ZerOes Page 7

  DeAndre mumbles back: “Then you’re lucky, man.”

  Hollis talks over and past them: “No unsupervised media access.”

  And here, a new round of protests, Reagan loudest among them: “Hey, whoa, hey. I got a DVR schedule back at home that is a thing of beauty. It has risen to the level of art. I need my shows. I need my Netflix, too. Given our surroundings, I think we can all agree that a little Orange Is the New Black is a necessity—”

  “I love that show,” Wade says at half volume. “Some funny lesbos.”

  Everyone gives him the stink-eye.

  “You want media access?” Hollis says. “Read a book. Books: the original TV shows.”

  More grumbles of dissent. Hollis goes on to add: No drinking, no smoking, no drugs. (A groan from Reagan.) No fighting. (Another Reagan groan.) No fucking. (Reagan mutters: “Then you might as well just kill me.”)

  “Tomorrow morning,” Hollis says, “your service to this great country begins in earnest. You will be given tasks to complete both as individuals and as a team. Should you fail these tasks, you will be punished. Should you fail them repeatedly, you will be washed out and thrown back into the prison pipeline that you have—at present—avoided. Are we clear?”

  A bunch of nods and eye rolls. DeAndre looks around: Chance looks nervous. Gone pale as a ghost, that one.

  “Now, let’s get you some breakfast,” Hollis says.

  “Breakfast is over,” the woman says from behind the counter. She’s got hair the color of a Weimaraner’s coat shaped into something that resembles a wave about to crash down on a beach. The name on her white chef’s coat: Zebkavich.

  It takes them a while to find the cafeteria. Hollis obviously doesn’t belong in this place—he takes them to a back door that’s locked, then around the side where they have to wind their way through a hall of what looks like offices and supply closets, then back down a stairwell until finally, the cafeteria.

  It’s a big room. Lots of round white tables with people sitting around them. Lots of light, too, from tall windows—though the light is muted, filtered as it is through the forest. Couple of arcade machines sit tucked in a lounge. Plus an air hockey table.

  DeAndre’s looking around when he hears the woman say that—breakfast is over. He sucks air between his teeth. “Aw man, what? I’m hungry.”

  Hollis holds up a finger. “Deb—”

  “Zeb,” she corrects. “Short for Zebkavich.”

  “Got a first name?”

  “Yes.”

  Awkward silence. Hollis sighs, then says: “Okay, ahh, Zeb—can you spare something for the pod here? They just got here.”

  “They just got here seven minutes too late, Agent Copper.”

  “You serious? You have absolutely nothing to spare?”

  Her face scrunches up in a bulldog scowl. “Rules are rules, Agent. Surely you can respect that?” But then she sighs and says: “Here. Hold on one minute.” She disappears into the back for a minute, then returns with a bag. “Bagels,” she says. “Old bagels. From yesterday.”

  Aleena protests: “Hey, wait. I don’t eat bread.”

  Hollis shrugs. “Then you don’t eat.” He thrusts the bag into DeAndre’s hands. “Have a good breakfast. You got an hour, then you need to be back in your cabin.”

  Hollis leaves, and the rest of them all pick a table and take a seat. They pick at half-stale bagels like bored but hungry squirrels. Quiet, mostly—DeAndre thinks it’s a welcome change from when they were all trying to tear each other new buttholes back in the cabin. He thumbs a hole in a puffy sesame bagel, peels apart the crust, and pops a piece in his mouth. Feels like he’s chewing a bike tire.

  All around them, the other—what? Hackers? Inmates? White hats? Whatever they are, they all sit around, finishing up their breakfasts. It’s a pretty motley crew, DeAndre thinks. Mostly dudes. Some girls. The expected racial breakdown: not a lot of brothers, no sisters at all, couple of Latinos, and the rest a mix of Asians and whites. Different styles: a girl with a Mohawk the color of grape soda sits between a chunky Asian neckbeard in fly Reeboks and some gawky white kid who looks like he took his fashion cues from D&D Dungeon Master Weekly. Most everybody’s young. Everyone looks tired, bored, angry, beaten down, beaten up. Hollow-eyed stares and the like.

  As DeAndre stares at the hackers, they all stare back.

  “I don’t know many of these people,” Reagan says, mush-mouthed around a wad of everything bagel. Specks of the “everything” dot her chin. “But I see we got at least one hacker superpower in the bunch.” She nods toward the back of the room.

