Reboot Read online

  “Governments change,” seethed John.

  “I don’t just mean politicians—I mean lobbyists, the media, blue ticks on Twitter. If I’d stepped up and accused him, not one of them would have believed me. Would you have believed me, before all this happened?”

  John stared at him in silence.

  “Lykos is practically a god in the tech world,” Mikael went on, “and those are people who have at least an inkling of what he can do. To the wider population he’s a saint with his charity work, educational trusts, and a bestselling memoir with an adaptation on Netflix. He sends free tech into schools. He was invited to the last royal wedding, for Pete’s sake.” Mikael’s growl took on an edge of bitterness. “Journalists love him, and so does everyone else. He’s a global superstar, and he’s untouchable.”

  “No one is untouchable,” said John quietly. “Remember Achilles? Big hero, crucial to the whole cause, unbeatable. Till Paris shot an arrow into his heel.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m hoping for.” Mikael shrugged. “That Lykos has a vulnerability. I just have to find out where it is.”

  “No,” said John, drawing himself up and looking straight into his father’s eyes. “I do. We do. Your Ghost Network.”

  “Remember why Achilles had that weak spot, John?”

  “’Course I do,” said John. “His mom dipped him in the Styx to make him invulnerable, but she forgot to dip his heel.”

  Mikael nodded. “And there has to be something in Roy Lykos’s past too.”

  “Yes,” said John. “There does. Something that’ll let us get to him. I swear it.”

  A hush fell again, and for the first time, father and son watched each other without hostility. John felt a lump in his throat. I’m still mad at him. But he’s my dad. It wasn’t his father who was his true enemy, thought John: it was Roy Lykos.

  Mikael looked away. “I believe you, John. I completely believe you’ll beat him. But it’s going to put you in danger, and I’m sorry for that—more sorry than you can imagine.” He drew a breath. “With every step you take now, you have to consider first how it could potentially help Lykos track you down. To start with, you can’t contact anyone outside this circle. Do you understand? Anyone. It would be a huge risk to you, but it would also put them in danger. Your friends, their families.”

  Salome nodded seriously. “We understand. No outside contact.”

  “So how am I going to explain to my mom that I’m going to the Sahara?” asked Slack dryly. “Am I supposed to tell her I’m going to research camels?”

  “I’ve heard worse excuses,” laughed Mikael, “but a field trip to Arizona would be more believable, so that’s the story I want you to use. You’re going to study mesa formation, with a view to developing computer models for predicting erosion. That should be detailed enough to satisfy even the most curious of your families.”

  Slack tilted his head thoughtfully. “Fair enough. And I’m sure John can convince his mom,” he added mischievously. “I mean, Tina thought an animated headshot was actually Roy Lykos himself.”

  A flicker of pain crossed Mikael’s face at the mention of his wife’s name, but it was gone quickly. “Another thing: when you get to the Scarab’s Temple, don’t even think about using the computers there to contact students elsewhere.” He gestured at Salome, meeting her tormented gaze. “Don’t try to contact Eva. You can’t access the IIDA mainframe without every other computer in the network knowing it.”

  Salome nodded reluctantly.

  Slack rolled his eyes. “Sure, Mikael. I’m glad you explained that about the network, because we’re complete computer noobs.”

  Mikael laughed. “Fair enough. But it’s like the safety demo when you get on a plane: even the frequent flyers should watch it.”

  Slack slipped down from his barstool. “I guess if I’m really not getting a beer, we should get going. No time to waste and all that.”

  “You’re not getting a beer,” confirmed Mikael, “and, yes, there’s no time like the present.”

  Salome retreated to one of the booths, one with a featureless backdrop, to Skype her parents. Slack pulled his phone from his pocket. Akane unpacked her laptop and found a booth of her own.

  “I should call Mom,” John told Mikael, a little awkward now that they were alone.

  “Yes. I don’t want her to worry any more than she already does.” Mikael gazed at him. “But there’s something else I wanted to give you. It might be useful.” He rummaged behind the counter, then walked around the bar to John’s side.

