ZerOes (7 page)

“You're willing to just blow yourself up,” Hollis says.

“'Sright. I'm old.”

“I wouldn't call sixty-three old.”

“It feels old.”

“Sorry to hear that, Wade. I have a third option I'd like to discuss. Can I get something from my pocket without you turning this place into the end of a
Die Hard
movie?”

“I said, call me Mr. Earthm—”

Copper holds out a photograph. It's wallet size blown up to eight and a half by eleven. Printed out from a color laser. It flutters and flaps in the wind. Hollis nods, and one of the soldiers points a gun at the photo, clicks on a flashlight at the end of the barrel.

That's when Wade sees whose face is in the photo. “Shit,” he says. Everything inside him goes slack, like a fishing line after the fish has bitten off the bait and gone to the current.

“You going to come with us, Wade?”

“Come on, man. You can't do this to me.”

“I'll ask one more time. You going to put that remote down and come with us?”

The photo. The girl's face. Wade sets the remote down on the seat of the quad. He lets the duffel slide off his shoulders and thud into the dust. Then he holds up his hands and puts them behind his head, and closes his eyes as they swoop in to claim him.

A ROOM, LOCATION UNKNOWN

T
hey each end up in a room, alone, after a long flight on a C-130 military plane. Seated at a table. Walls of cinder block. Black ceiling, black floor. Glass of water. Little sleeves of cookies—Fig Newtons, Oreos, Chips Ahoy—laid out in front of them.

They each hear a similar pitch. Though each pitch is tailored differently, because Hollis Copper knows that everyone has a story and if you want to speak to someone, you better find a way to speak to his or her story.

Hollis: “How are the cookies?”

Chance: “Little stale.”

“Our pastry chef is on vacation.”

“I bet.”

“You know why I'm here.”

Chance shrugs, trying to play it cool. “I know, man. I know. Overdue library books. I'm a slow reader, what can I say?”

“You're a funny guy.”

“I was hoping for ‘handsome gentleman,' but I figure that's reaching.”

“Shut up.”

Chance shuts up. Hollis can see, despite all the lip, the kid is scared pissless. “Two of those football players you messed with are facing a year, maybe five if the judge is a hard-ass who doesn't give much of a shit about football. But my guess is, around where you live,
everybody
gives a shit about football.”

“Shoot, I played baseball.”

“Yes, you did. Pitcher. Good arm on you, I heard. You
also
ran the computer lab all four years in college, which leads me to my next point. Way the laws are set up, what you did and what those boys did is not equal in the blind eyes of Lady Justice. They'll do a couple years. But
you'll
do ten.”

Chance stiffens. “Ten for what? You haven't said what.”

“You
know
what.” From behind him, Hollis pulls a white mask attached to a black hood. Looks like the one from the serial killer in that movie
Scream
. He gestures with the mask as he speaks. “Nice mask. A Faceless mask. Bunch of iconoclast punks throwing stones at giants. We've been looking to get one of them on the hook for a while and—well, look at that—now we got
you
. Chance Dalton, aka Shad0wman91. That's a zero instead of the
o
, and a 91 for the year of your birth, right? So. You hacked a couple websites. Broke into some e-mail. You went on the Internet and exposed a little cabal calling itself the Yellowjacket Rape Posse. Shit that would have stayed hidden because everybody wanted it hidden. But you can't turn a blind eye when this shit gets to Myspace, isn't that right?”

The kid looks freaked. “I don't know what you're talking about.” He crosses his arms over his chest, tucks the flats of his palms under his armpits. “And nobody uses Myspace anymore.”

Hollis ignores that. Computers aren't his thing. “I'm not judging you. Those boys will get far less than they deserve. You ask me, they deserve to have the same thing done to them that they did to all those girls. But then again, I'm a real Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye, karmic-debt type.”

“I don't think karma's in the Old Testament.”

“I'm not a big reader.”

“So.” Chance gnaws his fingernail. “Who told them? Bogardian and his pops. How'd they know it was me?”

“Another hacker sold you out.”

“I'm not a real hacker. I got no grudges against anyone. No one's got any grudges against me.” But Hollis can see the kid trying to figure it out.

“It was a troll type. Just messing with shit to mess with shit.”

“Oh.”

“You think you were doing the right thing. And by my standards, maybe you were—even if the reason for what you did was a little
complex
.”

There. Now Chance looks really panicked. He's wondering:
How does Hollis know?
But Hollis knows. He's got a pretty good idea why Chance did what he did. Everybody's got a dark secret, and this one is all Chance's.

“Like I said,” says Hollis, “those boys deserve more than they're going to get and they're going to get more than most folks around your town think they deserve. But it's not my standards that matter. I'm just one bee in the whole damn hive. What matters is the law. The laws of this country. And by doing your little computer thing—which honestly I don't understand and don't much care to—you broke the law. And I'm here to collect.”

“This isn't how it works. You haven't . . . you haven't shown me a badge or . . . or . . . produced a warrant. I want a lawyer.”

Hollis needs to seal this deal. He doesn't know why they want this kid—Chance Dalton seems like a bit player with middling skills—but they do. So he steps up from across the table, throws the
Scream
mask down, knits his hands in front of him. “Hey, don't misunderstand. I'm not here to arrest you. I'm here to offer you a choice.”

