The Rebel Code

Chapter Two - Part Two

But I've never asked, because if there's one thing I've learned from living with John, it's that he has reasons for everything.

Mo's being uncharacteristically quiet, which makes me uneasy. Mo isn't a quiet person. Even if she's working on an online engineering degree, I would never point at her and say "engineer" without knowing her and what she can do. Mo snuck out of the house once to get her bellybutton pierced. Mo has a summer job at a bar on the boardwalk. Mo is a beach partygoer, a karaoke singer, and a known representative of the group of girls in Port Carina who mostly wear bikini tops instead of shirts during the summer months. She's wearing a spaghetti-strap something-or-other now, with big flowers all over the fabric. Hoping to get her back to her usual self, I reach for the radio in a flash of inspiration.

"Don't touch-" She starts to object, but it's too late. There's no cheerful music. Instead, it's tuned to the local news, where an indifferent-sounding reporter is talking about Mr. Bosman.

"We were able to interview several of his coworkers at Port Carina Technical Academy, and they all said the same thing. None of them ever suspected him to be a freeboot. They said he was kind, considerate, and a good friend. What do you make of that, Prince?"

The man named Prince, undoubtedly the host of the show, responds.

"Well, it can mean one of two things, or maybe both at once. Either these freeboots are getting better at blending in with the general public, or the general public needs to be more aware of the warning signs. We know they're among us, and Criterion says that this is an incredible threat to national safety. I say we should push education in schools, and try for more thorough background checks on citizens."

"Well, Prince, these freeboots are able to do incredible things with computers. However they're able to move from province to province without detection has something to do with hacking, exploiting their computer skills. Whatever they're able to do with these smaller, low-security branches of Criterion's programming, don't you think they could hack Criterion itself?"

"Leslie, I think you might be overestimating them a little bit. This is a threat, yes, but we know for a fact that Criterion is untouchable when it comes to attacks like this. They've tried before and failed. No one person could breach that kind of security system. Our law enforcement was able to capture Mike Bosman alive, and whatever information they can get from him might be groundbreaking in anti-freeboot research. We know their strengths, yes. But they're human, Leslie. They have weaknesses. We just have to find these weaknesses and exploit them the same way they exploit ours. Thank you again for joining us, and folks, we'll be back again at four to share some more interviews with the staff of Port Carina Technical Academy."

Prince sends the station to a commercial break seconds before Mo slaps the dial, shutting it off and drowning the car in silence.

"Do you think they interviewed John?" I ask.

Mo frowns. "I don't know."

"Do you think Mr. Bosman is going to tell them any 'groundbreaking information' when they interrogate him?" I scoff.

"They never do. The government says they will, but they never do."

I lean my seat back and stare out the sunroof at the sky overhead. It's big and blue as anything, with little white cloud puffs in long trails stretching all the way to the horizon. According to the weather, there's almost definitely going to be another rainstorm tonight, so I have to savor the big sky while I can. I kick my white sneakers up on the dashboard and shut my eyes, inhaling the cool air as it circulated through the car. I love sky. I love sun.

"Stop that," says Mo, smiling a little. "What if I crashed this thing, and the airbag folded you like a pretzel?"

"You aren't going to crash anything at ten kilometers an hour," I point out. "Let's get that straight." But then, I suddenly find a question lingering in the back of my mind, and I blurt it out before I can stop myself. "What are they going to do to Mr. Bosman?"