Seizure Page 11
"No. You gotta see this. We gotta talk, and you gotta see this. Not necessarily in that order. Get moving. Now." There was a click as Janet hung up.
He hung up with a frown. Janet sounded excited about whatever it was, but Janet got excited about a lot of things, especially computers. Even so, Kent wondered if her discovery had anything to do with his theory.
He replaced his old shirt with a new one from his closet, then hurried down the stairs, pulling on his coat.
"Gotta go, Troy," he yelled. "Be back in a few hours with Chinese, okay?"
There was no response from upstairs, but Kent felt like his son approved.
He rode the taxi down to Janet's house, telling the driver to go as fast as the law allowed. He arrived to find a shroud of snow covering the Winnebago out front. Kent walked up the steps to the front door, brushing off snowflakes.
When he rang the bell, the door exploded open almost immediately. Janet faced him, her hair in a loose ponytail fastened by a thick rubber band, giving her a frenzied appearance that her wide-eyed gaze only intensified.
"Oh, man," Janet said, "wait'll you see this. It's like nothing I've ever seen."
She ran back into her apartment, leaving Kent to walk in and lock the door behind him. She was busy in the corner where she had hooked Morgan's computer up to her own equipment. She was feverishly flicking switches that caused her computers to hum to life.
"Okay," he said, "you got me here. What's so important?"
"This," Janet said. She pushed the Enter key on her computer's keyboard.
A large message blinked on the monitor's screen, accompanied by a warbling noise. The message read "Warning! Virus Source Detected."
He found an empty chair and sat down in front of the computer. "So you found another virus?"
"Not just any virus. Oh, no. This is the most sophisticated virus I've ever seen. It uses bits and pieces from other viruses. The password technique from the SerVex virus, some stuff from the Derpy8.i and Alameda viruses, but in other areas, it's totally unique."
He frowned at Morgan's computer. "And you found it on Vic's computer?"
Janet sat down at her own computer. "That's right. I checked out the monitor, like you said, but couldn't find anything. So I checked every inch of hardware on it. Hard drives, DVD drives, you name it. Zip. So then I checked the files, for no reason. Nothing. Finally, just for the heck of it, I installed an experimental virus-detection program I wrote last week. Took some number-crunching, but there it was, big as life. A virus."
He shrugged. "Okay, so you found a virus. Other than how well it's written, what can you tell me about it?"
"I'll tell you what about it. It's the most amazing virus I've ever seen. It works as a worm and a time bomb. Once it's in the system, it copies itself onto any media inserted in the computer later on, and it searches for an Internet connection. If it finds one, it starts trying to email itself to other computers. If it finds a local network, it copies itself onto any other computer on the network. But it does it through some really tricky back doors I've never seen before."
"Wow," Kent said. "This thing really goes."
"Exactly. But check out what it does."
Janet clicked on an icon on Morgan's computer. A word processor appeared on the screen. "The virus was programmed to go off last Sunday evening at seven o'clock."
Kent looked up at Janet, his eyes widening. "That's a few minutes before Victor died."
"Exactly. I kind of figured out what's going to happen from the code, but I've been waiting until you got back to try it. Watch this."
They stared at the blank blue screen for a moment, then it went black. Just as Kent was about to ask if something was wrong, the screen lit up again. But it wasn't a word processor. It was a three-headed wolf.
The wolf stood on a desert landscape. Its heads raised to howl at the moon with startling clarity. The heads lowered and settled their gaze on the screen. Kent felt a quiver in his stomach as the wolf broke into a run. It launched towards him, its dripping fangs bared, until its mouth filled the entire screen.
It went black.
"What happens next?" Kent asked.
Janet leaned back in her chair with her arms folded. "I dunno. The rest of it's been encrypted so I can't tell much, but from what I can piece together, it flashes a series of colors at various speeds. I think it's a random pattern. I was waiting until you got back to try it."
Kent's throat grew tight with horror at Janet's words. The information he had gained from the trip to Seattle was teaming up with Janet's discovery to form a terrifying combination.
"Shut the computer off," he said, adding in a louder voice, "now."
Janet gave him a sideways glance as she switched off the computer. Amidst the low whine of the computer's fan powering down, she faced him. "You know what this is?"
"The wolf? No, although it looks familiar. But that didn't kill Victor. The flashing lights did, and I think I know how. At the Institute, they told me about an experiment they were doing on VGRS. They managed to create a program that flashed a series of colors in a frequency that caused fatal epileptic seizures in anyone who saw it."
"What happened to it?"
"They claim they erased it from their computers. But it was on their computer system, which is hooked up to the Net. Janet, could someone have broken onto their system and stolen the VGRS program?"
Janet shrugged. "Anything's possible. A good hacker could do anything. Maybe they put a virus on something popular online, like a program that displayed naked babes, and the virus hacked into their system to get it. Or our mysterious killer might have worked at the Institute, and stolen it right out from under their noses."
