The Silence of Six (17 page)

“They won’t fire in a public place. There’s too much risk of hitting a bystander. Besides, they’ll be surprised. They’re probably expecting some computer nerd who’s going to panic at the sight of government agents.”

“They’re trained professionals,” Penny said.

“I’ve avoided guys like them before, and right now I’m highly motivated. And I have a plan.”

“Let’s hear it,” Penny said.

“It looks like there’s someone posted at the bottom of each of the down escalators, with about one hundred feet between them and the elevators. You two are going to walk out of the store and turn right then quickly make your way around the floor to the elevators opposite us. Those’ll take you past the down escalator and the agent waiting there, but he shouldn’t pay any attention to you. You get in the elevator and head down to the garage level, while I head for the up escalator.”

“I tried running down an up escalator once. It didn’t go well,” Penny said.

“Slapstick city,” Risse said.

“I’m fast,” Max said.

“Anyway, they’ll see you,” Penny said.

“That’s what I want. We don’t have time to argue. You have to get yourself and Risse out of here, and this is how we do that. If you have another suggestion, I’m all for it.”

Penny scowled. “Fine. We’ll try it your way.”

“Thanks. Don’t worry, it’ll work. I’ll see you at the car in the parking lot.”

“What if we don’t?” Penny asked.

“If you make it and I don’t, release Evan’s files to the public. If you’re about to be captured, ditch or destroy the USB drive.”

Penny nodded.

Risse nodded at the elevators. “The one on the left is moving up from the ground floor now. I’ve been timing them. We should be able to catch it on the way down if we go now.” The elevator shaft and doors were glass, showing the occupants peering down as they ascended.

“Go,” Max said.

“Good luck,” Risse said.

Penny and Risse headed out of the store and turned right. Max gave them a head start and watched them proceed along the floor while pretending to window shop.

Max tightened the straps of his backpack. Then he took off like a shot.

He flew across the floor, weaving between shoppers and pumping his arms hard, hands spread flat. He moved so fast he felt like his feet barely touched the floor.

The tiles were much more slippery than he expected: When he rounded the corner he slid and nearly fell. But he caught his balance and kept going toward the escalator. The moment he hit its first metal step, he heard the agents call out the alarm.

Despite his guarantees to Penny, he wasn’t at all sure they wouldn’t fire at him. But on the escalator, he was pressed in close to other people and it would be difficult for them to get a bead on him with Max moving in the opposite direction of the flow.

He hurtled down the stairs two at a time and again stumbled. He grabbed on to the rubber railing and steadied himself before moving double-time, shoving his way past startled, then angry, shoppers.

“Sorry! Sorry, excuse me,” Max said as he squeezed past a large man on his left.

“Dumbass!”

“You’re going the wrong way!”

“You little shit.”

“Stop him!” The agent on Level Two was pointing down at Max from the railing. Max grinned when the man rushed past Penny and Risse to head for the escalator. Then the agent turned around and ran after the girls.

“Crap,” Max huffed. But he couldn’t worry about them, because the agents heading up to Level Three were turning around and trying to make their way down their own rising escalator.

Max felt like he was barely moving, but the bottom of the escalator was gradually getting closer.

A man in a gray pea coat grabbed at Max’s arm. Max felt himself being pulled backwards and up.

“Hold on there, kid,” the man said.

Max stomped on the man’s foot and yanked his arm free. He jabbed his elbow in the man’s back, forcing him to pitch forward with a grunt of pain.

“Nothing personal,” Max said.

Max continued down, taking long strides, hyperaware of how precarious his position was. But he kept his knees high and his eyes on his goal.

He leaped down the last five steps, landed hard, slipped, and tumbled to his hands and knees painfully. A man about to climb on the escalator backpedaled out of the way and a woman with a stroller veered to the side.

Max rested there for a moment, trying to catch his breath. His right knee throbbed from his fall. Then he looked up and saw an agent running straight for him, gun drawn.

Max stood and glanced up at the elevators. Penny and Risse were riding down in an elevator
with the agent from their floor
. They didn’t appear to be under arrest—he was ignoring them and watching Max intently. Max spun around and saw two more agents heading down an escalator, almost at the ground floor.

Max ran for the exit to the parking lot. As he passed a pillar, he darted into the bathroom entrance behind it, almost colliding with another teenage boy on his way out.

Max passed the three urinals and took a stall near the far wall. He locked the door and climbed onto the toilet seat.

He pulled off his hoodie and quickly reversed it so it was white with a black lining. He hung it on the door and grabbed handfuls of flimsy toilet paper to mop the sweat from his face and neck.

