Disaster Recovery: Part Two
Josh would have slept well into the afternoon if the others hadn't kept waking him up every hour to ask, in turn, his name, where he was and what had happened to him. Apparently they had made the mistake of Nudling "concussion". According to the internet, any loss of memory was a Bad Thing that suggested a hitherto undiscovered head trauma. Luckily, Josh responded to their questions correctly, if impatiently. After he weakly threw a pillow at Sitara with a pained cry of "please let me sleep!", she decided his head was probably fine.
"Let's give him some space," she whispered to the other two, and (reluctantly, on Wrench's part), they left him on the couch and retreated to the other side of the hackerspace.
"Okay, what's our plan?" began Marcus, eager to make a start.
"I ran a trace on Josh's phone," said Wrench. The others blinked at him, surprise evident on their faces. Marcus looked concerned. "What?"
"Uh, did you get any sleep last night?" Wrench rapped his bruised knuckles on the table impatiently.
"Does it matter? Anyway, look." He turned his laptop around to show them the map, and pointed to the last place Josh's cell phone had given a signal. Valencia Street. "This is where he dropped it, right? But the last time it pinged was just before six a.m, which means either it's run out of battery…" He didn't bother to remind them of the obvious, that Josh was obsessive about keeping his phone charged. From the looks on their faces, they'd already dismissed the idea.
"Or the battery's been removed," said Sitara as she realised what he was getting at. "Shit."
"Then we need to get access to the CCTV footage," said Marcus, getting to his feet. "Even if it was too dark to see who attacked Josh, whoever has his phone could lead us to him." He made a beeline for the stairs, and Wrench shot to his feet. There was no question of him staying behind. He went to follow Marcus, but Sitara caught his shoulder.
"That was good thinking, Wrench. Pinging Josh's phone."
"Don't sound so surprised."
"Sorry. It's just, usually that's his department, you know?" She nodded to Josh's slender form, still huddled on the couch, with a sigh. "I wish he'd let me call his family. It kills me that they don't even know what's happened." Wrench felt a sudden surge of annoyance. DedSec were family, and if Josh felt safer with them, that was his own business, wasn't it?
"Why're you telling me this?" He snapped. "Some of us get by just fine without mommy and daddy to pick us up when shit hits the fan." That wasn't fair and he knew it, but he'd been awake for almost twenty-four hours, and… well, it was a crappy excuse, but now the words were out there, and he couldn't take them back. Sitara recoiled, looking stricken.
"Jeez, okay. I was only going to ask if you knew anyone else we could call. Someone trustworthy." Her jaw moved as if she was trying not to grind her teeth. For the first time Wrench noticed how exhausted she looked. She hadn't had time to put on any makeup, so the dark circles under her eyes stood out even in the tinted light.
"Yeah," he said reluctantly, swallowing his shame. "I'll text you the number." Sitara didn't say anything, but gave a tight-lipped nod, and stalked away to check on Josh.
I•I•I•I
Valencia Street was coming down from the rush hour scramble when Marcus and Wrench rounded the corner from 19th Street. It was a weird time to be out in the city, like being on a movie set preparing to shoot a scene. Within twenty minutes the stragglers and late risers had hurried into work, leaving everyone else to get on with their lives. (Or for Wrench on a normal day, turn over in bed and go back to sleep.) It was the perfect time to do some snooping, or at least, so they thought.
"Is it just me," said Marcus, staring at the spot where Josh had described getting hit, "Or is something weird about this place?"
"Something's not right," Wrench agreed, his brow furrowing. "Fucked if I know what it is." They let their eyes wander up to the CCTV camera conspicuously mounted above where they were standing. It was positioned right above the dumpster, probably to discourage divers, and just a little too far out of reach for the average loiterer to vandalise. Luckily, Marcus and Wrench were above-average loiterers. After hoisting themselves up, with Wrench giving Marcus a piggyback, they managed to reach it without much trouble at all.
Within a few minutes, Marcus had connected his phone to the camera's wireless transmitter and was looking for the local collection point, where all the footage was streamed to and saved.
