“Doors used to work that way too,” Mac said.
The glass panels parted and let us out. Sunlight. Air. I took a deep breath and glanced back. The building didn’t look like an oasis now; it looked like a madhouse. And it didn’t help that the shrimpy guy in the sweatshirt was following annoyingly close on our heels.
I whispered. “Txt Mac: We’ve got company.”
“Txt Kyla: I know,” Mac said. “Also, I’m right here.”
Mac abruptly stopped walking. The little guy plowed into him.
“Dude,” Mac said. “What is your deal?”
“I’m Rory, senior ConnectBook programmer.”
“And?” I asked.
“And? I’m the guy who’s gonna help you get your life back.” He grinned and pumped a fist in the air. “Man, I’ve always wanted to say something like that.”
Five minutes later, the three of us were sitting at a café right around the corner from Headquarters, as Rory called it. Hood up, Rory sat with his back to the café and spoke so softly, Mac and I had to lean halfway across the table to hear him whisper, “I heard your dilemma.”
“Shhh,” the woman at the table next to us said.
Was there ever a time when coffee shops weren’t dens of silence? This café didn’t even play music.
Even softer, Rory continued, “What it sounds like is some hater has made a series of nasty DRMs using footage they swiped from CB’s Woofer and you’re trying to find links between all the subjects hoping they connect back to the maker B-U-T you need someone on the inside’s access because half the accounts are closed re nasty DRMs.”
“You got all of that from my conversation with the receptionists?”
“I filled in some blanks. So now what I need to kick the SHT out of the person doing this to you are the names of the other victims. Then it’s just a simple logarithm that scans multiple accounts and connected lists along with any other related overlaps, i.e., if all those bad teachers were in some dirty CB closed group together.”
I reached for my Doc but only patted empty pockets. Mac jokingly mirrored my stressed-out expression back at me.
“I don’t have the names with me, but off the top of my head I remember Trina Davis. And another of the girl’s names was…Natalie Wong. And, well, Mr. E.—Eric Ehrenreich, though I think he deleted his account, so you might need, like, special access.”
“Darlin’, I am special access.”
As Rory spoke, he swiped at his Doc and murmured commands. Pushing his blue-framed glasses up on his forehead, he took out a wired pair from an inside pocket of his hoodie. With all the nodding, swiping, and twitching it was like someone had his head on a puppet string. I missed my Doc even more.
“Txt Mac: It’s like he’s possessed,” I murmured.
I’d only ever seen one person this adept at their gadgetry.
“Txt Kyla: Stop weirdly trying to audio txt me, you addict,” Mac whispered back, and then, reading my mind, said, “And, no, it’s like he’s Sharma.”
“I can hear you,” Rory said. “People in cafés down the block can hear you. Where are your Docs, B-T-W?”
“We left them in Brooklyn,” I said.
“You left them in Brooklyn?” Rory shuddered.
Being called out on what a terrible idea it was made my stomach feel even queasier. Before I could protest that we were trying to avoid being WhereYouAt-ed, which I already knew Rory would not accept as an excuse, Mac said, “Why don’t you just wear those NanoContacts? You wouldn’t need all this gear.”
“They give me a headache. And call me old-fashioned: I like the gear.”
Nobody would ever call Rory old-fashioned. All the gadgetry he was flicking and switching between could buy a family of four a luxury sedan. The woman at the table next to us got up with a loud tsk and moved farther away. I didn’t see what it mattered when both her ears were plugged with buds. I mean, if you want to work without distractions, maybe stay in your office.
“How long you been working for the evil empire?” Mac asked.
“Evil empire? I don’t have to pay a wired bill ever. Why sit in coach if you can fly first class? I’ve been with CB ever since I flunked out of college.”
“No mames.” Mac laughed. “Kid genius flunked out of college?”
“I only enrolled to get scouted. I never intended to graduate.”
“Why not just send CB your résumé?” I asked.
“Flunking out sounds cooler.” Rory’s eyes flicked to Mac.
The boys shared a smile, like they were members of the same rabble-rousers’ club.
“Let me ask you,” Mac said, after they’d knocked fists. “You get all the perks, how come I bought your coffee?”
“Because I’m the guy who’s going to fix your girlfriend’s life.”
Both Mac’s eyebrows went up. Girlfriend. I took a huge slug of coffee so Mac wouldn’t see me smile. I wasn’t about to correct Rory that we were only friends. Let him think what he wanted.
“We’re just friends,” Mac said.
Rolling my eyes, I said, “If I get you the students’ and teachers’ names by tonight, how long do you think this will take?”
“What do you mean how long will it take?” Rory sat back and cracked his knuckles. “All I had to do was a quick search of suspended or terminated accounts—which, I mean, are a pretty rare thing—taking into account age and date of account suspensions. Throw a little profession filter on it. Then a quick survey of flagged posts—everyone always flags the posts—bada bing, bada boom, and voilà. We have the teachers.
“Then it gets a little more complicated. I won’t bore you with the details—gender filter, school-type filter, recently clenched up on privacy settings, blah blah blah—and voilà! The students. I mean, it’s not called waiting with my thumb up my A-S-S. It’s called hacking. And it’s done.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Mac whooped, reaching across the table to knuckle Rory’s head.
The barista held a finger to his lips and loudly shushed us. Rory tried, but failed, to act offended by Mac’s affection and barely suppressed a grin when Mac said, “This little dude is killer. So dímelo, Killer, what’d you find?”
“To begin with, there are eighty-two matches between all twelve of your accounts.”
He hit a switch on his Doc. The white café table was now illuminated with the eighty-two matching connections he’d found between mine and the other eleven harassed teachers and students’ accounts.
“You can rule the famous connections out right off the bat. That takes away thirty. Good-bye, Madam President. Also, these users.”
With a swipe of his fingers, the pics on the table diminished by ten.
“Why?” I asked.
“Elderly Asians and Indians? No offense, but your criminal is not going to be Abhay Kapur. Dr. Abhay’s got better things to do.”
“No, that’s not racist at all, Rory.”
“Hey, my people died in the Holocaust. I’m allowed to make whatever ethnic jokes I want.”