by LS Hawker
She set four cheese sticks and a water bottle next to the computer keyboard.
Then she opened up a string cheese and scarfed it down. She didn’t think she’d ever been hungrier in her life.
“Do I have your permission to download Metasploit and PostgreSQL to your folks’ computer?”
“Yes,” she said. “Whatever you need.”
“Okay,” he said, focusing on the screen, his heavy dark brows knitted in concentration. “Did I ever tell you I used to be in a hacking club? Nothing heavily illegal. But we learned how to breach a protected computer remotely. Information Warfare didn’t teach us that.”
“But you need the IP address for that,” Jade said. This was not her thing at all. She didn’t judge him though, especially not now, not when he was their only option.
“You do, but if we can figure out Martin’s workstation name, we can ping it and find out his IP address.”
Another big if.
Elias ate all the cheese while the software downloaded, and he downed the whole bottle of water.
“Would you mind getting me another?” he said.
Jade ran back to the kitchen and got out the rest of the string cheese, found a bag of grapes, and a package of crackers. She retrieved two more water bottles and carried everything back to the den.
Berko dozed on the futon, clutching a pillow.
“Okay, I’m logged into the network. I’m pretty sure they’ll figure out where we are very soon, so we need to do this fast, and then get your family out of here, because they’re going to descend.”
Jade went to stand behind him as he typed into the black box: ping
Nothing.
Ping
The IP address came up.
“That’s amazing,” Jade said.
Elias turned and gave her a dubious look.
“I was never a hacker. I was a builder.”
Elias shrugged, then copied the IP address and opened the PostgreSQL Graphical User Interface, which resembled an FTP connection interface, clicked on Connect, and left the window open. Next, he opened the Metasploit GUI, which looked like the command prompt—black screen, 8-bit text—and typed in the database connect for PostgreSQL.
Text began flashing and Jade gasped. “Oh, no,” she said. “What’s happening?”
“That’s normal,” Elias said, taking a drink of water. When it stopped, he turned to her and said, “Now comes the connection to the server. Hold on to your butts.” He typed db_nmap and the IP address. “We’re in.”
Jade felt the same kind of thrill she used to feel when she and her high school friends sneaked beers out of their parents’ refrigerators.
“Now we look for the exploits.” He typed db_autopwn-t-p-e-s-b. “This is going to have to run for a bit.”
“How long?” Jade said.
“No telling. Hopefully it’ll be done before seven, because then you’re going to have to find where Clementine is in the system and upload your patch.”
But what if it didn’t work? The question hung in the air.
“We might as well just chill on the couch,” Elias said.
Jade sat next to Berko, and he put his head on her shoulder. Elias sat next to her, and she put her head on his shoulder. And soon, they were all fast asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
September 11
Jade jerked upright, knocking her shoulder into Berko’s head.
“Ow,” he said.
“What time is it?” Jade said.
Elias jumped up and sat at the computer. “It’s done,” he said. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”
Jade ran out to the foyer and peeked out the window next to the front door. A policeman.
The doorbell rang, and Fearless appeared, sleepy, one ear flipped over, mrphing. The upstairs hall light came on.
“Jade?” her dad called down. “Who’s at the door at this hour?”
It was five thirty. “Go back to bed, Dad,” Jade called. “I’ll get it.”
He turned the light out and went back to bed. She waited until his bedroom door shut before she opened the front door.
“Jade Veverka?” the uniformed officer asked. She vaguely recognized him as a town cop. She glanced at his name tag and remembered his name. Eric.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“Were you at Mike Dougherty’s house earlier this morning, about ninety minutes ago?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“May I come in?”
“Sure,” she said.
“I’ve found the exploit we can use, Jade,” Elias said as she and the cop came into the den. “I just need to get us in there, and then you can—”
“Sir, were you at Mike Dougherty’s house earlier this morning?” Eric asked in his cop voice.
“Yes,” Jade said. “He was with me.”
“Sir, would you stop typing, please?”
“Just one second, Officer, I need to—”
“Stop typing now,” the cop said.
“Officer,” Jade said. “It is very important that—”
“I’m not talking to you,” he snapped. “Sir, back away from the computer.”
“I’m almost—”
“Sir. Did you assault Mike Dougherty?”
Elias moused around, trying desperately to complete what he’d started.
Eric unsnapped his holster, and at the sound, Elias slowly raised his hands behind his head. “Officer. Mike Dougherty had something of Jade’s he refused to give back.”
“That he bought and paid for, correct?” Eric said.
“Yes, sir,” Elias said. “But we gave him money for it. It belonged to Jade.”
“Would you please stand up, sir?” Eric said.
Elias’s eyes flicked from Eric’s face to the screen and back again and he quickly shot out his hand to the mouse and clicked it.
Eric lunged at Elias and smashed his face into the desk, a replay of what had happened at the bar in Miranda a lifetime ago.
“You’re under arrest for assault, and for resisting arrest,” Eric said, bringing Elias’s right hand to his back and cuffing it, then cuffing his left wrist. Then the officer resnapped his holster with one hand and pulled Elias upright by his collar with the other.
