Existence (8 page)

Anger makes it worse.

Everything makes it worse.

An has spent six years learning to control his body and mind—the only two things in his life he has any control over at all—and just like that, it's all gone. He's been a prisoner in his father's house, but now he will be a prisoner in
SHIVER
his own body.

His doctors tell him to be patient.

His father, who visits only once, tells him to be a man.

The
blinkblinkSHIVER
tics are
blink
much
SHIVERshivershiverBLINK
worse when his father is there.

“D-d-d-d-d-d-id y-y-ou you you dooooooo this-s-s-s-s t-t-t-to m-m-me? ME ME ME?” An asks, cursing his halting and stuttering tongue.

Losing patience, his father walks out before An manages to finish the sentence. Maybe this is for the best, but An
blinkblink
doesn't care.
He's not afraid of
SHIVER
his father anymore.

He's not afraid of anything. Except living
blinkblink
like this.

For three
blinkblink
months he lives in a secure private rehab facility. He
SHIVER
learns to walk again, one jerking step at a time. He practices with a speech pathologist until
blink-shiver-blink
he can force his tongue to make the right letters again. He retrains
SHIVERblink
his brain to retrieve the words he needs to express his anger.

It's
blink-blink-blink
slow.

Thoughts flutter away from him; words escape him.

An Liu could once
shiverBLINK
multiply matrices and solve quantum wave functions in his head. Now his
blink
studies
blink
are
blink
simpler.

He looks at pictures, tries to remember the words that go with them.

This is a clock
.

This is a dog
.

This is a . . .

“A-a-a-a-a-a-apple!” he finally screams, and throws the fruit across the room in frustration. It goes only a couple feet.

His body is as weak as his mind.

What they did to him, what they took from him: it is irreplaceable.

What is left behind: a steel plate, a Swiss-cheese brain. A fragmented memory of his father's angry shouts and a rod slamming down, again and again. Pain, in his body, in his head, throbbing pains, stabbing pains, aching pains—and the perpetual fog in his brain from the medicines intended to take it away. And,
shiver
forever
blink
with
shiver
him, tics and stutters, stutters and tics.

“K-k-k-k-ill memememe,” he asks his physical therapists. “P-p-p-l-l-l-ease.”

He hates them for refusing, as he hates his body for rebelling, as he hates his uncles and his father for leaving him in this state.

Hate. That's another thing he's been left with.

His hate is the purest thing he's ever felt, untempered by fear or hope.

Someday, maybe, he will be
blink​blink​blink​blink
strong enough to use it.

An's mind heals faster than his body, but he begins to return to himself. He is slower and weaker than before, but he gets stronger every day. The tics and stutters
shiver
remain.

They will, the doctors say, likely always
BLINK
remain.

He
shiverSHIVERshiver
will never be what he was. Never as strong, never as coordinated. Nothing will ever be
blinkblinkblink
so easy for him again.

An Liu laughs bitterly when the doctors tell him that.

As if
blinkBLINKshiver
his life has ever been easy.

He goes home.

If he were of another line, if he were not
blinkblinkblink
Shang, then perhaps his people would
SHIVER
choose a different champion. They would deem him
BLINK
unworthy. Choose someone new to be their Player. Someone
SHIVERblinkSHIVERblink
whole. They would
BLINK
set
BLINK
An
BLINK
free.

Not the Shang.

The Shang believe in the oracle bones. The oracle bones were cast years ago, and they name An Liu as
BLINK
the next Player.

There is no question.

There is no escape.

If An Liu is
blinkBLINK
damaged, then it was meant to be. If An Liu's father deemed it
blinkblink
necessary to damage him, then it was
SHIVERblink
meant to be.

He will Play however he is able to Play.

He will Play no matter what.

He will not be given a choice.

He's not ready yet to resume his physical training. So his father and his uncles leave him alone to his basement and his computers. Maybe they think he's
shiverBLINK
no use to them in this state.

Maybe they
blink-blink-shiver
see something new in him, and they are afraid.

An doesn't care, as long as they leave him alone.

