Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 8

He looked up and saw the face on the monitors.

A girl with dark gla.s.ses and an anime T-shirt. Caleb thought he recognized the Betty Page haircut, but her presence on the screen did not immediately connect with a customer who had been in the store.

The girl smiled placidly but said nothing. It wasn't a static image, because at one point she sipped from a can of Red Bull.

"Yo!" growled one customer as he pounded at his keyboard in a vain attempt to break the connection. "What the h.e.l.l?"

"Hold on, guys," said Caleb loud enough for everyone to hear. "Must be a server error. I apologize for the delay, let me see what I can do."

Caleb pulled his laptop closer and tapped some keys, checking the router status, running a diagnostic, doing the routine things that should have fixed this in seconds. The image remained in place. The Korean girl took another sip of Red Bull.

"Okay," Caleb announced, "I'm going to have to reboot the router. Everybody should be back online in a couple of seconds."

"I'm not paying to sit here and stare at some j.a.panese chick," groused the man who'd yelled earlier.

She's Korean, jacka.s.s, thought Caleb, but he didn't see any value in saying that out loud. "Gimme a sec."

He unplugged the router from cable and power sources.

Every screen in the cafe flickered to black for one second, and then the Korean girl was back.

Caleb stared at the dozen-plus copies of her face scattered throughout the room. He looked at his own laptop. With the plugs pulled all that he should be seeing was a no-connection screen.

The Korean girl smiled.

Caleb said, "What?"

He tried several other things. The image of the girl blipped and for a moment Caleb thought he'd solved it, but when the girl sipped the Red Bull in exactly the same way as before he realized that this was a video loop. That was weird. If the computers weren't connected to the Net and yet were showing the girl, then that meant there was some kind of video file planted on each machine. Even computers belonging to customers who came in after that girl left the store. Was that possible?

Yeah. And if it was true it could be real trouble for the cafe.

That girl could have uploaded a Trojan horse to all of the rental computers here at the Surf Shop, and anyone logging on through the router was probably receiving it when they agreed to the terms on the cafe's homepage.

s.h.i.t.

The customers were mad now. Several were badgering him about getting things fixed. The loudmouth was saying that they should all get their money back.

Caleb quickly restarted his MacBook Pro. He entered his pa.s.sword and for a moment he saw his usual desktop display.

And then the image of the Korean girl reappeared.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing over there?" demanded the loud customer.

Caleb shook his head. "I-I'm having a little trouble with ... Um. Hold on, let me try something else."

He plugged the router in and waited as it ran through its opening diagnostic.

"Hey," said a woman seated by the window. She held up her iPhone. "It's not just us. It's on the news."

Everyone scrambled for their cells. Caleb subscribed to several RSS news feeds, and as soon as he unlocked the screen he saw a string of news alerts from USAToday, New York Times, Yahoo News, and even the BBC news. Caleb fished under the counter for a TV remote and aimed it at the flatscreen on the wall, which had been flashing advertis.e.m.e.nts from a CD-ROM. He channeled over to CNN.

And there she was. The patrons got up from their laptops and began drifting toward the TV. Below the Korean girl's face was a t.i.tle credit: CYBERHACKER MYSTERY WOMAN.

"Turn up the volume," said a woman, one of the cafe's regulars.

"... will auto-delete in a few seconds," the Korean girl was saying. "Good luck trying to figure out how we did this. And even if you do, so what? Big deal. Give yourself a cookie."

This wasn't the video loop still playing out on their laptops. This was a live feed on national news. And ... the girl looked different. The hair and sungla.s.ses were identical, but she no longer looked Korean. Caleb thought that she looked older. A young woman instead of an older teenage girl. And maybe-Chinese? He wasn't sure, but he knew that something was different.

"What the h.e.l.l is this?" demanded the loudmouth.

All Caleb could do was shake his head.

"Okay, monkeys," continued the woman on the screen, "pay attention, 'cause there are three things you need to know and Mother Night is here to tell you."

Caleb mouthed the words, Mother Night.

"First, if we do not all rise up against globalization then we do not deserve to be free of the shackles welded around our necks by groups like the World Trade Organization, the Group of Eight, the World Economic Forum, and others like them. We are slaves only if we allow ourselves to be slaves. We are free if we take to the streets and take the streets back. Occupy Wall Street failed because there were too many do-nothing p.u.s.s.ies. That wasn't anarchy. The pigs in the system haven't seen anarchy. Not yet." She licked her lips in a mock-s.e.xy way, as if tasting something forbidden but delicious. "But it's coming. The only action is direct action."

