?
Derek told Lela what to look for. The metal chassis carrying seven blade servers. She stands before them dumbly, the technology alien to her. The fan system gives off a breathy heat. She runs her finger across the servers, as though she might be able to guess which one hosts Hannah.
She digs the thumb drive out of her pocket, what Derek called a dongle. She closes her eyes until she can see only through her lashes. And approaches the computer terminal. When Derek realized how ignorant and allergic to technology she was, he made her practice on his own system. He knew that Cheston would have several computers running and the servers would be managed through one of them. She needed to track the wires to the right hub and then insert the dongle into the port. Derek’s beacon program would siphon the data they needed. That’s how he referred to Hannah. As data. Code. An anti-virus program. Human software.
Of course Lela cares about helping others, preventing the virus from spreading further, but the goal feels abstract. Hannah is what she’s here for. She promised to take care of the girl, and this is the only way she can redeem her failure to do exactly that. The dongle scrapes its way into the port. A light blinks on the butt of it. There is a sound—like an engine chugging to life—as the beacon software goes to work.
Derek told her to wait five minutes, what feels like an interminable amount of time, before retrieving the dongle and unplugging and destroying the system. “Don’t throw it out a window or toss it in the bathtub and think you’re in the clear,” he said. “I need you to smash everything you see to pieces. Get a hammer, find some scissors, a screwdriver. Whatever it takes. I expect your hands to be bleeding and your shoes to be shredded from the effort.” If people can scour dumps in Nigeria and dig out a dirt-clumped hard drive from a computer owned fifteen years ago by a guy from Pittsburgh and steal his credit card and social security information off it, then she needed to do more than yank a power cord. Total and immediate erasure. That wasn’t going to take back what had already occurred, but it would prevent its further dispersal. One step, then another—slow progress—just like the way she entered the apartment. Just like the way she leaves the office now, returning to the living room.
She can’t abide the red code. She remembers catching a glimpse of it on her laptop. That was all it took to sharpen her temper, flood her with the urge to hurt. Lose her sense of self. She had nearly struck Hannah when the girl slammed shut the laptop, hurled it against the wall in a splintering mess. Lela doesn’t trust herself. She worries that a part of the virus still chugs away inside her, waiting to load completely.
A telescope is stationed by the windows. Her foot accidentally thuds its stand, and the telescope swings in a wide arc as if to take in the span of the city, and she pauses to study Portland. She has always considered the skyline beautiful. Maybe now more than ever. Buildings rise all around her, weirdly bright with electricity and firelight. It is an odd but striking contrast, the manmade and the elemental. Black smoke rises into the murky red sky that soaks up the reflection of the city burning beneath it.
When she was down in the street, she could never see much, walled in by buildings. Trapped in what felt like a prison with all its cages rattling. But from this high vantage, she can see the city as a whole and even imagine what lies beyond it. The Cascade Range rising from the wilderness like broken teeth. The cars streaming toward roadblocks on the many arteries leading away from Portland. The National Guard units establishing a perimeter. People wanting to get in and others desperate to get out. Emergency shutdowns of all data systems and power grids. A press conference. Crowds of reporters speaking into cameras. She feels strangely naked when she thinks of them, as if every camera and microphone and notepad has swung toward her expectantly. She is the one they want, the source at the center of it all, the actor in and—maybe?—one-day chronicler of the story unfolding. But that flash of excitement lasts only a second as her gaze travels farther, and farther still, beyond the Cascades, beyond Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, beyond the borders of this country, to the world, and the shadows and the signs of war are everywhere. Portland is today’s tragedy. Torment and peril await everyone, everywhere. The Dark Net knows no borders; it is the trapdoor beneath all our feet. Immeasurably deadly. And with such a broad view of the terror that awaits, she feels small and adrift, and it is too much to hope that she can make any difference.
Something erupts in the near distance—maybe a gas line—a floral bloom of flame. The force of the explosion arrives a moment later. The window wobbles. The glasses in the kitchen cupboard chime. Because of this she doesn’t hear the footsteps behind her, but she sees a glint reflected in the window. She tries to turn, too late. Someone shoves her. Her body pitches forward—her face slamming the glass—and then the arms belt around her chest and belly. Her body hurls over the couch and onto the coffee table. Its wood jars her spine. One of its legs snaps beneath her weight, and she rolls off it and onto the floor. She has lost all sense of up or down when she scrabbles to right herself. The pistol has fallen from her hand and she reaches wildly for it, and then gives up.
Because the man is moving toward her. His arms are out, lashing the air, reaching for her. His face is masked in blood, making him appear all the more inhuman in the half-dark.
She backs toward the entry door, the hallway, but can’t leave despite every nerve in her body crying at her to go, go. At the last second, she darts into the kitchen. The man follows. She dives over the counter and into the dinette, circling back into the living room. And still the man follows. She dodges one way, then the other to grab the neck of the telescope. She wrenches it off its stand and takes a batter’s stance. The man reaches for her and she swings. The telescope clangs the side of his head, and only then—in the stunned silence that follows—does she recognize him.
Doughy-cheeked. Wild-haired. Ink-stained fingers. He wears a cardigan and corduroys and wingtips. “Daniel,” she says.