"Got it," he announced, to Wrench's relief. It wasn't that Marcus was heavy, but carrying your best friend on your back while trying not to put your foot through the lid of a dumpster and mash your face into a brick wall wasn't high on his list of favourite activities. He was about to dump Marcus unceremoniously back on his feet when he froze, realization hitting him like a slap in the face.
"Yo, I just realised what's wrong with this place," he said. Marcus looked down at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Uh, wanna put me down before you expand on that?"
"Someone's cleaned up," Wrench told him, when they both safely had their feet on the ground. It was obvious now that he had pointed it out - the place was extraordinarily free of the trash that tended to collect in the city's untended corners.
There wasn't so much as a lonely cigarette butt.
I•I•I•I
When Josh finally surfaced, groggy and stiff, he was met with the smell of greasy food and coffee. Sitara was sitting across from him, typing on her laptop with one hand, a breakfast muffin in the other. She looked up and smiled, but it was a half-hearted one at best.
"How are you feeling?" she asked, as he slowly sat up and stretched his limbs.
"Sore." Purple bruises were already blooming all over him, which meant he probably looked as crappy as he felt. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone, his hand closing on nothing before he remembered he'd dropped it. Seeing his stricken expression, Sitara leaned over and gave his shoulder a squeeze.
"You pwned Lenni with that phone, right?" Josh nodded, but it was more than that. Horatio had given it to him just after he'd first joined up, had flashed it with DedSec's custom ROM - the first iteration of it, anyway. He'd laughed when the first thing Josh did was improve it. Within a week, every phone owned by a DedSec member was running Josh's improved OS.
Josh ran his hands over the hoodie someone had placed over him - Horatio's hoodie - and shivered. He'd been lucky to only lose his phone.
"You seem ...pretty calm, all things considered," said Sitara, breaking into his thoughts." You been beaten up before?"
"Once. At High School." Josh gave a shrug that sent a sharp pain up his arm and grimaced. To his relief, Sitara pretended not to notice.
"Shitty feeling, isn't it?" she said. "My folks sent me to an all-girls boarding school," she added, by way of explanation. "Some of those girls were vicious." She paused, her expression unreadable. "Anyway," she shut her laptop with a snap, as if she could trap the memories inside. "I called your grandma-" Josh let out a groan- "and she wants me to drive you over to her place."
"Can't I stay here?" Josh protested as Sitara eyeballed him.
"Umm, no. You need food and a proper bed." She crinkled her nose. "And, no offense, a shower."
"I can't tell her what happened!"
"I already did." Sitara's grip was firm as she hauled him to his feet. "You can't go through this on your own, okay?" Josh wanted to tell her he wasn't on his own, that he had her, and Wrench, and Marcus - but then he saw just how dark the circles were under her eyes.
"Oh," he said quietly.
"Don't worry," said Sitara, thinking he was responding to what she'd said. "Your grandma seems cool. She's got your back."
"Yeah." Josh leaned on Sitara's shoulder as she helped him up the stairs, easing life back into his battered legs. He wasn't thinking about the pain, though.
"Hey, Sitara?" he ventured, before they emerged into the bright daylight of Gary's shop.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. For... everything."
I•I•I•I
According to Marcus, the CCTV camera streamed to a CToS box on a rooftop a few blocks away, along with all of the other security and traffic cameras along Valencia Street. Locating it was the easy part, but reaching it was another matter entirely. The closest they could get was a narrow side street squashed between the building and a small park, which ended abruptly in a locked metal gate with a large yellow "NO TRESPASSING" sign on it.
"I'm seeing barbed wire and Umeni goons with guns," Marcus said, looking up from his laptop. He'd managed to sneak his RC jumper under the gate and nestle it beneath a parked car. "That sign ain't playing." There was no reply from Wrench, and when he glanced up, he found his friend leaning blankly against the park fence. Marcus shook his shoulder. "Wrench! Wake up!"
"Huhwhat? I'm awake!" LEDs flashed as Wrench started, then shook his head as if to clear it. "Sorry. Last night's catching up with me. You were saying something about dickbags with guns?"
"Maybe you should sit this one out, man." Marcus couldn't even finish his sentence before Wrench yawned widely, the movement distorting his mask.
