ZerOes (12 page)

This is no big deal, she tells herself. A penetration test on a—well, all she knows is what it says.
Medical group
.

Then it's fingers down on the keyboard, and she starts cutting through the dangling digital vines with the heft of her data-machete.

Wade yawns, scratches his beard, scratches his balls, licks his chapped lips, looks up at the camera, smirks like a pissy little kid forcing a smile for the family photo, then reaches across and picks up the folder.

PENETRATION TEST
:
PALISADE SYSTEMS
&
SERVICES

He snorts. Speaks aloud, as much as to Them as to himself: “Really?
You've got me trying to crack the shell on a defense contractor? You know I'm rusty at this, right?”

This isn't what he does anymore. He'd developed a pretty cozy routine, honestly—he was like the spider in the center of the web. He didn't have to hunt; all the prey came to him. Servicemen, spies, embassy workers, techies inside the NSA or CIA or FBI—people sending him sensitive information that he could decrypt, re-encrypt, and post across a variety of sites across the world. WikiLeaks changed everything: it popularized what he already did, which made it easier, but also made it all so damn diffuse. Now the market for information is blown open—some folks want to torrent the latest Hollywood cock-buster of a movie, others want to torrent cables and wires leaking the corrupt practices of a variety of world governments.

Not much money in it, but Wade doesn't care much for money. What Wade cares about is keeping the government out of people's goddamn business. If the American people couldn't have privacy, then neither could the American government.

Now they're asking him to crawl out of his web—difference between a garden spider waiting for its prey and a jumping spider who has to hunt down its food. He's too old to go jumping around. Truth is, he's rusty in more ways than one.

He waggles his fingers. The knuckles hurt. His wrists ache. Arthritis.

“You make me dance too hard,” he says, “I'm gonna up and break a hip.” He holds up the file folder again. “By the way, this some kinda joke? I remember these a-holes. Palisade. High-tech weapons and systems, got caught greasing too many wheels overseas.” They fell prey to the FCPA—the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A little bit of mostly smart legislation that keeps American companies from influencing other nations (largely through that time-honored tradition of bribery). The act allows for what they consider “grease” payments—money paid to officials and individuals under the auspices of getting things moving along. But once folks start getting Lamborghinis and fancy bottles of champagne that cost a thousand a pop and appear in whole cases, well, that goes beyond just
lubricating gears
.

Wade didn't even know Palisade was still around. “All right,” he says, waving the folder. “I'll play. I'm curious.”

On the piece of paper:

PENETRATION TEST
:
UNTERIRDISCH ELEKTRIZITÄTSSYSTEM GMBH

DeAndre leans back in his chair. “German, really? Aw hell.” He shakes the folder at the camera. “I don't speak the Deutsch, okay?”

The camera stares, implacable.

“Whatever,” he says. “The work is the work.” It isn't the human language he needs, anyway.

PENETRATION TEST
:
ARCUS LAND DEVELOPMENT

Reagan makes a sound like she's dry-heaving. “Land development? What is that, real estate? Bo-ring. Fucking
God
. And what the shit, Big Government, where's my coffee? If you want me to wear a white hat in service to your nonsense, then I
at the very least
require coffee. You know what happens when I don't get coffee? Nothing, that's what. Nothing happens. I sit here, I stare at the wall, then I fall asleep. You're asking a car to drive a thousand miles but forgot to fill the tank, jerks. Jesus, God,
crap
.”

She sighs.

Waits.

Stares.

No coffee magically manifests. No elves bring it on a dogsled.

She yawns. “Fine.
This time
, you win. No coffee. Next time: coffee, or I stab a bitch.”

She gets to work. Arcus will be easy. The other job, though, the
real
job? That's going to be a bit harder.

Chance gnaws a thumbnail. Then some of the dry skin around the nail till it bleeds. Shit. His heart is beating same way it used to when he'd go into school knowing there was a quiz he forgot to study for or homework he didn't do. It's the kind of anxiety you get in a nightmare—one of those mundane nightmares where you show up late to something, or you end up naked, having to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in front of a girl you like, for some reason that makes sense only to the architects of the dream.

The file folder sits, splayed open.

