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  * * *

  As dusk turned into night, the CypherGhost sat on her stained, smelly couch in the dingy, darkened motel room. She brushed back her dyed bright-red hair and stared at her notebook’s screen.

  She had used Google to locate the aircraft that Avram and his mercenaries were on, flying back to Washington. She knew Avram would soon know it was she who had murdered DeSpain. She assumed he would place her death high on his priority list of things he had to accomplish.

  She figured she could hack their Cessna and make it crash in about an hour, after she was sure the aircraft had reached its peak altitude.

  * * *

  Ann practiced as she sat in the darkened bedroom, testing her ability to employ her brain to access the internet. As time passed, her ability became even stronger. She was still trying the next phase of her plan, to turn off a Bug-Lok inside another person. So far, over two hundred failures. But, if the Bug-Loks were accessible using near-field communication, she might be able to use the internet and a local network to… to do what? Was this even possible?

  She sighed. She reread the technical specifications and functional specs for the Bug-Lok device. Not clear.

  She finished reading about experiments that the CIA and KGB had separately done, trying to harness the higher powers of the human brain. Telekinesis. It had never worked, or so they reported. In effect, she realized, that’s what I’m trying to do.

  She kept trying. Nearly an hour had passed, and, every time, she failed.

  * * *

  It just happened. Thinking about how Ann had turned into her enemy made the CypherGhost furious, and she threw her hands up in the air and screamed with anger. To her surprise, she felt ash fall into her hair. She saw burn marks in the ceiling.

  She tried the same thing several more times and just once she saw sparks fly from her fingertips. After that, she spent hours practicing until she had mastered her ability to send fire from her hands.

  Soon, the CypherGhost had set fire to the telephone directory book, the hotel room’s New Testament, and a roll of toilet paper by aiming her hands at these objects, closing her eyes, and thinking “fire!” She looked at her hands. Her fingertips emitted a thin wisp of smoke as she focused intently on them. Sparks, small ones. Then she threw her hands at the motel room’s unplugged lamp and it burst into flames. She extinguished it with the pitcher of water she’d prepared beforehand. Cool! Just like the Emperor in Star Wars!

  * * *

  The aircraft carrying Avram and sixty of his mercs was nearing Dulles International Airport. The sky was dark outside. Avram was angry, and given his huge height and muscular bearing, the mercs all sat as far away as they could.

  He and Jon Sommers had nearly finished their conversation on cellphones but still had no actionable plan. No next step. They both knew they needed to find proof of guilt for the ninety-three associates of Cy DeSpain before they could terminate them, but neither could formulate a plan that had even a remote chance of working.

  The pilot’s voice advised them through the sound system to secure their seat belts. Still cruising at twenty thousand feet, the Cessna awaited tower clearance for landing.

  In seconds, they had emerged through a layer of clouds into the black of night. A few minutes passed.

  Avram spoke to Jon. “Let’s give this a rest. Maybe after a few hours sleep, I can continue trying to configure a plan with you. But right now, I’m exhausted.”

  Jon replied. “Right. I also need a break.” He terminated the call.

  Another minute passed. The hum of the aircraft’s engines suddenly went silent. Then the big plane tilted downward. Avram was instantly alert.

  Avram thought, something wrong here.

  Avram pulled his cell from his pocket. He punched in Ann’s number. “Ann, it’s Avram. We have a problem. Out aircraft is in a forty-five-degree angle of descent. I think the plane’s been hacked.”

  * * *

  Ann remembered her only other hack of an aircraft’s flight control system. “Avram, I’ll have to reboot the aircraft’s systems. It should take just over a minute for it to come up clean. When the lights go out on the aircraft, tell the pilot to fly manually, using instruments, until the system completes rebooting.”

  Avram replied, “Okay. I’ll do that now. Work quickly, Ann.”

  Ann pulled out her notebook and geolocated the aircraft using Avram’s cellphone, then ran a program that was supposed to reboot the aircraft. But nothing happened. She tried again with the same result. She realized this had to be the work of the CypherGhost, and the other hacker had figured a way to close off the entry point into the system. It was that system address that Ann needed to use.