"You're probably right," he admitted. "So, what's plan B?" Marcus thought for a moment.
"There's a fire escape at the front of the building," he suggested, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the street. "If you give me a boost, I can climb up and get on the roof that way."
"Are you… are you sure?" Wrench said slowly. "Look at us, dude. There's got to be dozens of people around. Would you call the cops on us if you saw us climbing a building? 'Cause I'd call the cops on us. Just sayin'."
"When has the idea of someone calling the cops ever stopped you?"
"You make an excellent point," Wrench conceded. "Okay, I'm in." he clambered to his feet as Marcus recalled his jumper and stowed it away. A few short minutes later they emerged onto the street, Marcus patting his pockets theatrically.
"Oh goddamnit, I've locked myself out again!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands up in mock exasperation.
"Well, ain't that just a kick in the dick?" Wrench made a show of looking up at the fire escape, exclamation points dancing over his eyes. "Say! Why don't you shimmy up that ladder? I'll give you a boost!" There were arguably more people pausing to watch the display of bad acting (and worse accents) than there would have been if they'd simply gotten on with it, but Marcus was having far too much fun to stop now.
"Why, thank you, sir!" He gave a little bow as Wrench obligingly dropped to one knee and interlocked his fingers.
"Tally ho!" Wrench straightened, and Marcus reached up and grabbed the iron railing, heaving himself over. Less than a minute later he was scaling the rickety stairs and clambering onto the roof. Wrench nonchalantly leaned against the front of the building, ignoring all the strange looks people were giving him and looking about as natural as a blue slushie as he waited for Marcus to return.
And waited.
Marcus was no stranger to breaking into CToS boxes - it was kind of his thing, after all. Wrench had seen him in action a few times. Marcus had gotten it down to a fine art… so what was taking so long? He was just about to give in to his curiosity and take a peek down the side of the building when a yell of "HEY! WHO'S UP THERE?" followed by the popping of what Wrench hoped was taser guns echoed down the side street. People walking past whimpered and hurried on, keeping their gaze firmly in front of them.
A few seconds later Marcus appeared on the fire escape, vaulting over the railing and landing with a thud on the sidewalk. Somewhere nearby a car horn blared.
"Got it," said Marcus, a little breathlessly. "Let's get going."
They turned and hurried away up the street, ducking around the first corner they came to, as the sound of sirens in the distance got steadily louder.
I•I•I•I
If his grandma's tiny house had been furnished with a bathtub, Josh might have spent the rest of the day in it. As it was, he had to settle for a record length shower, letting it wash away the blood and filth and loosen up his stiff muscles. At least through the steam and roar of the water he could forget about the interrogation that waited for him on the other side of the bathroom door. When he finally emerged, dressed in clean clothes Frannie had grabbed from his apartment and feeling like he'd been scrubbed raw inside and out, she immediately sat him down and shoved a plate of waffles under his nose.
"Eat," she said, easing herself into the chair opposite. Josh did as he was told and tried not to pay attention to the fact she was staring at him, her expression inscrutable. When he couldn't take another bite she whipped his plate away and handed him her ancient plastic brick of a cell phone. After much cajoling, he finally gave in and called his parents, giving them an extremely watered-down account of the previous night.
"I'm fine," he lied, careful not to lisp through his busted lip and studiously ignoring Frannie's disapproving stare. "They only stole my phone." He assured them he would visit them soon (another lie) and that he had already reported the theft to the police (and another).
"I have to finish my coursework," he said quickly, when his mom suggested they come over. She acquiesced, of course, telling him she was proud of him, which made him feel even worse.
"Joshua Micah Sauchak," Frannie said flatly as Josh handed her cellphone back to her. "I have heard more than my fair share of lies, deceptions, falsehoods, selective truths and 'alternative facts' in my time. But those were some real whoppers."
"I just don't want them to worry."
"No," said Frannie dryly, eyeing his bruised eye socket. "I get to do all the worrying for them." She took his plate and shuffled into the tiny kitchen. When she returned she had two mugs - coffee for herself, cocoa for him, like when he was little. "So," she said, and Josh eyed her warily. Here it came. "What in Sam Hill were you doing out at two in the morning?"
