Hacker: The Outlaw Chronicles (7 page)

The man cinched the monitor around my ankle and told me how it worked: wandering twenty yards from the apartment building—giving me enough leash to take out the trash and go to the laundry room—or tampering with it would send an alarm to the monitoring company. An agent would be banging on my door faster than I could spit.

A few minutes later, Jill’s team had packed everything up and left, leaving behind two men in a car out front to make sure I stayed inside.

I sat in silence for hours, until the sun dipped low in the sky and sent long shadows creeping through the streets like restless spirits. It had all happened so fast. My life was unraveling before it’d even gotten started.

Lettie always said it and she was right: a person reaps what she sows. And, at that moment, I despised what I’d shoved into the cracked mud of my life. Loneliness fell over me like a blanket as I sat on the living-room floor surrounded by gathering shadows. Night hadn’t yet fully fallen, but the room was grey and dark. Like my soul.

My family had been all but wiped out—half of us in the ground, another heading there quickly; and now Pixel was dead. I wanted nothing more than to make it right; I
had
to make it right. But how could I do anything from here?

The agents had turned my apartment upside down, taking everything. A few random cords were all that remained of my computer workstation. Everything else had been stripped bare. They’d even confiscated my cell phone.

My mind began to churn. I’d make my own opportunities. Most people will do anything if they’re pushed hard enough, long enough. It’s all a matter of how deep your desperation runs, and mine ran to the bone.

I couldn’t get the conversation with Austin out of my mind. Whatever he was doing, however crazy it seemed, it was my only hope. Mom’s, too.

If he could go under, if he could hack his brain, then so could I. I had to. I couldn’t simply sit here with my finger up my nose. Pixel was dead, I had no chance of getting the money Mom needed, and time was running out.

Austin’s research was now the only option—to fix this mess, to have a life again, to give Mom a chance. Nothing else mattered. The best I could do for Jill was stay out of sight while she investigated BlakBox, and the best thing I could do for Mom was learn to hack like Austin.

I had to try.

An agent checked on me just after midnight. I waited another thirty minutes before making my move. I knew exactly what I had to do, but I had to move fast.

I went to my hall closet and took a pair of heavy-duty shears from the toolbox then went to my bedroom window. My apartment was on the backside of the building, away from the street where the agents were. I opened the window onto a fire escape, went down the stairs, cringing at every squeak and rattle they made, and dropped to the alleyway below. I landed in a crouch and waited. No footsteps running toward me. No one yelled for me to “Halt!”

Shears in hand and staying near the building, I made my way to where I’d parked my bike, hoping Jill hadn’t taken it. It came into view and my tension eased—a little.

Kneeling, I worked one of the shear’s blades into the gap between my skin and the monitor. The band itself was rubber with a circuit running through it. It would be fairly easy to cut, but when I did, it would trigger the alarm.

One deep breath and I cinched down on the handles. The blade sliced through, cutting the circuit with a distinct
snap
. I stripped it off and tossed it away with the shears.

Without so much as a glance back, I climbed on my bike, started it, and tore off down the street.

There was no turning back now.

“
W
HAT ARE you doing here
?” Austin stood in his apartment doorway. He looked exhausted, but to me he’d never looked so wonderful. After escaping from my FBI-imposed prison, he was the best sight in the world.

I wrapped my arms around him and held tight.

“Hey . . . what’s going on?” He held me at arm’s length and looked me in the eyes. “You okay?”

“No,” I said.

He led me inside and closed the door.

Removing the ankle monitor and fleeing from my apartment now felt like a terrible mistake. Surely the FBI was scouring the city for me, but I was certain no one had followed me. And without my cell signal to track me, I was a ghost.

“It’ll be all right,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

We sat on his couch, and I told him everything: my experiences with and suspicions about BlakBox—the files I’d discovered and exported, the way they’d interrogated me, that they’d killed Pixel—Jill’s investigation, my house arrest, which Jill had claimed was “for my own protection.”

He listened quietly, then settled back into the couch to think for a while. Finally, he said, “Are you sure you weren’t followed here?”

“I’m sure.”

“Where’d you park?”

“In the abandoned warehouse on the corner, where you keep your Jeep. I took the alleyway and came in the back just like old times. No one knows I’m here, and no one saw me.”

He let out a quiet sigh. “So what are you going to do?”

“The only thing I can do. Help my mom.”

“By doing what? There’s no way the Feds are going to let you get back to work.”

“I’m not going back to work.” I paused. “Teach me to hack.”

“What? Your brain?”

“Yeah, the way you do it.”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I told you before, it’s too dangerous. Helping me with the programming is one thing, but it’s another to put you in the tank.”

“You said your goal is to change reality. I want to change my Mom’s reality. I want her to live, to have her old life back. And you can use my help, you said so.”

“I do, but I also don’t want you to get hurt.”

“How will I get hurt? You seem fine and that’s after, what, three hundred hacks?”

He stared at me, nothing to say.

“Saving lives. That’s worth whatever risks we need to take, right? I’m not taking no for an answer. This is the right thing to do. You know it is. It’s what we need to do to save you and my mom.” I took his hand. “Neither of us has anything to lose.”