  She’d need another way to hack the aircraft. If she was correct, anything she did now would be countered by the CypherGhost. Except, perhaps, hacking the CypherGhost herself.

  Ann was sure that she wasn’t prepared to battle the CypherGhost. This is suicide. But as Spock from Star Trek once said, the lives of the many outweigh the lives of the few—or something like that. Here goes. She focused on the aircraft and backtraced the location of the CypherGhost. Somewhere near Baltimore. She tried entering the other hacker’s mindspace. And failed. Ann focused harder, concentrating so hard that she was straining every muscle in her body. This time, something happened. She saw the CypherGhost from the other hacker’s eyes. The CypherGhost sat in a dingy hotel room filled with dingy furniture She saw the other hacker’s fingers on her notebook computer!

  Ann concentrated on the CypherGhost’s mindspace and saw her brain was filled with over one hundred active Bug-Loks. She felt her heart lurch in fear. She tried to turn one off. It worked! She turned off several more before the CypherGhost screamed.

  She could hear the CypherGhost talking. “Ann! I’ve been expecting you. You’ve become more powerful. You must have taken a thousand of the little buggers for you to be able to do this. I have an offer: Be with me. I am power itself. Together, we can rule the entire planet. I have the codex of my daddy’s contacts. Every one of them. I intend to run them all.”

  Ann kept working. She had turned off fourteen of the CypherGhost’s Bug-Loks. “Your father? Cy DeSpain was your father?” She turned off three in under four seconds. It was working faster now. Ann relaxed for just a second and almost lost the connection. She clenched her fists and pushed her own mind back into her enemy’s mindspace. Ann continued turning off the devices as fast as she could. She knew the plane would crash in under two minutes unless she could reboot the aircraft’s systems.

  The CypherGhost said, “Uh-huh. Daddy treated me and my mother like shit. I finally found a way to kill him.”

  “You know all your father’s co-conspirators are going to die within a few days.”

  “No they won’t. I can hack the orders Avram just sent, and call off their terminations.”

  “Fuck, no. And now, you’re trying to kill my friends.”

  “They’ll kill me if they can. I’m just doing what I must to survive.”

  “Well fuck you!” A few seconds passed while Ann continued destroying the Bug-Lok devices. Suddenly, she felt her hands burning. She opened her eyes. They were on fire! She ran to the bathroom, jumped fully clothed into the shower, and turned on the cold water. As she stood in the tub with water flowing over her burning fingers, she forced her mind back into the CypherGhost’s mindspace. There were only seventeen Bug-Loks left within her enemy’s skull. It would take just another few seconds more. She bore down and worked as fast as she could. And finally, DONE!

  Now the flowing water drenched the flames and she could see her hands were badly burned.

  Ann ran back to her notebook. Her hands were so terribly burned that when she tried to touch the keyboard, the pain from the burns was too much. She used her nose to key the last command. She watched the screen: “REBOOTING. American Flight Technology, Inc. REBOOTING ACCOMPLISHED.”

  Ann took a deep breath. She was sure the aircraft would recover. Now, she had to reenter the
CypherGhost’s mindspace one final time. A space with no Bug-Loks. Was that even possible? She clenched her lips. Time to find out. Inside the other hacker’s brain she found multiple lesions along the CypherGhost’s medulla oblongata where the Bug-Loks had been embedded. They were pulsating and seeping blood into the hacker’s skull. Ann took a deep breath.

  “CypherGhost, you are dying. I can see the damage.”

  “Well. Fuck you, too. I know you have a copy of Daddy’s files from his cellphone. Too bad all of Daddy’s files were encrypted by a PGP key. With me gone, you won’t be able to decipher them.”

  Ann searched through the CypherGhost’s brainspace, looking for anything useful. She could feel her enemy convulsing as more blood leaked into her brain. Time was running out.

  She worked as fast as she could, knowing she had little time left before CypherGhost stopped breathing and her consciousness blinked out. She scanned the other’s most recent memories.