"I was out for a walk," mumbled Josh, but he couldn't meet her gaze.
"You're a terrible liar, you know. Even over the phone." Frannie sipped her coffee loudly. "Fine, I can play this guessing game. You're not just a programmer, are you? Any more than Wrench is a mechanic." She chuckled darkly as Josh stared. "Don't give me that look. I've had my suspicions for a while."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"It was clearly important to you. At least, that's what I thought. You're not dealing drugs, are you?" She narrowed her eyes at him, and he drew back.
"No!"
"Then why not go to the police? Are you in some kind of trouble?" She saw Josh hesitate and pursed her lips. "I see."
"It's not what you think," Josh insisted. "Please, you can't tell Mom and Dad. They won't understand."
"I'm having trouble grasping the finer points myself." Frannie's expression darkened. "Well, you're a grown man, so if you want to keep on hiding things from your parents, then that's your choice. But it's time to be honest with me, unless you want to walk home." Ah, that was it then. Josh had never been great at reading people, but there was no mistaking the look Frannie was giving him. It was a look that said 'checkmate, kiddo'.
"Fine," he said.
"Good. Well then, tell me everything," said Frannie, regarding him over the rim of her mug. "Starting with what you really do for a living."
I•I•I•I
While Wrench sloped off to catch a few hours' sleep (and thus avoiding any of Sitara's residual wrath), Marcus and Sitara wasted no time scouring the CCTV footage. The task was made easier by the wall-o'-screens - formerly the DedSec follower wall - a towering construction of refurbished computers and monitors that dominated the far end of the hackerspace.
It didn't take long for them to realise something was amiss.
"This is suspicious as fuck," said Sitara, grabbing Marcus' laptop. A dozen screens rewound, flickered and resumed. "This is the time when Josh would have walked through here, right?"
"Yeah, here he is." Marcus pointed to a feed from a camera stationed further down Valencia Street, where a familiar figure in a green hoodie passed through the bottom left of the grainy shot and out of sight.
"Okay, but look at the parking lot." Sitara jabbed her finger at a different screen - the feed from the camera Marcus had hacked in the parking lot earlier.
"Where is he?"
"Right? It wouldn't have taken him that long to- whoah!" Sitara practically jumped out of her seat - "Did you see that?"
"See what?"
"The timestamp." Sitara grabbed the laptop again and shuffled backwards through the footage. This time she stayed standing, staying close enough to the screen to read the timestamp carefully. Marcus joined her. Sure enough, just after Josh passed out of the first shot, the footage of the parking lot gave an almost imperceptible flicker, the time stamp jumping ahead.
"Yo, what the fuck." Marcus drew back, his mind racing. "Did someone delete the CCTV footage?"
"It sure looks like it." Sitara was fuming now. "Just over twenty minutes of it." A silence fell over them as they processed this. Marcus uttered a curse under his breath as something else occurred to him.
"The dumpster wasn't there when we went down there earlier," he said, pointing. "It had been moved right underneath the camera." He grabbed his laptop and fumbled his way through several hours' worth of unchanging video stills before he found what he was looking for.
"Here." He brought up the feed again, timestamped at around six fifteen in the morning. Just as he remembered, the dumpster was sitting right under the camera, almost completely out of the shot.
"So someone moved it? Why would they do that?"
"Maybe it was in the way. If they grabbed Josh's phone too..." he was clicking his way back through the stills now, looking for the right moment. The screen flickered, and the dumpster moved back to its original position. "There," he said, and switched it over to playback mode. Several long seconds passed, before the screen jumped, lightening instantly as the timestamp skipped ahead by half an hour, the dumpster along with it.
"Oh my god," Sitara tried and failed to order her thoughts.
"Wrench was right," said Marcus, grimly.
"What am I right about?" Wrench's groggy voice came through the tinny speaker on Marcus' laptop. Marcus bit back a groan. He'd forgotten to close the DedSec VoIP channel. He looked to Sitara for help, but her expression had gone blank. She coolly ignored Wrench as he repeated his question.