  What sophisticated tech was Mikael going to give him? John wondered. Despite his lingering resentment, he felt a spark of excitement. A new burner phone, one with capabilities I’ve never heard of? A tracker device? A jet pack would be nice . . .

  “Here.” Mikael extended his hand.

  John stared at the thing in his father’s palm. It was a small, lumpy block of black plastic with a single green screen and a few buttons.

  “What in the name of Odin is that thing?” he asked, wrinkling his nose.

  Mikael chuckled. “It’s what we considered high tech in the ’90s. It’s a pager, John. Primitive, but it works, and it doesn’t use IIDA networks. If there’s an emergency, and if you think there’s any chance Lykos has broken IIDA’s encryption, this is how you can reach me. OK?”

  John took the pager. “It even has a belt hook,” he said, rolling his eyes. “What’ll they think of next?”

  They both laughed, and for a moment John forgot how bitter he felt. It was almost like old times, he thought: when Dad would explain stuff to me and I thought he was the most brilliant, wisest, smartest man on the planet.

  He sighed and looked up. “Thanks, Dad.”

  Mikael reached out to pull him into a hug.

  “Thank you, John. For trusting me, for now.” Mikael’s eyes looked tormented. “Now call your mom. Tell her you’ll be safe. And to keep you that way, I’ll get you on that plane to Morocco.”

  There was nothing Eva Vygotsky wanted more than to climb the stairs to the outside world, stand on the windswept plateau of Little Diomede Island, and let the Arctic breeze chill her body and clear her head. She wanted to see the sky and the choppy sea and the lumpy outline of Big Diomede, barely a stone’s throw away but just across the dateline in Russian waters. She wanted to leave the Wolf’s Den complex beneath her feet, just for half an hour. Was that really too much to ask?

  Apparently, yes. She had been confined within the Wolf’s Den’s interior since the night her friends John, Slack, and Salome had escaped. Her every move, her every look was monitored by the cameras that rotated silently in the corner of every room. She knew it and could say nothing. There was no family for her to return to, no place for her to go. She did not trust a single member of the staff. The Wolf’s Den was her home—the only one she had ever known—but now she feared she might never be able to leave.

  She didn’t know whether she could stand it. Especially when she had to sit here, stuck in a whole-school assembly in the main lecture theater, being talked at by Irma Reiffelt.

  “At this Center, ladies and gentlemen, you will learn to protect individuals and computing systems against those who would do them harm.” Pause for dramatic effect. “Unless, of course, we want you to do them harm.”

  There was a nervous ripple of laughter from the new students, and Eva tried not to roll her eyes. It was Ms. Reiffelt’s standard beginning-of-term lecture, and the older students must have been even more bored than Eva was.

  Eva stole a glance at some of the noobs. John Laine did not like her to use that term—he thought it was demeaning—but there was really no other word that fit. They looked so eager, so innocent; not one of them had any idea of the chaos that had happened last term. Roy Lykos and his teacher cronies had covered it all up very effectively: nothing had leaked online, and not a single press organization or an
archic blogger knew that helicopters had flown in to abduct three of the students or that Roy Lykos had conspired to steal the intellectual property that was woven into those students’ DNA. It was not public knowledge that guns had been drawn in an elite hacking school. And the very existence of John Laine and his friends Slack and Salome had apparently been wiped from the school’s history.

  Eva tried, not very successfully, to suppress a sigh. She sat several rows back from the main student body, alone and isolated. That was her choice. She couldn’t remember when she’d last spoken voluntarily to another student—certainly never outside class. She certainly had no desire to talk to Adam Kruz or Leo Pallikaris, who sat sprawled out in their chairs at the front, looking superior and smug. She would never forgive those two rich boys for siding with Lykos, for betraying her friends—and, most of all, for booby-trapping her laptop with their stupid virus and threatening to destroy all her data. And the boys were as stupid as their malware: poisoning Eva’s computer data didn’t just threaten her work; it endangered her actual mind.

