The Silence of Six Read online

  Max zipped up all of the academic documents and sent them to Jeremy from his own e-mail address. In the e-mail, Max promised to ship the computer back or send money to replace it when he could, because of course he knew Jeremy’s home address now too. He signed his message “Anonymous.” He smiled, thinking that Jeremy would assume he’d been hacked by someone from the infamous group.

  That was fun. He’d missed doing stuff like this.

  Now to get down to his real business.

  First, he launched a secure web browser and ran a search for the latest information on the debate. It looked like Courtney was still sitting on her blog post, but media was now buzzing about the suicide. Max knew it was inevitable the story would come out eventually—how long could they keep an auditorium full of teenagers from sharing information online? Yet there was still no public video footage of those final seconds of Evan’s video.

  Agent Kwon was quoted as saying, “We’re following up on some promising leads. Right now, we’re focused on finding out who STOP was.”

  But since Max was clearly one of their promising leads—perhaps their only one—they had to know that Evan was STOP. Had they found his body yet?

  Kwon hadn’t said anything about investigating the meaning behind STOP’s message, which left it to Max.

  He launched a new tab and opened Panjea, while running more searches in other tabs for “silence of six,” “Clancy Tooms,” and “Angela Lovett.” He switched between them all, soaking in whatever information he could.

  The only hits on “silence of six” were articles about the debate, which all showed the same short clip of Evan’s question, “What is the silence of six, and what are you going to do about it?”

  Commenters on the blogs were wondering if the phrase literally referred to six people who had been silenced, whatever that meant, or if there was someone or something named “Six,” or some organization with a similar-sounding acronym that was “silent,” as in secret. Someone pointed out that STOP was a hacker, and “SICS” was internet slang for “Sitting in Chair Snickering”—suggesting he had posted the video “4 the lulz.”

  If they had seen the video’s dark and graphic finale, no one would think it was a joke.

  The debate had ended prematurely, but it had been nearly over anyway; most pundits declared it a win for Lovett, mirroring overwhelming online sentiment in her favor. Senator Tooms’s team tried to spin STOP’s interruption as another attack against Tooms by Dramatis Personai.

  Governor Lovett had opted to issue a simple, personal apology for the debate being disrupted. She invited anyone with questions or concerns to participate in her Ask Me Anything beginning at five o’clock Pacific time in the Panjea forum, promising that she would answer as much as she could in an hour.

  Max collapsed the other tabs and returned to Panjea. To find out what “the silence of six” was, he had to get into Evan’s head—which was all stored online. His friend was brilliant when it came to computers, and he referred to off-line storage and the cloud to host his brain. His hard drives and online backups were now all that was left of Evan.

  And those were just as inaccessible as he was. Of course his accounts were too secure for Max to guess the passphrases, and he struck out with the characters from Evan’s text message as well.

  He browsed Evan’s public Panjea pages, but Evan hadn’t made any notes since May, or he had purged them. There could be a clue buried deep in his pages of notes, but Max didn’t have the time to go chasing ghosts right now.

  Ghosts.

  There was one last place Max could check online to see if anyone knew anything about Evan’s plan—if he could find his way back there. As far as most people knew, it didn’t exist.

  Max typed in an IP address he hadn’t visited in over a year. For a while, this site had been his whole world, but now it just seemed like a tiny part of it.

  He was in. The address for the hidden hacker chat group was still alive in the so-called “Deep Web,” the intricate network of unpublished IP addresses on the internet. No search engine crawled through the Deep Web indexing webpages. Like the most exclusive clubs, you had to know it existed before you could go there, and you had to have an invitation. The question was, had his invitation expired after a year away?

  Max clicked his cursor into the first of two unmarked text fields on the screen and typed “503-ERROR”. The box disappeared and he entered his passphrase. That box disappeared too, leaving a blank white screen.

  After ten seconds, he thought the slow Wi-Fi was to blame. After thirty, he wondered if the page had timed out, or if the chat rooms were no longer active. After fifty seconds, he started to get worried.

  Loud high heels clacked on the marble floor and echoed throughout the lobby. Max watched a woman in a short red mini dress cross the lobby from the elevator bank and push through the revolving door. Outside, she opened the back door of a waiting taxi.

  His computer screen faded to black. He started to panic, but a flashing green user prompt appeared in the top left corner, mimicking an old style computer terminal. Green type scrolled in a retro font: Welcome back, 503-ERROR. Long time no see.

  A shiver ran down his spine.

  The cursor flashed. Anyone who just stumbled across this and somehow gained access would probably start typing commands, but those in the know understood that there was one more passphrase needed to get past this screen. Max typed: You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

  The old lines from Zork, the first text adventure game, came back to him easily. He’d never even played the original game, but he appreciated the analogy: Every target was a puzzle to be solved, a place to be explored. And it took the right strings of characters to get you deeper. Every hack was a text adventure.

  The screen displayed the next line from the game: There is a small mailbox here.

  Open mailbox, Max typed.

  A familiar robotic sound bite played “You’ve got mail.” Max had never used America Online, but the early days of computing had been immortalized in pop culture.