  DeAndre turns. Huh. Well, damn. “Shane Graves,” he says.

  “Ivo Shandor?” Aleena asks.

  Reagan winks and picks bagel from her teeth. “Bingo bango bongo.”

  Graves is tall, lean, broad shoulders—ropy without being skinny. He lopes between tables like a wolf or a coyote keeping the rest in line. He’s never not smiling, but that smile ain’t exactly happy. It’s the smile of a shark. Or worse, a salesman.

  “He’s a high bar,” Reagan says. “So I guess it’s time to slap all our scrotums on the table. Show our jewels, as it were.” When no one responds, she makes an impatient gesture—finger rolling like a barrel down from Donkey Kong’s hand. “Your hacker cred, motherfuckers. Spit it out.”

  “Fine, since I guess we’re all workin’ together.” DeAndre shrugs. “I’m nobody special, but I’m good at the game. Made a name for myself over the last couple years—been going by Darth Dizzy lately. Mostly switched everything over to the carder market. I know the guys who hacked Walmart.”

  Reagan whistles. “Oooh, you know the guys. Gosh, jeez, wow. Did you ever touch them? Can I smell you? What a hero!”

  “Hey, man, shut up. You asked, I’m talking. I stick mostly to gas stations. Skimmers and shit. It’s good money.”

  “If you don’t mind people getting hurt,” Aleena says. Her mouth tightens up like a greedy person’s coin purse. “Stealing is stealing.”

  “Yo, whatever. What I do these days is a victimless crime. Money isn’t money anymore. It’s all just ones and zeroes.”

  “We’re all just ones and zeroes,” Wade says. “Trick is figuring out which of us are ones and which of us are zeroes.”

  Reagan interjects: “Sitting at this table, I’d say we’re all zeroes.” Then she holds up a bagel and makes a fart noise through the center hole. “Actually, that’s a pretty good name. I’ve never been part of a group before but they always have names. Masters of Disaster. Lulzcult. Chaos Chess Cabal, or Triple-C. I say we’re”—and here, said with some flare—“the Zeroes.”

  “Whatever, Reagan, you call us whatever you want. I’m just saying,” DeAndre continues. “It’s not like I’m reaching under somebody’s mattress and stealing their hard-earned bills. Credit card fraud? All that’s just data. And it’s backed up and insured—it’s damn near no different from, like, BitTorrent. I can copy the latest Transformers piece of crap and who cares? Same thing here, except I’m just copying dollar bills. I get one, you get one. Like Oprah and shit: you get a dollar bill, you get a dollar bill, yoooou get a dollar bill!”

  “Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Aleena says.

  “I sleep just fine,” he says. “And don’t pretend that you don’t do some illegal shit. You didn’t get here by helping old ladies across busy roads.”

  “Lemme guess,” Reagan says. “White hat. Arab Spring?”

  Aleena says nothing. Wade grunts.

  “More racist nonsense?” Aleena says.

  “Hnnh?” the old man asks. “Nope. I’m all for the Arab Spring. Spread some democracy around that joint like butter on toast.”

  “It’s not about democracy,” Aleena. “Not like you mean it.”

  “And how do I mean it?”

  “You mean America. You want to spread America.”

  “No, that’s not it, either. Maybe some perfect world idea of America. But this country hasn’t been a democracy in a lon
g time. We ain’t free like we think we’re free. Politicians keep coming along, each stacking the deck just one more card deep in their favor and in the favor of the rich and powerful. Big companies. Big government. Big men.” He’s suddenly super serious. “It’s all a rigged game, and you realize that soon as you start flipping through the rule book and none of this stuff even makes sense. Soon as you play a few rounds, you start seeing some common themes: the Bilgerbergs, the Trilateral Commission, MK-ULTRA—”

  Reagan bleats an attention-getting laugh. “Yep. You’re one of those. Conspiracy-nut alert. Lemme guess: you probably think one of them is run by the Jews.”

  “Well . . .” Wade furrows his brow. “I figure some Jews are in there somewhere.”

  “It is worth looking at Israel’s influence over world politics,” Aleena says.

  Wade nods. “Sure is.”

