The Ghost Network (book 1) Page 4

  Slack looked pointedly at the screen. “Or we could play the heck out of the latest Call of Duty . . . ”

  John set the book down and grinned. “I think I’m going to like this school . . . ”

  “How did you do?” John muttered to Slack as their screens went simultaneously blank then lit up with a sleek logo: Wolf’s Den Center.

  “Oh man,” Slack whispered back. “I looked at that coding problem, and I just had no clue.”

  “Didn’t look that way to me,” said John, surprised. “You were typing like a crazy person.”

  “You too,” Slack pointed out.

  “Yeah, but that was because—I don’t know—because I suddenly felt a weird—” John frowned, then whispered as he glanced toward the front. “Sh!”

  Everyone in the test class had fallen silent, including the supervising teacher. The glass doors parted as if opened by invisible footmen, and a tall figure strode into the room. He turned on his heels, clasped his hands behind his back, and gazed at the class. His face was instantly recognizable from a thousand technology news stories and computing magazines, let alone Time’s Man of the Year issue. If Zeus had strode down from Mount Olympus, John’s jaw could not have dropped further.

  “It’s him,” squeaked Slack, faintly.

  John said nothing, only swallowed. Roy Lykos’s piercing blue eyes had fixed briefly on Slack as he spoke. They shifted to John then continued to roam around among the other test candidates.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.”

  The voice was rich and mellifluous, with a hint of good humor. It was a little at odds with Lykos’s austere looks: the close-cropped, almost colorless hair; the black turtleneck; the beautifully cut black pants. John glanced self-consciously down at his own flea-market jeans and discovered that for the first time in his life he wanted something a little more designer.

  He looked back up at Lykos. Those pale eyes were locked on him and Slack. Suddenly, Roy Lykos smiled, and it was as if the Alaskan sun had come out.

  “The good news is your test results won’t take long to come through,” he said. “We’ll assign your classes later today. Until then, I suggest you all relax and get to know the Center a little better. When your work starts, it’ll be intense. I won’t say the most important thing is to enjoy your time here—that’s definitely not the most important thing!—but take advantage of the facilities when you can.” Yet again, his gaze slid back to John and Slack. “Everybody needs time to reboot!”

  A ripple of slightly anxious laughter went around the classroom, and the new students began to rise. There were no bags to gather up; none had been allowed into the room. As John and Slack joined the line of students at the door, John felt a tingling on his neck, and he turned. Lykos was still watching him and Slack as he murmured to another teacher. Feeling a little starstruck, John risked a smile.

  Excusing himself from his conversation, Roy Lykos strode over to them as the class emptied. “Welcome to the Wolf’s Den, you two.”

  Slack gazed up at him in awe. “Hi . . . uh, hi, Mr. Lykos.”

  “It’s Roy.” He grinned. “You’re John and Jake, right? You’ve both done well. I monitor the tests as they’re happening.”

  A surge of delight went through John, making him blush. He’d always known he was good, but he’d had more than a twinge of uncertainty as he entered the classroom: some of the kids here had looked terrifyingly composed and clever. And that moment of understanding as he stared at the coding problem had felt more like a lucky lightning strike than a rational problem-solving decision.

  But Roy Lykos has singled us out! His chest swelled with pride.

  “By the way, I didn’t tell you how you did, OK?” Roy winked. “But you’ll all be getting your results and class assignments in a couple of hours, so I don’t see the harm in it. I think it’s safe to say you’ll both be joining my classes.”

  “Yes!” Losing his composure, Slack punched the air.

  Roy laughed. “Go on—take out the stress in the gym. The hard work starts tomorrow.”

  As he raised a hand in farewell and strode off through the classroom doors, John and Slack turned to give each other broad grins and a high five.

  “We did it!” said John.

  “I honestly thought we were doomed when I saw that coding puzzle.” Slack wiped his forehead dramatically. “But I had a flash of inspiration while I stared at it.”

  “Same!” John grinned, shrugging. “Isn’t that weird? It just made sense . . . all of a sudden. Like it just clicked in my brain.”