"Jeee-zus," said the loudmouth. "What kind of Communist bulls.h.i.t is this?"

"It's not communism," said a college kid seated near him. "It's anarchy."

"I don't give a flying f.u.c.k what it-"

"Shhh," hissed several people. Caleb raised the volume.

"Second," said the woman who called herself Mother Night, "because complacency is not only a symptom of a corrupt society, it's also a cry for help, I am going to shake things up. Will it take the sacrifice of one in three hundred to force the pigs in power to let true freedom ring?"

Mother Night paused to smile. She had perfect white teeth, but smiling transformed her from a pretty girl to something else, something unlovely. The effect was transformative in a chilling way. It was a sardonic, skeletal, mocking grin, a leer that was hungry and ugly.

The screen display below the image changed to read: WHO IS MOTHER NIGHT?

"Third, Mother Night wants to tell all of her children, everyone within the sound of my voice, all of the sleeping dragons waiting to rise-now is the time. Step out of the shadows. Be seen, be heard. Let your glow cast enough light even for the blind to see. 'Cause remember, kids, sometimes you have to burn to shine."

She gave another of those terrible, leering grins, then every screen went dark. TV, laptops, smartphones.

For five seconds.

And then, one by one, the screens returned to Yahoo, Safari, Gmail, and websites. They returned to normal. The TV suddenly showed the confused faces of the unnerved reporters.

Everything looked normal.

But Caleb-and everyone else at the cafe or who'd watched the broadcast-knew that normal was no longer a part of this day.

Chapter Fourteen.

Across America Sunday, August 31, 6:32 a.m.

Teaneck, New Jersey Digger Hohlman sat in the rear corner of a Dunkin Donuts, head bent low, earphones screwed in, his Styrofoam cup of coffee nearly forgotten as he watched the screen. He was entranced.

Mother Night's face had suddenly filled his laptop screen. It was like magic. One minute he was watching "Awakening," a video from the deathcore band Molotov Solution, and then she was there. It made Digger's hands clench into fists and he could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

After all these months, after encoded e-mails, after packages left for him in coin lockers, after the slow and insanely careful process to bring him into the Family, now here was Mother Night. On his laptop. Speaking to him.

On some level he knew that this was a general message going out to the whole world, something she said would kick open the doors and light the fires. However, Digger also knew that it was a clarion call to the many members of the Family.

Like him.

Born in the dust and promised so much more. Mother Night had told him that she would set a beacon ablaze in his skin. For Digger, who had never shone for a single moment in his life, he would shine because of the grace of Mother Night.

He bent closer to the laptop, so close his breath steamed on the screen, and he turned the volume all the way up so that her murmured words shouted in his ears.

"Okay, monkeys," began Mother Night, "pay attention, 'cause there are three things you need to know and Mother Night is here to tell you."

Digger smiled. A rare thing for him. As he listened he thought about the things he had in his backpack. The chemicals. The detonators. The blades.

All the time she spoke, he mouthed the sacred words.

Burn to shine.

Burn to shine.

Pasco, Washington Julia Smith and her girlfriend, Rage, sat huddled together in a booth at Jerry's Java on North Twentieth Street. They were sharing an omelet with extra onions and peppers. They were dropping down, mile by mile, from their first pipe of the day.

Normally the descent to earth would be painful and sad, and the ground would be covered in broken gla.s.s. They didn't have enough cash to buy more rock, so that high was the only one they were going to have that day unless they could do some b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs for truckers pa.s.sing through. Rage still had her teeth, and in the right light, with a push-up bra and short shorts, she could usually score three or four ten-dollar tricks. Julia knew that her own looks were too far gone. Hand jobs in the dark for five a rub was about her best.

Luckily, Jerry's had a three-dollar omelet with a bottomless cup of coffee.

They were watching the news on the tablet Mother Night had sent them. The wi-fi was free at the coffeehouse, and the tablet had a good battery as well as a splitter, so they could both plug in their earphones at the same time.

When the news feed vanished to be replaced by Mother Night, Julia sought Rage's hand under the table. They sat, fingers tightly entwined, watching the world change. This was what they had been promised was coming. This was the way out of the shadows for both of them.