He pulled off his glasses and eye patch and slipped them into his back pocket. He dipped a hand into what he hoped was clean toilet water then slicked his hair back. Finally, he pulled on the white hoodie.

Max sauntered out of the men’s room and turned to his right, walking slowly toward the exit and trying to control his breathing.

When Max was a kid, he used to think that if he didn’t look at someone, then they couldn’t see him either. He’d walked around for a while like that, imagining himself cloaked in invisibility. He did that now, forcing his eyes to look at his phone, pretending to text, pretending to be invisible.

As he approached the exit, he looked up. In the glass doors’ reflection, he saw four agents standing by the pillar, watching the bathroom he had just exited. One of them was leaning against it, doubled over with his hands on his knees and panting.

Max smiled as the automatic doors parted for him. But even as he stepped outside, he steeled himself for another ambush.

No one accosted him. And he didn’t spot any other agents. Max headed for the stolen car, wondering if an agent would pop out behind other parked vehicles. If he noticed anyone suspicious, he would just keep walking and lead them away from Penny and Risse.

The girls were already in the car. Penny was behind the wheel, and Risse had her laptop on her lap. She unlocked the doors. Max glanced behind him one last time before opening the passenger door and scrambling into the back seat. He huddled in the footwell.

Risse started the car from her laptop and Penny drove slowly toward the exit.

“See? Told you we’d make it,” Max huffed. He was drenched in sweat and trembling all over. He shrugged out of his backpack and pressed himself lower.

“That was way too close. Hold on, one of their cars is circling the lot.” Ten seconds later: “Okay, we passed them. Stay down, Max,” Penny said.

“Make a left,” Risse said.

“One of the Feds actually rode in our elevator. I thought he had us for sure, but he got out on the ground floor without giving us a second glance,” Penny said.

“We got lucky,” Max said. If they hadn’t left the computer store when they did, they would have been caught in the act and pinned down. They would have been in cuffs before they even knew what was happening. “Where are we going?”

“Go straight for a while. Look for Skyline Boulevard then make a right,” Risse said.

“I want to take a look at those files. We certainly earned them,” Penny said.

“I think we should get off the road and stay low for a while. I found a spot that should be fairly secluded this time of day and is listed as a cell phone dead spot,” Risse said.

“That sounds perfect,” Max said. “It’s possible that some cameras caught me without my disguise.”

“Max!” Penny said.

“It’s not a big deal. We’ll be out of the area soon. They’ll figure out pretty soon you were in the mall today, but they don’t know where you’re going next,” Risse said.

“Especially because we don’t even know that yet,” Max said.

17

Risse’s secluded spot ended up
being a sandybeach at the base of a high cliff. Sure enough, they had zero cell reception or data coverage.

“This is beautiful,” Max said. There was a warm, gentle breeze coming off the sea. He lay back on the hoodie he had spread over the cool sand and closed his eyes. He breathed in the salty air and felt like he could just rest here forever, listening to the waves wash in and out.

“
My name is. . . STOP.”

Max bolted up and looked around. Penny and Risse were sitting side by side on an outcropping of rock and working on their laptops. Risse tapped a key and glanced at Max.

“You don’t need to watch this again,” Penny said.

Max got to his feet and brushed off his pants. He shook sand from his hoodie and sat down on Risse’s other side so he could see her screen too.

“Play it,” Max said.

Risse clicked back to the beginning of the video and pressed the spacebar. The picture was warped and out of proportion, stretched out on the edges from the convex lens and angled downward from the center. The top third of the screen on the stage in the Granville High School auditorium was out of frame, but Senator Tooms and Governor Lovett were visible on either side of it. They were in shadow, due to the bright video screen between them.

“Was this taken from Courtney’s laptop?” Penny asked.

“No, she was on the other side of the auditorium, closer to the stage,” Max said. “This looks like footage playing on a screen in the school’s security office. Someone recorded a copy on their phone.”

Max sucked in a breath and let it out slowly as Evan’s grotesque white mask appeared onscreen.

“My name is STOP.”

“What’s going on?”
Bennett Avery said.

“Do you really want to know?”
Evan asked.

“There’s your proof that this was transmitted live!” Risse said.

“I forgot about that,” Max said.

“That’s because the clips on the news were edited,” she said.

“He answered me! Is this live?”
Avery said.
“What do you mean you don’t know where it’s coming from?”

Evan:
“Just listen. Please listen.”

Three high-pitched tones blasted from the speakers. Max winced.

“What was that music?” Risse asked.

“It sounded like feedback from the sound system,” Max said.

Evan looked directly at the camera.
“What is the silence of six, and what are you going to do about it?”