"So someone got the VGRS program, and made it into a virus that killed Vic."
"That's a theory," Janet said through another mouthful of chips. "And I think the graphic is there to draw your attention to the screen, so it can hit you with the lights. I think the full version actually has some of the color frequency hidden inside it to paralyze you. Once you see it, you're already dead. Is that why you had me shut off the computer?"
"Yeah," he said. "A few more seconds, and we'd have ended up like Victor or Cindy. But my next question is, how did this guy get the virus onto his computer?"
"There's a lot of ways. Like I said, this virus was designed to spread itself as quickly as possible. Vic could've gotten it from an infected USB drive or on a website."
"All those other cases, they might have been victims of the virus, too. It's all over the place. You think Morgan's death was just a random accident?"
She leaned forward again, thumping her chair legs on the floor. "Well, Kent, here comes the bad news. I checked the virus on Vic's computer. It turns out it was written specifically to infect his type of computer. It's what we in the biz call a 'cruise virus,' just like a cruise missile. Whoever wrote it intended for him to get it. But Cindy Diamond was using a laptop. I suspect her virus was written just for her, too. The Kachina High School's system was a network of Macs, so it wasn't the same strain. Again, not an accident."
She leaned forward to rummage through a pile of papers on her desk. "But that's not the worst part. I checked my computer. The virus is on mine, too."
"What?"
"But it's not the same virus." She found what she was looking for, a printout of a section of programming code. She waved it at Kent. "This baby is all-purpose. It's designed to work on any and all IBM-compatible computers. And I checked some computer systems of my clients. Most of them had it, too. There was even a Mac version. By my estimates, I'd say one in every three computers has this virus."
She unhooked a calendar on her wall. "Now here's the fun part. This new version of this virus is a time-bomb set to go off at midnight in three days."
"Wednesday the twenty-second. Why?"
She shrugged. "No idea. I checked every calendar I could find for a significance on Wednesday the twenty-second. No soap. Whoever made this virus is working on his own timeta
ble."
He leaned forward in his chair. "Okay, so what've we got? We've got a virus designed to give people fatal epileptic seizures that uses a program stolen from an epilepsy research institute. The program is designed to go off in three days, and it's on most of the computers in America."
"And that's just in the U.S. I wouldn't be surprised if this virus has spread all over the world. I've never seen one spread that far, but we have no idea how long it's been circulating. It's designed to lie dormant until Wednesday the twenty-second, so nobody's looking for it. And it can bypass all-purpose vaccination programs by encrypting itself, so it's virtually undetectable. It could have been spreading for years."
"Three days," Kent murmured. "In three days, this virus is gonna go off and kill anyone who sees it. That could be millions of people."
"And no one would have suspected it until it was too late."
"But we caught it in time. That gives us an edge. Can you write an anti-viral program for it?"
She leaned back in her chair again. "Eventually? Yes. In time for the release? No."
"Oh, come on. You fight viruses for a living."
"That's right. Which is why I could find it at all. But I'm not Wonder Woman. I write vaccination programs for viruses that already exist. Usually just an old virus someone modified. But this is totally new, something I've never seen before. It'll take time to reverse-engineer the code, break it down, study it, and work out a program to detect and purge it."
"How much time?"
Janet sucked on her lower lip, then said, "Maybe a year."
"A year?"
She nodded. "And that's being generous. The virus encrypts itself onto programs in the host computer's hard drive. It's scattered all over, not all in one place. I've managed to piece together enough to get a vague understanding of it, but to write an anti-viral program, I'll have to patch the whole thing together from millions of lines of code. Then I'll have to go over the virus, figure out how it works, and find a way to shut it down. There's no way I could crack this virus in three days, even if I worked around the clock, even if I had a whole team working with me."
Kent ran his fingers through his hair. This was bigger than he had ever imagined.
"Kent, we gotta tell somebody."
"Like who?"
"I dunno. The police, for a start."
He rolled his eyes. "The police don't know anything about computers. Tell them about a computer virus and they'll put on rubber gloves before they use their PCs. They wouldn't understand."
"Hey, police aren't dumb. Some of them have cyber-crime divisions these days. And we can explain it to them. Make them see the danger."
"Well, we can try, I suppose. We'll have to plan out what we're going to say to them. Gather and organize all the evidence."
Janet swiveled her chair to face her desk, wriggling her fingers in the air. "No problem. I can't sleep anyhow. I'll get to work on putting together the virus, maybe come up with something to show the cops."
"Great." He stood up. "I need time to think about this, anyway. We both do. Besides, I just climbed off a three-hour flight from Seattle, and I'm beat. We have a few days, we can pick this up in the morning."
"Fine. But there's one more thing. I told you once that everyone writes viruses differently. It's like a fingerprint, right? Well, I've studied this virus and it's very familiar. Reminds me of Nightshade."
"Nightshade," Kent said. "What's that?"