“Choice? What kinda choice?”

“One year or ten years.”

“I don't understand.”

“You do ten years behind bars or you do one year with me. Working for the government. Doing some . . . odd jobs. You still get to do your computer thing, don't worry.”

Chance clutches his ribs. “I want a lawyer.”

“You lawyer up, this deal turns to smoke. Grab it before it's gone.” When Chance hesitates, Hollis shrugs. “Not like you got much else going on,
Shadowman
. You go back home, those football players will eat you like a cookie.” Hollis pops an Oreo in his mouth, crunches down hard.

Chance closes his eyes. Draws a deep breath. “All right,” he says. “. . . All right.”

Aleena: “I want a lawyer.”

Hollis: “You lawyer up, this deal turns to—”

“Where are we?”

“You can worry about that later.”

“Hour-and-a-half flight, fifteen-minute drive. I'm guessing D.C. area. Virginia?”

“Okay, so you get the
clever
badge.”

She wrinkles her brow. Looks down at the cookies. “Muslims don't eat cookies. We're not allowed to have processed sugar. Islamic dietary laws.”

He laughs. She's quick, not like that last joker. “That's no dietary restriction I've ever heard about. Besides, we both know you're not actually Muslim.”

“So you know quite a lot about me. Do you also know I'm an American? I know my rights.”

“Whatever. As I was going to say, your kind doesn't get a lawyer.”

“My kind. You mean Arabs.”

“I mean
terrorists
.”

She freezes. “I'm not. I'm not a terrorist.”

“No, I know that. But that's how it'll play. And the laws work easier for us if we just slap that scarlet letter across your chest now instead of later. You're Syrian. You got family there. Muslims. Doesn't matter that you're not religious. Which, I have to say, begs the question why you're involved at all in the Arab Spring.”

She blinks. “Those are people who can benefit from my help. As you noted: I have family there. They like freedom. I like freedom. The reasons are not complex.” She stiffens, like she's got a little more steel back in her backbone. “By the way,
begging the question
is not that. It's a logical fallacy. Where a statement attempts to prove itself by including the conclusion within the statement:
This girl is a terrorist because the law says so, and I am the law
.”

“Enough with the pedantic nonsense. Let's cut to the chase, Aleena. I can help you. All you gotta do is come work for us.”

“Us.” She says that word like a curse.

“The United States government.”

“I neither like nor approve of this government.”

“But as you note, you
are
American. Which means this is your government as much as it is mine.”

“This government hasn't been mine in a long time.”

One of
those
types
. “You and I are going to have to differ on that point. I say you live here, it's your government. All the bells and whistles. All the warts and wrinkles. You want the job?”

She gives a stiff shake of her head. “I want a lawyer.”

“Answer's still no.”

“Please—”

“I thought you were smarter than this. Top of your class at Emerson. Folder full of recommendations. I guess you're still a little dumb, too.”

“Excuse me?”

“You're not looking at the long game, Aleena. We got you, so let's say we file you under T for Terrorist. What happens to your family, you think? You have a big family, Aleena. Mother. Aunt. Little brother. They might pass the smell test. Maybe they won't. Doesn't matter. They're going to be in for it. The accusations. The
threats
. If you're a terrorist, then far as the rest of the world is concerned, so are they.”

She pinches her eyes shut, like she's trying not to cry. But then she opens her eyes and her stare bores a hole right through his chest and into his heart. Hollis thinks,
She wants to leap across this table right now, wrap her hands around my throat, and kill me
. He doesn't blame her. This is dirty pool and he knows it.

Aleena: “You're a bully. Your whole country, a bully.”

“We have work that needs doing, and I'll say whatever I have to in order to see that work done, Aleena. Last chance. You in?”

She stares off at an unfixed point. “What choice do I have?” she asks.

DeAndre: “Man, fuck you.” He pushes the cookies away.

Hollis: “That's not very friendly, DeAndre.”

“Government bitch. You don't know me.”

“Oh, but I
do
, DeAndre Deleon Mitchell. How do I know thee?
Let
me count the ways
. Online handles: Cardshark. Scarface. Darth Dizzy. Mister Freeze. All sound like cartoon names to me. You're a carder. A spammer. A scammer. A movie pirate. You're like the Swiss Army knife of hackers. You've got card skimmers and backdoors and botnets—and I don't even know what those things are, that's just what they tell me.”

“So who are you?” DeAndre asks.

“I'm a friend. Here to offer you a deal.”

“A deal.”

“Uh-huh. The United States government knows what naughty business you've been up to. And they would very much like to bring the hammer down and pound you flat like a crooked nail. Unless you decide to play nice. Come work for the government for one year.”

“Sounds like prison.”

“It'll be much nicer than prison, I promise. It's a lodge.” DeAndre's face twists up in confusion, probably imagining he'll be skiing and drinking hot chocolate by the fire or whatever. Hollis laughs. “That's what we call it, anyway. It's in the mountains. Real pretty.”

DeAndre sniffs. “You want me to turn traitor. Be a white hat all of a sudden.”

“I'm sorry—white hat?” Hollis suddenly feels old.