“This is a misunderstanding, Officer,” Berko said, following behind Jade and Elias, who was being dragged toward the front door. “Mike wanted one hundred dollars for an old Nintendo cartridge, and Elias here understandably got upset. You can understand that, right?”
“Yeah,” Eric said. “But he still assaulted Mike. So I’m going to have to take him to jail.”
“Listen, Jade,” Elias said. “You need to finish going through the exploits. You can figure this out. You know you can. Then do your thing.”
“Okay,” Jade said. What if she couldn’t figure it out? She liked to take her time to fully understand whatever she was working on. But she didn’t have that kind of time.
The upstairs hall light came on again, and Robert, clad in sweats and a T-shirt, came running down the stairs and out the front door.
Jade followed him.
“Eric,” Robert said.
“Hello, Mr. Veverka,” Eric said as he opened the back door of the cop car.
“Listen, I need a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“I need you to let this young man finish working on my computer. It’s really important. I need it fixed before he leaves. Can you let him do that? And then I’ll drive him down to the courthouse myself. Okay?”
Eric stood looking at Jade’s dad. Eric wasn’t much older than Jade.
“Mr. Veverka—”
“I’d consider it a personal favor,” Robert said.
“You’ll bring him over as soon as he’s done?”
“Yes, Eric. You have my word.”
Eric stood thinking for another moment, and Jade wanted to crawl out of her skin.
“All right.”
“Could you uncuff him,
please? He’s no good to me unless he can use his hands, you know?”
The officer pulled out a keyring, located the one he wanted, and unlocked the cuffs on Elias’s wrists.
“See you after a while,” Robert said.
Elias rubbed his wrists then touched his nose, which didn’t look broken, although Jade was sure it hurt.
“Thank you, Mr. Veverka,” Elias said, walking up the walk toward the house.
“You bet. Just do whatever it is you need to do, all right? Then we’ll see about getting you to the courthouse.”
At this Robert rolled his eyes and went in the front door, followed by Elias and Jade.
“I’m going to make some eggs and bacon and coffee,” Robert said over his shoulder on the way to the kitchen. “Anyone want some?”
“Please,” Jade said.
Elias went back in the den and sat at the computer.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“What is it?” Berko said.
“When my face went into the keyboard, it halted the process.” He wearily rubbed his eyes. “Let me figure out what’s going on.”
“We have to wait for it to look for exploits again?” she said, aghast. “That took a long—”
“Not that far back,” he said. “Just give me a minute, okay? Then it’s your turn to shine.”
Berko pressed his hands into his chest. “I don’t think my heart can take much more of this,” he said. He left the room.
“Poor guy,” Jade said. “But I know how he feels.”
Elias hadn’t heard. He was trying to repair the damage.
Jade fidgeted for ten more minutes. It was 6:50 a.m., which meant it was 7:50 eastern time.
Elias put in a few keystrokes then stretched. “All right,” he said. “It’s all you now.” He stood from the chair and held it out for her.
“Will you quit saying that?” she said.
Berko stood in the doorway. “Just take your time, Jade,” he said. “You’ve got fifty-five minutes. Plenty of time.”
Jade had to bite her tongue. All this “encouragement” had shoved her nerves to the very bleeding edge. She sat down and looked at the screen. She was in the system. There was the system map. She could do this. She could figure it out.
“You know what to do,” Elias said.
“Okay, you know what, guys?” Jade said, her jaw rigid. “Can you wait in the kitchen? I need to concentrate.”
They went out the door without another word and closed it behind them.
Jade examined the system and plunged in.
“Where are you, Clementine?” she murmured, remembering playing hide-and-seek with her sister when she was younger, and how Clem would put her hand over her eyes and stand in the middle of the room, because if she couldn’t see you, then you couldn’t see her.
She ran a search, even though they almost certainly renamed it.
Except they hadn’t.
There she was. There was Clementine, glowing on her screen. She pulled out the Super Mario Kart cartridge and opened it up. Inside was a two-terabyte flash drive with the AIP on it. She hoped Mike Dougherty hadn’t screwed it up somehow. But she suspected he hadn’t even been aware it wasn’t actually Super Mario Kart.
As usual, a shiver of excitement and dread moved through her as she pulled it from its hiding place.
There was a knock at the front door.
Had Dad waited too long to bring Elias in to the police station? Was Eric back?
She looked at the clock. It was 7:10. He must be getting impatient for his prisoner.
But then she heard Berko scream, and a body drop to the floor.
Jade bolted out of the chair, the drive still in her hand, flung open the office door, and dashed out into the hall.
And there, in the doorway, stood Colonel Dan Stevenson.
Chapter Thirty
Jade gasped, smacking herself in the face with her hands as she slammed backward into her mother’s china cabinet. Glass and tableware crashed behind her but it didn’t register because Dan was here. He was alive.
He was alive.
And then she was in his arms, and he was saying, “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
But. Her left hand was against his chest. No bandage. His face was perfect, as if it had never been beaten. His fingernails.
