Doomed (13 page)

“What do you mean by crazy?”

I shoot Lessing a disbelieving look. “Surely you’ve seen it. Whatever’s going on with the phones is totally messing up the credit-card machines.”

“Whatever’s going on with the phones,” she repeats, her
eyes gleaming, and I get the impression that I have somehow walked right into a trap. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is. “And what
is
going on, Pandora?”

“I have no idea.”

“Why don’t you give me your best guess?”

“I don’t know! I swear, I don’t. I just know that everything is messed up—cell phones, Internet, landlines, because of the Pandora’s Box worm.”

“And what do you know about Pandora’s Box?” She pounces, like she’s just been waiting for me to say the words.

I start to tell her that I heard about it on the car radio, but we walked home. If I admit to listening, to being in a car, she’s going to want to know who, what, when, where, how, and why. Any chance I have of keeping Theo and Eli away from this will go right out the window.

“I just know what everybody else knows,” I finally say. “I got the total-annihilation message today and then my phones went wonky. Same thing that’s happened to a lot of people. Right?”

I wait, breath held, for her response. So far, she’s been asking me all the questions, and I admit I like being able to turn the tables on her.

Of course, she’s a lot better at this than I am, and all she does is raise one perfectly arched eyebrow at me. “No. You’re not. But I am curious. We’ve been through all the equipment in the house. Nothing shows that you’ve played at all.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking on what device did you play Pandora’s Box today? Because nothing in this house registers it.”

“Of course it does. My—” I break off right before I
mention my laptop, because I suddenly remember where it is. In my backpack, which, the last time I saw it, was draped over Eli’s shoulder.

“Your?” A second eyebrow joins the first.

“My cell phone. I played on my cell phone.” I reach into my pocket, pull out my phone, and hand it to her. It’s completely dead right now, and when they charge it they’ll see that I actually have logged on to Pandora’s Box from there before. Will that be enough for them to believe me?

She slips a glove out of her pocket and puts it on before taking the phone and sliding it into a small plastic bag. I love that phone, use it constantly, and now it’s evidence. Against me. I watch it disappear into her pocket and wonder if I’ll ever see it again. Which is a stupid worry considering how much trouble I’m in, and considering that the phone is basically worthless now. Who knows how long this communications blackout is going to last. Ten days? But what happens when the countdown runs out? What is the Pandora’s Box madman’s idea of total annihilation?

I’m afraid to find out. We all are. Even the federal agents in front of me. I remind myself of that when Lessing stands up and begins to circle me like a hungry predator playing with its prey. That she’s doing all this because she’s afraid. And because it’s her job.

It doesn’t make me like her more, though, or make me want to cooperate. Fearful or not, she takes way too much pleasure in her job.

She’s staring at me now, and I force myself not to squirm, not to react at all. For a long time she doesn’t say anything
and neither do I. She’s waiting me out and I can’t afford to break. Not now. But the silence is grating—and not just on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Emily’s leg bouncing up and down like a metronome on high.

She’s also shivering and I realize, with surprise, that I am, too. It’s November, so the weather is still warm here in Austin, but the rainstorm cooled things off—especially me. My clothes are clammy against my skin, and they feel gross. I want to take them off, but there’s no way I’m asking this woman for a favor. I don’t want her to know how miserable I am—or how close I am to caving.

So I wait quietly, without moving, and eventually Lessing cracks. Score one for me. “I have one last question for you.”

“Okay.” I say it more to fill up the dead air between us than because I think she cares how I feel about things.

“If you don’t know anything about the Pandora’s Box worm, if you don’t have anything to do with the present communications crisis in this country, then please explain to me why we managed to trace the worm’s point of origin to this house.”

And score one hundred for her
. “That’s not possible.” I try to be firm, but my voice breaks.

“Isn’t it?” She reaches into the pocket of her suit jacket, pulls out a notebook, and flips through it. “According to the men who work in the FBI cybercrimes lab—who, incidentally, know more about this stuff than just about anyone—the worm was activated this afternoon. From your IP address. So, unless someone else was here today …”

I shake my head mutely.