"It looks like someone did go back to the parking lot this morning," Marcus told him. "But they or someone else has deleted the CCTV footage." There was a pause as Wrench absorbed this new information.
"Seriously? Goddamnit!"
"But it narrows down our potential suspects," Marcus added quickly, before his friend's temper could kick off again. "It's got to be someone with at least the same level of access to the CCTV footage as us, maybe even more." Sitara's eyes widened.
"Wait… d'you think it could have been Prime Eight?" Marcus made a face.
"Lenni would have a motive. You know, after the RenSense op." Lenni had never actually come out and admitted that her implant was infected with malware, but she hadn't been spotted using it since then, either. For someone who liked to shove her supposed superiority in people's faces, this was telling.
"So? We gonna question the shit out of her or what?" Wrench said impatiently. From the noises in the background, he was wide awake and practically tearing his garage apart in his eagerness to throw himself back into the investigation.
"Uh, that depends." Marcus eyed his laptop suspiciously. "Are you gonna try and murder Lenni?"
"Before or after she talks?"
"Yes."
"I will try, but I can make no promises," said Wrench. Marcus considered this.
"Close enough. I'll swing by in a bit."
I•I•I•I
Josh's cocoa had long gone cold by the time he'd finished talking. He sipped it anyway, not wanting to hurt his grandmother's feelings. Was that absurd? Probably. She had gone very quiet during his explanation, though her frown had deepened. The silence stretched on, and Josh was just about to suggest he call for a cab, when Frannie broke it with a faint laugh.
"Did you know," she said slowly, her fingers tapping absently on the table, "When I was nineteen, I was arrested during a protest in Oakland."
"What were you protesting?"
"The draft, mostly. Young men like you being shipped off to Vietnam. But there was other stuff, too. The same feeling of being crushed by this big, hungry machine we had no control over." Josh said nothing; he was trying to picture a nineteen-year-old Frannie facing down a squad of police officers in riot gear. He felt something start to slide into place - he couldn't put a name to it, but it was there, at the back of his mind.
"So," Frannie said, pulling herself back to the present. "You don't want your parents to know about your gang of ne'er-do-wells. I suppose that's your choice. But this business with you getting brutalised…" she trailed off and pursed her lips. "It it connected to this hacking business?" The word 'hacking' sounded foreign in her mouth.
"I don't know. Maybe." It was true - Horatio, Marcus, Wrench… at this point, Sitara was the only person who hadn't been snatched, arrested or had someone try to kill them. That was a worrying thought. "I can't stop. Please don't ask me to stop." Frannie rolled her eyes.
"I wouldn't do that to you." She sighed and took his empty mug, then shuffled off to the kitchen. When she returned, the corners of her mouth had turned up wryly. "When I was your age, I thought I was invincible too. Hold on to that - you can't change the world if you're scared all the time." Looking up at her in surprise, Josh felt something else slide into place. "Don't mistake this for me giving you permission to continue," Frannie told him. "That's not for me to give. It's your life, after all."
"But you're not going to tell mom and dad."
"No. I won't." For the first time since the night before, Josh smiled. It didn't last long - the scab on his lip stung in protest, and it ended up more of a grimace.
"That young lady who called me, what was her name?" Frannie asked suddenly. "Samara?"
"Sitara."
"She's your boss?"
"We don't really have-"
"-Pshh." Frannie flapped her hand dismissively. "I'm not stupid. Leader, figurehead, head honcho, queen bee, call her whatever you like. You listen to her, don't you? I'd like to meet her. She reminds me of me, minus forty years and twenty pounds." Just thinking about Sitara and Frannie in a room together was enough to make Josh break out into a cold sweat, but he nodded anyway. He suspected whether he actually agreed or not wouldn't make much of a difference either way.
"Okay."
"Good." Frannie nodded with an air of faint satisfaction. "Now then," she added, all trace of sympathy gone as she rubbed her hands together briskly. "Since you're feeling better, you can do the washing up."
I•I•I•I
A/N: If you're wondering who the hell Frannie is, she's from my other story, 'Good Samaritan'. It's a little bit silly, so check it out if that's your kind of thing. Or, you know, don't. That's okay too. I won't mind.