  “It was all about the traversal approach, right?”

  “Yes! Hey, we must be psychic!”

  “Not psychic,” said Slack grandly. “Just geniuses. Want to celebrate with a burger?”

  “You ever stop thinking about food?” John punched his arm.

  They slapped and shoved each other playfully, competing to be first through the door, so it took John a moment to notice that the crowd in the outside corridor had fallen silent. Only when Slack froze, his eyes popping out of his head, did John turn and follow his gaze.

  The other test candidates stood respectfully as a woman strode down the glowing walkway. She wasn’t particularly tall, but no wonder everyone had stopped talking: she moved with the arrogance of someone who could have them all executed on the spot. Her cropped hair was the same iron gray as her suit, her face was sharp boned, and her eyes were practically black behind jet-rimmed cat-eye glasses. She was not smiling. But maybe, thought John, that didn’t mean much. She didn’t look like she ever smiled. Staring at her, John felt a tremor of steely cold run down his spine.

  The woman’s heels clicked to a halt beside Roy Lykos, and she pivoted to face him with almost military precision.

  “Roy, my boy,” she said into the silence. “How did your tests go this morning?”

  Roy smiled easily at her. “Hello, Irma. Very well, as a matter of fact. Very well, indeed.” He glanced around, and his eyes met John’s. They were twinkling.

  “Good morning, candidates.” The woman turned from Roy, and her gaze swept around among the gathered students. The corners of her lips didn’t even twitch. “I am Ms. Reiffelt, the principal. Welcome to the Wolf’s Den Center.”

  “Good morning, Ms. Reiffelt.” Even Slack joined in the automatic and slightly terrified chorus.

  “It is a pleasure to welcome talented students,” she said, though it didn’t sound as if it was much of a pleasure. Her accent had a touch of Eastern Europe, John thought, and her tone could have sliced through the glass roof. “You are all here because you have remarkable skills, but it will be to your benefit if you assume, in this school, that you are not as able as you believe. Keep in mind that, until your learning proceeds, in this place you are all—how do you put it?—script kiddies.”

  Beside him, John felt Slack bristle. His friend’s blue eyes were glowering with resentment. That’s more like it, thought John with a secret grin. And Slack’s defiance made him feel a bit less intimidated himself.

  “I look forward to watching your skills develop.” Irma Reiffelt gave a brisk nod, and there was a tiny tightening of her lips that might have been the start of a formal smile. Before it could turn into one, she had walked away.

  John shook himself as the other students began to talk once again, this time in low murmurs. “Phew,” he said.

  “What a monster,” growled Slack. “I take back every mean thing I ever said about Mrs. Long. She’s a cuddly sweetheart next to that—that—”

  “Gorgon,” suggested John. “She could turn you to stone with one look.”

  “Don’t mind Ms. Reiffelt.” Roy walked back to their side, his eyes warm with amusement. “She’s scary, but she’s an excellent teacher who gets results. And I’m looking forward to seeing you both in class tomorrow. Script kiddies you are not.”

  Slack
grinned. “Yeah, we know.”

  “Buuut . . . she’s right. You will learn things here you never imagined were possible.” Roy winked. “I know from your tests that you turn left where everyone else would turn right. That’s to be expected from any competent hacker. Here you’ll learn to turn upward instead and cross to another dimension.”

  “Yeah!” Slack’s eyes glittered with excitement.

  “We can’t wait,” said John, his heart racing.

  Roy grinned. “Welcome to Hackwarts.”

  John laughed and raised a nervous hand in farewell as Roy turned away. He felt Slack tug his sleeve.

  “What’s wrong with them?” hissed his friend, jerking his thumb.

  John followed his gesture. Across the vast, sunny atrium, two boys were glaring at them. One was tall and muscular looking—quite the jock, if it hadn’t been for his austere black T-shirt and pants and his hipster glasses. The other was shorter, with curly, dark hair and angry, flashing eyes. His style wasn’t much like his friend’s; he wore a preppy blue polo shirt and chinos.