  And there it was. DeSpain’s codex and his PGP cypher key to the files she’d already copied. She applied DeSpain’s key and located everything in one of the CypherGhost’s recent memories, a full list of names, titles, corporations, contact information, and a checklist of projects DeSpain had directed his team to work on.

  The ones relating to the plot of the coup d’état were all there. Ann copied the decrypted information into one of her four functioning Bug-Loks, and then sent the copy to the Drafts folder of the Swiftshadow Group’s website.

  Exhausted, Ann felt herself fall into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  The CypherGhost knew that she was dying. She could feel a growing pressure in her head where her brain was swelling, slowly filling with blood. Over a hundred tiny holes in her medulla oblongata were oozing away her life. The pain was beyond anything she could have imagined. She knew with certainty she wouldn’t survive the swelling of her brain, even if she sought medical attention. She tried to move but she couldn’t feel her legs.

  She sought out the Bug-Lok devices. No, they were all gone from her now, every last one. She was unable to move her hands.

  She tried to emerge from the alternate mindspace but she was trapped there, between the real world and the wrecked world of the alternate consciousness that the Bug-Loks had created before they were all ripped out from her brain.

  She tried to scream, but she couldn’t even do that.

  The CypherGhost knew she was seconds away from death. Had it been worth the ride? She decided it had been. For a short time, she had been someone important. What should my final thought be? She had fallen in love with Ann, and wondered if Ann had truly loved her. Doesn’t matter. She decided to leave Ann one final gift. She had very little energy left, but she focused intently on Ann’s mindspace and pushed her new-found talent into Ann. Did it work? Would Ann even notice? If Ann could project flames like I had been able, what will she use this new talent for? She tried to smile, but she felt her heart stop beating. Time stopped for her and she felt her consciousness swirl away.

  * * *

  Cassie returned from the office and found Ann lying on the floor in the kitchen, her hands blistered and severely burned. “Baby, can you hear me?”

  Ann was unresponsive. Cassie carried her to the elevator, then out onto the street. She hailed a cab and took Ann to the nearest hospital. “Her hands!”

  The ER nurse examined Ann’s hands and yelled for a doctor.

  * * *

  Four days had passed since Ann and the CypherGhost had fought. Ann remained unconscious and Cassie worried.

  She had read the memos Ann had sent her. She knew Ann and the CypherGhost had battled, and that her daughter had murdered the CypherGhost.

  Cassie couldn’t sleep and had cried so much her eyes hurt. She sat in Ann’s private room with her husband, Lee Ainsley. He sat next to her, holding her hand.

  “Don’t worry, Cassie. I’m sure she’ll recover.”

  “Maybe. Maybe. But so far, the doctors don’t know why she’s still unconscious. And even if she wakes, look at her hands! They’re bandaged and scorched. The doctors say they’ll be scarred. They aren’t even sure if she’ll ever be able to use them again.”

  “At least the doctors didn’t need to amputate them.” Lee turned away.

  * * *

  Ann could feel each person in the room as if she were inside their consciousness. She heard what they said, and she could sense their thoughts before they spoke. But she wasn’t conscious, and couldn’t tell if this was just some elaborate dream. She could sense the green walls of her hospital room. Cassie sat across from her bed, crying. Ann wanted so much to comfort her mom. She reached out with her mind, but “it” was no longer working.

  No matter. She would just have try harder to push herself into consciousness.

  She tried to open her eyes. Nothing worked. So, she kept trying. It took a few more attempts, but she was able to force her eyes open, just a bit. The walls weren’t green. They were taupe. She smiled.

  Cassie said, “Ohmigod. You’re awake!”

  Ann’s hands felt awkward. She couldn’t move her fingers, so she looked and saw layers of bandages covering her hands, making her fingers stiff. She tried to bend her fingers and found she could, but just a little.

  Cassie yelled at Ann. “What were you thinking, going after that rogue hacker all by yourself? You knew it was too dangerous!”

  Ann smiled and forced her fingers to give Cassie the middle finger salute. Her lips felt like plastic as she tried to form words. “I just played my part, Mom. But, I do love you and dad.” Her voice was slurred. Maybe some damage here.

