Chapter 35: Rough Waters
Chorus was gone. Daniel Chin had succeeded in kidnapping her. There was nothing they could do to stop him, but maybe they could at least find out where he took her.
Haylek stood in front of the holographic projector, staring at the Waterfall display. With each passing moment, he could see their network of owned systems shrinking. Members of the Brotherhood of Hackers were disappearing, their avatars gone from the conference channels and their contribution to the network with them. If this trend continued, their hacking resources would be limited.
The problem was compounded by the fact that the other Brotherhood hackers would not entrust him with the security keys of their systems. If they did, they could at least retain control of the lost hacker’s systems. Unfortunately, a hacker’s habitual distrust extended even to other hackers, and try as he might to convince them, they would not give up the keys to their precious systems to anyone.
There was no doubt in his mind that Daniel Chin was behind the hacker disappearances, but how he was doing it was unknown.
“We’re just going to have to locate them,” Haylek said. “Find out what happened to them. Even if Daniel somehow killed their wave, they must still be out there somewhere.”
Freeze looked up at him, a drawn expression on his face. “I don’t know what else to look for!” he said. “I’ve checked all the channels, I’ve scanned for their watermarks on the Ocean, I’ve even… I’ve even asked for help from other hackers! Nothing!”
Haylek felt a cold chill: it was as if they winked out of existence.
“They can’t have all just disappeared,” Haylek said. “Just keep looking—”
“I’m fucking tired!” Freeze yelled. “When are we going to get some Elation? If you want me to work like this, I’m going to need some!”
The mention of Elation got The Doc’s attention as he stopped tapping and turned to look at him. The two hackers stared at Haylek, waiting for an answer. It was a matter of time before they would start feeling withdrawal symptoms—at a time when he needed them most.
“There is no Elation,” Haylek said. “Chorus was going to give us some, but she’s gone now. So unless we do our best to find out where she is, we won’t get any.”
The two addicts stayed quiet for a moment.
“I don’t care anymore,” Freeze said finally. “Fuck the Elation! Let’s just try and help Chorus.”
The Doc looked to Freeze, a determined look on his face.
“Den we mus keep woking,” he said. “I wok on decreepshun of packet, joo wook on finding da hackas. Les doo dis!”
To Haylek’s surprise, there was no further argument and the two hackers returned to their terminals. As he watched them aggressively tapping away, he began to realize that perhaps he had unfairly judged these two.
“You’ve done an awesome job, guys.” Handing out compliments was hard for him, but they deserved it. “Thanks.”
The two were engrossed by their terminals and did not acknowledge him. Well, at least he tried.
At that moment, the doors to the quarters opened to reveal Laina. She took a few steps in then stopped. Their eyes met for a moment and Haylek could sense either annoyance or anger from her—he could not tell which. She quietly walked to the other side, disappearing into the restroom. The ordeal on the bridge must have taken a toll on her.
Haylek walked away from the hackers, trying to find a place to sit. The couches were covered with pieces of equipment and cabling. He saw a stool on the ground that was tipped over, so he flipped it upright and sat in front of the A.I. conduit.
Reaching under his shirt, he pulled out the necklace. It was cold to the touch and the jewel was clear—no magical sparkling. He wondered if there was still something inside it, some part of Chorus that could help them. He raised the jewel to the conduit.
“Where are you, Chorus?” he whispered, but no reply came.
The only signs of life within the jewel were the normal reflections of room lighting on its crystal surface, and the conduit appeared equally lifeless.
“I guess we’ll just have to do it on our own,” he said, squeezing the jewel in his hand.
Haylek watched as Laina stormed out of the bathroom. She went over to Freeze and Doc, obviously ready to unleash her wrath.
“What is that thing in my bathroom?” she said.
The Doc and Freeze looked at each other dumbfounded.
“Oh! Dat serv’a mooti’plex’a,” Doc tried to explain. “Eet goot plays fo it cuz of da centality ub heet.”
“What the hell did he just say?” She glared at Freeze, who looked to Haylek for help.
“It’s part of our network,” Haylek said, walking back toward them. “We need it, but we’ll move it somewhere else if it’s in your way.”
