“KRAP.”
“What did you say?”
“I used KRAP — my Keyboard Recognition Analysis Protocol. That code that I wrote over Thanksgiving, remember? Exploits Javascript timing features to measure the cadence of typing as users enter login credentials. By watching H2O2’s logins over the past three days, I’ve been able to categorize his cadences into a digital pattern. Maybe one in twenty thousand share the same pattern, but by appending other data, it’s probably closer to one in ten million. Believe me. It’s him.”
Ivanov pointed at the red dot on the terminal. Almost as if on cue, the dot started to fade. “What the… Look at the thermal monitor.” He tapped at the screen. “He’s vanishing. Is the window open? What’s the temperature?”
Decker glanced at a view of the loft from the traffic cam down the street. “No, it’s closed. And it isn’t that cold.”
“He’s entering the Westlake Defense Systems server. Time to go, Armstrong,” Ivanov said.
Special Agent Armstrong leaned forward, pressed a button, and the view on the monitor switched to the micro-cam fixed to his helmet. The view swiveled right as he reached for his M4 assault rifle. The other men picked up their weapons. Decker watched as they opened the door to the apartment and filed one by one into the corridor.
Decker glanced at one of his other monitors. The screen featured lines of code as H2O2 used the Trojan he’d planted earlier to slip through the Westlake Defense Systems firewall. Moments later, he was in.
“Clear,” someone said.
Decker turned back to the first screen. Armstrong was out in the hall now. His camera jostled and bumped as he ran down the corridor. One of the other FBI agents stopped by apartment 5F. He was carrying a stout metal battering ram. He lifted it high in the air and pounded it with all of his might against the face of the door. The wooden frame crumbled and they were suddenly through.
Music blared in the loft. The Black Eyed Peas. When we play you shake your ass. Shake it, shake it, shake it, girl. Make sure you don’t break it, girl.
The FBI agents streamed through the 2,000-square-foot loft, visors down, weapons drawn.
“Freeze,” Armstrong shouted through the music. “FBI. Put your hands on your head.”
Decker could see H2O2 at his keyboard, framed by a triptych of monitors. He was a skinny kid in a dinosaur t-shirt, with a shaved head and the tattoo of a bug on the back of his neck. He was wearing a set of black headphones.
“Clear,” someone shouted. “He’s alone.”
“I said put your hands on your head!” Armstrong moved closer.
It’s like playing a video game, Decker thought as the special agent leveled his carbine. A first person shooter. Except this is reality.
“He isn’t responding,” said Ivanov.
“I can see that,” said Decker.
“No, I mean he’s still typing.” Ivanov pointed at the monitor with the Internet feed. “But on the cam, he’s just sitting there. See?”
Armstrong finally stepped up to the suspect and poked him. H2O2’s head tipped to the side, his headphones slipped off, and a fountain of blood cascaded from a hole in his temple.
The music blared on. Turn it up, turn it up. Turn it up, turn it up… One of the FBI agents touched the sound system and the loft fell suddenly silent.
“He’s dead,” Armstrong said. He let go of the young hacker’s neck. His head slumped forward onto the keyboard. In the background, on all three of the monitors, the furious typing continued.
“I don’t get it,” said Armstrong. “If he’s dead, who’s doing the typing? Do you copy? Decker, come in.”
“We copy,” said Decker.
“It’s a zombie,” said Ivanov. “A drone. His computer is being driven remotely.” He reached out for a keyboard, began entering code.
“By whom?” Decker asked him. “From where?”
“Just give me a minute,” said Ivanov, still typing away with precision. “Vladivostok. No, sorry, Vermont.”
“What?”
“I mean Uzbekistan. No, wait. That isn’t right either. From…”
“From where, Ivanov?”
Ivanov looked up from his keyboard. His thick lenses glowed like a pair of full moons. “I have no fucking idea.”
CHAPTER 6
Teddy Reed wondered why the words which came out of his mouth never seemed to match up with his memories. A supervisor on the electrical maintenance team at the Shannon Nuclear Power plant in Pottstown, PA, Teddy was recounting his latest fishing expedition for muskie on the Susquehanna and his audience in the Level 4 break room was falling asleep. His co-workers shuffled and fidgeted. They slurped at their coffees, glassy-eyed and indifferent.
That which was, Teddy thought, was made pure by my memory, redefined, made resplendent. And yet, now, the remembrance spilled out without form, grace or elegance. The symbols clumped up and collided. Then again, it was 4:00 in the morning.
But, in his mind… In his mind, it was different. When he said, “Then I cast my lure…” in his memory, in a cascade of exquisite bio-electrical energy, he could still see the bright copper spoon as it arced like a firework — lit by tendrils of dawn, coursing over the water — as it started to finally descend, piercing the brooding black surface tension barely an inch from that stump. He recalled how his line had just stopped, how the thick rod had bowed, pumped and steadied, and how, in the distance, he had seen the black water swell for an instant, lifted up by the tail of that fish. That fish!
Teddy heaved back on the rod — once, twice — setting the hook.
“What is it?” said Angelo, his fishing companion.
There was a splash and the line started singing as the spool doubled back on itself. “Don’t know.”
Angelo dropped his rod to the gunwale and reached for the landing net. The fish was running for the rocks. “Looks decent,” he said.
The fish ran once again, then slowed. Teddy twisted on his seat, swinging his line round the bow. He pumped and he pumped, and a dark silhouette churned the water. Northern pike. And, judging from the movement of the rod, the way that its dorsal fin slashed at the surface, Teddy knew it was big. Twenty pounds. Maybe more.
Angelo reached across with the net, only to stop and say, “Jesus H. Christ. What the fuck?”
Teddy peered into the murky currents of the river. The pike had twisted to one side and, clamped across its back, primordial and huge, he could see the thorny jawbone of another fish. There was a flash of golden stripes. The frigid water heaved. The reel began to sing again and he saw the pike collapse upon itself, the massive body cut in half.
Angelo pulled his hand back into the boat reflexively.
The pike began to sink, its severed head concealed behind an amaranth of blood. The second fish advanced. It swam lethargically beside the boat, the jaws maneuvering the remnants of the pike along its bony throat, the hackled fins extended and blood discharging through its gills.
For a moment, it was still, its left eye fixed upon the fishermen as if in recognition. The muskie was as long as the boat. Then, slowly, deliberately, it sank into the depths.
This is what Teddy saw in his mind. But the words… They came out all different. The tale seemed to falter and still, to fold back, to collapse on itself. Like that pike.
“And then he just kinda vanished,” he concluded.
Teddy’s co-workers barely acknowledged his story. They sat in the break room distracted, half-asleep, simply sipping their coffees.
Teddy sighed. Words are never enough. There are things and the symbols of things, he considered. But as close as they came, they never converged. They were broken, like faulty capacitors, always shy of full charge.