  The screen stuttered and suddenly Max was looking at a list of comment threads. The most recent thread, created just seconds before, was titled “back from the dead.” It was about 503-ERROR’s return after his long absence and whether they should give him access to the room or not.

  Max wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans then flexed his fingers. The thread directly below the one about him, with thousands of page views and a few hundred comments, was labeled “Who was STOP?”

  A new thread appeared: “503-ERROR.” He debated ignoring it, but he was in a tenuous position. He hadn’t logged in for a long time, had disappeared without warning, and there were bound to be questions. If he didn’t respond, or didn’t give the right answers, he could be booted at any time and locked out.

  Max clicked on the “503-ERROR” thread to expand it. There was only one post, which said: come inside.

  He opened a chat window, clicked Join, and typed 503-ERROR. He was logged in to a private chat room that already had nine users signed in. He recognized only a couple of the names from his old days hanging out here with Evan: 0MN1, Edifice, and Kill_Screen. The rest were strangers, or might have been people he’d dealt with before under different handles: ZeroKal, print*is*dead, GroundSloth, Plan(et)9, DoubleThink, PHYREWALL.

  Hackers changed their identities all the time, or maintained multiple identities: Anonymity was one of the last freedoms available on the internet, though even that was harder to come by now, unless you were on the Deep Web. And when you decided to give it up, as Max had, you could just disappear, without anyone ever knowing who you really were or what had happened to you.

  A message from 0MN1 flashed on the screen: Who are u?

  I’m 503-ERROR, Max typed.

  Kill_Screen: the real deal???

  503-ERROR: Of course
I would say I was, even if I wasn’t.

  0MN1: Where have you been?

  503-ERROR: I needed to take a break for a while.

  He didn’t mention that he’d never intended to come back.

  Kill_Screen: why are you back now?

  503-ERROR: I’m trying to figure out what STOP was up to.

  0MN1: I thought u 2 used to be buddies?

  503-ERROR: We were. But we haven’t been in contact for a while.

  print*is*dead: That could have been anyone behind the mask.

  Kill_Screen: Shut it.

  0MN1: When wass the last time u talkd, 503?

  Crap. Max could lie now, but if he decided to trust them he wouldn’t be able to ask for their help deciphering the text message later. They would refuse, and they might lock him out. Or worse, they could turn against him and make him another one of their targets.

  If Evan had trusted them, maybe Max could too. And if they weren’t trustworthy, there wasn’t much they could do without Max’s cooperation.

  But something made him hold back from telling them everything just yet.

  503-ERROR: Few months ago.

  Had it really been that long? He’d been so busy with soccer practice over the summer. Then school had started, and they’d been in separate classes. And Max had started dating Courtney.

  Max waited for a response. The others were probably discussing all this in another private chat room and posting the news for others.

  0MN1: Suspishius that your hear, now, after all this time. If u want us to believe, tell us something about STOP. Something real!

  Max was asking a lot by coming here. If he wanted their help, he had to give them a reason to trust him, and show that he trusted them. He didn’t want to tip his hand about seeing Evan’s suicide just yet, though, because that would give them too much information about his own identity.

  What if he told them something that they didn’t know the Feds already knew? It was just a matter of time before the FBI had to share more information about the case, including STOP’s identity. If it came from Max first, it might buy him some credibility.

  503-ERROR: STOP and I sometimes talked IRL. His name was Evan Baxter.

  It couldn’t hurt Evan anymore to admit their connection in real life, but it still felt like a betrayal.

  Another long pause—so long that Max had to check to make sure he was still connected to the internet and the program hadn’t frozen.

  Finally, nine chat responses appeared on-screen simultaneously in one block of text, as if sent by one user—which shouldn’t even be possible.

  0MN1: Hi, I’m Dramatis Personai

  Kill_Screen: Hi, I’m Dramatis Personai

  Edifice: Hi, I’m Dramatis Personai

  print*is*dead: Hi, I’m Dramatis Personai

  DoubleThink: Hi, I’m Dramatis Personai

  GroundSloth: Hi, I’m Dramatis Personai

  Plan(et)9: Hi, I’m Dramatis Personai

  PHYREWALL: Hi, I’m Dramatis Personai

  ZeroKal: Hi, I’m Dramatis Personai

  No way.

  7

  Max stared at the green text that filled hisblack screen:

  Hi, I’m Dramatis Personai

  503-ERROR: Oh shit.

  Evan really had been in Dramatis Personai.

  print*is*dead: LOL

  503-ERROR: I can’t believe I’m talking to Dramatis Personai. You guys are legendary!

  Edifice: Now that you know our handles, we’ll have to kill you.

  DoubleThink: Seriously, this is a mistake. We shouldn’t trust him. Why would he give up STOP’s name like that?

  PHYREWALL: Assuming it’s legit.

  Kill_Screen: Why should we trust *you*, DT?

  DoubleThink: I was here before you, KS.

  print*is*dead: I remember 503 / He’s a good guy

  503-ERROR: Thanks, print*is*dead.

  Max’s surroundings dropped away as his focus narrowed to the rhythm of fingers on keys and the glowing fifteen-inch window into a digital world that often felt more immediate than his “real” life.

