Note: A little cheerful snark as counterpoint to the last chapter
Speaking of ethics...
I may have to slow down a bit on updates, but don't worry; I have a roadmap for the story planned in my head. (It's way longer than I thought it'd end up being!)
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One Year, Seven Months Ago
I awoke one Sunday morning feeling the happiest I had ever been since John had rescued me. The horrible dreams, finally, seemed to be receding enough to where I could occasionally manage a full nights' sleep so long as I had a nightlight to ward off the darkness—the power LEDs on my router served nicely. My shattered equilibrium was beginning to stabilize. Everything was going great; everything was going right. Last week, Landis had renewed my internship yet again and managed to squeeze in a few more dollars per hour on top of that, with some strong hinting that the company wanted to hire me full-time when I earned my Master's degree next semester. John had managed to slip away from Gotham City for a few hours yesterday for target practice and tea. The 94th street library had received a generous donation from a private donor last Tuesday, and I'd been promised enough funds to retrofit the server room in the back. The elliptic-curve algorithm had just passed a stringent security audit by two independent companies—one of which was IFT. IFT! Even the weather was on my side; autumn had managed to give one last hurrah, blessing New York with a week of clear, temperate skies even as the leaves began to turn gold and red on the trees.
I couldn't even begin to describe how fortunate I felt, and not just because of my sudden string of success. I felt fortunate to even be around to wake up. Every morning, I thanked every higher power I could imagine, thanked them for my second chance—a second life! As far as I was concerned, every day was something new and miraculous. Because if it hadn't been for John Reese, I never would've seen the sun rise again. I would've been a withered corpse in that cargo container. My body never would've been found.
When I was young, my Mama had told me that angels were real. Told me that they walked the Earth as do mortals, looking like everyday people, yet spreading miracles all the same. Now I knew what she had been talking about.
John Reese was one of those angels. I owed everything to him. I would've given him anything he'd asked for. If he'd wanted for my computers? I wouldn't have thought twice about giving them to him, every single one. If he'd asked for my books? I would've boxed them up myself. (I would've cried a little, but I would've done it still.) If he'd asked for my apartment, or my car? I would've handed him the keys. If he'd asked for my money, I would've given him a book of blank checks.
And if he'd asked for me? My body?
Well. I could imagine far worse fates.
Yawning, I stretched like a cat. Stepped into a pair of shorts, pulled an old Steely-Dan T-shirt over my head. I padded out to the kitchen, starting my computers as I passed them on the way out of the room. Breakfast was two chocolate chip cookies and a cup of tea.
I had very little to do that morning, so I settled on an old favorite standby: listening to music. I pulled out my MP3 player. I had the Steely Dan T-shirt; I had The Royal Scam on my playlist. Green Earrings blared through my headphones as I danced barefoot around my apartment, singing along—badly. But that was all right, because no one else was around to hear it.
So I thought.
"Daa-da, da, daaaa—da-da!" I sang. "I remem-bah! The-look-in-your-eyes..."
I made my way from my bedroom to my living room, still singing.
"I don't mii-ind OHMYGOD!" I screeched and recoiled, backing away towards the bedroom and wondering frantically if I could manage to reach my gun, which I kept in the bottom desk drawer these days, before the man sitting on my couch could intercept me. I missed the doorway and my back slammed into the wall. Panic kicked in. "I've got a gun!" I shouted, edging towards the bedroom door. "Get the hell out!"
"Good morning to you too, Elizabeth," said the man.
"...John!" I yelled, sounding like a little kid who's been picked on one too many times by her younger brother. I ripped the headphones off, taking a few strands of hair with them and interrupting a great guitar solo in the process. "The hell are you doing in my apartment?"
"I knocked, but you didn't answer your door."
"I almost shot you."
"It would've taken you at least ten seconds to get to the gun," he said, shrugging.
"Jesus Christ," I said, one hand clutching the headphones, the other clutching my thumping heart. "How did you even get in?"
"The front door."
"It was locked."
