“Ow! Triste flaca—”
“Not Yosae itself,” said Marisa, “just your local definition file. One of the benefits of user-driven security software. They update so quick we’ve never had to do it before, but you totally can.” She typed in a few more commands and hit Enter. “Boom. I’m in.” She smiled triumphantly, dropping in the Bluescreen virus code and setting up the admin flags. “Now, just run a scan, and it will recognize these files as dangerous and scrub them out of your brain, with what I respectfully call ‘extreme digital prejudice.’”
“Awesome,” said Anja. She blinked, and her eyes refocused on her djinni interface. Marisa watched on her tablet as Anja’s Yosae Cybersecurity program began running a scan, searching each file and folder.
“And this will kill it, right?” asked Omar.
“That’s what ‘extreme digital prejudice’ means,” said Marisa.
Hey Mari! A message popped up in Marisa’s vision, from Pati this time. I’m home from school, where are you? Want to play Overworld? Marisa deleted the message without responding; she’d get back to Pati later.
The antivirus program raced through the files, one by one by one, faster than Marisa could follow.
And then it finished. The Bluescreen files hadn’t even been touched.
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Anja.
What happened? wrote Sahara.
“Yosae didn’t find the files,” said Marisa, frowning at her tablet. She checked the virus definitions again: the Bluescreen files were right there in the database, flagged as dangerous, ready to be destroyed as soon as the scanner found anything that resembled them. And yet it hadn’t touched them. “Why didn’t it find them? They’re right there.”
Maybe they’re undetectable? wrote Sahara.
“There’s no way they’re detectable to a file manager but hidden from Yosae Cybersecurity,” said Marisa. “There has to be something we missed.”
“We’re just asking one program to delete another,” said Anja, “there’s nothing to miss. The only reason it’s not working is . . . the file system is literally not functioning like a normal file system is supposed to.”
Omar grunted and punched the side of the autocab, hard enough that Marisa could feel it rocking from the impact.
Is he just super pissed off today? wrote Sahara.
Anja did almost die, Marisa wrote back.
I’m starting to like him for more than just his car, wrote Sahara.
“Hang on,” said Anja, and her eyes unfocused again, wobbling back and forth in her head as she started moving files through her djinni interface. “If the file system doesn’t look like it’s working, maybe it’s really not working. Maybe the virus rewrites the file system to make itself partially invisible—that could be what that other piece was for, the one you couldn’t find a purpose for.”
“Maybe,” said Marisa, watching the tablet helplessly, “I just—”
We need to talk. The message appeared in Marisa’s vision abruptly, not part of any other conversation, and without any ID tag. Marisa started in surprise, and couldn’t help but glance out at the street. Rich kids were lounging on the high school lawn; others walked aimlessly in conversation. No one seemed to be paying them any attention.
“Did any of you get that message?” she asked.
Another message appeared. I saw your post on Lemnisca.te. I have information you’ve been looking for.
What message? wrote Sahara.
Anja shook her head. “What message?”
The words floated in Marisa’s vision like lost spirits. My name is Grendel. Meet me in NeverMind.
EIGHT
“Marisa, you look sick,” said Anja. “Did something happen?”
“I just got a message from someone named Grendel,” said Marisa. “Do any of you know who that is?”
“Some old monster,” said Omar. “Like a viking legend or something.”
Never heard of it, wrote Sahara. Where’d you meet him?
“I didn’t meet him anywhere,” said Marisa, probing the message in her djinni. “Looks like he hid his ID—santa vaca, he even hid the route his message took to get here. It’s like it just . . . appeared, out of nowhere.”
“That’s some high-level hacking,” said Anja. “What’d he say?”
“He says he has information about the Bluescreen code,” said Marisa. “He saw my post on Lemnisca.te.”
He’s from the darknet?!?!?! wrote Sahara.
“Double scheiss,” said Anja, “with a cherry on top.”
Marisa’s djinni display lit up, showing a voice call from Sahara. Marisa blinked on it, patching her into the autocab speakers, and Sahara practically screamed in their ears.
“Don’t talk to him, Mari; this is scary.”
“Some shadow from a hacker forum on the darknet just messaged you directly,” said Anja, her voice more serious than Marisa had ever heard it. “Without permission, without access, without even you telling him who you were. Scrub your ID and run.”