"It's a virus that went off in the early eighties. It would erase your hard drive and reset your monitor to burn it completely black. Just before it did, it would display a message, 'You have just drunk from the nectar of the Nightshade.' It destroyed millions of computers all over the country, including the system at NASA. It still pops up every now and then. They never caught the guy who did it, but he did send a letter to Kilobyte magazine to gloat about it. Called himself Pluto."
"So you think Pluto is behind this."
Janet nodded.
He stood up, brushing dust off his clothes. "Great. At least we have an idea who we're looking for. If we can catch Pluto, we'll have a much stronger case."
Janet swiveled her chair to face her computers. "Let's hope so."
* * *
Troy sipped a Coke as he watched the conversation on his screen. It was mostly a debate about the significance of the "Schizoid Man" episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The familiar chime came again. Troy checked his mailbox to find a private message.
Troy jumped to life. He exited the forum he was on, then went to the VirtuaChat system. He selected the octopus again, and a few seconds later, he was floating through the virtual room of Pluto.
He was already there in his hulking green avatar. It didn't seem as scary to Troy as it had the first time he had seen it. He knew now that Pluto was a cool guy. Troy guessed that he was another kid, just like him, maybe a little older in his late teens. Pluto was funny and interested in everything Troy was. They even watched the same shows and listened to the same music. For the first time in years, Troy felt like he had a real friend.
Troy had to remember he had told Pluto about his father. That was another thing that had surprised him; how easy it had been to open up to this complete stranger about all his problems. Troy guessed it was because he knew he'd never see Pluto in real-life, so there was no risk involved.
The web address popped up on the screen. Troy cut and pasted it into his browser. He couldn't wait.
* * *
In his computer room, Roland watched the octopus floating on his screen that represented his enemy's son.
Roland sipped champagne with a sense of satisfaction. Troy was about to go to the same area that he had sent Crawford's friend, the principal of Kachina High School, and hundreds of other people around the globe. There, they would find a Web page where they could download a new Odyssey program.
What Troy didn't know was the program he downloaded, when started, would activate the VGRS sequence immediately. Troy would go into a seizure and die within minutes, and his father wasn't around to help him.
Roland sipped more champagne. Kent Reynolds' investigation was about to take an unpleasant turn.
* * *
Kent walked into the dark hallways of his house with a paper bag under his arm. He called up the stairwell. "Troy, I got Chinese."
There was no response.
He went into the kitchen and unpacked the brown paper bag from Wong's. He opened a few of the cardboard containers, then waited. He couldn't hear anything from Troy's room. Fine. Kent took a canister of pork-fried rice and a fork, filled a glass with red wine, and headed upstairs to his room.
As he passed Troy's door, Kent rapped on it with his knuckles. "Troy, the food's in the kitchen if you want it."
More silence. Kent didn't worry about it. He had bigger problems. If his son was still mad at him for leaving, Kent would make it up to him. Somehow.
But the virus occupied Kent's mind more than anything else. He wasn't sure what to do about it. He finally had the answer to the questions that had plagued him for the last week, but he wasn't sure what his next move should be.
Kent sat down on his bed and speare
d a forkful of pork. Janet's opinion was to go to the police, but Kent wasn't really comfortable with that. Kent just didn't trust them to solve this, just like they hadn't solved his wife's murder.
He sipped some of the wine as he admitted to himself this was bigger than anything he could handle alone or with Janet's help. He should call the police. And tell them what? "Excuse me, there's a killer computer virus running around, and it'll go off in three days?" By the time they believed him, and checked it out for themselves, it would probably be too late already. Of course, he didn't know that. He was being cynical.
Kent ate more pork-fried rice. There was no excuse for him not to go to the police. So he would. Tomorrow. He was very tired.
He set his meal on his bedside table, and leaned back on his bed with a sigh. He closed his eyes, feeling his mind drift into unconsciousness.
The image Janet had shown him floated through his thoughts. A three-headed wolf. There was something familiar about it, although he couldn't remember seeing it before. It was an odd thing to display on a computer at any rate, but something about it struck a chord. It was very strange. He searched his memory for any connections that might tell him where he had seen it.
When it came to him, he sat up in bed with a huff. He remembered now where he had seen it, on a game called Odyssey. He had seen it on Troy's computer.
Kent bolted out of bed so fast that he tripped and went flying. He landed on his chest, forcing the air out of his lungs. He scrambled on his hands and knees across the room to the door. He threw it open. He ran across to his son's bedroom.
Kent pounded a fist on the door. "Son? Son, open up, it's Dad. Open up now."
Troy's voice drifted through the wood. "Dad, leave me alone, will ya?"
"Troy, it's important. Open the door--"
"But Dad--"
His voice cut off just as a high-pitched squeal filled the air. There was a heavy thump, then a series of smaller thumps like a fist pounding the floor. He could hear a loud wheeze like the dying breath of a lost soul.