Free Assured Destruction by Michael F. Stewart Page B

part’s easy as long as I know the IP address, but creating a trojan like this won’t be simple—
    Oh no! What the …
    Beside me, Hairy’s computer goes blue. I cry out. Blue is worse than dark. Dark means no power. Blue means there’s something wrong with the operating system or the hard drive. They don’t call it the Blue Screen of Death for nothing. What’s worse, the timing can’t be an accident.
    I type faster. These are my friends, my family. I’ve spent weeks rebuilding and months creating them.
    Frannie goes blue. My heart rams against my ribs. I have to make a decision: Save the hard drives or get this code up? My dad. My mom. Everything could be lost.
    I dive for the wires.
    JanusFlyTrap’s blue … good excuse for my essay? No one will buy it. I pull the first plug. Heckleena’s gone. Tule’s gone. I tear all the plugs from their seatings in the powerbar. On the ground, I clutch them like a bouquet of flowers. It’s too late. My image of my dad beckoning blinks away. The only plug I yanked in time was Paradise57. My hands and knees press into the concrete floor. It’s possible that this is just a system error and I can recover all my files, but if this was targeted, then everything could be gone and all I’d have left are memories.
    Gumps is still flashing green at me. Of course—he’s not connected to the Internet. Nothing could have infected him. I still hear a humming and slap my forehead: the backup server. I sprint to it, but just as I arrive, it shuts down all by itself.
    I shriek. And crumple to the floor, where I sob.
    A minute later, my iPhone proximity alarm goes off—I really need to delete it from the app store, makes me look bad. But when I wipe my eyes, I see Peter at the base of the stairs, watery eyes now clear.
    “Quite the network you have here,” he says.
    I bite my lip. “Had here. Something just shut me down.”
    “Virus?”
    I shake my head. “There is no way a virus could have gotten in. I’m so careful.”
    “Sorry to hear that, Janus.” He looks uncomfortable. “We heard the scream … and your mom can’t, well, you know.”
    “I know.”
    “Not that that is important,” he adds. I look at him weirdly, not inclined to be nice to anyone tonight and failing to care that my view of him might be important. If I just got nailed with a worm, why should I let him off the hook? “I’d prefer she could walk, of course,” he says, fumbling around for the right words. “Your mother is very special to me.”
    Special is such a loaded term. If someone called me special in school, I’d flip out. So I say, “Great, my mom must think you’re special, too.”
    He looks at his feet. “You’re okay, then?”
    “Yeah, thanks.”
    And as he walks back up the stairs, I realize that now another someone can access my private space. I don’t like it. Not while my mother’s business is at stake. Not with her heart on the line.
    I plug Hairy back in and try rebooting. On the screen blinks the message to please install the operating system. I shut the computer back down and sidle over to Gumps. 8-ball question: Is Peter using his money to date my mom?
    Response: Outlook not good.
    I stare at the dark screens. The only light is from the green phosphorescence of Gump’s monitor and the occasionally bleeping iPhone, full of Facebook notifications.
    I cry and wonder what to do. I can’t bring myself to see how bad the damage is on Shadownet. I dread school tomorrow. I don’t want to go upstairs and be around Peter. Shadownet is mortally wounded. I pull my sweater over my head and huddle against the cooling server.

Chapter 12

    I hunker down in the front seat of my car in the school parking lot. As I wait for the bell, the tape deck (you heard right) is playing one of my mom’s old The Who tapes: Who are you? Who, who, who who. I’m avoiding everyone. I don’t want to hear the rumors. The snide remarks. I now know why I have a hundred Facebook notifications. Someone