Crow - The Awakening Page 8

  Sirel moved closer to Penipe and started moving virtual blocks of data around, turning their own system into a proxy for Steven's connection. "Done. Want me to run a track on those who noticed him and divert them?"

  "Not yet. We might be able to use them if we lose connectivity with the deviant." Lohet returned his attention to the microscope. "Things are getting very complicated and very dangerous." He wondered what the DNA snippets he discovered could be for and how they got there.

  Migalo left to go hunt and Sirel curled up in her little nest on the ceiling, exhausted from the long excursion. Penipe stared at the screen of their computer, watching their young target perform his search. She hoped against hope that he would not get caught. She had not seen her daughter in so long and desperately wanted to go back home. The deviant represented their only chance to make that happen.

  Steven typed quickly, trying to elude detection. He found he wasn't the only one exploiting the security holes that software and hardware contained. In order to add muscle to his search, he had incorporated several distributed networks and added his own network as a controlling node, albeit surreptitiously. Normally no one would have noticed this since he was doing everything completely behind the scenes. But someone else was in that part of the network as well. He wasn't sure what they were doing, but they did notice him and he had to shut several doors behind him as he retreated and worked to flank his pursuer on the network and bottle him in. He formed what he called a honey pot, a virtual representation of himself that was less hidden and used that as bait to distract his opponent while he covered his tracks and returned to anonymity. Then he stopped and waited, holding his breath. The other guy took his bait, then he slammed the honey pot down. That appeared to be satisfactory and the chase ended. He could tell that the other guy had put in place traps of his own, forming a mine field that he had to tiptoe through as he continued inserting himself into the botnet.

  From there he pointed his new tool at the census databases, the ones that were not public, and started mining them for information about his parents. If they existed, they would surely be there. Even with a distributed network of thousands of computers, mining the database required a long wait. There was a ridiculous amount of data to go through and he had to do it in a way that didn't attract attention, meaning a slower search rather than a brute force frontal attack. The number of computers did come in handy when it came to dissecting the data, however, so it was a matter of hurry up and wait. Steven sat back, bouncing on his chair as he waited.

  Growing hungry, Steven reached to the right of his computer for the mushroom he was sure was there. Only, it wasn't there anymore. He looked at the counter, then on the floor and stood up and looked around the tree house for the mushroom. Everything appeared to be in perfect order, except for the missing mushroom. Sitting down, he thought hard trying to remember. But he knew he had left it there. The windows were closed. Could a squirrel have slipped in through the hatch? But then it would still be in the tree house, unless they're able to open the hatch and leave. He sat down and pondered that. Perhaps someone had entered his tree house? But to do so would have required someone who was definitely not afraid of heights and good at climbing on the bark itself without branches. He didn't see any sign of scarring from climbing tools as he clambered up the tree this afternoon, so it was unlikely that a person had been there. Sighing, he reached into his backpack and pulled out one of the mushrooms he had collected for his godfather. He'd have to collect another one on the way back.

  He looked out at the meadow reflectively. He hoped that he had put his nightmares behind him with what he had done. Conquering his dreams using his imagination and ability to form fantasy lands and people seemed unorthodox, but he expected it would be effective. The meadow was no longer a mysterious place but one he had a distinct connection to - and more importantly, one that he made his own refuge. He grinned at his Asherah. She was cute and witty and a little silly. A good companion to confide in. Brandon was a decent friend but even he wasn't privy to Steven's deepest secrets. Even if Asherah was imaginary, it was nice to have someone he could openly talk to. The glare of the sun interrupted his reverie. It was low enough to shine directly into the window, which meant the day was coming to a close. Sighing, he shut his computer down and turned off the inverter circuit. Today was nearly over, but tomorrow was another day full of promise. He especially looked forward to spending more time in the meadow. He nimbly hopped and dropped straight out of the hatch, pulling on the rope handle of the hatch cover as he fell through so that it closed behind him. He landed on a branch a few feet below and he began his typical rapid descent to the ground, already planning his projects for the next day.

  Chapter 4

  Laurence stood in the lobby contemplating the memorial of officers lost in the line of duty. There were two recent additions that he took note of, both within the last couple of years. There were no names on them, no text describing the portraits. Just the pictures. This stressed the secrecy of this government organization while at the same time paid homage to those who worked for it and died in the line of duty. He looked at his watch and looked at the reception desk. The secretary was on the phone talking to someone. Behind him were some comfortable sofas arranged around a table with a selection of periodicals stacked neatly on it. The only thing that differentiated this reception area from any corporate foyer were the armed guards and the body scanner at the entrance. Laurence nodded at a guard that had noticed him and met his gaze with a steely look, then he returned his attention to the plaques on the wall. He heard a door open and turned to look.

  "Mr. Johnson?" A thin and balding man stepped out of the door, carrying a tablet computer. Laurence saw the screen of the tablet for an instant from across the room, but the glance was enough for him to see what was on the display. He relaxed a little. It was his portfolio and credentials, naturally. Today he is a computer expert and investigative analyst that has had extensive consulting experience with the DoD. It would appear that they are convinced he is legitimate. He smiled and waved, walking confidently toward the man.

