Son of New York (Ephialtes Shorts Book 3)

by Gavin E Parker

  The guilt drove Adam to investigate the circumstances of Leon Eyre’s death. He searched through the streams, looking for all the footage he could find of the rally that day, particularly events around the shooting.

  The official streams all seemed to tally rather neatly. There were plenty of senior police officers interviewed either at the scene or hours later in press conferences or back in their air-conditioned offices. The collage of interviews painted a consistent overall picture. An angry but peaceful demonstration had degenerated into a riot when a hard-core decided to take on the police at the Business School building. The police had been forced to use strong-arm tactics to hold the rioters at bay but once explosives started to be hurled at them they had no choice but to open fire. There were plenty of streams of senior officers expressing sorrow that deaths had occurred. There were streams too showing protesters, faces covered, throwing bricks and other objects towards the police. One particularly high ranked stream, posted over and over again, showed a rioter throwing an object which may have been some type of bomb. A smoke trail makes a graceful arch from where it leaves the rioters hand to where it lands behind lines of police officers. Seconds later there is a large bang. The camera judders and momentarily points to the ground. There is a second of abstract blurs of colour and light before the camera quickly pans backup to the lines of police. There appear to be police officers on the ground with others rushing to their aid.

  Adam decided to dig deeper and look for less popular streams posted by individuals on the march. There were untold hours of footage to hunt through and he was unable to find much that contradicted the official story.

  Like millions of others Adam had had doubts about the official version of events and decided he should scour the internet to somehow find the truth. But the more he looked for the truth the further he felt he was getting from it. Unlike most conspiracy theorists who, on finding conflicting evidence, immediately assume the official version is a lie and that anything that deviates from it must be true and connected, Adam just felt bewildered. The more he read and watched the less he felt he knew for sure. He would have just given up, assuming that the official version was broadly correct, but for one thing; the large amounts of streams he found where, on clicking the link, he was greeted with the words: ‘video unavailable’. More than that, he had bookmarked some of the unavailable videos planning to return to them later in the hope that their unavailability was due to some transient technical issue. Links to titles like ‘Cops fire on unarmed protesters’ would be dead, bringing up the ‘video unavailable’ message. A few hours or minutes later even the account that had posted the video would be gone.

  Adam wondered what might be happening. Perhaps the disappearance of the accounts was something to do with the same technical issues that were losing the videos. It seemed odd but not yet sinister. He imagined what Leon Eyre might have made of it. ‘They’re censoring the streams, man,’ he would have said. Adam smiled as he thought of it, but the smile quickly faded.

  There were various ways to use the computer networks that enveloped the globe. The top, most open level was the one that people were generally familiar with. Here they did their shopping, communicated with friends and relatives, gossipped, and laughed at pictures of cats. There were other less well travelled highways on the world’s communication networks and, though he had never used them, Adam had heard about them. During the war it was rumoured that the USAN and its enemies were engaged in a huge cyberwar. Famines, floods and plagues could be unleashed at the tap of a keyboard, and filched information about people, stores and matériel was invaluable to those involved in more old-fashioned hostilities. The Restrictive War Measures included restrictions on what sort of communications and protocols were open to the general public. Though the war had ended four years earlier those measures were yet to be rescinded. As such it would be, technically at least, a crime for Adam to delve into the darker recesses of the world’s computer networks.

  He mulled it over for a long time before deciding that it was something he had to do. All he wanted was an alternative take on the events of the weekend, then he would be able to weigh them up in his mind and decide whose version seemed most plausible. If he could get the information he wanted he would only be in there for a few short hours. It seemed worth it, and besides, who would know? He assumed that so many people were creating so much traffic on the darknet that it would be almost impossible to police it. Someone like him - a curious teenager - dipping in for an hour or so would be incredibly unlikely to get caught. Even if he did he would be able to plead ignorance, and surely it would be seen as a minor infraction.

  He began by searching for instructions on how to access alternative networks. The information was freely available, flowing from sites in streams which were constantly being shut down or moved and reopened. The information didn’t stay in one place for long but it was constantly popping up in so many places it was easy to grab a copy before it disappeared again.

  He installed the necessary applications to his terminal and took the precautions as advised. From what he had read his time in the darknet would be undetectable. According to others, however, the untraceable platforms and protocols were constantly being bested by cybersecurity services in a never-ending arms race with the hackers. He felt the risks were low and worth it. He wanted to know.

  He found some alternative streaming sites and immediately began searching for crowd footage from the protesters. Most of it was fairly dull; placard waving, marching and chanting. He narrowed his search, hoping to find video of the shootings and the events leading up to them.

  When he found some he still wasn’t sure what to make of them. It was difficult to piece the events together from hundreds of different streams, most of which didn’t show anything specific. There were lots of streams showing people appearing to react to sounds in the distance, or people talking to each other about what other people had told them was happening. ‘They’ve started shooting at us,’ was a popular refrain, as was, ‘What’s happening?’ and ‘What was that?’