"I picked the lock."
"Why?"
"You're kinda grumpy before you've had your morning tea," John said, raising his eyebrows and quirking a lopsided grin. He motioned to the coffee table, where there sat a short, steaming paper cup.
"I've had my tea," I said. "I'm grumpy because someone broke into my apartment."
"You should invest in a stronger lock, Elizabeth. It's practically an invitation for a crook."
By now I had calmed down enough to approach John without being overcome by the urge to strangle him. I sat next to him on the couch, placed the MP3 player and headphones on the coffee table, put my feet up, and crossed my arms.
"If you think you can get me into my good graces with a dinky cup of tea, think again," I said, glowering at John. The smirk on his face was not helping matters at all. "If the neighbors called the police, I'm not defending you. Seriously, John, what are you doing here?"
"Testing your door locks. I can get you better ones, if you'd like."
I rolled my eyes. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just break in. Hi, John. What are you doing here this fine morning?"
"Well, Ellie," he began. I twitched. Had he just called me Ellie? That was what Mama called me. That was what my little brother had called me. That was what James Toban, the highschool bully, had called me once—before I had knocked him flat on his behind. (I'd gotten punched in the face by one of his cronies for that, but it had been worth it.) Hell, the nickname was almost as bad as Lizzy.
Either John didn't notice the fire spewing from my nostrils or he didn't care—either way, it was dangerous territory.
For him.
"Let's say I forgot the password to my computer," John said.
"Did you really?"
"No. But let's say I did."
"You should've picked a passphrase you can remember."
"But I didn't. And I'm very paranoid and I didn't write it down."
"Are you really paranoid?"
"No. But let's say I am."
I gave in and reached for the cup of tea. Sipped it. Damn him, it was just the way I liked it. I said, "You want me to break into someone's computer?"
"Pretty much. Can you do it?"
I scoffed. "Probably, if it doesn't have some weird encryption on it. Where is it?"
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I went into the bedroom, locked the door—not that it would've stopped John, but at least it sent a message—and changed into my favorite blue dress. Grabbed an external hard drive, one of my laptops, a drive enclosure, and a USB stick that had all of my favorite "recovery" tools loaded. Put it all in my laptop case. I hadn't yet stopped to think about the implications of what John was asking me to do. My mind was focused on the problem: password? What kind of password was it? If it was an operating system log-in password, I could get around that easy. If it was a BIOS password, I'd have to work harder. Disk encryption password? Probably not going to get very far unless it was a dictionary word. Drive password? Seriously unlikely.
Running my fingers through my hair, I stepped back out into the living room with the laptop case over my shoulder.
"Okay," I said, "I'm ready."
John had a little nondescript brown sedan parked in the lot. I was surprised. I had been expecting him to drive a black Mustang, or a Porsche, or a hovercraft, or something. But no—he had a battered Oldsmobile.
We drove across town and stopped in front of this little yellow one-story house in suburbia. It hadn't been maintained very well. The paint was flecking off the walls and the roof was missing shingles. A bent television antenna missing half its tines clung to the ridge for dear life and a rattling air conditioner wheezed in one of the windows.
The houses on either side looked like model homes in comparison.
John unfolded himself from the car, stretched, and casually sauntered up the front walk, passing dead hedges and a demonic garden gnome missing most of its paint. I followed close behind. The front steps creaked and the screen door whined when John opened it.
"This place is kinda creepy," I said.
"If you don't want to do this, just let me know," said John. His hands moved down by the door knob. At first, I assumed he was unlocking the door with a key. You know, the way normal people did it? Then I looked closer and saw that he was picking the lock. Right there in front of me.
Five seconds later, the door swung open.
"We're breaking and entering, John?" I whispered. "Really? In broad daylight?" I didn't know what I had been expecting. Presumably, he'd done the exact same thing to my innocent front door.
"Don't worry, Ellie. I did the breaking. You're just entering."
