Cyberking Reclaims His Throne novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Cousin John

Melinda takes the nameless man home, and he out-hacks her roommate's server in minutes.

I signed him out of St. Brigid's at nine that morning as my cousin John.

The nurse at the desk didn't ask for ID.

She looked at his bandage and my red eyes and slid a clipboard across the counter.

"He's lucky to have you," she said.

I wrote my own address on the form and felt my stomach drop.

He walked out beside me in a borrowed gray sweatshirt, holding his ribs.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked in the car.

"You said no police. You said she would know."

"That's not a reason."

"It's the only one I've got," I said, and merged onto Powell.

"I watched a woman look at you like you were a broken lamp. Then I watched her cry on TV. I want to know why."

He was quiet for a block.

"What if I'm someone terrible?"

"Then I'll find out before the cops do," I said.

"Which is a bad plan, but it's mine."

My apartment is the top half of a duplex in Southeast Portland, with a leaning porch and a roommate named Oz Quigley.

Oz was at the kitchen table in a hoodie printed with cats in astronaut helmets.

He was eating cereal at ten in the morning with three monitors lit up behind him.

He looked at me, then at the stranger with the bandaged head, and set down his spoon.

"Mel," he said.

"Is that a guy?"

"Oz, this is John. John, this is Oz. John fell off something. He needs to stay a few days."

"Fell off what?"

"A building."

Oz stood up so fast his chair went over.

"You brought a man who fell off a building into our house?"

"He's got nobody."

"He's got a bandage the size of a bowling ball."

"I can hear you," John said mildly from the doorway.

Oz stopped and pushed his glasses up his nose.

Then he looked at the TV in the living room, which was still on mute and still showing Yvette Vandermeer in her white coat.

Then he looked at John again.

"No," he said. "No way."

"Oz."

"That is the Meridian guy. That is Jonas Wray."

"I know. I saw it at the hospital."

"He doesn't remember anything," I said.

"Not his name, not Yvette, nothing. And she's the one who pushed him. I saw her on the roof."

Oz sat down on the arm of the couch.

"You saw her push him?"

"I saw her look over the edge after. Same thing."

"It is not the same thing," Oz said, but weakly.

I made John sit on the couch while I ran the kettle.

I put his own photo in front of him on my laptop.

Jonas Wray, thirty-one, founder of Meridian Labs.

A mouth that looked used to being listened to.

John stared at the face for a long time.

"That's a good haircut," he said finally.

"That's all you've got?"

"I look at him and I feel nothing. It's like looking at a stranger's school picture."

He pressed two fingers to the bandage.

"I'm sorry. I know that's not what you wanted."

"I didn't want anything," I said.

"I wanted to know if you were going to bleed on my couch."

That got a real smile out of him, short and surprised.

It changed his whole face, and for one second I forgot to be angry at anyone.

Then Oz's router started to beep.

It had been beeping for a week.

It was a cheap, old, hateful thing, and the internet in our apartment cut out every day around noon.

John's eyes went to the blinking light.

"That's running firmware from two thousand nineteen," he said.

"The admin panel's still on the default login. Do you mind?"

I handed him my laptop out of sheer curiosity.

He typed with his good hand, awkward and slow at first.

Then something happened to his fingers.

They stopped hunting for keys and started to flow.

In ninety seconds the router had a new password and a patched firmware.

It also had a log of every device that had tried to knock on it in the past month.

"There are eleven strange devices," he said. "Three look hostile. Your neighbor's smart fridge is pretty rude, too."

Oz made a strangled sound.

"My server," he whispered.

"I run a game server in the closet. It's got a custom firewall. Nobody gets in. I've run it for three years."

"Which one is it?" John asked.

"The one called Brickhaven."

John looked at the screen for about four minutes.

Oz stood behind him, breathing.

At the end of the four minutes, John turned the laptop around.

On the screen was Oz's own admin console, with the server's name at the top and a cursor blinking in a field that said root.

"Your firewall is clever," John said.

"But you left a debug port open for yourself. Everyone does."

Oz did not speak for a very long time.

"I'm going to cry," he said at last.

"Please don't."

"I might."

I laughed out loud, the first time since the alley, and it surprised all three of us.

Then three hard knocks hit the front door.

They were slow and even, the knocks of someone who had never had to knock twice.

"Ms. Lindeman?" a man's voice called through the wood.

"Portland police. We're doing a welfare check on a patient who left St. Brigid's this morning."

I had written my own address on that clipboard, and somebody had read it.

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