Sam lay on the lumpy mattress on the metal-framed bunk, staring blankly at the ceiling of his cell.
He felt he was going mad. Three days locked in a cell they called a bedroom. But it had wire mesh on the windows and the door was permanently locked, which seemed more like a prison cell to Sam.
Three days ago he had raced down the hallway to the front door of their apartment. Terrified of opening the door, but even more terrified of his mother opening it first.
The man standing there wore tactical black SWAT-type coveralls and a Kevlar vest. A pistol in a black leather holster was strapped, not to his hip, but halfway down his thigh. He was in his late twenties. Not short, but not tall either. His hair was slicked back in a style reminiscent of old fifties rock’n’rollers, as if to make him taller, and he wore dark aviator-style mirrored glasses which he removed as Sam opened the door.
The man was flanked by two others, in identical uniforms, but with automatic rifles slung across their chests. They stood back from the doorway, against the wall on the opposite side of the hall, and their gaze flicked left and right as if they were expecting trouble.
All three of them wore flesh-coloured earpieces with a curly wire that disappeared around the back of their necks.
Through a half-open door on the other side of the corridor, Louis, the Neanderthal twelve year old, watched wide-eyed.
“Sam Wilson?” the first man asked.
Sam nodded mutely.
“I’m Special Agent Tyler Ranger from the Department of Homeland Security, Cyber Defence Division. I am placing you under arrest on suspicion of government network infiltration and sabotage. You have the right …”
Sam didn’t get to hear his rights. Not just then anyway.
“What?” his mother screamed from right behind him. “What is going on? What are you doing? What …” There were quite a lot of “whats” in fact.
None of which phased the men in black at all.
Since then he had been here. Wherever here was. It was somewhere near Washington DC, that much he knew. A collection of old-looking buildings surrounded by tall trees and a high razor wire fence, a mile or two from the nearest town.
He had seen it when they had flown over, in the black Learjet emblazoned with Homeland Security logos, and again, up close, through the wire mesh windows of the black Chevy van that had brought him from the small airfield to his new home.
As prisons went, it could have been worse, he thought. The floors were a polished dark wood and the walls were timber panels, although he suspected they covered a more solid, concrete construction. There was a toilet in a cupboard on the left side of the bedroom, and a communal shower block at the end of the hallway.
It wasn’t a prison for adults, that much was clear. It was some kind of remand centre or juvie hall for youth offenders. Nobody that he saw through the mesh on the window looked older than eighteen.
There was a beep from the electronic lock on his door and it opened. It was one of the wardens, a hard-faced man with a gut that hung low over his belt, named Brewer.
Brewer looked around the cell before placing a large cardboard box on the floor. It bore a red label with the word “inspected”.
He scowled at Sam and left.
Sam got up off the bunk and opened the carton.
On the inside flap he found a huge heart drawn with a thick marker pen and I love you, Sam, written in his mother’s neat hand.
That was the only communication from his mother in three days.
The carton was full of clothes: shirts, shorts, socks.
Under the first layer of clothes had been his model of Thunderbird 2, carefully wrapped in a couple of T-shirts. He took it out and placed it on the windowsill.
Below that were some sweaters, although it was too warm for those just yet.
He started to lift them out, then stopped, his fingers nerveless. He let the sweaters slip back into the box, realising that he might be sitting in this same cell as the fall leaves drifted off their branches. As the cold winter winds began to howl across the state, and the first tiny soft snowflakes turned into flurries of white ice.
He had been so sure of himself. So confident of his own cleverness that he hadn’t ever really stopped to consider the consequences of his actions. He had charged around the country’s networks as if he was playing a computer game.
But it wasn’t a game. It was real.
He’d thought he couldn’t be caught, and yet the whole time they had been watching him, just waiting to pounce. That uncomfortable feeling he had had inside the Telecomerica network – that had been more than just a case of nerves or indigestion. Thinking he could fool them with a C-3PO mask at the hackers’ conference. What a joke that was.
But the joke was on him.
And there were consequences.
And at the moment the consequence was a cell, a bedroom, in an unnamed security facility somewhere near the nation’s capital.
He turned back to the window, picked up the Thunderbird model and hurled it against the far wall.
It shattered and fell.
He lay back down on the bed, and cried.
That afternoon he was allowed out for exercise in the courtyard for the first time. It did not meet his expectations of a prison courtyard at all. It had pleasant, grassy park-like grounds, bushy trees and a small pond.