  "Bill Paul," the man said, holding his hand out. Ah, a man with two first names, Laurence thought to himself as he grasped the extended hand in his own. Bill smiled broadly. "We just got your clearance."

  "Thanks. I was wondering why it was taking so long." Laurence picked his jacket up off the sofa and the two of them stepped through the door that closed and locked behind them. The room they entered was huge and full of cubicles with a lot of busy agents crunching and filing collected intelligence. A few looked up as they walked past, still obviously focused on their work but taking a moment to see who was walking by. There were no greetings except for a few nods. These people were very focused. Bill ushered Laurence into a windowless conference room where they were joined by a couple of other agents, and the door was shut. Bill typed a code on a wireless keyboard sitting on the conference table, and part of a wall lit up and displayed what appeared to be a web of dots, some connected, others not, but none with any common point.

  "That is the work of someone we call the Ghost." Bill took a chair and Laurence another. The other two were already sitting down and shuffling their notes. "The name is more descriptive than you might think. The intruder appears out of nowhere, leaves to nowhere, and leaves no trace of where he came from or went. All we know is what servers he has accessed and what files he looked at." Bill looked at Laurence over his reading glasses. "He's been deep in DARPA, Mr. Johnson."

  "How do you know it's the work of one person?" Laurence looked at his handout that listed files accessed and servers exploited.

  "The basic pattern he leaves is a complete lack of identifying information." Bill sat back. "The best any of us can do is forge identifying packets. He..." Bill hesitated for a moment, "or they..." he didn't want to reinforce an assumption, "don't even have that. All the packets we've filtered appear local to every server, as if originating on that computer. There is no hint of any network activity whatso
ever. The consistency of it represents a pretty clear fingerprint."

  "You've vetted the personnel at the compromised locations?" Laurence pursed his lips as he fingered through the reports.

  "Yes. Some of the locations are remotely managed data centers too, like Seattle." Bill pointed on the report Laurence was holding. "There were no staff present at those locations at the time of the incursions." He scanned over the data, already familiar with the Seattle occurrence. "The abundance of incidents hints at a team of hackers, but the identical nature of the attacks points to an individual. Even our own teams demonstrate a small level of variance in their attacks no matter how closely they work together."

  "How far did you get on tracking these events?" Laurence already suspected the answer.

  "What you see is what we have." Bill threw up his hands and leaned back. "There's no real pattern in the files that are accessed, or even the project being hacked into. He's hit up administrative servers and research servers."

  "The pattern could be the lack of a pattern."

  "We've considered that and tried culling non-critical files. It hasn't helped in tracking the intruder down, however." He looked at the other two who sat without a word. "There's, uh..." Bill looked down, "something else." He took a breath. "We had two agents working on this consecutively."

  Laurence sat quietly, looking at him. He knew exactly what Bill was talking about, remembering the two recent additions to the memorial. Bill fidgeted in his seat, playing with his pen and looked at Laurence. "There is more to this than what we see here." He tapped the folders with his pen. "We have no idea if they got close or not. Only that they both ended up having... accidents." Then he leaned forward. "Consider this full disclosure."

  Laurence nodded. Bill looked at him for a moment, then he and the other two stood up. "Good. Welcome to the team. I'll send you on to Linda for your access card and phone. I'm sure you know the drill." Laurence grabbed his folder and followed Bill out. He pointed the way and shook Laurence's hand again.

  Linda smiled at him as Laurence walked up. "Hello, Mr. Johnson."

  "Hi." Laurence smiled back.

  "Put your right hand on the scanner, please." Linda looked at her computer as Laurence complied. "Okay, left." He switched hands. "Thanks. Now put your chin here and look at the red dot." She pointed to what looked like something Laurence would find in an optometrist's office. The red dot flickered briefly. "Good. Now, put your index finger on that, please." Laurence saw what looked like a little scanner but it just had a dot. As he put his finger on the groove, he felt a quick prick. A blood sampler for DNA collection.

  "Is that it?" He rubbed his finger. He couldn't remember the number of times his finger had been pricked like that.

  "Yes, sir. If you have a seat over there, I'll have your ID and phone for you in just a moment." She pointed to a small couch and Laurence sat down. It didn't take long, however. She already had most of the paperwork completed before he arrived. She waved to him and he went back to the counter and retrieved his phone and badge. It was time to get to work.

  Bill was waiting for him as he walked back into the cubicle area. "Here, you can use this workstation. Your phone has a VPN connection to this workstation too."

  Laurence sat down and pulled up the latest records of the hacks and the evidentiary files and logs. "This will work fine."

  "Good. We're a team so if you need anything, just let me know." Bill patted him on the shoulder, then went off to another meeting on yet another crisis. Laurence didn't envy him his job. He dug into the records they had of the hacks and started digging into history of each file and compiling a list of file types and locations.