  “Looks like he got lost on the way to the golf course,” snorted Slack.

  Frowning, John returned the boys’ stares. “What’s making them so mad? Big ninja guy looks like he wants to throttle us with a Calvin Klein sports towel.”

  Slack shrugged as the boys threw them one last glare before marching away.

  “Dunno. But I have a feeling we’re going to find out . . . ”

  “Do not imagine,” said Ms. Reiffelt, “that I have illusions about some of you here today. There are students in this class who are here through hard study and dedication. And there are some students here because they are criminals.”

  Her eyes were the color of icy slate, and they were fixed on John and Slack. John swallowed as a blade of sharp guilt slid under his sternum, but Slack didn’t even flinch. He was slouching at his desk next to John, a slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  To John, there was no disguising the light of eagerness in his friend’s eyes, but he didn’t think that would be enough to placate their steely principal.

  Ms. Reiffelt’s eyes lingered on Slack a little longer, then she gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Hacking is no laughing matter—”

  “Looks like nothing is,” muttered Slack under his breath.

  “—but it can be a very worthwhile endeavor. At this Center, ladies and gentlemen, you will learn to combat those who do as you once did. Far from committing crimes, you will find them and undo them. You will learn to protect individuals and systems against those who would do them harm.” She paused. “Unless, of course, we want you to do them harm.”

  Slack sat up a little straighter, balancing his unused pencil deftly between his fingers.

  “You all know that worms can be used to destroy defense systems, for instance. There may be some systems that are—shall we say—asking for it.”

  Slack’s expression was positively enthusiastic now, and clearly he could contain himself no longer. “What’s your specialty, Ms. Reiffelt?”

  She turned back to him. Irma Reiffelt was very good at long, heavy silences, thought John.

  “Cryptanalysis,” she said at last, coolly. “I will teach you to break impossible codes and also to write them. Both of which, incidentally, I have spent much of my life doing at a practical level. I believe you consider yourself quite special, Mr. Hook, and you appear to resent the term ‘script kiddie.’” A knowing and slightly unpleasant smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “While I dislike it myself, I can assure you that compared to me, it suits you well.”

  There were snickers behind them, and John turned his head. The boy he’d noticed in the atrium, the one with the black T-shirt and hipster glasses, was openly smirking at Slack, and his curly haired friend could barely suppress his laughter.

  The rest of the class was silent, studiously avoiding Slack’s reddening face, but down at the front Eva Vygotsky turned, propping her elbow on her desk so that she could stare at him.

  “Ms. Reiffelt worked for many years for the intelligence services of the DDR,” she said.

  John expected Ms. Reiffelt to snap at the Russian girl, but she only nodded, giving Eva an approving smile.

  Wait, he thought, the DDR? East Germany?

  “Servers are protected against data theft,” the teacher went on, as if Eva hadn’t spoken, “but as you are all aware, hackers can always break through. It’s your job, among other things, to make that more difficult for them. Today we will begin building a practical system that will compute encrypted data without access to the decryption key. And when I say ‘practical,’ I mean exactly that. I shall expect you to come up with a combination of systems and cryptography that will be fast, rather than cripplingly slow.”

  Her face, thought John, held more than expectation: she looked as if she’d have them all shot if they didn’t come up to par.

  “During this term we shall build a database system, a web application platform, and a mobile system. Kindly take written notes as we begin. In some ways, I am old-fashioned.” Suddenly, her eyes swept up the rows of desks and landed on the boys behind John and Slack. “Adam Kruz! Leonidas Pallikaris! This also applies to you. I specify this because you so often believe that my instructions do not.”

  John glanced back with a grin. The boys looked really uncomfortable; they were shifting in their seats, and a fierce flush crept up the curly haired one’s cheekbones.

  She doesn’t have favorites, he realized with relief. She’ll have a go at anybody. Even—what did she call them?—Adam and Leonidas. He filed the names in his head, certain he was going to run into those two boys again.