  Adam decided to search for a more structured piece. He found one called ‘Cops Murder Protesters.’

  The video was a moderately well-argued piece claiming that rioting had only broken out once the police had opened fire on unarmed protesters. It rearranged the official timeline convincingly, demonstrating that many of the crowd sourced videos showing the police shooting appeared to have been taken at dusk, where most of the footage of rioting was clearly after dark. Other evidence was put forward too; timestamps on videos and testimony of eyewitnesses. A plausible case was made but the thing that was most shocking was a claim made by one of the eyewitnesses. The man, who spoke to the camera with half of his face obscured by a bandanna, claimed that far from firing indiscriminately into the crowd the police had specifically targeted certain individuals and deliberately assassinated them.

  To Adam this seemed to be an extraordinary claim. He had expected those sympathetic to the protesters to hold positions antithetic to the police’s, but to claim that specific people had been intentionally executed seemed to belong to another realm of paranoia altogether.

  He flipped to a news report and found a list of the victims’ names, which he then searched for individually. Surprisingly, none of them were aged over forty. The two oldest victims were both leaders of separate protest movements. The rest were all students, like Leon.

  Adam looked for the students’ social pages. He couldn’t find them.

  Switching back to the darknet he searched again. He managed to find cached versions of most of their pages, where they had all been very vocal about what they saw as the crimes of Cortes’ government. Many had links to streams and other sites calling on people to fight back against the power of the state, as well as many ominous dead links.

  Adam thought about it. Was it that strange? The sort of people who would end up on a protest march against the government would tend to have anti-government feelings and vent them on their social pro
files. That was obvious, wasn’t it?

  Or could the man in the structured stream have been right? Had these individuals been targeted for their views and assassinated?

  That had to be too crazy, didn’t it?

  Leon Eyre was known at the college for his rants against the government and his committed support of the protest movement. He had a certain type of low-grade charisma and his fellow students seemed to enjoy his performances, either to listen to him expound his offbeat worldview or to take issue with him and argue back. Was it possible that he could be seen as a focal point for seditious activity amongst students? It hardly seemed likely. Leon was a loudmouth more than anything. It wasn’t like he was advocating revolution. Not seriously, anyway.

  Adam came out of the darknet and deleted the applications he used to access it. If anything, he felt even more confused than he had before. The official story seemed particularly neat and fitted the paradigm of the protest out-of-control story that everyone had heard countless times before. But the alternative appeared to be literally unbelievable. There are plenty of reasons for objecting to loudmouth students, but viewing them as dangerous enemies of the state requiring permanent silencing seemed to cast them in a light far more threatening than even they would have claimed for themselves.

  Three

  Headlights playing on the living room wall signalled the return of Greg Wilson. The low purr cut out and was followed moments later by the clunk of a car door. Adam heard the sound of the front door opening. His father went to the kitchen first before entering the living room. He flicked the light on and was surprised to see Adam on the sofa.

  “Hey,” he said. “What are you doing, sat in the dark?”

  Adam shrugged. “You heard about the riots?”

  “What is it?”

  “Some of the people who got shot. I knew them.”

  Greg approached the sofa and sat next to Adam, putting an arm around his shoulder. “Kids from school?”

  “College.”

  “Jeez. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a bit shocked is all.”

  Greg seemed genuinely concerned. “Were they people you knew well?”

  “One of them. I mean, I’d got to know him a bit recently. He wasn’t my best friend or anything but it’s still kinda shocking.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Where were you today?”

  Greg turned to look at him. “I was on the other side of town. I heard that stuff was going down over there. Jeez, it’s tough on everyone. Tough on the cops too, I mean.”

  Adam hesitated. “I saw some stuff on the network. People saying that the cops were targeting specific people. Does that sound plausible to you?”

  Greg Watson stood suddenly. “Where did you see that?”

  “On the network.”

  “Where on the network?”

  “I don’t know. The aggregator just picked it up. Could that happen?”

  Greg paused before answering. “Stay away from the darknet. There’s all sorts of kooks on there.”

  “It wasn’t on the darknet,” Adam lied.

  “Just stay away from there, you hear me? And no, of course cops wouldn’t target civilians. It’s late, you need to get to bed.”

  Adam looked at his father. He seemed twitchy.

  After brushing his teeth Adam knocked on his father’s door.

  “Hello?” said Greg.

  Adam opened the door and leant around it. His father was seated at his terminal. “Night, Dad.”

  “Goodnight, Adam.”

  Adam closed the door and waited. A few seconds later he heard his father speak to the terminal in hushed tones. “Well if he knows, who else does? If we confronted O’Halloran right now we could blow it wide open. Maybe bring in some journalists or something. The least we can do is keep in touch with each other. If we stay organised we can just refuse to play along.”

  There was a pause while the other person spoke but Greg had his terminal volume so low that Adam could only make out general sounds rather than words.

  “But we can’t just do nothing. It’s illegal for Chrissake and we’re cops, goddammit. It’s murder. Just because it’s an order doesn’t make it right. This thing is so screwed up.”