  At the end of the day, Laurence packed up what he was allowed to take with him and headed out. Bill waved at him as he walked by his cubicle. Laurence smiled and waved back. As he walked to his car, Laurence looked at his new badge and phone. The phone was fully encrypted and already had a direct link to his handler, but Laurence suspected it also was recording sound all the time too, keeping a close eye on anything he did. Not that it was unusual to him. He found the setting unobtrusively tucked away in the configuration application but left it as is. Before getting into his car he pulled out a small device and walked around the car while looking at it. No red light, which meant the car was not bugged. Laurence found that strange and he adjusted his scanner. Ah, there it is, he thought to himself, good. It was expected, a routine procedure he experienced when working for the three previous agencies he had inserted himself into on this mission. Once he got into his car, he looked at his GPS unit and turned it on. "Seattle, Washington." He waited for the GPS to display a route. "Downyville, California." The GPS reset its route. He smiled and turned on his car. The GPS combination he entered in was preplanned. It sent out an encrypted code to his real boss who was waiting for a status update. The message was short. He was in.

  The years seemed to fly by as Steven continued his search and spent all of his free time in the meadow with Asherah. She was no slouch when it came to technical stuff and she even helped him refine his search for his parents greatly. While he was producing no results that were solidly conclusive yet, thanks to her he could more efficiently cull databases that have no value to him, making the search more focused.

  In all that time Steven had never given much thought to the stability of the seasons in his meadow. It was consistently tropical year round. He would arrive bundled up for winter, only to have to strip down to shorts and a t-shirt when he got there. Asherah always wore her basic but ornately decorated tube top and climbing shorts. Much more than that would result in heat exhaustion in the heavy tropical air. The rains also came frequently, even from a Washington perspective. Often he would find himself scrambling to cover his books and drawings as a single cloud would drift overhead and dump buckets of rain on him. It rained every day there so he had gotten used to that. His godparents would often raise an eyebrow at some of the moist textbooks he'd bring back. His excuse was easy, however. It was Washington after all.

  One thing he did find most disconcerting was that the days weren't synchronized. Steven expected noon in Washington to be noon in his meadow, but that often wasn't the case. They were close, but for a time he would be visiting in their afternoon when it was morning to him. He had long ago given up trying to figure that out, however, and now it was just par for the course. He was reminded of the technicians who drove the various Mars probes who had to live by Mars time which was just a little off from Earth time. Their noon could easily end up at Earth's midnight over time.

  Regardless of the peculiarities, the meadow remained his favorite place to hang out. He still spent time with Brandon, helping him with his motorcycles, sneaking in gaming on his computer, or watching various movies. But Brandon spent more time in Seattle as he began finishing up his own schooling and preparing for college. That left Steven without any peers except Asherah. Not that he complained. He wasn't particularly lonely and felt complete when they were together. He could honestly say that she was his best friend and most trusted confidant.

  During that time, Asherah taught him Elvish and Common, which were both very similar and actually pretty easy to pick up. Steven had already studied several other languages for school so he was very much familiar with linguistics. Elvish was a beautiful flowing language that was much more expressive than English. It was almost sung rather than spoken. Steven imagined that Asherah felt more than a little constrained speaking his native tongue and they ended up spending most of their time conversing in Elvish before long.

  He would often sit there in the meadow listening to her sing. She was as comfortable singing to him as speaking and he loved it. Her favorite song was a love ballad and it wasn't long before he knew it by heart and would often bring a guitar out to accompany her while she sang and they'd end up in a duet until he'd goof up and they'd get the giggles and totally lose it. Steven found music in general a tremendous relief and seemed to be able to make music on any instrument he picked up, and
out in the meadow music fit Elvish very appropriately.

  In return for her lessons, Steven helped her with her own studies, which were as intensive as his own, if not more so. Sometimes he felt like he was going to two advanced schools at once. But he found her studies fascinating. Most of the math, physics and sciences were similar to what he already knew, with some advanced topics breaking ground he had never even remotely considered before. Nevertheless, it was a fascinating distraction that helped him pass the time as the never ending search for his parents continued. Once he worked up new algorithms, hacked more databases, and applied them to the search, there wasn't a whole lot else he had to do out there except studying, drawing, and playing with Asherah.

  He was jealous of the computer that she used for her studies. It seemed so... common sense. It was simple ornate cylinder that looked like brass. It had no keyboard or screens and it was completely weatherproof. All he had to do was touch it briefly and he could suddenly see what she was seeing. There were indications of an upgrade that didn't even require his touch. Just proximity. An interface hung in the air before them and even around them as they moved items around. It seemed to be connected to a vast network, and anything they wanted to know and learn was at their fingertips. All of her studies were on her computer, except perhaps for her music and art practice, which he also loved to help with.

  Content with the conclusion of their respective studies for the day, Steven lay on his back in the meadow tossing a ball up in the air and catching it. Even though it was the middle of winter, the meadow appeared to him as it always did when he was there imagining, tropical and inviting. He removed his jacket and outer garments, uncovering shorts and a t-shirt that felt much better in the oppressive heat of the mid-afternoon day. It didn't rain that much today. Supposedly the meadow was in its dry season, though it still rained every day. Asherah should call it the less-wet season.