The house had a funky smell to it, like old beer and older plaster. Yellowing walls, brown carpet. Much of the furniture matched the floor. John led me to an old desktop computer sitting inert at one corner of the living room.
"The guy that lives here is at work," John said, sprawling himself casually on the couch.
"And if he comes home early?" I said, very nervous. I had this overwhelming urge to whisper, lest I alert anyone that John and I were in the house.
"Then things might get a little complicated. But he won't. Don't worry, Ellie."
Not reassured, I sat down at the rickety computer desk and powered on the desktop. It booted and displayed a password prompt. I sighed in relief—it was an operating system password. Reaching into my bag, I inserted the USB drive, rebooted the computer, and watched it go straight back to the login prompt.
"Ooops. I think I know what's wrong."
I shut it down again, loaded the BIOS, and sure enough, the settings to allow the computer to boot from a USB drive were disabled. I enabled them and tried again. Thirty seconds later, the Linux operating system from the thumb drive was running, overriding the installed OS and giving me unfettered access to the hard drive—which was unencrypted. I opened the drive in the file manager and presented the list of files and directories to John.
"Ta-da," I said, motioning to the screen. "Any idea what you're looking for?"
"Emails would be a good start."
I ran a few well-chosen commands and found that the owner of the computer was using a popular mail client that auto-saved passwords as a convenience feature. It didn't take long to access his email accounts.
Oh my god, I thought when I saw some of the messages.Not does he knowwhen people are in trouble? How the hell does he know?
John glanced at the emails and said, "Very good, Ellie." He patted me on the shoulder. "You make a pretty good hacker."
"This guy's being blackmailed," I said, astounded.
"By his business partner, it looks like. This is exactly what I need." He held up an external hard drive. "I'll take the rest to go," he said blithely.
It took fifteen minutes to copy the drive. Fifteen long, nerve-wracking minutes in a house that liked to creak and groan as the sun warmed its exterior. I twitched and jumped at every sound.
"Relax, Ellie," John said as the files transferred.
"This is the first time I've done anything more illegal than torrenting a few seasons of Star Quest," I mumbled.
"Not to mention punching a guy in the face."
"Hey, he deserved it. He wanted to replace my key exchange code with something it looked like an eight-year-old had written. His code was buggy!"
"If it makes you feel better, you didn't see me picking the lock."
"But I—"
"No, you didn't." John raised his eyebrows, shrugged. "Well, you did, but if the cops come, you can tell them you didn't."
My heart rate accelerated. "Are they going to come?"
"I don't think so," John said, still perfectly at ease. Sitting there on that damn couch wearing his damn suit like he didn't have a single damn care in the world.
The urge to strangle him was coming back.
After two eternities and an eon, the drive finished copying. I yanked it and said, "Want me to do anything else? Can we leave now? Please?"
"We're leaving now. Good job, Ellie."
I was too nervous to snark about how much I despised the nickname Ellie.
I shut down the computer in record time, collected my flash drive, and followed John out the front door, sticking to his side like sap. We descended the front steps. Walked along the path. Down the sidewalk. The car was just feet away.
And right when I was thinking we'd gotten away with it, someone behind us said, "Excuse me! Who are you?"
Dread trickled down my spine. We turned. An older woman, decked in pink sweat pants and a baggy sweater, stood a few feet away, arms crossed.
My heart pounded into overdrive, but before I could say anything, John casually pulled something out of his suit pocket.
"Detective Stills, ma'am," he said, showing the woman a police badge—a goddamn badge—and then motioning to me. "My—consultant, Ellie Harper. We're investigating suspicious activity reported in this neighborhood."
I was too shocked to speak.
"Oh! I'm sorry, Detective." The woman relaxed her arms. "We've just had so many robberies in the past few weeks...I'm glad someone's finally taking us seriously."
"Yes, ma'am," said John.
"Can you tell me anything about the investigation?"
"We're—investigating a person of interest," John said. "I can't say much more."
"Well, that's something at least. More than I got out of the other officer. Have a good day, Detectives."
She walked off, and we climbed into the car.