He stood, breaking my grip, and started pacing. “I don’t know.” He chewed his bottom lip. I could nearly hear the cogs grating in his mind.

“This is an opportunity for both of us,” I said. “We each get something out of it. You get a research partner and a chance to live, I get to help Mom.”

“Maybe.”

“I know we can do it. Look how far you’ve gotten on your own.”

He ran his hands over his bald, studded head and continued pacing.

“Please,” I said. “Don’t make me beg.”

“If we do this,” he said, “we do it my way. My rules.”

“Of course.”

“How can we pull this off when you’re not supposed to even be here? The FBI—”

“Doesn’t know where I am. No one does, I promise. We’ll work round the clock. I’ll sleep on the floor. You have two tanks, right? We’ll double down. I can be your control subject.”

He stopped pacing and looked at me, wide-eyed. The idea was taking root in him.

“There’s no better option,” I said. “Time is ticking for both of us.”

“Okay,” he finally said. “Okay, you can help, but you have to do
exactly
as I say.”

“Got it.” My grin radiated at him.

“I hope I’m not making a mistake,” he said.

I realized that I felt better than I had in a long time. Even before everything had hit the fan at BlakBox, Mom’s deteriorating condition had weighed heavily on me. And money alone was no guarantee of finding a cure. Austin’s dream of manipulating reality was a long shot, but at least it was something, at least I was
doing
something. I had momentum and that felt good, exhilarating.

“We’re burning time,” I said. “Let’s get started.”

“It’ll take a while to bring you up to speed on how everything works.”

I looked around. “Where do we start?”

“We need to prep you for a TAP, the neural interface array you’ll use to connect your mind with the system. I’ll have to take some measurements and fit you with sensors. That’ll take a few hours.”

“Let’s do it.” I sprung up off the couch.

After a moment of staring at me, he walked away, saying, “Follow me.”

He led me across the far side of the loft into the kitchen, a large modern space that opened to a dining area overlooking the Bay through floor-to-ceiling windows. A single chair sat where a dining table might go, facing the window.

“We have to shave your head,” he said. “There are some scissors on the countertop. Cut your hair as short as you can. I’ll use clippers and a razor for the rest. Sit over there,” he said, pointing to the chair. “Be right back.”

I shrugged out of my jacket and draped it on the counter. I picked up the scissors and walked to the chair. My image reflected back at me from the window. Through it, the distant lights of the Bay Bridge sparkled like stars strung together over the water. It seemed so far away and detached from my life, like a still picture from a movie. Everything felt like that now.

You sure about this, Nyah?

In answer, I reached behind me, grabbed a handful of hair, and scissored it off my head. The hair hung limp in my hand, black with a thick streak of fading purple running through the middle of it. I turned my hand over and watched it fall to the floor.

Snip.
Another clump fell away.

Then another and another . . . until my hair covered the floor around my feet like dark straw. Austin returned with electric clippers, a can of shaving cream, a hand towel and a razor. He tapped the seat back with the clippers. “Ready?”

I nodded. “Chop, chop. Let’s do this.”

He placed one hand on my head to steady it and turned on the clippers.

“Wait,” I said. “I have a scar. From the accident. Don’t freak out, all right?”

He paused. “I won’t.”

Drawing a deep breath, I watched our reflections in the window as he pressed the clippers to the base of my skull and slowly mowed a path to the top of my head then along my scalp. The vibration buzzed against the bone, and long sheaves of hair cascaded to the floor, leaving exposed skin that felt cold.

He worked quickly, adjusting the clippers closer to my skin with each pass before finally slathering my scalp with shaving cream and running a razor over it in long streaks—periodically wiping the blade on the towel—until my head was as bald as his.

Austin rubbed my head with the towel, like polishing a bowling ball, and stepped back. He said, “Welcome to the Bald and Beautiful Club.”

I lifted my hand and ran my palm over my scalp, wincing when it reached the ragged scar. My head reminded me of my dad’s freshly shaven face.

“There’s a bathroom down the hall, on the left,” he said. “Go rinse your head before we mark the locations for the TAP. When you’re done, meet me over there.” He pointed to a nearby contraption that resembled a dental chair.

I stood and brushed hair off my shirt and pants.

“Take as much time as you need,” he said. “I’ll get everything ready.”

I walked down the hall, rubbing my scalp. It felt as though a portion of myself had been cut away, and I would never get it back. My hair had been a part of my identity: Nyah, the girl with the nose ring and funky hair. It had also covered the memento of the most horrible thing that’d ever happened to me. It was a part of my mask, I guess. Now it was gone, years of growth and care sliced away in less time than it took to brush it in the morning.

Emotion had churned inside me while Austin was shaving my head, but it didn’t turn into a tsunami until I saw myself up close in the bathroom mirror. I didn’t want to cry, but the tears came anyway, so I let them. They slipped down my cheeks while my fingertips drifted along the newly sensitive skin. My hair would grow back, but Nyah Parks as I knew her—as Mom and Dad and Tommy had known her—had departed and someone new was looking back at me.