There were about seventy or eighty other inmates, all boys, wandering around the courtyard in groups or pairs, or playing soccer on a flat patch of ground in the centre, using shoes to mark out goalposts.
Others played basketball on a concrete court over by the administration block.
Sam kept to himself in an empty area of the park. He had heard too many horror stories about life in prison to want to get on the wrong side of the wrong people. Right now he didn’t even know who the wrong people were.
The sky was that kind of indecisive overcast that could fade away to sunshine or intensify to showers just as quickly.
He sat on the grass, keeping his eyes low, careful not to make eye contact with the other inmates, and contemplated his own stupidity.
“G’day, mate,” a voice intruded and he looked up. He hadn’t heard the boy approach.
He was about seventeen, in Sam’s best guess, and wore a pair of thin, wire-framed glasses. His hair was wild. His mouth was open in a goofy grin that made him look a little soft in the head. Sam wondered if he was.
“Um, hi, I guess,” Sam responded. “Australian?”
“Nyew Zilder,” the boy said, which Sam took to mean New Zealander. That was a small island of the coast of Australia, he thought, or was that Tasmania?
The boy stuck out his hand. Sam took it and shook it. He seemed harmless enough.
“Jase,” the boy said. “They call me Kiwi.”
He pronounced it koy-wee.
“Kiwi like the fruit?” Sam queried.
“Like the bird,” the boy, Jase – Kiwi – said.
“Sorry, no offence,” Sam said.
“No worries,” Kiwi said.
“I’m Sam,” Sam said.
“What are you in for?” Kiwi asked.
“Stuff,” Sam said, not wanting to give away too much. “What about you?”
“Armed robbery,” Kiwi said.
Sam blinked. With his casual appearance and goofy grin, Kiwi didn’t look like a typical armed robber.
“Really?” he asked.
“True as a fart in a suitcase,” Kiwi said, although Sam had no idea what he meant. “I robbed a bank in Nebraska, armed with a computer.”
Sam laughed. “Computer fraud?”
Kiwi hushed him. “Don’t tell any of them.” He nodded at the rest of the inmates. “They keep away from me. Think I’m dangerous.”
“Sure thing, killer.” Sam smiled.
“So what are you in for?” Kiwi asked. “You’re cyber too, right? I saw the CDD van when you arrived.” He saw Sam’s quizzical look and elaborated, “Cyber Defence Division. Homeland Security boofheads.”
Sam shrugged. “They reckon I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been.”
“Where?” Kiwi asked.
“I’m not admitting anything,” Sam said.
“Yeah, yeah, same, same, but what did they accuse you of breaking in to?” Kiwi asked. He sat down on the grass beside Sam and crossed his legs like a first grader on a teacher’s mat.
Sam looked at him and decided that he was an unlikely snitch.
“The White House,” he admitted at last.
Kiwi’s jaw dropped. “No way.”
“That’s the accusation,” Sam said.
“The White House! That’s impossible. You’d never get near it. It’s on GovNet; it’s air gapped and therminated. You wouldn’t have got within a hundred miles.”
He wasn’t quite as dumb as he looked, Sam decided.
“The White House,” he confirmed.
“Oh, that’s funny.” Kiwi laughed. “How far did you get?”
“Could have peed in the presidential john if I’d wanted to.”
“No way of the dragon!” Kiwi breathed.
“How long have you been here?” Sam asked. “How long did you get?”
“Just three years,” Kiwi said. “‘Cos of my age. Woulda been worse if I’d been older. I got one year here at Recton, then a couple of years upstate. After that I’ll be repatriated. Sent home to New Zealand. Kicked out, in other words. How about you?”
“I dunno,” Sam said. “I haven’t been officially charged with anything yet, as far as I know. I haven’t seen a lawyer, haven’t been to court. Nothing like that. I haven’t even spoken to my mom.”
“Right,” Kiwi said knowingly. “CDD.”
“What does that mean? How long can they keep me here?” Sam asked.
“Long as they want,” Kiwi said. “They got me under the Fraud Act – that’s criminal. But they would have got you under the Terrorism Act. Since Vegas, if they call it terrorism, they can do what they want with you. You’ll stay here till you turn eighteen, then you’ll head upstate to a real prison. With the adult prisoners. Good chance that they’ll throw away the key and forget you ever existed. Sorry, mate, but I’d rather be in my shoes, if you know what I mean.”
Kiwi must have seen the look on Sam’s face, as he added quickly, “You should email your mum, let her know that you’re okay. There are computers in the library.”
“There’s a library?” Sam asked.
“Over by the admin block.”
“With computers?”