That seemed to calm her down.
“Thank you,” she said, then looked around, apparently searching for some place to sit.
Haylek rushed to clear away a space on the couch for her.
Laina walked over, giving him a weak smile. She sat down, a weary look on her face. He noticed her dress had some dark stains on it—blood apparently.
“You have blood on you,” Haylek said.
She looked down at it, then stared off into space.
“Yes… I do,” she said so quietly he could barely hear her.
“Do you need something?” Haylek asked.
Laina looked toward a liquor cabinet; a wall of equipment blocked the path to it.
“I can get that for you,” Haylek said.
Laina waved her hand. “No, it’s okay. I need to stop anyway… but thank you.”
Haylek nodded uncomfortably. Today was the day for stifling addictions, apparently.
Not sure what else to say to her, he decided to give her a status update. He explained about the disappearance of the hackers, the dilemma of losing pieces of the network along with the hackers, and their attempts to find Daniel and Chorus.
She brightened somewhat at the prospect of finding Chorus. “How quickly can you find her?”
Haylek shrugged. “Our programs are slowing down every time we lose a member. Freeze is trying to contact the missing hackers—”
“Why waste time on them?” she interrupted. “We need to concentrate our efforts on finding Chorus.”
“We need to find the hackers first. If we can contact them, we might be able to get the keys to their systems and regain some of the lost network—it would speed things up in the search.”
He began to doubt the logic of their tactics even as he explained it. It dawned on him that it really was just the hacker in him that wanted those systems back. Perhaps they would be better off concentrating their efforts on just finding Chorus instead.
“Woo-hoo!” The Doc exclaimed.
Haylek hurried over to him. “What is it? What did you find?”
“Da packet! I dee-creep it totoolay!”
“What’s in the payload?” Haylek asked.
The Waterfall image danced and changed to show something new: a diagram of the packet, with its sections dissected and layered with labels overlaying them.
At first glance, it looked like a normal packet: a standard header, data and power segments, encryption envelope, predictive fabric, routing intelligence, etc. However, encapsulated within the data segment was another packet—a packet with its own hidden agenda. The Doc had managed to decrypt and decompress this hidden packet of information.
“Now zee dis.”
The display changed again. It now showed lines of code extrapolated from the hidden packet: code to a program.
Haylek tried to follow the code, line by line, hoping to decipher its purpose. The program instructions seemed benign at first, but as he got to the end of the code, the realization of what it was hit both him and Freeze at the same time.
“Wow!” Freeze said. “That’s going to be a nasty one!”
“It’s so elegant,” Haylek
said, still in awe. “So elegantly written… so perfect and concise.”
“What is going on?” Laina said.
She appeared beside Haylek, so close to him that he could smell the scent of her perfume, which unbalanced him momentarily.
“Uhh,” he fumbled. “The Doc managed to decipher a packet—a heartbeat packet that Daniel was using to control portions of the Ocean. It looks like there’s more in it, though. Doc, is there more beyond this? Could there be another encapsulation within this packet as well?”
The Doc tapped away at his surfaceboard. “I dot da zame teeng,” he said. “But fond sumteen bett’a. Tek a luke.”
The Waterfall now showed a space in the code—an unassigned variable space, designed to hold something that was not yet in the program.
“What does all this mean?” Laina demanded.
Haylek could barely wrap his own head around it; how could he explain it to her?
“It’s a worm program,” he said. “Daniel has a worm that is ready to run against the entire Ocean. But the worm’s destination address is subtle. It’s not targeting anything and everything out there—just systems with a specific signature.”
“What systems?” Laina asked. “Do you know?”
“Yes,” Haylek said. “Environmental systems. On Earth, Mars—everywhere.”
Laina’s eyes went wide. “Like water treatment? Artificial atmosphere? Things like that?”
Haylek could sense her rising interest; she seemed to know something. “Yes, exactly. You suspect something?” he asked.
“Keep telling me more,” she said. “What else does it do?”
“It has something called a variable space. Basically, it’s an area that will hold something. Something the program is going to use, but it is currently empty—it’s not there yet.”