But maybe, I thought, she
wasn’t
a stranger, after all. Maybe she was a truer picture of the desperation I felt in the deepest part of me—exposed, no longer able to hide the scars and imperfections, now dragged into the light for all to see.

My fingertips lingered along the eight-inch scar that ran along the right side of my skull, front to back. Besides a broken arm, the deep gouge was the only injury I’d suffered in the accident that had claimed the rest of my family, the result of my head shattering one of the back windows. It’d taken forty-eight stitches, eighteen staples, and skin from my thigh to patch up my scalp. Nothing compared to what my family had sacrificed.

I stood tall and smeared the tears from my cheeks, pushing every thought but one from my mind. The reason I was there: Mom’s life.

I splashed cold water over my face and head and dried them with a washcloth. By the time I’d finished, Austin was done adjusting a large wire frame on an articulating arm above the medical chair I’d seen earlier. It looked like the steel braces used to hold broken necks in place, the kind that attached to the skull with screws.

He looked up and smiled. “Sit down here,” he said and patted the chair. He was wearing latex gloves and a clear face shield covered his face.

“What’s that for?” I asked and flicked the bottom edge of the facemask with my finger.

“To protect my eyes. The drill bit creates a minute amount of bone dust. Nothing to worry about.”

“Uh, okay,” I said. I slid into the seat and found myself nearly lying down. The vinyl upholstery was cold and an examination light glared overhead. Austin pumped a foot pedal and the chair bent into a more upright position.

“Try to relax,” he said, swabbing a cold cotton cloth over my head. The harsh smell of rubbing alcohol burned my nose. My raw scalp tingled.

He eased the wire frame over my head and carefully rotated several knobs until the device was cinched tight against my skull.

“What is this thing?” I asked.

“A calibration guide I’ll use to place the four cranial access points. It’s like a precision stencil to ensure an accurate borehole position. After it’s in place I’ll take a few preliminary measurements, then we’ll evacuate the bone.”

“Evacuate? You mean drill holes in my head.”

“Evacuate sounds better.”

“Not to me.” I shifted nervously in the chair. “Is it a power drill, like a Black & Decker?”

“It’s a surgical drill, very precise and very expensive. I modified the entire system with software I developed to guide the cranial vault incision and the skull boring process. Someone still has to initiate the process—it’s not like you can drill into your own head, after all—but everything is calibrated; the computer guides the whole procedure.”

“Will it hurt?”

“A little,” he said. “I’ll numb the region with Xylocaine, a local anesthetic. You’ll just feel a pinch from the needle, like a bee sting.”

“It’s not the needle that worries me. It’s the drilling holes in my head that makes me nervous.”

“It’s accurate to within micrometers. Trust me.” He lifted a syringe from a metal tray and raised it over my head, out of sight. The needle pricked my scalp and I flinched. He injected me three more times then started adjusting something. “The sound is worse than the pain,” he said. “You’ll mostly just feel pressure. If you want, I can put you under.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“No.” I glanced at him nervously. “You said you’ve done this before?”

“Yeah, with help. It’s not that hard and the computer handles the actual drilling depth. Don’t worry, you’re safe. I promise.”

I winced and gripped the chair arms as a low humming began to build above me. A tingling warmth crept across my scalp and down into my forehead as the Xylocaine spread from the injection points.

Austin worked slowly, methodically attaching instruments to the headgear, but because my neck was fixed in place and my gaze locked on a bookcase across the room, I could only feel it, not see it.

“I’m ready,” he said. “Are you?”

“Will you stop asking, already?” I closed my eyes. “Just do it.”

The drill’s whirr grew louder in my ears and my pulse quickened.

“You’ll feel some pressure as the bit penetrates the bone,” Austin said. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

“Stop talking,” I said.

I clenched my jaw and drew staccato breaths as a grinding sound reverberated through my head, growing louder by the second. Pressure bore down on my skull. The sensation was like having a screwdriver burrow slowly into the top of my head. The entire top portion of my skull felt like it was compressing into my brain.

The world swayed. I blinked and tried to focus on the bookshelf, but smudges of darkness and stars played at the edge of my vision.

Is this normal?
I tried to speak, but nothing came out. Something was wrong.

“Relax,” Austin said. His voice sounded distant and muffled as if he were speaking underwater. “. . . important . . . relax . . .”

I gripped the chair arms tighter. The pressure in my head came and lifted repeatedly, each new time intensifying until barbs of pain raked down my spine, branching out to grip my entire body.

I tried to open my mouth, to tell Austin that something was wrong, but the words wouldn’t form. My jaw tightened and I tried to lift my hand. It felt heavy and not at all like a part of my body.

I couldn’t move. Worse, I couldn’t breathe.

I can’t catch my breath
. The words were clear and loud in my head.

“Nyah?” Austin’s voice came again, this time unusually slow and deep like a movie running in slow motion.

Can’t breathe . . .

The dark smudges gathered and grew until they covered the world around me. Numbness poured over my head like warm water and I thought,
Blood! My head has split wide open!
The sensation spilled down my entire body. My eyes fluttered.