All ten still anchored in place.
She pushed him away and blinked at him. He smiled at her.
“What—what—” She couldn’t form a coherent thought, much less a coherent sentence.
“I know, I know,” Dan said, as if to a little girl who was sad her dog had run away.
Or had been shot in the chest at point-blank range.
“I don’t understand,” Jade said.
“Yes, you do,” Dan said.
Berko slumped against the wall, staring at Dan as if he’d never seen him before. Or as if he were seeing a ghost.
“He’s one of them,” Elias said.
Jade whirled around at the sound of his voice. Elias stood in the kitchen doorway, his hands laced behind his head. Behind him, Connor pressed a gun into Elias’s back.
“Where’s my dad?” Jade said.
“They tied him up,” Elias said. “A lot like they tied up Gilby, as a matter of fact.”
“And where’s the rest of the family?” Dan said. “I’ve always wanted to meet them. Especially darling Clementine, the inspiration for the new age.”
Jade’s mouth filled with saliva. She was going to throw up.
Never before this moment had Jade realized how powerless she was, how buffeted about by the winds of circumstance and the will of others. This was accompanied by the understanding that Dan had used her. She’d believed he cared about her, knew her, saw her. That he, above all other people in the world, understood who she was, what she was about. Now she understood he wanted to use her brain the way a john used a hooker’s body—for his own gratification, his own amusement, his own ends.
He was just like everyone else who used her. Her parents used her to take care of and understand her sister. Her schools used her for awards and glory. Her friends used her for test answers. Her football team used her for recognition and extra points. That’s what she was—an extra point. Not a human being with a soul.
She didn’t exist. She was a tool.
And she realized too how blinded by her own ambition and desire for acclamation and approval she’d always been. Someone who lived outside herself—with only external motivation. She’d wanted Dan to love her for her. Not for what she could do for him. Not to make him king of the United States of whatever it was about to be.
But in the next instant she realized the flash drive had been knocked out of her hand when she crashed into the china cabinet. She had to retrieve it, but how could she do that without Dan and Connor noticing?
Dan stood there smiling at her, until the smile turned brittle and angry.
“You hacked into the system, didn’t you? You were going to try to upload the AIP, weren’t you?”
Jade didn’t say anything. She couldn’t remember ever having told Dan about the AIP. But she must have. Had she ever said anything about it out loud at the lab and the surveillance picked it up? But she had to focus now.
“We have to be able to use Clementine to stop the Chinese,” Dan said. “Clementine will keep the power grid online.”
“Martin told us all about his—your—plan,” Jade said. “So you don’t have to pretend anymore. You’re not going to use Clementine to keep the power on. You want to use it to turn the power off.”
He laid his hand on Jade’s head. Then he shrugged. “Jade. You know I’m not the bad guy here. I am—we are the knights in shining armor. We’re saving this country from itself.”
“Don’t you just love a nonspecific enemy?” Elias said. “Then anything goes. All bets are off. Kill people. Stage deaths. Terrorize employees who’ve done nothing to deserve it.”
“Why, Dan?” Jade said. “Why?”
He sho
ok his head. “Martin explained everything to you. I’m not going to go into it all again.”
She held her hands out, entreating. “Once Clementine’s on the Internet, there’ll be no stopping it,” she said. “There’s no telling what it will do. I’ve told you that. You know that.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “We’ve reconfigured it so we can control it.”
“You can’t control it!” Jade said.
“You can’t,” Dan said. “You did your best, and we’re all so proud of you. But you can let the adults take over now. We’ve got all the best men on it, honey. So don’t you worry your pretty little head anymore.”
Honey? Pretty little head?
All the best men?
Rage bloomed like a mushroom cloud inside her. She’d heard this kind of patronizing language her whole life. Dan had fooled her into believing he wasn’t a chauvinist. He was another Sauer, another Nishant. Eager to stand on her shoulders and call himself a giant.
“I need you to give me the AIP,” Dan said. “And you need to come with us. Then we’ll leave your family alone. That’s all you have to do.”
She had to draw him away from the china cabinet, and the only thing she could think to do made her hate herself. But it had to be done. “Would you like to meet the real Clementine?”
Dan lit up, and Jade’s skin crawled.
She turned to Berko, who still sat on the floor in shock at the revelation that Dan wasn’t dead. “Berko, could you clean up the glass on the floor there? I don’t want the dog or my sister walking on it.”
Berko looked up at her with an incredulous expression.
“I know you don’t feel well, but we have to protect Clementine.”
She turned away from him, because she was afraid Dan would see a telling look pass between them.
“Come on, Dan,” Jade said, trying to keep the venom out of her tone.
His smile lost its angry sheen and he followed her up the stairs.
“You got me,” she said. “We were trying to upload the AIP. But it’s too late, isn’t it?”
Jade hoped Clem would stay out of sight. Because now Jade realized Dan would snatch her up and hold her hostage. If he would fake his own murder in front of her eyes, he would do anything to make sure the Clementine Program propagated.