“Waverider, there’s more here, man,” Freeze said. “Look at that pointer. It’s directed at the power segment.”
Haylek followed the code and saw what he was talking about. “Doc, zoom in on the power segment of that packet.”
The display now showed the power transfer segment of the packet, an area designed to carry electrical power as a utility service across the Ocean. The data segment was usually filled with empty data space, as it was designed to just carry power, but this one was etched with program code.
The Doc took notice of it as well and listed the code on the display. It was similar to the worm program, but this one was designed as a widespread worm, targeting everything in the Ocean. He knew what this was for.
“A diversion,” Haylek said. “The power segment’s worm is designed to cause havoc on the Ocean, keeping PIG occupied with trying to contain it.”
“While the real program,” Freeze said, “would be hitting the environmental systems, without being bothered by PIG.”
“What is pig?” Laina asked.
“The Passive Identification Grid,” Haylek said. “It’s part of the Ocean’s defense program. It’s designed to identify hacker threats, locate their origin, stop them, and even dispatch UEP Enforcers, Confed, or whoever’s jurisdiction it falls under—and then arrest the hackers involved. It’s the program that pretty much single-handedly killed the original Brotherhood.”
A disturbing thought occurred to him.
“Guys, is it possible the hackers we lost were arrested? Found by PIG?”
The two hackers looked at each other.
“That would explain it,” Freeze said. “But that would mean that Daniel has control of PIG.”
Haylek swore. “Of course!”
“But wait,” Freeze said. “That means the other program is not a diversion for PIG… so then what’s it for?”
“A diversion for us,” Haylek said. “The Brotherhood—to keep us from interfering with its plans.”
“Wait a second,” Laina said. “You are losing the big picture here. Why is Daniel targeting the environmental systems?”
They stayed quiet for a moment.
“The variable space,” Haylek said. “It’s designed to hold something we don’t see.”
“Could this ‘something,’” Laina said, “be… a formula, or mixture, that could cause the environmental systems to become polluted with something foreign?”
Haylek nodded. “Yes. That makes sense, I guess. But why not have it in there already?”
“Come on, guys,” Freeze said. “Think like a hacker—run-time code! It will be inserted later. Maybe Daniel’s trying to protect himself… doesn’t want all his code out there in case it’s compromised. This way he still keeps his code a secret until he’s ready to run it.”
“Run-time code,” Haylek said. “That’s a good point. But what could this code have in it? Something that will poison us?”
“It kood make us ole! Like dem peeple in da conf’ens!”
“Or worse,” Laina said. “It could take control of us… turn us into zombies. All of us.”
A chill ran up Haylek’s spine. He saw what happened on the bridge—the pilot was controlled by Daniel and forced to do things, even when he was dead. What if Daniel could do that… to the entire human race?
“Is there something here that can help us find him—and Chorus?” Laina asked.
Haylek looked at the diagrams. There had to be a route back to the originator or he would not be able to control the worms.
“Doc, Freeze—we need to decode the routing intelligence. Take us offline and work it on a closed network. If Daniel controls PIG, we don’t want to be connected to the Ocean unless we have to.”
“Are you crazy?” Freeze said, gesturing around them. “With this equipment and without the Brotherhood network, that could take months!”
“We don’t have a choice,” Haylek said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and have a eureka moment.”
“This ship has depleted its cache of luck,” someone said behind them.
Haylek turned to see Julius. Haylek hadn’t even heard him enter.
“Julius!” Laina said. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough. Enough to know that what you are talking about is beyond us. We can’t do anything about it.”
“Yes we can!” Laina shouted. “In fact, we’re the only ones that can. Nobody knows about all of this. We need to stop Daniel and save Chorus.”
Julius walked toward the liquor cabinet. He shoved a cabinet and other equipment out of his way effortlessly, equipment that Haylek saw other crewman struggle to move into place.
He poured a drink into a glass and downed it in one gulp—and followed it up with another… and then another.
“This expensive stuff tastes like piss,” he said.
“Gentlemen,” Laina said, “I know you have a lot of work ahead of you—but can you excuse us for a moment.”
The tone indicated it was not a question open for debate. The three hackers left the room, leaving Julius and Laina alone.