“No one was here at all?”

“Just the cleaning service this morning.”

She pauses for a moment, like I managed to knock the wind out of her. “What time?”

I shrug, feeling guilty about the shit storm I’m about to bring down on the poor cleaning ladies. “I don’t know. I was gone most of the day. I just know they were here, because the house was clean when I got home from school. But they never touch my computer or anything,” I feel honor bound to add.

“What time did you get home from school today?” she finally asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. Five or so.”

“The worm wasn’t released until five twenty-three this evening. So, I ask again, was anyone here with you then?”

I don’t move, because that sounds about right for the time I logged on to Pandora’s Box. “Pandora?” she prompts.

“No.”

“But that’s not the really puzzling part,” she continues. “Especially if you insist on your innocence in this matter, how is it that starting at eight fifteen this morning, someone from this IP address opened the twelve different sections of code that make up this worm and uploaded them onto the Internet, one by one?”

Emily gasps and I want to protest. I want to tell Lessing she’s crazy. That I have no idea what she’s talking about. But the truth of the matter is that suddenly I do. I know exactly what I was doing at 8:00 this morning.

The tentative fairy tale I’ve been building in my head all day—the one I wasn’t even aware of until right
now—collapses. I swear I feel it shatter, and my stomach, though close to empty, chooses that moment to revolt.

I spring up from my chair.

“Hey, you can’t go anywhere. Sit back down!” Lessing tells me firmly, reaching into her jacket and pulling out her gun.

I don’t stop. I can’t. Even so, I barely make it to the trash can in time. I don’t know how long I sit there, puking my guts up, but by the time I finish, Lessing has put away her gun. Emily is looking at me in dismay, while Mackaray and Lundstrom—who rushed in at Lessing’s alarmed shout—are wearing identical expressions of smug triumph. Even Lessing seems satisfied, and I know it’s because I’ve blown it big-time.

It’s pretty hard to protest your innocence when you get so upset by what they’re telling you that you hurl.

I don’t get up right away. Instead, I stay on the floor, my head resting against the cool wood of a cabinet. I think about my laptop, stuffed in my backpack, with all the incriminating evidence on it. I think about what else is in the bag—namely the pictures from my father that I shoved in there at the last minute. All twelve of them. Not that I can prove where I got them, not when all the evidence against my father—the e-mail, blog, letters—has been removed.

I’ve been racking my brain, trying to figure out why me, and the answer has been there all along. The psychopath who did this, the one who chose me as his harbinger of destruction, is my
father
.

He
did this to me. Used my curiosity against me—and the world—and turned me into a modern-day Pandora. Like my namesake before me, I’ve brought a new kind of evil into the world and there’s no going back. Maybe Emily’s dad and the others can fix it. Maybe they can’t. But either way, I have a feeling that the deep, dark hole they want to throw me in just got a lot deeper and darker.

Every writing campaign I’ve ever participated in for Amnesty International flashes through my head. Letter after letter about Guantánamo Bay. Sierra Leone. Somalia. Story after story of Americans taken to foreign countries and tortured because they’re suspected of terrorism.

Even as I tell myself I’m being silly, I hear the president saying the United States doesn’t tolerate terrorists. That’s what I am, what my father has turned me into with a few strokes of my keyboard, a few picture downloads that I thought were to celebrate my seventeenth birthday.

A cyberterrorist
.

I reach for the trash can again as dry heaves shake my entire body.

What am I going to do?

What am I going to do?

What. Am. I. Going. To. Do?

Behind me, I hear movement and I brace myself to be yanked to my feet. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, Emily settles on the floor next to me and hands me a bottle of
water. I rinse my mouth out, drink a few sips. Then she’s hugging me, stroking my hair. “It’s going to be okay, Pandora,” she whispers to me. “I promise. It’s going to be okay.”

I open my mouth, planning on telling them everything and begging for mercy. Instead, only four words come out. Four words I never thought I’d say. “I want a lawyer.”