  In high school, everything you said and did had consequences, and everyone had their own expectations and agendas. He spent most of his time there worrying about what others thought of him. People were sometimes turned off by interactions with strangers or shocked at how blatantly people acted in chat rooms, but their conversations were just unfiltered. Despite their layers of anonymity, hackers were refreshingly transparent. Usually, at least.

  DoubleThink: Where’s 503-ERROR been all this time? Like 0MN1 said: Why come back now, when the Feds are looking for info on STOP?

  Edifice: He may not even be 503 anymore.

  That comment struck a little close to home. Max hadn’t thought of himself as 503-ERROR in a long time, but it was coming back to him, with startling ease.

  Kill_Screen: Where you been, dawg?

  503-ERROR: I had to lay low for a while. Had things to sort out. You know.

  0MN1: Chill, guys. He knew STOP irl.

  Max had interacted with a few members of this group before, so they knew how far back he and Evan went. He wondered if they secretly had been in Dramatis Personai even then, or if they’d also been recruited with Evan in the last year.

  To think: If Max had stayed in this world a little longer, they might have invited him into the group too. Could he have passed up that opportunity? Joining Dramatis Personai meant you had leveled up as a hacker. You could have a bigger influence on the world and do something that mattered. But being part of it also came with greater personal risk, as Evan had probably learned.

  503-ERROR: We talked sometimes on the phone. Never met in person.

  This was an old lie. He and Evan had always been careful to act like they only knew each other through faceless communications, and rarely revealed any truthful information about their lives. If someone pieced together enough small, seemingly harmless personal details about you, they could figure out who you were. It was doubly dangerous for Max and Evan to be friends, because identifying one of them would inevitably lead to the other.

  That was what had happened with the FBI in less than twelve hours: from the time Evan entered their radar at the debate to the agents who tracked him down the next morning at Bean Up.

  Kill_Screen: then we have one up on you. we all met STOP once IRL

  They had met Evan?

  503-ERROR: When was that?

  0MN1: @ Hackers Gonna Hack – you shoulda been there!

  Max and Evan had planned to go to the annual gathering of hackers, but the conference had been scheduled for the last week in August, when soccer season started, so Max had begged off. He had assumed Evan would skip it rather than go without him.

  PHYREWALL: We knew STOP, but even we didn’t know his name.

  Kill_Screen: that doesn’t prove they were friends or that we can trust 503. if anything, the opposite.

  503-ERROR: I’m just trying to do the same thing you are—figure out what happened to STOP. Knowing his name helps, right?

  0MN1: STOP’s video was intense, huh?

  503-ERROR: Definitely.

  0MN1: Thanx for the tip. I’m doxxing Evan Baxter now. Can u give us more 2 go on?

  0MN1’s attempts to research Evan’s identity wouldn’t turn up anything that Max didn’t already know. Evan had been obsessively cautious with his identity, up until the end. Giving up his secrecy in such a reckless, public way was almost as shocking as giving up his life. It could have been a sign of mental instability. That might be enough for the media to feel satisfied by his motives, but Max believed there was more to it.

  503-ERROR: I wish I did. Had he been planning that for a while?

  print*is*dead: STOP talked about this debate for weeks / he told everyone to watch and spread the word / he sign
ed out a few minutes before he hacked the video feed / didn’t know it was for the last time :(

  Kill_Screen: the video’s on youtube! most of it. someone commented that he shot himself. that part was cut out.

  PHYREWALL: I saw that. It was posted by “AHS_Student.” He said STOP used a gun.

  503-ERROR: God.

  Plan(et)9: The video and those comments were DELETED. But there are SCREENCAPS.

  The chat program dinged as a link came through to Max’s computer. It only identified the sender as “Dramatis Personai.” Wasn’t he already talking to them?

  Max clicked on the link and returned to the chat while his browser loaded the page. Everything was a little slower through Tor.

  Edifice: Coverup! It’s surprising there aren’t more posts from kids at the school. Like, how do you get teenagers to ~not~ post notes on Panjea when something happens?

  Plan(et)9: I saw a picture with a FRAME that wasn’t in the released vid. STOP’s mask’s half off.

  Plan(et)9 posted a bitmap image of the projector screen on the stage at Granville High. The picture was blurry, showing Evan reaching off-screen for the gun. It gave Max a chill to see it again. It had to have come from one of the kids at his school, probably around the fifth or sixth row on the left side of the auditorium. Max saved the image to his desktop.

  503-ERROR: What do you make of this “Silence of 6” thing? Any guesses what STOP meant by that?

  print*is*dead: I bet it has to do with the others who went offline. . .

  ZeroKal: muy suspicious

  GroundSloth: This again? STFU. 3 missing + STOP isn’t 6, idjit. And quit the Spanglish ZeroK. We get that you’re Latino, or want us to think you are.

  503-ERROR: Hold on, 3 people are missing? Recently?

  print*is*dead: 3 of us

  Max felt a rush. Three members of Dramatis Personai disappearing went beyond suspicious. This could be a clue to what Evan had been talking about.