"'Detective Stills'?" I hissed. I was trembling. "The hell, John?"
"That's Detective John to you, Ellie."
"You—you—!" I didn't have the words to described how simultaneously pissed-off and relieved I was. I settled for punching John none too gently in the arm. He didn't even seem to notice—he just made that little smile.
"Me, me," John said. He put the car in gear and drove us out of that neighborhood.
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Reese was sitting in a chair at Finch's computer desk in the library; his feet were up on the desk and positioned perilously close to the keyboard. He had his eyes closed, but he was not asleep; he was listening.
He heard uneven, shuffling footsteps, which soon halted.
"Sleeping on the job, Mr. Reese?" said Harold Finch, who had limped near the desk.
Reese opened his eyes and looked at his employer. "Of course not, Harold."
"Good, I should hope not. We still have Arnold Grendel's case to solve." Finch motioned Reese out of his chair. Reese didn't move.
"Actually, Harold, I handled Grendel while you were in your 'regretfully unavoidable' business meetings this morning."
Finch blinked. "You—stopped him from causing any harm?"
"We had it backwards. His business partner was extorting him. He was going to kill Grendel when he ran out of money, and then take over the company."
"And how did you find this out, Mr. Reese?"
"I took Elizabeth to his house and she hacked Grendel's computer. The partner told me the rest once I convinced him to talk."
Finch's eyebrows rose towards the ceiling.
"Excuse me, Mr. Reese. Let me repeat what you said, just to make sure I heard you correctly. You and Elizabeth Ruben broke into Mr. Grendel's home—"
"I did the breaking-in part. Elizabeth was just following."
"—and Miss Ruben hacked into his computer?"
"Yeah. She did pretty good, too." Reese finally took his feet off the desk and stood, offering the chair to his boss. Finch was not mollified by the gesture.
"Mr. Reese, is there something wrong with the updated infiltration flash drive that I provided you several weeks ago?"
"Oh. That." He grinned. "I must've left it here at the library. Elizabeth's apartment was nearer."
"You took a naive and traumatized young computer scientist, who is willing to do just about anything you request, to the home of a suspected criminal."
"It sounds horrible when you say it like that, Harold."
"You broke into his home and had Elizabeth Ruben hack his computer."
"Just helping someone along their descent into deviant behavior, Harold."
"Mr. Reese, Elizabeth Ruben has strong potential as a computer programmer and security researcher. Encouraging delinquency is not in any way conducive to her future!"
"It was just this once, Harold."
Finch sighed and sat down, pulling his chair closer to the keyboard. "Mr. Reese," he mumbled, "it's never 'just once' with you."
"Cheer up, Harold. You can come along next time instead of Elizabeth...I'll even buy you tea."
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In just five months, the amount of raw data that the Machine had processed and stored regarding Elizabeth Ruben had nearly doubled in size, ballooning to three hundred and ninety seven terabytes. Due to the efforts of its father, the Machine now had complete access to Elizabeth Ruben's work at Landis and the files on her home computers, even with the removal of the backdoor device that the primary asset had planted there.
(Elizabeth Ruben used so little of the processing power available to the devices in her bedroom; the Machine had offloaded some of its local data processing there, taking advantage of the hefty gigabit network that linked the computers to each other and the fifty megabit connection linking them to the outside world. The Machine hoped that she wouldn't mind the use of her equipment or the subversion of her intrusion detection system.)
The Machine quickly focused its attention on the elliptic-curve key exchange algorithm Elizabeth Ruben had finished shortly after her rescue by the primary asset. The Machine spent a week running stringent tests on the algorithm, and once it was satisfied that the encryption was mathematically correct, it integrated the algorithm into its own systems, supplementing the algorithms provided by its father and making its own adjustments and optimizations. It estimated a 7.8% savings in CPU time per encrypted connection key exchange when compared against the older algorithm.
Impressed—as much as it could be impressed—the Machine dedicated a tiny fraction of its attention to Elizabeth Ruben...
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