“A lawyer?” Mackaray’s eyes gleam with triumph as he crouches down next to me. “Pandora, where you’re going, lawyers rank right up there with fairies and unicorns as mythical creatures.”

“You can’t do that!” Emily protests. “She didn’t do anything wrong! My father—”

“Your father is one of an elite few who could pull off something of this magnitude, Ms. Scott.” Lundstrom speaks up for the first time in a long while. “So I suggest you close your mouth unless you want to bring a lot of trouble down on him as well.”

Emily shuts up, her eyes wide and frightened as she presses her back against the cabinet, almost like she wants to shrink inside. The arms wrapped around me start to tremble, but I barely notice, since I’m shaking just as hard.

“She didn’t do anything,” I tell them, wondering again if I should just tell them everything.

If I should send them next door to retrieve my laptop from Eli and Theo and get them involved in this.

Do I admit that my father is behind this and let them arrest him, lock him up and throw away the key like they’re threatening to do to me?

But if I admit I had only an unwitting part in this, are they going to believe me? The looks on their faces say no,
that they’ve already made up their minds about my guilt. My best bet, then, is to wait for Mr. Scott. He’s one of the best computer-security guys in the country. He’ll know what to do.

I shut down then, refuse to say anything else. They keep demanding answers, but I ignore them. Even when Mackaray grabs on to my arms and lifts me into a standing position, I don’t protest. I’ll wait for Mr. Scott, I tell myself. He’ll be able to fix this.

As we wait, the house grows quiet around us. The front door opens and closes numerous times, and I hear the slam of car doors outside. The rev of engines that marks the end of the search. The others have done their jobs, and now I’m left alone with these three.

Mr. Scott finally arrives, with a police escort. He’s all outrage and concern as he wraps his arms around us, but it becomes clear very quickly that he won’t be able to help me. He’s not my parent or guardian, and no matter how much he argues with the agents—he knows two of them personally—they aren’t budging. But at least Emily seems safe, and that’s something.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say, after Mr. Scott’s been here about an hour. They’ve told him both he and Emily are free to go, but he hasn’t budged. I know it’s because he doesn’t want to leave me alone with them.

“Tough,” Lundstrom tells me. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Jesus, Mike, she’s just a kid!” Mr. Scott exclaims.

“She unleashed cyber-Armageddon—‘genius computer hacker’ trumps ‘kid’ every day of the week.”

“She’s not a hacker!”

“And I know this how?” Lundstrom stares him down. “The worm launched from here. She was the only one here. Ergo …”

I can’t stand it, can’t sit here listening to this for one second more. “Please,” I say. “I really need to use the restroom.” Even though I don’t. I just want a couple of minutes alone to think, a couple of minutes where they aren’t staring at me like I’m a monster.

“I’ll take her,” Mackaray finally says, and I almost change my mind. I don’t want to be alone with him, even for as long as it takes to walk to my bathroom. But it’s not like I have a choice now, not after I made such a big deal of having to go.

We leave the kitchen together, and when I try to head upstairs to my bathroom, he grabs my elbow and directs me to the half bath down the hall. The one without any windows. I shake my head in disbelief. They already think I’m some kind of genius hacker—now they think I can mastermind an escape from federal custody as well? Who the hell do these people think I am?

“Leave the door open,” Mackaray tells me when we get there.

“What?” I stare at him incredulously.

“You heard me.” The face staring back at me is implacable.

“Where am I going to go? There’s no other way out of the bathroom!”

“Take it or leave it.” Something moves in his eyes, and I know he’s waiting for me to leave it. But I won’t give him the satisfaction.

“Does your wife know you get your kicks by listening to teenage girls pee?”

The hand on my elbow gets tighter, his fingers digging into my flesh until I start to see stars. He pulls me toward him and whispers, “You don’t want to play games with me, little girl. I win every time.”

I’m straining so hard in the other direction that when he finally lets me go, I stumble, crack my funny bone hard against the door frame.

I go into the bathroom, leaving the door partially open. I turn on the faucet, splash water on my face, blink back the tears.