The Unseen (13 page)

Kari replicated a copy of the security system in her simulation and placed the physical borders of the two systems to overlap with each other. She then scanned both systems again, targeting every point of entry and device behind the security systems protection. Every single attack failed. Except for one. She was able to get a computer physically between the two security system cores to respond to her single request an infinite amount of times.

Kari joyfully reset the simulation to keep it from crashing.
It’s trapped at the exact center of two identical security systems, and they are both trying to secure it. So the attack is getting bounced between the two systems indefinitely, and they are spitting back a response! They are stuck!

“Yes!” Kari yelled out to her empty room. The sudden noise sent Lars into a barking fit, but she didn’t mind. The physical fencing of the system created a vulnerability against itself when faced with a clone of equal strength!
That’s ridiculous
. It was crazy her plan worked, and it was even crazier she had thought to try it.

The attack would need work. Getting a computer on the inside to respond wasn’t necessarily compromising the entire system, but it was close.
If I can get my finger in the door, that’s always enough. We just need to figure out how to get a duplicate system physically set up in the right location and know what devices can be attacked on the inside
. It was a complicated hack, but compromising a system was never easy in this day and age.
It’s better than anything Joseth has for sure. Going to be game over for Oedipus once I smooth it out.
The thought of beating Oedipus in a hacking competition was overwhelming.

Maybe this wasn’t as good of an idea as I thought.
Kari was sitting uncomfortably on Joseth’s bed, as he had no other furniture, waiting for him to get back. She wanted to claim her victory to his face, but now that she had been waiting for a couple hours, she was starting to question her strategy. She wanted to just lie down on the bed and rest, but didn’t think that lying on his bed would send the right message
.

I guess I could just leave a note.
Kari tried to find a printer to connect to, but Joseth didn’t have one in his room.
It was a bedroom, but it was different than hers. The floors were made of bamboo, and in the center of the room was a small mattress that rested on the floor. The rest of the room was smaller than Kari’s, and the room had far fewer amenities. In fact, there wasn’t anything else in the room besides an abstract painting on the wall.

No wonder he’s never in here. There’s nothing comfortable to sit on, and there’s not even a clothes printer. That’s it; I’m out of here.
Kari leaned back on his bed.
In just a minute.

“Well I didn’t know you enjoyed the kiss that much . . .”

Kari jumped from surprise and tried to climb to her feet at the same time, which resulted in her falling onto the bed again. Kari expected to hear Joseth laugh, but instead he was silent as she tried to regain her composure and climb to her feet. Once she was settled, she looked up to see Joseth blankly staring at her.

“What?” Kari said.

“Wow.”

“Well.” Kari smoothed her clothes slowly. “You should really consider getting some furniture for guests.”

“I don’t see why I would,” Joseth said coyly. “With results like these, I don’t think I’ll ever print a chair again.”

“You should think about treating your guests better, or they might not be inclined to share their successes with you.”

“Do you count as a guest if I didn’t invite you in?”

“Well, that’s it. I’m leaving,” Kari said, not trying too hard to fake some outrage. “And I’m taking my Lantern Dynamics security system hack with me.”

“Wait, are you serious?” Kari walked past Joseth smugly, enjoying every second of his stunned reaction. “You did it?” Kari left his room with a broad smile. “Wait, Kari, come back!” Joseth came scrambling out the room and grabbed her shoulder.

“I might have,” Kari said. “But I’m not sure I’ll be sharing it with you.”

“Wow.”

“There’s that ‘wow’ again . . .” Kari started forward before letting Joseth stop her.

“I’m not going to push you to show me or anything if you don’t want to, but can I just say I’d appreciate seeing how you got past it. No pressure. Please? But it’s OK if you don’t want to.”

Kari just stared at him, trying her best to give him no hint of what she was thinking. “Well, it’s pretty complicated, and it’s not very clean, but it should qualify for the bonus on the penetration test.”

“So you’re saying you might not have beaten me?”

“Worst-case scenario: it’s still farther than you’ve ever made it.”