Hour after hour, he sits in the dark, in front of his computer, fingers
shiverBLINK
flying across the keyboard. On screen, in the bits and bytes, there are no tics. No stuttering. He calls himself LaMort377.
La mort,
French for “death”—he likes it because, out loud, it sounds the same as the French word for “love.” There's nothing to tie the username to him except the number: the Shang people are the 377th bloodline. But no one would be able to piece that together, trace it back to him. This is a secret he shares only with himself.

Online, An can be whoever he wants to be. Do whatever he wants to do.

He wants to destroy, and when the impulse seizes him, he does.

He hacks electricity grids. Banks. Air-traffic-control systems. He makes mischief of any kind that suits him. Some days he crashes stocks, other days
blinkBLINK
planes.

Every day, he searches for his mother.

Government databases. Social networks. Corporate mailing lists. Media archives. Anywhere and everywhere, he looks for evidence of his mother, something to lead him to her. Something, even, to prove she ever existed.

There is nothing.

There are no walls in An Liu's cyberspace. No locks he can't
blinkSHIVERblink
crack at will. No shred of information hidden from him—but his mother is a ghost.

He learns plenty about this father, answers to questions he never before thought to ask. An Bai grew up in Beijing, child of wealthy banker parents. His name, Bai, means “person of purity,” and An Liu thinks this is well chosen. His father is impossibly pure, untainted by mercy, doubt, or love. When he was 16 years old, his parents died in a fire, leaving him everything: their penthouse in Beijing, the family estate in Xi'an, and four brothers who depended on him for
everything. He controlled the money, and so he controlled them.

As he
blinkblink
continues to control them.

The more An Liu learns about humans, the more he comes to despise the human race.

Machines are better. Machines are rational, trustworthy, easily controlled. Everything in cyberspace is smooth and comprehensible—everything except for the fact that An Liu's mother is invisible, unfindable, even by someone with An Liu's unlimited powers.

This, An Liu cannot comprehend.

And there's something else: someone is
blinkSHIVERblink
watching him. There's no concrete evidence at first, just a sense he has, that someone is tracking his digital footprint. It should be impossible; he moves untraceably through the cyber world. He's a ghost in the machine, and yet . . .

And yet there are traces of another. Tiny bread crumbs left behind, almost as if this shadow wants An to notice him, as if the predator yearns to become the prey.

Then, one day, the impossible happens: despite the security protocols on An Liu's system, despite layers and layers of unbreakable firewalls, despite some of the best encryption in the world, the stranger breaks through, and a message in English pops up on An's screen, uninvited, unwelcome.

It blinks red, waiting for a response.

12GOLDENGATE12:
GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS, FRIEND. WANT TO PLAY?

An doesn't want to
blinkSHIVER
“play,” whatever that means. He doesn't
blinkblink
want to be noticed, or watched, or tracked. He certainly
shiverBLINK
doesn't want a friend.

But 12goldengate12 is persistent.

12GOLDENGATE12:
I'M NOT YOUR ENEMY.

An ignores him that day and the next.

12GOLDENGATE12:
I CAN BE YOUR ENEMY, IF YOU'D RATHER.

He tries to trace his IP, find this annoying bug and squash it, but
12goldengate12 is the best he's ever seen, as good, almost, as An himself. The signal is bounced across 12 satellites, ping-ponging back and forth across the world—An is, finally, able trace its origin to the west coast of North America, but that tells him nothing he couldn't have guessed from the username itself.

It doesn't tell him how to find and eliminate this pest.

Or what the pest might want from him.

And
blinkblinkblink
as the days pass, An finds himself getting curious. His uncles and his father haven't spoken to him in weeks. They deliver his food to him in silence. It's a relief, this temporary respite from pain and torture—but it's a strange silence to live in. Sometimes An wonders if he's gone invisible. If he
blink
died
blink
after all, and is
shiver
doomed
BLINK
to haunt his father for all his days.

It's easy to imagine he doesn't exist—except that 12goldengate12 knows An Liu is there, and wants an answer.

After one week, An finally gives it to him.