That was where the video clip online ended, where the broadcast had been cut off. No one but the people in the auditorium had seen what happened next.

Evan pulled his hood down and slowly raised his mask. “Risse, look away,” Penny said.

Risse shook her head and kept her eyes glued to the screen, jaw clenched.

This time Max saw it clearly as Evan reached off screen and picked up the gun. The video feed scrambled for a second, like a damaged video file, or a malfunctioning old school video game screen.

Penny gasped as Evan nestled the barrel of the gun in his mouth. Max balled his hands into fists.

“
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry . . . ”

The background noise in the video blocked out Evan’s voice until the muzzle of the gun flashed and a loud bang reverberated through the auditorium.

Penny looked away. This moment had been playing on repeat in Max’s dreams, but he forced himself to watch it again. This was the truth.

Blood and bits sprayed from the back of Evan’s head as it snapped back. His body convulsed once and slumped backward then fell off-screen as blood speckled the camera and splashed onto the bulb of his LED lamp, painting the scene red.

Watching this play out again on Risse’s computer almost made it all seem like a special effect in a low-budget film. The gunshot sounded hollow. Unreal.

Lovett tucked her head down and plucked out her earpiece. Two agents ushered her quickly off the stage.

Risse let out a long breath. “God,” she said.

The screen on the stage went black and the lights came up. The video went in and out of focus for a second. Risse paused it.

Max cleared his throat. “Well. That still sucks.” He glanced at Penny. “Are you all right, Penny?”

“I’ll be right back.” Penny’s voice was strangled. She jumped up and ran across the sand, toward the water. Max heard her sobbing over the sound of the crashing waves. His eyes stung with tears as he heard her ragged gasps, as if air was being torn from her chest and she was drowning while standing ten feet from the shoreline.

Risse watched her sister with concern.

“Should I talk to her?” Max asked.

“She needs some time alone. She’ll be okay,” Risse said. “Penny’s the strongest person I know.”

Risse opened a video editing program and fiddled with it for a few minutes, looking up often to check on her sister. Finally, she tilted her computer so Max could see the screen better. It displayed both the public clip of the broadcast and the high-definition security camera footage of the auditorium side by side.

Penny returned drenched in seawater, cheeks flushed. She sat down next to Max as though nothing had happened. “What’s up?”

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She avoided his eyes.

“I synced up the two videos. Watch what happens when Evan says ‘Listen,’” Risse said.

“Please listen.”

Max heard those same piercing tones from before. “Ow.”

Risse paused the video and pointed to the footage of the auditorium. “Did you see what happened?”

“When those three tones played?” Max said.

“You only heard
three
tones?” Risse asked.

“Yeah. How many did you hear?” he said.

“Five. What about you, Penny?”

“Three.” She swept her damp hair away from her face and stared out at the ocean.

“Hmm,” Risse said. “I’ll play it again. Look carefully at the audience.”

She played through the tones again, pausing on the second note.

“What am I looking at?” Max asked.

“Focus on the students,” she said.

“They’re wincing. Some of them are starting to cover their ears.”

“What a discovery!” Penny said. “Maybe they’re doing that because it’s annoying.”

“But check out Tooms and Lovett. Look at Avery.”

“They look fine,” Max said. “Like they don’t even hear the tones.”

“Yes,” Risse said.

“
Why
do they look fine?” Max asked. “They had earpieces piping in audio, so they must have heard them clearly. The tones were bad enough in the noisy auditorium. If I heard that screeching right in my ear, I’d pull the earpiece out. They didn’t even blink. You sure the video is synced up?”

“Perfectly.”

Max saw Risse had included the time code onscreen, which matched the clock in the lower third of the CNN video clip.

“They probably have an audio limiter on their earpieces,” Penny said.

“Look. A couple of the teachers heard something, though.” Max pointed at Mrs. Tanner and Mr. Lundberg.

“How old are they?” Risse asked.

“Mmm. Mrs. Tanner is twenty-four, I think. Mr. Lundberg is thirty-one.”

“Thirty-one? What does he teach?”

“Band.”

Risse smiled. “And you really only hear three tones? Max, pause the video when you hear the first one.”

“Is this a hearing test?”

“Kind of.”

Max jumped the video back a few seconds and hit Play.

“
Listen
,” Evan said. A beat later, Max heard the first tone start and he paused it.

“There,” Max said.

“I hear two tones before that,” Risse said. “Hit F5 and play it again.”

Max did, and an audiometer popped up in the upper right corner of the video window. He saw it spike when Evan spoke, then twice more when he couldn’t hear anything, and three more times for each of the tones.