“Well, that’s a great surprise,” Joseth said. “Even better than the one I have for you.”

“Are you sure you’ve never been rafting before?” SeptemberMist said. “Because, girl, you looked fearless up there at the front of the raft!”

The other dozen or so members of the Unseen sitting around the fire cheered and took a swig of their drinks.
A hacker who went by the name TrailMix choked a little on his beer, which caused him to spray a mouthful of it into the fire. This sent the group into a round of laughter, especially Joseth, who was sitting cozily close to Kari.
Everyone is sitting close to each other. It’s cold.

“Only in simulations,” Kari said when the laughter died down.

“Pretty much the same thing, then?” SeptemberMist said.

“Not quite,” Kari said, causing another round of cheers and laughter. It was an easy crowd to please. Kari had never been much of a drinker of herself, a habit she had inherited from her parents, but she was starting to like to hang out with people who cheered at everything she said.
“There’s something about actually getting wet from the water that makes the difference, I think.”

Simulations were incredibly lifelike, but there was something about having real-world consequences for mistakes that made it more intense. In simulations, if she had been thrown off the raft and pinned to a rock under water, she would have been reset back to where she was before. Things didn’t work that way in real life. Riding at the front of the raft had been terrifying and exhilarating. The whole day had been full of new real-life experiences that were now causing her body to ache.

“Well, you sure did better than Natalie!” MagicWaffles, the oldest hacker on Joseth’s surprise excursion, exclaimed.
MagicWaffles was easily twice Kari’s age, but he was the most immature of the bunch. Natalie, one of the few hackers whose handle was the same as her name, laughed harder than the rest of the group as they recalled the epic way she had been
thrown from the back of the raft by one of the smallest rapids they had gone over that day.

Kari looked around the fire as she laughed with the rest of them.
All of these people, we’re all so different, but it doesn’t matter
. Kari paused as she looked at Motorcad. He was laughing, but it didn’t feel the same as everyone else’s laughter.
Is he pretending to laugh?

“Hey,” Joseth touched her arm, “do you want to go on a walk?”

“Right now?”

“Of course, no better time to do it.” Joseth waved off the eager workers who were standing by to serve drinks and snacks, and led Kari up a path between the trees. They were up in the mountains above Valhalla, but in true Unseen fashion they had all the accomodations anyone could want available to them. The moon was full, and the stars were bright, but it was still hard to see where she was going after coming from the fire. Joseth offered her his hand.

“Here, let me help you. I forgot that it’s harder for people with eyes to see in the dark.” Kari accepted his hand, and he led her away from the fire. With each step her eyes adjusted just a little more. Her breath caught as she looked up at the incredible night sky.

“Wow.”

“I know,” Joseth said. “Isn’t it incredible out here away from everything?”

“It really is,” Kari said, without taking her eyes off of the numberless stars. She hadn’t grown up in a big city by any means, but she had never seen the night sky like this before.

“So what did you think of my surprise?”

“It’s been an awesome day,” Kari said. “I can’t think of the last time I willingly stayed off the Net the entire day. So thank you for that. And all of this.” After weeks of heads-down work hacking government entities, trying to find information about the assassinations, and pushing herself to break through the security software, today had been an incredible change of pace.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it. We do things like this sometimes, when it feels like the right time.”

“What made this the right time?”

“You,” Joseth said. Kari felt uncomfortable with the situation, so she changed the subject to something that had been heavy on her mind for the past few days.

“How much of Valhalla is financed by selling the EMP guns to the Middle States?” Kari asked. When they had been working on their list of war profiteers that might be behind the assassinations, she had silently added the Unseen to the list after ending the conversation with David. She knew it wasn’t them, but she needed to check.

“It’s not our most profitable account by any means,” Joseth said. “Although, I must admit, the sum would be considered significant to many.”

“So . . .” Kari wasn’t sure how to word her question naturally.
“Are you a murderer?” somehow doesn’t seem like the right way to say it.
“Are you happy with the current arrangement, or would you rather have the war be over?”