LAMORT377:
WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU WANT?

12GOLDENGATE12:
A FRIEND

12GOLDENGATE12:
I COULD BE A FRIEND, AT LEAST

12GOLDENGATE12:
DO YOU WANT A FRIEND?

This is a question An Liu has never asked himself.

LAMORT377:
WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO BE MY FRIEND?

12GOLDENGATE12:
DUDE I'VE BEEN WATCHING YOUR WORK. IT'S SOME NEXT LEVEL SHIT. NOT MANY PEOPLE OUT THERE CAN KEEP UP WITH ME. BUT YOU'RE ALMOST THERE. I CAN TELL YOU'RE LOOKING FOR SOMEONE, THOUGHT YOU MIGHT WANT SOME HELP.

It disconcerts An to think that the stranger has traced his steps well enough to figure out that he's searching for someone. What else does this interloper know? And how dangerous is it to have him out there, knowing it?

On the other hand, he appreciates that the stranger is impressed with him. Even if he's clearly not impressed enough.

LAMORT377:
YOU'RE SUGGESTING YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME? THAT I COULD
LEARN FROM YOU?

12GOLDENGATE12:
FOR A GENIUS YOU'RE KIND OF SLOW. YEAH, DUDE, I'M SUGGESTING THAT. I'M THE BEST. SO I MUST BE BETTER THAN YOU. THAT'S JUST LOGIC

LAMORT377:
PROVE IT

With that, An Liu shuts down his system. The stranger is galling, enraging—but
blinkblinkSHIVER
this is the first
shiver
tic-
blink-
free conversation he's had with someone since he woke up from the coma.

The stranger has
shivershiver
no idea who An Liu is or that he is
blink​blink​blink​blink​blink
damaged. An Liu's father would certainly disapprove of An making contact with anyone, much less continuing it. He would
shiver
likely forbid it, if he
shiverBLINK
could—but An Liu surpassed his father's computing skills years ago. In this digital space, An Liu is free to do as he pleases. And perhaps the stranger simply wants to play. So An will give him a game.

Surely there's no harm in that.

They do battle. An Liu builds up his defenses, and again and again 12goldengate12 hacks his way through. When they get bored of this back-and-forth, they move on to other targets, racing to see who can be the first to burrow into the UN's mainframe or tamper with Interpol's digital archives.

12goldengate12 prefers stealing information to abusing it; he calls himself a force for good, and An Liu overlooks the priggishness because, for the first time in memory, he's having fun. An Liu is good, but he
blink
has to
shiverblink
admit that, every once in a while, 12goldengate12 is better.

Somehow, without realizing it, they slide from war into collaboration. Though they know nothing about each other, they
understand
each other—the hacker's language is universal, and their minds share the same contours, leap to the same wild conclusions. There's relief in finding another so like him, devoted to such a singular purpose. Sometimes, hours passing without his notice, hunched over his
keyboard in the dark as, somewhere beyond the basement, the sun rises and sets and rises again, he feels joy. They swap chunks of poached code and share security keys to some of the world's most secure systems. Together, they tackle Mossad, which neither has ever managed to crack on his own—working together, it's a breeze.

12GOLDENGATE12:
NOTHING CAN STAND IN OUR WAY! LET THE WORLD BOW BEFORE US

An Liu has never
BLINKBLINKBLINK
been an
us
before.

In the world beyond the basement, An's father and his uncles wait for him to recover enough to resume his training. They
blink-shiver
grow impatient. Every week, An's father descends the stairs and gives his son a
blink​blink​blink​blink​blink
test. Sometimes this means hand-to-hand combat. Sometimes it is a pain challenge, hot coals or a nail driven into flesh, to help An's inner resilience return. The more disgusted An Liu's father grows, the more tics An
SHIVERblink
gets, and the more tics An
BLINKshiver
gets, the more disgusted his father becomes. Soon there are no tests at all, simply
blink-shiver-blinkBLINK
punishments.

An Liu endures.

12GOLDENGATE12:
WHERE YOU BEEN?

LAMORT377:
BUSY