PENETRATION TEST
:
HARRINGTON CON
-
GEN

The computer sits, waiting.

Look busy
. Chance nudges the mouse, waking the system from sleep. He knows this OS a little.

He finds the web browser. Opens it up. On a lark, he types CNN.

Blocked.

Entertainment Weekly
?

Blocked.

Gmail?

He can practically hear the portcullis slamming down.

In a search window he types in: “Harrington Con-Gen.”

It's some biotech company. Nice website, clean, bright, big fonts, all green and blue. And it's ConGen, not Con-Gen, but whatever. Looks like it's a company that genetically engineers—er, “modifies,” in their parlance—insects for “accelerated and adjusted function.” A few clicks deeper, he sees self-destructing mosquitoes, moths that spin spider silk, corn-eating pests that instead eat each other, some new honeybee. ConGen also specializes in the software necessary to genetically engineer plants and animals.

Chance has no idea what any of this has to do with anything. All he knows is, he has nothing. He finds a couple of e-mail addresses, a few phone numbers. But there's no intranet logon, no way into the company's systems from here. If he were a real hacker he'd know, but he's not a real hacker. He's a fraud. A guy who knows how to do the bare-bones basics: a script kiddie who can crack some e-mails, scare up an FTP password now and again, maybe use keylogger software or download Wi-Fi WEP/WPA breakers. Hacking Ryan Bogardian's e-mail was one of the easiest things he'd ever done. He got it on his
third
try—for God's sake, the password was
yellowjackets
. The name of Ryan's team. Then it was nothing to scroll through the dumb-ass's e-mail until he found what he was looking for: a link to a cell-phone video taken by one of his teammates, a little scatback named Barry Lattner—aka “the Flash.”

Even thinking about that video damn near makes Chance puke up what little breakfast he actually managed to eat.

He took the e-mail, the video, forwarded it to every damn news station he could think of. Plus, Gawker, Jezebel, whoever, whatever. He found other incriminating e-mails, sent those, too. This wasn't their first “posse.” They knew this rodeo all too well.

Of course, he was still pissed—especially since all the local news refused to pick up the story. Protecting hometown football, probably.
That's when he bought one of those discount
Scream
masks and pretended to be a member of Faceless. He knew Faceless pretty well—had haunted the dead-chan forums, watched them do their thing. They'd been around a long time—since he was in high school—but they'd only recently started getting attention in the media as a group who could get things done, who could put pressure and move the needle when it needed to be moved. They went from trolls to warriors, from bullies to picking on bullies, and he dug that.

Pretending to be part of Faceless worked. It got him on TV. Ranting behind a mask and a voice modulator.

Now, here he is. He used his one trick.

Above him, one of the cameras beeps once, then twice. The green light goes red. The other camera—this one over the computer—does the same thing.

“Hello?” Chance asks aloud, feeling stupid for even saying it.

His screen flashes. Then, out of nowhere—a series of installation progress bars. Software loading. Whoa. A chat window pops up. A user named “Dutch Jellyfart” appears with a
bing
.

                  
DUTCH JELLYFART
: HEY DICK-KNOCKER

The return cursor blinks.

                  
DUTCH JELLYFART
: HELLOOOOOOOOO

A graphic image shows on the screen: a breaching whale with its fin out of the water. Underneath:
WHALE HELLO THERE
.

Chance pulls the keyboard close, types a response—

                  
GUEST:
Who is this?

                  
DUTCH JELLYFART
: Who the fuck do you think it is? IT IS I, SIDNEY FELDMAN.

                  
GUEST:
What?

                  
DUTCH JELLYFART:
Grosse Pointe Blank, wang-nozzle. Uh, only the best movie ever. John Cusack is my master now. Though these days he's looking like a melting candle. It sucks when hot sexxxy people get old.

Then up pops an emoji of a cute little piece of poop.

So it's Reagan, then.

                  
GUEST:
I need help here.

                  
DUTCH JELLYFART:
No shit, Cumberbatch. I'm going to take over your computer for a little bit. Pay attention to what I'm doing. TAKE NOTES. We good?

Does he trust her? He winces. What choice does he have?

                  
GUEST:
Okay.

                  
DUTCH JELLYFART:
YALL READY FOR THIS