  Cassie rushed to Ann and gave her a hug. “Well, I’m so glad you are going to be okay.”

  Ann hugged Cassie, her hands behind Cassie’s back. Ann felt her fingers grow hot. She moved her hand to where she could see it. Her fingers were white hot but she felt no pain. What the fuck? She calmed herself and the glow emanating from her fingers disappeared.

  Ann wondered what would happen if she told anyone, even her mom, what she’d become. I will tell no one. I don’t even know if I could repeat what I’ve done. So, now, this remains my most closely guarded secret, even more than my hack of the Russians last year. But now, I’m not just a hacker anymore.

  Chapter 2

  Ten Months Later

  Ann Sashakovich’s apartment,

  #211, 3950 Louis Road, Palo Alto, CA

  September 11, 3:34 p.m.

  Ann lugged her book bag up the stairs at one of the Student Cooperative apartments. A group of parents of Stanford University students had bought several apartment buildings on streets east of the university grounds. When parents bought a share, their child had the right to use one of the apartments. The buildings were basic for such an upscale area, but they were kept neat. Cassandra and Lee had invested, and Ann’s unit was on the second floor of the building on Louis Road. Ann had accepted a roommate to help cover the expenses.

  She exited the stairway at the top of the second landing and walked the hallway, looking for the unit the cooperative had assigned her. This was the start of her sophomore year. She had missed half a semester of her freshman year while recovering from her battle with the CypherGhost. Her grades, as a result, had suffered. Now she would have to ace her entire course load to get off probation.

  Her fingers hurt. The burns had healed into scars, but she always felt any pressure on her hands as a wall of pain. Six surgeries hadn’t helped much. Mom was right. I should have stayed out of danger.

  Apartment 212. She opened the door and saw a room almost exactly like the one she’d lived in a year ago. Looks like a room at a convent. There were two beds, and two identical dressers old enough to be antiques. The two desks looked like they had been used during one of the world wars. The colors of the furniture and walls were monochromatic gray. Depressing. She sighed and dropped the book bag on one of the beds. Whoever her roommate was, the girl was going to be late to the party. First one in chooses whichever bed she wants.
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  She selected the bed on the left side. Its dresser and desk were in the shade, so she wouldn’t have constant sun on her hands.

  She unpacked her book bag and took the stairs back to her car to retrieve her suitcase. The brown-gold Toyota Corolla was nearly five years old.

  By the time she had completed her third trip and emptied her car, her hands felt like she had destroyed them. She took a painkiller and rubbed lotion into the spots where the skin on her fingers had cracked open.

  * * *

  Laura D. Hunter thought, it feels so good to be back at school. She wore a shit-eating grin. She was finally out of her grandparents’ house. They always tried to micromanage her. Stanford was the only place where they couldn’t reach into her life and force her to live as they wanted her to. She climbed the stairs, looking for room 212. She prayed her roommate wouldn’t be a slob, like the one she’d had during her freshman year.

  The door was closed. She took the key she’d been mailed and pushed it into the lock. When she opened the door, she saw another woman on one of the beds. But she was in luck: the other woman had left the sunny side of the room for her. The other woman seemed to be asleep, so Laura made as little noise as possible, pushing her two suitcases in and closing the door as quietly as she could. Apparently, not without a sound though.

  Her roommate stirred and her eyes opened. She tried to hide her hands, but Laura couldn’t help staring at the extensive burns on her roommate’s fingers. “How?” she said, pointing at the scars.

  Ann frowned. “I fought and won.” She stared at her fingers. “But this was the cost.”

  Laura stood without replying. Finally, she said, “Does it hurt?”

  “All the time. Especially when I carry something. Hi, I’m Ann Sashakovich.”

  “Oh, sorry. I’m Laura D. Hunter. Most people call me Laura D. I see you chose the dark side of the room. Bad joke.”

  Ann smiled. “Yeah, I’m the virtual essence of the dark side. I’m majoring in computer forensics, so I guess ‘dark side’ is where I should be.”