SOS - A Prequel to The Silence of Six

SOS

Tuesday, 2:00 p.m.

EVAN BAXTER WALKED AROUND THE block for a third time. His head was down and his hood was up, but he studied the cars and the people on the street closely. By all appearances, it was just another ordinary, boring Tuesday afternoon in downtown Granville. The only suspicious activity came from Evan himself, who was walking in circles and hauling a large black backpack that he swore got heavier each time he completed a circuit. He hiked the bag up on his shoulders and continued counting his steps. Ninety-nine or one hundred? He froze and struggled with the decision to go back and start over.

It was a cool October day, but Evan's face was pouring sweat and his balled hands crammed in the pockets of his cargo pants were clammy and trembling. He concentrated on holding them steady, squeezed his hands tighter. Control. That was better. 

Maybe I'm coming down with something, Evan thought. A virus.

He laughed out loud, but the young mother pushing a stroller didn't even glance at him as she passed. (Evan confirmed the stroller held a sleeping boy, not a life-like doll. She was probably a real mom running errands.)

Everyone talked or laughed to themselves those days; it was almost impossible to tell whether the man laughing his head off was mentally ill or talking to someone on his phone through the magic of Bluetooth. (Why couldn't it be both?)

Evan abruptly stopped laughing. He forced a smile, but then he decided that it wasn't necessary and relaxed his expres- sion again. He worked hard to keep it all straight, wearing the face that people expected from him. Emoji were more straightforward and efficient.

Time was running out. He decided he had taken one hundred steps, but doubt still wormed its way to the back of his mind. He started walking again. One-oh-one, one-oh-two, one-oh-three....

Evan should have stood out with his red sweatshirt and stuffed bag, but he was used to being overlooked or outright ignored. That was better than the alternative: being mocked for acting different. Evan was content to go about his life relatively unnoticed, which made his mission that much more difficult. After today, everyone would know him. He liked anonymity: He lived on the internet, which eliminated his real-life awkwardness and shyness. He even enjoyed a measure of popularity online, or at least notoriety.

Satisfied that he wasn't being watched or followed (he glanced over his shoulder one more time), Evan slipped between the abandoned bookstore and the costume shop and hurried down the narrow alley to the parking area behind them.

Granville swarmed with Secret Service agents for tonight's presidential debate at the high school, so he acted cautiously. This was too important to mess up, and he couldn't risk being stopped. (Or maybe he wanted someone to stop him. He wasn't afraid for himself, but of what might happen to everyone else if he failed.)

Evan slipped off his backpack and set it as his feet. He lifted a loose, graffiti-covered plywood board and nudged the bag inside with one foot. He took one last look around his familiar stomping grounds before ducking through the low opening, then slipped into darkness.

Monday, 9:12 p.m.

EVAN HIT THE ZONE. His fingers flew across the keyboard, spilling forth code in an exhilarating stream of letters, and numbers, and symbols.

His best friend Max Stein often talked about being in the zone on the soccer field, when everything but the ball and the net and the other players dropped away and his body performed a complicated series of physical feats he could never explain in words. Evan was no athlete (his arms and legs had minds of their own when he was forced to play sports in Gym), but he was the MVP when it came to anything related to computers.