  DeAndre shakes his head. Two minutes ago they were sniping at each other, now they’re nodding at each other from across the table. Bridges burned, rebuilt, probably burned again before too long. That’s hackers for you, he thinks. They’re a group of individuals every time. Don’t work well together because to the number they’re all freaks, mistakes, assholes, fringe-dwelling wack jobs who got a real bug up their asses about people telling them what to do.

  Reagan says to Wade while pointing to Aleena, “So we know her deal. What have you done, Earth Man?”

  “Earthman. Emphasis on the first syllable. And I’m not telling you all what I do because it’s none of your business. Just know that I’m old school. I remember punch-card computers, some of them big as a fancy mansion’s walk-in closet.”

  “Fine, don’t play our reindeer games.” Reagan faux-pouts. “Now, let’s talk about me. I am no hacker. I don’t belong here.” She feigns horror and exasperation. “Unlike all of you jerkoffs: I am innocent!”

  “Bullshit,” Wade says.

  “I don’t hack. I troll.”

  “Figures,” Aleena says.

  “It’s true. I spend a great deal of my time trading in that most precious of currency: lulz. I fuck with people because it’s funny. And because they deserve it. I expose people for who they are. All the hypocrisy and hyperbole. I’m frankly something of a champion.”

  DeAndre thinks she’s serious. She doesn’t have that flip tone anymore. This is a girl who has bought into the smell of her own stink.

  It’s now that Chance chimes in: “Man, you all are the worst. Trolls, I mean.” He seems agitated—he takes a napkin and begins to tear it into ribbons like someone ripping apart a bedsheet in order to make an escape out a window. “I, ahh, knew this girl in high school. Didn’t know her very well, but she got raped. And after the fact, she tried to tell people what had happened—though she didn’t know who had done it to her since she was drugged at a party—and you know, it didn’t go like I thought it would. I figured people would rally around her. They didn’t.”

  “What happened?” DeAndre asks.

  “They mostly treated her like she brought it on herself. You know, all that ‘how was she dressed’ and ‘that’s what happens at parties’ garbage. But the real corker was that she started getting . . . messed with. By people that I think she didn’t even know. These people, trolls, just finding her online and posting pictures of her and blog posts and Photoshopped . . . things. Just wearing her down. She eventually swallowed every drug she had in her family’s medicine cabinet. They drove her to that. Shamed her to death.”

  Reagan arches an eyebrow so high it might as well float above her head. “Sucks for her, but maybe she really was asking for it.”

  Jaws drop around the table. DeAndre shakes his head. “What the actual fuck.”

  Aleena: “Yeah, seriously, are you joking?”

  “Hey, you don’t lock your car doors, it might get robbed. You drop chum in the water, you might get sharks. You go out to a party with a bunch of drunken asshole frat-tards and you wear skimpy-ass clothes with a whale-tail thong sticking out and a tramp stamp that’s a Chinese character for ‘do me up the butt long time,’ then maybe, just maybe, you send an RSVP invite to all the rapists in the room.”

  “You’re messed up,” Aleena says. “Aren’t you a feminist?”

  “Ugh,” Reagan says. “So uptight, those bitches.”

  “You know what your problem is?” Chance asks, suddenly angry. “No way to see yourself wearing other people’s shoes. It’s all about me, me, me. No care about anybody who ain’t you.” He thrusts out his jaw. “That’s screwed up. You’re screwed up.”

  “The word you’re looking for, dear Chauncey, is empathy. And I’m not a fan.”

  “It’s Chance. Not Chauncey.”

  “Sure, Chauncey. So, fine, let’s talk about someone who isn’t me. Let’s talk about, ohhh, I dunno. You. We’re all showing our balls here, so tell us what great feats of mighty hackery you have committed. Share with the rest of the class.”

  Chance leans forward for a moment, like all he wants to do is bury his head in his arms and take a long nap. Then he straightens up, stiffens, and thrusts his chin out. “I’m not much of anybody, but I was the one who exposed the Yellowjacket Rape Posse.”

  “Right, right,” Reagan says. She snorts. “You and Faceless.”

  “You’re one of Faceless?” Aleena asks, and she’s about to say something else but then it hits DeAndre. His eyes go wide and he says:

  “Whoa, shit. You were the one on the TV? Behind the mask with the . . . the . . . whaddya call it that modulates your voice—”

  “Voice modulator?” Wade asks.

  “Yeah. Voice modulator. Was that you?”

