bad stuff was going down in the government. Terrorists have hacked into everything and are holding the world hostage.”
“The world? Erik, be serious. You can’t demand ransom from a prisoner. And besides, where would they keep the world? It’s huge!”
On TV mouths moved. Frantic cops met with more frantic FBI agents all who talked far too much with little to no action. The hostage looked terrified. People were panicking with no clear leader for the city. The whole thing had gone stale and boring. Harper turned off the TV.
“I am being serious. What do you think all those blackouts are about? And have you tried to use an ATM? Banks are going down right and left. Finn says it’s going to get a who
le lot worse before it gets better. That’s why I need you to get off your butt, go over to Tara’s house and go shopping. You need water. All the water you can find. Canned stuff. Fruits, vegetables. Especially meat. Make sure you get stuff that’s going to last. Don’t forget trash bags. Stuff you would take like when you’re camping.”
Erik’s voice had risen an octave as he’d listed everything. He wasn’t kidding. Harper felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach. “Erik, c’mon. You’re freaking me out a little here. This isn’t funny anymore.”
“I’m not joking, Harper. I’ve told you that a million times. Listen, peanut, if ever you’ve listened to me, do it now. Go get those things, quickly. Don’t forget that charger. I don’t know how much longer the phone systems are going to last, but you want to be able to use them as long as possible. And don’t talk to anyone else about it. Just get what you need. In and out. Then when you get home I want you to take any meats you still have in your freezer and whatever you bought and cook them. Smoking would be better, but cooked at least lasts longer. Are you listening? Water. Canned goods. Trash bags. I’m going to text you a better list. There’s a website…here’s the link. You’ll be wanting to add other stuff on there. Batteries. Medicine…”
Erik went on and on but as he rambled, his voice only grew more urgent and higher pitched. Whatever Finn told him, it freaked him out as much as he was freaking out Harper. Suddenly the silence of the apartment and the muted noises of the street below her window felt more sinister. It was that same feeling she’d had in that sweater shop where normal things took on an unearthly tinge.
She held the phone away from her face as it chirped and opened the link he’d sent. Then sat there blinking when she realized what kind of site her brother had sent her to. She’d have been less surprised if it had been porn. “Survivalists? Are you kidding me? Is everyone going nuts because of some stupid brownouts?”