Los Angeles, California Tayshon watched the broadcast on his laptop, which he'd snuck into the bathroom. His mother's boyfriend, Isaiah, didn't know he had the computer and would have taken it away from him if he'd found out. Isaiah would then beat the living s.h.i.t out of Tayshon, demanding to know where he got the laptop, why he had it, why he didn't say anything about it, and on and on. It wasn't like Isaiah could use a computer. He was an illiterate fool who thought he was a thug, but he was really just a wife beater, a child beater, and a drunk. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d loved using a belt, and he didn't mind if the buckle was what made contact. He made Tayshon kneel on grains of rice. Made him stand barefoot on screws and nuts. Sometimes he'd use his fists, rings and all. Trying to beat his own life's defeats and disappointments out of his girlfriend and her sixteen-year-old son. Tayshon had scars on his face and body that he'd carry to the grave because of Isaiah.

The only good part of that, as Tayshon saw it, was that the grave was right there. Close enough to touch. Offering a perfect escape hatch from the bulls.h.i.t and the humiliation and the nothingness.

On the screen, whispering to him through his earbuds, Mother Night said, "... remember, kids, sometimes you have to burn to shine."

When it was over, Tayshon bent and put his face in his hands and wept, his thin shoulders trembling as each sob rocked him. They were the happiest tears he'd ever shed. He prayed then. Not to G.o.d, but to Mother Night. Prayers of grat.i.tude.

Then he washed his face, opened the bathroom door, went back to his bedroom, and fished in the very back of his closet for the things Mother Night had sent him. The knives. The kilos of semtex. The detonators.

The gun.

He heard a sound downstairs. Isaiah's chair sc.r.a.ping as he pulled into the table for his breakfast.

Tayshon tucked the pistol into the waistband of his pants, the steel cold against belly flesh. Then he picked up the skinning knife.

When he turned the blade this way and that he imagined he could see Isaiah's face. b.l.o.o.d.y and screaming.

"Burn to shine," said Tayshon in a voice thick with tears and strong with purpose.

Orlando, Florida His name was Parker Kang.

He was twenty years old and he was certain that he was as old as he was ever going to get.

He was good with that.

It was perfect.

It was soothing to think about it.

No more pain.

No more humiliation.

No more loneliness.

No more anything.

He sat at a desk he'd found in an office building that had been closed during the economic crash a few years ago. He and some other squatters had broken in the night after the place had been shut, moving fast because they knew that someone would be coming to remove everything of value. Parker and his friends came in quick and quiet, using skills honed from years of living hard and surviving from day to day. Each of them knew how to disable a basic security system and open a lock. There were always a lot of chicken hawks learning from older, more experienced squatters. Back when Parker was a snack rat, living off the crumbs dropped by the real players on the street, he learned everything he could. Now he was on his own and didn't need anyone else.

Except Mother Night.

He needed her more than anything he ever smoked, huffed, swallowed, or spiked. He needed her voice. Her face.

He needed her permission to step off the ledge and fall into forever.

The laptop on his stolen desk was from her. It was nice, too. The sh.e.l.l was that of a MacBook Pro, but the guts were something else. Something weird that she'd designed herself. Stronger than any computer Parker had ever touched, with built-in programs that allowed him to sneak into almost anywhere. He could order food delivered from Domino's and pay for it with fake credit card numbers. Never a kick out, never a canceled order, because the card numbers were hijacked. The pizza always showed up. Other stuff, too. FedEx and UPS deliveries with clothes and equipment. Even parts for the devices Mother Night had asked him to build. Asked. As if he would ever say no to her.

She was the only person he believed in. The only thing he believed in.

Parker had no G.o.d, no angels. Like most of the kids who move like ghosts through the cities, he belonged to nothing. He wasn't like the homeless who clung to the coats of groups like Homes Not Jails and Take Back the Land. He didn't have that kind of optimism. He didn't give a cold rat's d.i.c.k about squatters' rights or the plight of the homeless or any of that s.h.i.t, because nothing was ever going to change.

Not unless Mother Night made it change.

Even then, though, even if Mother Night ignited a fire that burned down everything that was and cleared the way for something new to grow, Parker knew that he wasn't going to live in that world. He didn't want to. He didn't care if the changes she wanted to make would really build a better world for the disenfranchised, the dispossessed, the forgotten, and the lonely. Parker had even less politics than he had religion.

All he wanted was to help Mother Night light those fires.

There was a big table lining the wall opposite where he sat. Something else he'd boosted from the bankrupt office. One half of the table was filled with boxes of parts. The parts always came in individual shipments. Screws one day, housing another, specific chemicals another. Like that. Sometimes shipments from every professional delivery service, including the Post Office. And occasionally things were left in coin lockers for him, or in post office boxes. In those cases he'd get a key in the mail.