  Adam and Leo couldn’t have known; they weren’t in on Mikael Laine’s AI project. But being outwitted by John and the others had not dented their arrogance one bit. And Eva would not ever feel like forgiving them.

  Eva blinked, realizing that Irma Reiffelt had left the podium to make way for Roy Lykos. The tech superstar (and all-around thug and psycho, thought Eva bitterly) was taking the steps two at a time: slim and athletic but austere and dressed in his usual black. He wore a thin-lipped smile as he reached the podium and gazed out at his new student intake. They stared back with a mixture of awe and sheer adoration.

  If only they knew, thought Eva.

  “Thank you, Ms. Reiffelt,” Lykos said with a nod toward the principal. “I know everyone here is more than ready to begin their term’s work. I’ve spoken to many of you already, and you’ve turned up with exactly the right mind-set: inquiring, curious, and determined to learn. That’s what we at the Wolf’s Den want most in our students, and you are all more than welcome!”

  A burst of wondering applause broke out at his banal little speech, and Eva glared at the shiny-eyed students.

  Lykos waited for the applause to die down and nodded solemnly. “There’s so much we offer here, and I want you all to make the most of every opportunity—for study, for relaxation, for individual enterprise. I expect to see great things from all of you. But as you can imagine from an elite institution, we demand dedication too. It’s not all fun and fully interactive virtual-reality climbing walls!” He gave them a grin and a wink that sent a few of them into spasms of giggles—deep down, he was still a nerd, Eva thought—then he grew serious again. “We demand dedication, and hard work, and loyalty to the Wolf’s Den. Sadly, I can’t tell you that this has always been the case.”

  Oh, thought Eva, stiffening. Here it comes.

  Lykos sighed. “Last term, we lost some highly promising students. Despite their intelligence and creativity, they were unable to operate under the Wolf’s Den’s strict code of conduct. It broke my heart, let me tell you, but we had to say goodbye to those students.”

  There were a few gasps of disbelief and outrage from the audience.

  “Imagine,” whispered a girl to her neighbor, two rows in front of Eva. “Imagine having this kind of privilege and abusing it!” She sounded horrified.

  Eva bit her lip hard and said nothing.

  “I’m sorry to have to make this part of my welcome address,” Lykos went on, lowering his eyes to a card that he pulled from his pocket. “But I mean it when I say these students were talented. They were among the most promising students we’ve ever had—not that we could allow that to sway our decision, unfortunately. And it’s possible they might still try to make mischief. You’re all tech-savvy enough to imagine the ways they might do that. So should any of you . . . any of you”—his gaze drifted dangerously close to Eva—“receive any form of contact from the following, you are obliged to report it to me. And I mean to me personally. The names are as follows: John Laine, Jake Hook, Salome Abraham. And there’s another name, one who failed to qualify for entrance and who is alarmingly bitter about that: Akane Maezono.”

  Eva felt a surge of anger, and she had to fight not to scream out loud. You liar! Akane never failed any entrance exam—you just hadn’t gotten to her yet! And just as well Lykos hadn’t gotten his claws into Akane, she reflected: last term it was Akane who had met the other three on the outside and helped them to escape across the frozen wasteland of Alaska.

  Roy Lykos was folding up the card, meticulously and rather sternly. He ran a fingernail firmly along the crease he’d made. “Any contact must, I repeat, must be reported to me. Immediately. Or there will be consequences, whether you are a co-conspirator or the innocent recipient of an unsolicited message. Do you all understand?”

  Eva studied him as the assembled students murmured their nervous agreement. His mask of a friendly and stern - but - approachable genius had slipped just for a moment; Lykos looked for a fleeting moment like the amoral, emotionless psychopath she knew him to be. Behind his wire-framed glasses, his steely eyes flashed frozen daggers.

  Then, in a flash, the warm and kindly teacher returned. “That’s good. If I know anything about this student body, it’s that you’re all smart and you understand the outcomes of batch command sequences.” He grinned, and there was a low hubbub of laughter as the tension ebbed. “I’m glad to have you all here, and I have some exciting new projects to tell you about. You all know how much more concerned governments have become in recent years, how much more aware they are of digital threats and the dangers of cyber warfare. Well, as of last week, the Wolf’s Den is teaming up with the US government, and together we’re declaring war on cyberterrorism!”