  “Miss Vygotsky is correct about my career,” Ms. Reiffelt told them all, as her own keyboard lit up and glinted on her cat-eye glasses. “Needless to say I will be providing no juicy details, but what I will say is this: hacking is espionage for a new generation. I served my former state, and I served this one. And should your country need you—even when your country itself believes that it does not—you will be there for it.”

  John swallowed hard.

  “Now,” Ms. Reiffelt said, “let us begin.”

  <<>>

  “Phew,” muttered Slack as they closed their laptops. “My head hurts.”

  “Script kiddie,” John laughed.

  “Go on, admit it. You’ve got the start of the biggest migraine in the world.”

  “Not just the start of it,” admitted John. “But c’mon, that was fun.”

  Slack grinned. “I think by the end of this week I’m going to be sick of the sight of computers.”

  “Never happen,” said John.

  As the class set off past the rows of desks toward the door, Eva Vygotsky paused to talk to Ms. Reiffelt, who leaned close and listened intently. If she does have a favorite, thought John as he watched them, it’s definitely Eva.

  “We’d better get going. We’re due in”—Slack checked his phone—“Yasuo’s classroom. Five minutes. Denial of Service tutorial. Hey, I’ve done that!”

  “Yeah, when you shut off the heating system in the school in Fairbanks. I’ve got a feeling this is going to be a bit more challenging.”

  “Got us all a day off, didn’t I?” Slack smirked. “Yeah, but from the way things are going, I’m guessing we’ll be stopping World War Three. Or starting it, maybe.”

  “Look at these classes and it’s only week one.” John took out his own phone and scrolled down the calendar. “Bot Armies: The Art of War. The Walking Dead: Zombie Traffic and the Collapse of Web Services. Looking a Trojan Horse in the Mouth: who came up with that dumb title?”

  “I did.”

  John didn’t even have to look up. He decided the best strategy was to go on staring at his phone screen till the flood of embarrassment subsided.

  When he did, Roy Lykos was watching him with s
harp amusement.

  John cleared his throat. “Sorry, Mr.—I mean, Roy.”

  “Never apologize, John.” Roy laughed. “I thought twice about that title myself, but I wanted something catchy for Mr. McAuliffe’s—for Howard’s—course.” He leaned a little closer and whispered, “Because, to be honest, it’s a little dull.”

  John couldn’t help spluttering a laugh. “OK.”

  “Mr. Lykos. Are you distracting students, my boy?” Ms. Reiffelt strode out of the classroom behind them. “Because I’m sure they have somewhere to be.”

  John saw a flash of irritation on Roy’s face at her patronizing “my boy,” but he took a step back. That, though, wasn’t as surprising as the look he gave Eva Vygotsky.

  The Russian girl was walking out of the classroom, her laptop clutched against her chest. As she caught sight of Roy, she neither hurried up nor slowed her pace, but she caught his eye and held it. Eva’s expression was unreadable, but Roy’s darkened.

  Fascinated, John watched the silent, hostile interaction. Was that anger in the man’s eyes? It looked an awful lot like it. But there was something else there too, and he could swear it was fear.

  He had to be imagining that. As Eva strode off down the corridor, John gave himself an inward shake. “We’re scheduled for one of your classes this afternoon, Roy.” It still felt odd to call a teacher by his first name. “We’re looking forward to it.”

  Lykos’s eyes seemed to focus again. “And so you should be,” he said, his relaxed charm restored. “We’ll be starting to investigate advanced infrastructure hacking. Intercepting HTTPS connections and forcing them to use weakened encryption. You like the sound of that?”

  “Yeah.” Slack’s eyes shone. “Freakin’ awesome!”

  Ms. Reiffelt shot him a look of cold disapproval. “You two should be in Yasuo’s classroom by now. Please get going. Roy, my boy, we have a meeting at four, don’t we?”

  It didn’t seem like a real question, and her eyes were challenging. Roy simply nodded, but his voice was cool. “I’ll see you in Lab 31, Irma. Till later, you two.”