  Adam went to bed.

  At first it seemed like a nightmare. Flashing lights, shouting. Initial disorientation gave way to greater confusion. What was going on?

  On waking from a night terror the realisation that the all-encompassing fear is unfounded slowly permeates through one’s consciousness. In the seconds and minutes after waking relief seeps in to take the place of fear.

  This was nothing like that.

  This was like waking up into a nightmare. Two cops were heaving him out of bed. They were dressed in full riot gear, their faces obscured. Bright lights were shining through the bedroom windows and further beams from some other cops’ flashlights were bouncing around the room. Somewhere, dogs were barking.

  Adam was too terrified to think. The cops half dragged, half carried him down the stairs, passing other cops as they went. The air was filled with sounds; dogs barking, doors slamming, radio chatter, shouted commands and responses.

  “Clear!”

  “Team One, confirm, over?”

  “Don’t move! Don’t move!”

  Adam was dragged out of his open front door. Outside was a cavalcade of lights and sounds. Multiple cop cars were parked haphazardly down the street, across the street and on his lawn. The blue and reds were all flashing and their super-bright headlights were pointed mostly at the house. The scene was so chaotic and unexpected it took him a few seconds to realise a helicopter was hovering overhead, the thrum of its rotors adding to the cacophony and its searchlight adding to the light show.

  Somewhere at the back of his mind the slow realisation that these people were cops gave Adam some minor and longed for reassurance before the memory of what he had read just that afternoon gave the whole thing a sinister underlay.

  He found himself being thrown up against the hood of a car. “Spread ’em!” a voice said from behind, kicking his legs apart before he had chance to respond. “Hands on the hood! Hands on the hood, where I can see ’em!” said the voice.

  Adam was shoved in the back, forcing his upper body over the hood where his head hit with a clang which was lost amongst all the other sounds. “Stay there! Don’t move!” the voice said, then quieter, “Keep him here.”

  He kept still, too scared to even say ‘okay.’ He was breathing hard and he noticed he was shaking. It could have been the cold March air; he was dressed only in jogging shorts. He assured himself that must be what it was.

  The pause in action allowed him some time to take stock. The cold tarmac under his feet was chilling his toes and the cold metal of the hood was gaining condensation where he was breathing on it. He could hear radio chatter and the sounds of people moving about. His view was restricted by the downdraught from the chopper and the pair of headlights pointed at him. Beyond their glare there was nothing.

  Why was this happening? Could it be his short trip into the darknet - surely that wouldn’t warrant all this? Something to do with his dad, maybe? But his dad was an upstanding police officer. Perhaps it was a set-up. Perhaps it was his association with Leon Eyre. Assassinate the ring leader then round the rest up later. Christ, now he understood Leon’s paranoia. He seemed to be second-guessing every little thing.

  Through the noise he heard his father’s voice. “Get off of me, you sons of bitches,” was the only thing he could make out clearly amongst other grunts and screams. There were some clanging sounds and the same commands that had been shouted at him; ‘Spread ’em,’ ‘Don’t move,’ and all the rest. He heard his father cursing again followed by the sounds of scuffling, audible over the din. Instinctively he raised his head to look but was quickly shoved back down. “Don’t move!” came a barked command from behind him.

  There were more muffled shouts then all that remained was the thrum of the
rotor blades and the bright lights.

  The helicopter seemed to be moving away. The downwash eased and it became easier once more for Adam to open his eyes. The menacing throb receded into the distance.

  Adam saw two men approach through the light-haze. One was uniformed, wearing the same dark special operations garb as those who had seized him. He was talking to the side of the other man’s head. That man was wearing a grey suit, nodding as he took in his underling’s report.

  As they reached the car Adam was sprawled over the suited man said, “This is the son?”

  “Yessir,” came the reply.

  “Turn him around.”

  “Yessir.”

  Adam felt two sets of powerful arms grab him and turn him about. He stood with a special operations police officer either side of him, half sitting on the wing of the car. His arms were pinned tightly to his sides. He looked at the suited man but could not make out his face; he was lit by flashing red and blues which seemed to camouflage him. He stepped forward.

  “Adam Watson, right?”

  Adam looked at him. The anger he felt was compelling him not to cooperate at even the most basic level, such as responding to a simple question. But fear battled with his anger and suggested absolute compliance was the only acceptable strategy. For a few seconds the battle raged, then fear won out.

  “Yes?” he said, defeatedly.

  “Greg Watson’s son?”

  Adam looked down. “Yes.”

  The suited man took a pace to the side. “You know what this is about?”

  Adam looked at him but did not reply.

  “Care to take a guess?”

  Adam was convulsed with fear but tried to think carefully before answering. “The darknet?” he offered quietly.

  “The darknet. Good, we’re on the same page. What have you been doing on the darknet? Who have you been contacting?”

  “I haven’t contacted anyone. I . . . I was just looking for information.”