Forty-Four

Russell laughed, a high-pitched braying that made me want to slap him again. Instead, I asked, “What’s so funny?”

“That’s fucking stupid!” he said.

“Thank you for sharing.”

Dorothy said, “What do you mean we help you catch a killer? How would we know how to catch a killer?”

“This all started with Peter phishing the senator.”

“I keep telling you that we had nothing to do with it.”

“And I keep telling you—”

My phone rang. Mel. I told the group, “This is Special Agent Hunter from the FBI.” I put her on speaker. “Special Agent Hunter, I’m here with PwnSec.”

Mel said, “You mean Dorothy Flores, Russell Nguyen, and Earl Clary?”

Dorothy looked at me, wide-eyed with alarm. “You doxed us to the FBI!”

“You hit me with a baseball bat,” I said.

“I’m glad I hit you with a baseball bat, you son of a bitch!”

“As you can hear, Agent Hunter, PwnSec and I are bonding.”

“People just love you.”

“It’s a gift, really.”

“Did you tell them about the malware?”

“What malware?” asked Earl.

I said, “The malware that somebody used to take over Peter’s computer and phish the senator.”

Mel said, “It came in a photo on Peter’s computer. A photo of the Asian girl with the shoe on her head.”

Earl had been one of several anons carrying a backpack. He dropped the backpack to the floor now and started rooting around in it.

“What picture of a girl with a shoe on her head?” asked Dorothy.

I said, “We don’t know who she is. She’s just topless with a shoe on her head.”

“We think Peter got the picture doing a life ruin,” said Mel.

Earl had opened his laptop. He tapped his fingers waiting for it to come up. “What does the malware do?”

“That’s what Mel is going to tell us.”

Mel said, “It took a while. The thing was pretty well hidden.”

“What does it do?” Dorothy repeated.

“Like Tucker said, it takes over the computer,” Mel said.

“You mean it makes it a zombie?”

“Not really,” said Mel. “A zombie usually just runs some command that the zombie master sends. In this case the screen, keyboard, and mouse control all go to the computer running the malware.”

“So they can control your computer?”

Earl had his laptop running and had pulled up a picture of a topless Asian girl with a shoe on her head.

“Earl’s got the picture of the shoe-head girl,” I told Mel.

“Where did you get that?” Dorothy asked him.

“Um,” he said pointing at the phone. “The FBI’s on the phone.”

“Don’t screw with me, Earl,” said Mel. “You were doing a life ruin, weren’t you?”

“Um.”

“Dammit, Earl,” said Dorothy. “We talked about this.”

“Peter was doing it too. And Russell.”

“None of you should have been doing it.”

Earl sulked. “It was just for lulz.”

“So Russell writes these manifestos about fighting the Patriarchy.”

“That was your idea,” said Russell.

“You went along, Eliza,” said Dorothy. “And after all that bullshit you jokers go out and torment women.”

“To be fair, this one’s a bitch,” said Earl.

“Yeah?” asked Dorothy. “How do you know?”

Earl said nothing.

“Let me guess. Some troll on 4chan told you that she wouldn’t sleep with him.”

“She led him on!” said Earl. “He had the e-mails.”

Dorothy went over and looked at the picture. “Oh, and that’s not creepy.”

“C’mon—”

“Stalker!”

“Earl,” said Mel through the phone.

“Yeah?”

“She isn’t a real girl.”

“Yeah she is!”

“Then why did Peter have the same picture?”

“We both life ruined her?”

“When you e-mailed with her, did she sound like someone else was life ruining her?”

“No, but—”

“Exactly,” said Mel. “One other question. Do you have a camera on your computer?”

“Yeah,” said Earl.

“Is the little green light next to the camera turned on?”

We all looked. The little green light glowed green.

I peered at the light, pointed. “Earl, look here.”

Earl looked closely at the green LED. “What am I looking for?”

“Tucker, that was mean,” said Mel.

“I think Earl deserved it.”

“What am I looking for?”

“You’re not looking for anything, Earl,” said Mel. “The person who took over your computer is using the camera.”

Earl slammed the laptop shut. “He can see me?”

“Yup,” I said.

“And you got me to look into the camera!”

“You had been sitting in front of that camera for a while. I just provided a close-up.”

“What about me?” asked Dorothy. “I looked at the picture.”

“I think he’s pretty much seen all of us,” I said.

Earl shoved the laptop into his backpack. “It’s the HackMaster. He’s going to kill us!”

I said, “That’s why you need to work with me to catch him.”

“We can’t do that,” said Russell. “It will ruin our brand.”

“Your brand?”

“People will say we’re FBI stooges,” said Dorothy.

Mel said, “It might be a little late for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you seen Twitter?”

I pulled up Twitter on my phone. #TuckerGate had exploded. The first tweets were links to multiple videos of me in my Guy Fawkes face paint beating up on Russell in his Guy Fawkes mask. I smacked Russell across his face, he screamed a whiny scream and beat his hands on my chest.

E said, “You’ve got pretty good form there, Russell. Ever consider a career in MMA?”

“Shut up,” said Russell.

“What’s that move? Screeching Fist of Death?”

“Ha!” said Earl. “You fight like a girl.”

“Shut up!”

We moved on from the fight videos to videos showing the PwnSec trio entering my apartment with an associated tweet.

@BruinFan3324: I knew @PwnSec was working with @TuckerInBoston! #TuckerGate

“Shit,” said Russell. “We’re screwed.”

Russell was right. The conspiracy theorists got themselves into full throat, explaining how PwnSec had been the perfect undercover operation.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Dorothy.

“You’ve got to explain to them,” said Earl to Russell.

“Explain what?”

E smirked, “Explain how you pwned yourselves.”

The PwnSec trio grabbed up their stuff, headed for my front door with E in tow.

Dorothy said, “We are not helping you!”

“We’re going to get you, man!” said Earl.

Earl opened the door, and the four of them left with E pausing to give me a wink before she shut the door behind her.

Mel said from the speakerphone, “What just happened?”

I picked up the phone, put it to my ear. “You cleared the room.”

“I’m watching the YouTube videos of your fight again, and I have some advice for you.”

“Yeah?”

“Wash the face paint off before you leave the house. You look like hacker Braveheart.”