  This time the assembly lost all their shyness; they cheered and clapped their excitement and approval.

  “I’ll be personally selecting an elite class of hackers; your mission will be to quash genuine, real-world threats. These won’t be war games or virtual exercises in our simulated world, Global One. This, for the best students, will be real.”

  The whole assembly erupted. Around Eva she could hear the eager chatter of students determined to make it into Roy Lykos’s elite class; she felt a pang of sorrow as she remembered John and Slack’s excitement last term, their determination to be chosen for Lykos’s special lessons.

  If they’d arrived this term, they’d have been joining in, she thought. Maybe I would have fought for the chance myself, when I first came here.

  The irony was it was clear what Lykos meant by genuine, real-world threats. He meant John and Slack themselves. And Salome and Akane. The Ghost Network. They’d once been star students; now they might as well have a giant digital target fixed on their backs.

  Eva had known an outburst like that speech was coming. Of course Lykos couldn’t carry on indefinitely as if nothing had happened. He must still feel under threat. And he was human, despite all his technological brilliance, but he had some of the worst traits of a human.

  Like a thirst for revenge . . .

  She should feel dread and fear, but Eva only felt numb. I have to do something. I have to. I just don’t know what.

  She barely heard the rest of the assembly speeches. When it was over, she rose with the rest of the student body, gathered her books and laptop, and made her way in a daze back to her room.

  She’d agreed with the Ghost Network that she’d carry on as if nothing had happened. She’d continue with her schooling, pretend everything was normal, and lie low. But how could she keep that promise now? Lykos was making his move, and her friends were in mortal danger. I have to do something!

  She lifted her wrist implant, and the door of her room slid smoothly open. Eva stepped inside, still distracted and wracked with concern, and then heard the door slide shut behind her.

  There was something different about the sound as i
t clicked into place. Frowning, Eva turned and faced the door. It was featureless, pale wood; she’d always found it stylish, but now she couldn’t help seeing something sinister in its blankness.

  Eva lifted her wrist. Nothing. This was new.

  She pressed her wrist to the door. She backed up a good distance and tried again.

  These implants did not malfunction. They just didn’t. A tide of panic washed through her body, and her blood ran cold. With a strangled yell, Eva slammed her wrist against the door.

  It stayed put. And so, apparently, must she.

  Eva did not know which was stronger: her rage or her terror. Her roaming gaze must have seen too much; she must have stared too long and coldly at a tutor. She’d helped the Ghost Network, and she’d refused to disown them afterward. Her hostility, her noncompliance, had been noted, and they had decided it was time for a crackdown.

  She was Roy Lykos’s prisoner.

  The last plane flight John had taken had been with his family, from Vancouver to Alaska, and he barely remembered it. He’d been in a fog of grief after the “death” of his father. It was Dad who inflicted that on me.

  No, he must try to forget that; he had to look forward. On that flight he couldn’t remember what movie he’d watched. Had there even been any? This flight was a lot rowdier—the group of young women sitting behind him were overly excited about their vacation—and he was glad for his earphones filled with the crash and racket of the movie he’d chosen. In the seat beside him, Slack was riveted by his screen.

  Slack had the right idea; there was no point in worrying about what awaited them in Morocco. Frowning, John tried to concentrate on the antics of Thor and Rocket Raccoon. He’d waited ages to see this movie, and he might as well enjoy it.

  Just as he decided that, the screen blanked out. Irritated, John tapped it. Nothing. He glanced at Slack, who had turned to him in surprised annoyance. His screen was dead too, John noticed. On the other side of the aisle, Salome and Akane were pulling off their earphones and muttering to one another; Akane actually grabbed the headrest in front of her and shook it. Leaning forward, John peered between the seats at the passenger screens in front. They were working perfectly. John leaned back, reaching up for the flight attendant button.