“That’s quite the question.”

“Sorry, I’m just curious.”

“I cannot wait until the day this war is over. I promise you that. Missing out on a little bit of revenue is something that I look forward to.” It was the answer she had expected, but she felt a sigh of relief despite herself. Kari mentally crossed the Unseen off of her list of possible suspects.

Joseth stopped walking, but didn’t let go of her hand. He turned, standing close enough to her to make her heart start to beat faster. Kari took her eyes off the stars and looked at Joseth; he was close enough that she could see him looking at her longingly.

“I—” Joseth cut her off before she could say anything else, with a kiss. Kari let it last just a second before she pulled herself back.

“What?” Joseth said.

“I didn’t want that,” Kari said
. Always great with words, Kari!

“I think you did.”

“Excuse me?” Kari’s mind found clarity in record time.

“Come on, Kari, there is something here between us. We both know it. It’s good and natural to try to find out what it is.”

“No. It’s not OK.” Joseth shook his head before looking up at the sky.

“Why not?” Joseth said. “Because I don’t get it. You kissed me back down by the printers, and I don’t think you hated it just now. I know you like me, so what is it?”

“I have a boyfriend,” Kari said.
Well I guess that makes it official, then.

“So what? That was before, but you’re here now. Why don’t you live in the now with me?”

“Because I have a boyfriend, Joseth, and it’s not fair to him.”

Joseth scoffed.

“Well I don’t think it’s fair to you or me to not try this out,” Joseth said. He leaned in for a kiss, and Kari pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” Kari said before walking down the path back toward the fire as quickly as she could in the dark without killing herself.

“Kari . . . Kari, come on.” Joseth called after her, but she didn’t slow down as tears started to well up in her eyes.

“Hey, girl,” SeptemberMist said. “How are you?” Kari opened her eyes to see that SeptemberMist had moved across the auto-auto to sit next to her. The party had lasted a frustrating amount of time after Kari made it back to the fire. Everyone else continued to have a blast, but the fun was over for her. She had sat on the opposite side of the fire from Joseth and just stared into the flames until they turned to coals, no longer laughing along with everyone else. Later, a few of the stylized auto-autos pulled up to give them a ride back to Valhalla. Kari had waited for Joseth to get in an auto-auto first so she could be sure not to share the same vehicle as him.
What is wrong with him?

“I’m fine,” Kari said. She tried her best to make it sound like it wasn’t a lie, but she knew she wasn’t successful. She had been so upset she hadn’t even gone online when she had the chance. She just sat in the auto-auto with her eyes closed thinking about what to do about Joseth and David.

“All right . . . well, do you want to talk about it?” SeptemberMist said.

“Talk about what?”

“Come on now, Freelancer.” It was clear from her tone that Kari didn’t have a choice in the matter.
Why are girls so insistent about these things? If Aubrey were here I wouldn’t have made it twenty seconds back at the fire without her demanding that we talk about feelings.

“It’s nothing,” Kari said. “Guys can be confusing. Life can be confusing.” SeptemberMist grunted her agreement and put her arm around Kari.

“Life
is
confusing. I agree with you there.” Kari laughed a little, but that just made her want to cry.
Why is Joseth even interested in me anyway? What’s his problem?

“I just never expected to find myself in a situation like this. I never prepared for it, you know?”

“No one ever does . . .”

“I mean, everything else in life is pretty straightforward. Like code. Code is great. You tell it what to do, and it does it. If there is a problem, it just throws an error and tells you exactly what happened. It’s logical. And then there are stupid relationships, and they don’t ever go like they are supposed to, and they’re never logical.”

“Some people might say that’s what make them worth it.”

“Those people are stupid,” Kari said with a bitter laugh. “The problem is that it can just be so hard to figure out what I want. I hate that. It’s me! Shouldn’t I always know what I want? I’m myself, so it doesn’t make any sense that I don’t know how I feel about things. Just insane.” SeptemberMist laughed.

“Haven’t had many relationships have you, dear?”