Chapter Text
Class ended in five minutes and all I could think was, an hour is too short for lunch.
Mr. Gladly’s world issues class was grating enough at the best of times, but his desperate popularity schtick was really getting to me today. We were discussing Parahumans. How they affected the world, politics, and so on would have been my favourite parts of this class four months ago but now the whole subject left me feeling bitter. Hearing parahumans described as powerful game-changers in any conflict felt like a personal slap in the face for all that I knew for a fact that it wasn't.
I tried to tune out Mr. Gladly giving us a pointless bit of homework. His tone and body language communicated clearly that he expected most of us to wing it during the discussion next week. I couldn’t tune his words out, but I could look down at my phone.
I had been typing on my second-hand blackberry by feel, but seeing the keyboard helped a bit. If I was typing text I would probably average around seventy words per minute at the moment. That was a mostly meaningless concept here though. I guess I could have counted hex-strings per minute but that seemed unfair, given that I was typing each one using a letter on my phone keyboard.
I finished the request, changed the filename, and launched the program. The benefit of writing in machine code was that I didn’t need to compile it, although the downside was that I had needed almost the full class to type the damn thing out. The sooner I figured out how to get some version of Linux compatible with the phone, the better. My virus got flagged by several antivirus programs, but I closed those from the developer console. It would run in the background with or without the warnings, but I wanted to be able to see it.
A wall of text scrolled down the screen, and I could read the signal strength and ID of all bluetooth-enabled devices around me. My program selected the closest seven, formed a piconet, and tried to send a file. That failed immediately, as expected, and my program halted. Each device had sent back a random challenge to check if the connection was legitimate. Each challenge needed an encryption key that my phone didn’t have, so it was waiting for my input. I read each one carefully, and input the correct key manually. The program immediately sent a copy of itself to run on all of the devices it had access to.
In the five minutes it took for the bell to ring, I had what I wanted. The program would only run on blackberry operating systems, but there were enough of those in class that one of them eventually connected to Madison Clements’ smartphone. Her phone was not a Blackberry, so my program could not copy itself on. It could, however, recognise that it was her phone (based on some keywords I had told it to look out for) and request a file. That file was a raw binary dump of her entire phone’s memory.
The class was moving, shifting in that slow way that a crowd did. I quickly sent the kill command, and the virus deleted itself off the impromptu scatternet that it had formed. Hopefully the other devices would work like mine, and remove the warning as soon as the malicious code stopped running. If not, I was reasonably sure it couldn’t be traced back to me anyway.
Madison was the cute kind of pretty. Not gorgeous like Sophia or Emma, but innocent and maybe a bit shy. At least that was what she tried to communicate. Her body language screamed childish in front of teachers, mysterious in front of boys, and predatory when she looked at me. She shot me a grin that was supposed to make me insecure as I left the classroom in a hurry.
I powerwalked to where I knew Sophia and Emma would be coming out to get lunch. It felt a bit like walking into the lion's den, and I got there faster than the rest of the world issues class. Emma spotted me first, nudging Sophia and telling her to look over at me with a subtle nod.
“Taylor!” she almost squealed, dripping with sarcastic sweetness. She was in public after all.
Sophia played along, “It looks like you’re finally getting some exercise,” {You used to be unfit,} “I’d suggest you join the track team, but I’m not sure it would be allowed…” {You have no tits so you could be transgender.}
Wow. That was a subtle one. I definitely wouldn’t have understood that before. I wondered who that was meant for, since it was way too obscure to be meant to insult me directly. Maybe someone in the audience? I glanced around and, sure enough, one of the track team girls was looking hurt. I was missing the context for why this particular insult might be hurtful to this particular girl, but I also did not care past a basic sense of solidarity. I had a mission.
I pretended to check my phone briefly.
Sophia glanced at Emma, {Why isn’t she responding?} Ah, I was supposed to ask her why I wouldn’t be allowed, and then she would explain in offensive euphemisms what she had meant.
This was the moment to fire back instead. I had an opening. “Don’t worry about me,” I said, “I can validate myself.”
The implication probably wouldn’t hit anyone else since it was tailor-made for Emma. She received it loud and clear, {Sophia only likes you because you validate her.} It may or may not even be true, but I thought it would sting either way.
“Come on Sophia.” She tugged on her elbow. {Taylor is fighting back, let's disengage.} “Something smells here and I don’t want to ruin my appetite.” {Taylor smells bad. I want to eat. Prearranged vague signal to do something passive rather than something active.}
I let them go. I had what I needed in the form of two binary dumps. Instead of heading to lunch with the crowd, I shouldered my heavy bag and went to the top floor.
I asked the keypad to open the lock to the roof. The request took the form of a four-digit code, which had changed again. Maybe someone had noticed that I was eating my lunch up here, or maybe they just changed the security codes every now and then. Both seemed a bit excessive for Winslow but what did I know? A frequently changed lock in the school of consistent decay barely registered a raised eyebrow.
I sat down on my usual air conditioning vent and took my lunchbox out. Dad had packed me a premade sandwich from the shop, an apple, and a little bottle of orange juice. It was the same lunch he got for himself every day. Sometimes it was literally the same lunch. I knew he sometimes left his in the fridge and then just gave it to me the next day. It always tasted fine, so I didn’t complain.
I took out my phone again, connected to the teacher’s WiFi, and downloaded an ebook to pass the time. Redwall. Even with my phone’s tiny screen I’d be able to finish it before art class.
A shadow fell across my little nook.
A few months ago, I would have jumped in surprise. Now I just looked up slowly, and caught a glimpse of drifting blackness around a human skeleton. The spectre didn’t notice me as it landed elegantly on the roof and turned into a recognisable silhouette.
What the hell was Shadow Stalker doing at my school?
The roof access door was around the corner from where I sat, but I could hear her typing in the code. The door clicked shut and I dared to breathe again. My brief sigh was cut short by the five minute warning bell. Lunch was over.
I hoped the Shadow Stalker entry wouldn’t become a common thing, or I’d have to find a new spot. This break time, limited as it was, was probably the only thing keeping me sane. The rest of school I was beset by the bitches three and while home held my computer and little workshop it also occasionally held the shell of my father. I knew I shouldn’t be bitter. He was trying, but he was home so rarely it didn’t really make a difference.
I suffered through art class, not even getting to present the little diorama I had put so much work into. I had read a book that described art as a form of communication and something had just clicked for me. The diorama was nothing special on a technical level, just a little reproduction of our living room, but I thought I had gotten the feeling of bitter disconnect just right in the placement of the furniture. It was that glaring emptiness, the stifling lack of something that I would be taking the bus home to. I wasn’t sure if I preferred that to the bombardment of sneers, barbs, and pranks I was subject to at Winslow.
At least I understood what was going on at school. I couldn’t not understand. That was the whole point. Dad, however, was a mystery. A depressing one at that. He barely talked to me, and his body communicated almost nothing most of the time. It was like he wasn’t even there. Like his body was present, but his head was empty. I hadn’t been able to talk to him about mom’s death, nor about Emma’s emotional heel-face turn. He hadn’t even asked why she didn’t come over anymore. No, as easily as I could communicate now, as sure I was that I would be able to get whatever point I wanted to make across perfectly, I no longer wanted to.
I hadn’t even told him I had superpowers.