“If you don’t stop doing that, I’m going to throw your computer into the ocean,” Penny said.

Risse looked aghast.

“What is it, Risse?” Max asked.

“Mosquito tones. Sounds pitched so high, usually only kids can hear them.”

“Of course,” Max said.

He hadn’t messed with mosquito tones since junior high. They followed the same principal as dog whistles: When people are young, most can detect sounds up to twenty kilohertz or so. The older you are, the lower the range you can hear. Most teenagers can probably hear anything from seventeen to twenty kilohertz. Most adults: sixteen kilohertz or less.

“Some of our classmates used that as a ringtone. The teachers couldn’t tell when they were getting text messages.” Max smacked the table. “It was Evan’s idea. He distributed the ringtones.”

“Was he a musician?” Risse asked.

“No, but he loved music. He messed around with sound sometimes. Did some remixes, liked sampling noises from the environment and uploading them to sound libraries. He just liked doing stuff with technology, it didn’t matter what it was.”

“So he might have had better hearing than your average teen. And because I’m a little younger than you two, I can still hear the higher ranges. I need some time to work with this.”

Risse plugged in her oversized headphones and started working.

Max looked at Penny.

“Did you have any luck with that file we got back at the mall?” Max asked.

“I couldn’t open it.” She stared down at the sand between her toes for a moment before getting up and bringing her laptop over. She sat close to Max and balanced the computer on her knees.

“Okay . . . .” A terminal opened on her screen and she plugged in her USB flash drive. She typed some commands and a graphical interface appeared that showed one file in the directory, named mxyzptlk.txt. That was definitely from Evan.

“It’s encrypted. At least Evan was consistent and meticulous in his paranoia.” Penny tucked her damp hair behind her ear.

Max reached for the keyboard. “May I?”

Penny hesitated then nodded. He slid the computer onto his knees. Risse glanced over, splitting her attention between her screen and Penny’s as she manipulated audio samples from Evan’s video.

Max opened a plain text document and started typing the elaborate password Evan had sent him days ago. The wrong characters appeared. He looked at the keyboard and hit the D key then checked it on the screen:
E
.

“I forgot. You use Dvorak,” he said.

“You can switch it back to QWERTY mode—”

Max shook his head. He highlighted the text he’d already typed, deleted it, and started over with the new keyboard mapping in mind.

He typed a little more slowly than usual at first, but he was equally fluent in both layouts. He and Evan had used Dvorak as a very simple cipher back in the day; it was a convenient substitution code that wouldn’t occur to most people who had the old typewriter layout drilled into their heads.

“Like!” Penny said. “You’re full of surprises. But I tried that password, and the one from the CD. Unless he left us another clue somewhere, we’re out of luck. I might be able to crack it, but it could take months. We don’t even know how many characters the password is.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Max said. “Evan wanted us to have this file, and fast. The clue is right in front of us. Does this word mean anything to you?” He pointed at the file name.

“Mix . . . izip . . . . Mix-el-plik . . . ?”

“Mxyzptlk.” Max pronounced it
mix-yez-pit-a-lick
. “It’s from Superman. He’s a magical imp from the fourth dimension.”

“So?” she asked.

“He’s Evan’s favorite comic book character. Like, ever. He felt like he was a kindred spirit. He wanted it for his handle but someone else was already using it.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Penny said.

Max opened mxyzptlk.txt in NewCrypt. A password screen popped up. He waggled his fingers over the keyboard then started typing three letters at a time, referencing the password he had typed in the adjoining window.

“I told you, I already tried that,” Penny said.

Max missed a letter, and paused. He had completely lost his place. He pressed his finger on the Backspace key and glared at Penny while the line of asterisks diminished.

“Sorry,” she said.

He started over from the beginning, meticulously copying the characters into the password field. He hit Enter and a dialog box appeared showing a decryption progress meter.

Risse pulled the right cup of her headphones off her ear.

“How’d you do that?” she asked.

“That password definitely didn’t work before. I tried it, like, three times.” Penny leaned over to glare at the screen.

“The only way Superman can defeat Mr. Mxyzptlk and send him back to his dimension is to trick him into saying his name backwards. Kel-tip-yix-em,” Max said. “K-L-T-P-Z-Y-X-M.”

“That’s awesome,” Risse said, at the same time that Penny said, “That’s dumb.”

“You reversed the password he’d already given you,” Penny said.

“We used to trade messages back and forth all the time, and we realized we could use the same password twice if we just switched it around,” Max said. “So on the way out to Evan, he would use one password, and when he sent his reply, I would enter it backwards.”