Free Zero Day: A Novel by Mark Russinovich, Howard Schmidt Page B

the most desirable catch on campus. When her dorm sisters first realized that “Four” was interested in their nerdy roommate, they’d been envious.
    Daryl had never before been courted, not like that, and found the experience interesting as a form of minor cultural ritual. Four was pleasant when he wanted to be but, she’d told her mother, not really quite smart enough for MIT. She wondered why he’d come.
    “Because Dad wanted me to attend Yale,” he’d told her one evening when she asked. “Anyway, I like it here, better since meeting you.”
    That night they’d gone to bed for the first, and only, time. In his room Four had stopped her from undressing, telling her he wanted the privilege for himself. She’d stood unmoving as he slowly unbuttoned and unzipped her out of her winter clothing. She’d observed the experience as if it were occurring to someone else, as if she were standing to the side. When at last she was down to her bra and panties, Four had pressed her to the bed, removed his clothes, then lay beside her. Then he slowly removed her bra and panties, breathing heavily as if lost in a trance.
    It was January, and from the uncovered window silver moonlight spread across her now nude body. Four stopped as she lay naked and said over and over, “Magnificent. Magnificent.”
    The sex was better than she’d expected. Daryl could see why a woman might get excited over it, but afterward Four had been distant, as if wrapped in his own world. He called repeatedly after that night, but she’d never gone out with him again. She understood what was going on and was not flattered.
    Throughout their weeks of dating, Four had repeatedly spoken of her beauty. Then he had worshipped at its altar. She had no desire to be any man’s idol. From that night forward she committed herself to her work. No more dating, no more pawing. She wore baggy clothes, no makeup, and buried herself in her studies.
    She counted herself the better for the experience. Four, she realized, had been full of himself, certain he was God’s gift to women, to her, to the world, when in fact he was a self-satisfied, egocentric snob. She considered herself well rid of him, and from this had come her utter contempt for egocentrics.
    Four had not taken rejection well. He spread stories that Daryl was a slut, that he’d dropped her because she’d cheated on him. His stories only seemed to increase the attention of the other male students, and no hiding beneath oversize clothes could conceal her obvious beauty and latent sexuality.
    As a release, and because she’d discovered her aptitude for sport, Daryl played intramural soccer after moving to Stanford for graduate work. She threw herself into the game and, if not the star of the team, was taken seriously as a player. On weekends she backpacked and hiked throughout northern California and parts of Nevada. She skied at every opportunity.
    When Daryl first met Jeff, she was working in cyber-security, performing virus analysis, at that time a new field. A rising star in the NSA, she’d played a major role in identifying the hackers of two high-profile viruses. Overall, though, she was bored and generally annoyed by the obvious attention of men to her physical appearance. She’d learned, however, that it could work to her advantage. As for marriage and family, she had her work and found it endlessly fascinating.
    After that first meeting, she’d seen Jeff at two others. Following the third a small group had gone for coffee together. It devolved into just the two of them. Their conversation had been on the merits of the Windows operating system versus that of the Macintosh, and in such detail they’d driven the others away. Not once, she realized, had he looked at her breasts, and for the first time since they’d developed, she was disappointed. What was the point of great tits if a man who interested you didn’t notice?
    Over the telephone she’d once complained about it to her mom, a