  Chance nods.

  And then a shadow darkens the table. A pair of hands falls on Chance’s shoulders—long-fingered hands that suddenly grip the meat between Chance’s neck and shoulders and squeeze. He winces, pulls away, and protests. “Hey, what the hell—?”

  Behind him, Shane Graves is grinning like the fox that ate all the chickens. “Look at this table. Some real odds and ends here. You ever puke and then wonder where the hell all that stuff came from? That’s what it’s like looking at you guys. Who barfed all of you up?” He makes a gross face like he’s catching a whiff of a dog fart.

  “Ivo Shandor,” Reagan says with no small amount of awe. No, DeAndre thinks, that’s not awe, that’s lust. She wants to climb him like she’s King Kong and he’s the Empire State Building. “Heyyyyy.”

  DeAndre’s damn close to feeling the same way. Graves is a bona fide legend. Biggest, most public hacks? All him. Hacked the Google Car, drove it off a Bay Area cliff. Posted YouTube videos on how you hack an airplane, an insulin pump, a pacemaker. Has taken over Times Square billboards not once, not twice, but five times. He even caused a small stock market crash the day he hacked a bunch of news sites and put up a story about how China and all these other countries were devaluing the dollar and calling in a shitload of American debt. People lost money that day.

  Then, about a year ago, the guy dropped off the map, like a ship sailing off the edge into the part labeled HERE BE DRAGONS. One day, the most public hacker everybody knows. The next: vaporware.

  Now, at least, DeAndre knows where the guy’s been.

  “Now, this guy in particular,” Shane says, reaching forward and mussing up Chance’s hair. “He’s the real superstar, isn’t he? Big social justice champion on the YouTube and the boob tube. I hear those rapey football assholes are gonna go to jail. Nice job. Seriously. You made a real difference, buddy.”

  “Uh. Thanks?” Chance says.

  “Thing is, though, you’re not part of Faceless, are you? I know some of those guys. You were acting all by your lonesome.”

  Chance shakes his head. “C’mon, man, Faceless is just a . . . faceless organization; it’s all anonymous; there’s no, like, central council or leadership—”

  “But you still gotta earn your way in. Still gotta do something to deserve the name and the mask. Did you earn your way?”

  “My stunt says I d
id.” DeAndre can tell Chance is trying to stay cool. But there’s something going on underneath. Anger. Fear.

  “Your stunt was a lucky hack on a dumb jock who didn’t know how to cover his tracks. You’re just a little script kiddie, couldn’t hack your way out of a cardboard box even if I handed you a brand-new machete. You’re gonna wash out. We don’t have room here for amateurs. This isn’t pool-hall karaoke, Dalton. This is Radio City Music Hall.”

  “This is prison,” Chance says.

  Again, Graves musses his hair. More aggro this time. He looks to the rest of the table: “Were I you, I’d jettison this extra weight ASAFP. Dump him over the side unless you wanna all go down with him.”

  “That a threat?” Wade asks.

  “It is, Grateful Dead, it is.”

  Wade gives him the finger.

  Graves just winks. “Enjoy your bagels, shitstains.” He strides off back to his own pod—a couple of other white boys who look moneyed and privileged, plus some Latina with little shoulders and big hips and an Asian kid in all black, maybe thinks he’s the Japanese Dracula or some shit. His crew all laugh as Graves returns to them.

  Aleena buries her face in her hands. “So glad we’re making friends.”

  Reagan just laughs.

  Chance says: “Shit.”

  And DeAndre, well, he just reminds himself:

  Keep your head low.

  Do your time.

  Don’t take the bait.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Eye

  HOLLIS’S OFFICE

  The office they gave him must’ve once been a supply closet. It’s still got the metal frames bolted to the wall where shelves must’ve sat, and the whole room still has that antiseptic stink, which calls to mind hospitals and high schools—two smells that haunt Hollis like a pair of vengeful ghosts.

  He wonders if Golathan did that on purpose.

  What the hell—of course Ken did this on purpose. That’s who he is. Wouldn’t surprise Hollis if the son of a bitch was pumping in those scents through the ductwork. Little injuries sent as a reminder of who is really in control.

  As he sits at his desk, his monitor blinks on. It flashes a couple of times, then a green light winks above it. Golathan’s face appears. He’s stuffing his face with a forkful of salad. Dressing dripping.