Ignite the Shadows. Ingrid Seymour
“Yeah.” I slurp my tea and shift my body toward the door.
“I dreamed about Max,” she says.
I clear my throat. Let’s not go there, please.
“A memory, really,” she adds. “His tiny body whisked away, prodding needles, doctors. He was so small. Only three pounds. He never made a peep. You, on the other hand, came out ten minutes after Max, kicking and wailing.” She makes it sound as if I came out with two heads. I can’t help but wonder … if I’d been the one taken away, would she hurt Max the same way she hurts me by saying stuff like this?
She must notice something in my expression because she adds, “You had a head full of black hair already, spiky and shiny.” This is one of the things Dad used to say when he fondly talked about the day I was born. The words sound empty on Mom’s lips.
“It still sticks out if I cut it too short. That’s why I keep it long,” I say, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction. I don’t like where this is going.
Mom puts her tea down on the night table. Her hands fall to her lap, where she worries at a hangnail. Her eyes lose their focus and her expression grows pained.
Oh, no.
“When I saw Dr. Dunn at the hospital and then that horrible alarm shrieked, I knew what had happened. I told everyone, but they didn’t believe me. Not even your father. That man took your brother, Marcela.”
“I know, Mom.” She’s told me this story a million times, as if talking about it will make the outcome different.
My teeth grind, as her memories swim in my brain. They’re lodged in there like a splinter, as vivid as any movie I’ve seen on the big screen, as vivid as if they were my own. This is why I hate these conversations. They awaken these images, which have no business being in my head. I already have enough in there that doesn’t belong. They make me understand Mom’s pain all too well and, even if I never knew Max, his loss hurts. Every time Mom brings this up, the splinter digs deeper—so deep that I think it will split me in two one day.
I imagine Dr. Dunn as a balding, short man with small hands and Vienna sausages for fingers. He wears a spotless white coat over an equally white button-up shirt and dark blue tie. He smiles with thick, fleshy lips. He winks at me and my heart skips a beat.
Damn, my overactive brain. I shake my head. “Mom, uh, I think I should …”
“Why would he take him? Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Because he was a sick man, I want to say. Why else would he have tracked Mom’s pregnancy after doing the fertility treatments? Why else would he have stolen a newborn baby in need of neonatal care?
Mom clings to this hope that Max is alive somewhere. I know because one night she woke up screaming that she had failed Baby Max and now that he was a teenager, we both failed him every day by not bringing him to his real home.
Does she really want him growing up with that bastard? I want to shake her, ask her if she’s crazy. I pray to God my little twin brother didn’t survive after he was taken from his incubator. I pray he’s an innocent little angel with wings and a halo, floating on fluffy white clouds.
And like always, as I pray for his redemption, I think: it could have been me, that monster could have taken me.
Back in my bed, I toss and turn. I keep seeing weird shapes and I can’t sleep. Tonight only the H-Loop can keep me sane. I wrap my quilt around me and tread back to the computer desk.
I tap on the keyboard and notice I never logged out. Not smart. The customized console program I wrote to connect to the loop creates a daisy-chain through different servers, so I’m never detected. But still, you can never be too safe.
As I start scanning the list of people logged in, I noticed a new chat window is open. One single line stares at me.
IgNiTe> I know what you are.
The timestamp of the message is now. The cursor blinks. My heart keeps the same beat. I tell myself the words mean nothing. It’s just some idiot playing games. I’ve no idea who this IgNiTe guy is, but I’ve ran into his kind before. He needs a taste of Warrior’s cyber wrath. Just what I need to keep my head free of the ghosts weighing me down.
I rub my hands together, load my tracing program, and type a message to keep the jerk online.
Warrior> Do you, skiddie?
He calls himself a hacker when he’s nothing but a cracker. I hit enter and just as I’m doing it, a belated sixth sense warns me to stop, but it’s too late. All three monitors go blue and white text starts raining down the screen, repeating the same thing over and over again.
I know what you are. I know what you are.
I know what you are. I know what you are.
I know what you are. I know what you are.
Cursing, I drop to my knees and fight to untangle myself from the stupid quilt. I slip and slide in an effort to get traction on the parquet flooring. Under the desk, I’m faced with three CPUs and a tangle of cables swathed in dust bunnies.
Furiously, I push everything out of the way until I find the power strip. I press the button and the LED light goes out, indicating the flow of electricity has been cut off. In the same instant, the uninterruptible power supply kicks in and starts to beep. I scramble to unhook all the cables to the battery backup. Damn, why do I have to be such a meticulous freak?
Finally the hum of the CPUs dies down. I lay under the desk seething, wanting to strangle something. He better pray I don’t find him, because I’ll kill him, very slowly. No one messes with my equipment, my sanctuary. My ears are hot, and if I was a cartoon character, there’d be steam coming out of them.
When the rage subsides, my mind hits fifth gear. How did he do it? How did this IgNiTe jerk get through my intricate security measures? Everyone in the H-Loop knows I’m the hacker to beat, so it’s obvious why he’d want to mess with me. But how did he do it? My system is tight. The hardware, my code … I don’t ever leave any trails. I rack my brain trying to figure it out and come up empty. I’ve been outsmarted, and I don’t even know how.
Suddenly, I feel like crying. I can’t even hide in my room anymore. I shake my head. Self-pity isn’t something I allow myself. Slowly, I crawl out from under the desk. The clock reads 5:29 A.M. I groan. When the display changes to 5:30 A.M., I walk over to the alarm and turn it off. Time to leave for the dojo. I ponder whether I should go or sleep for an hour before school. The bed looks tempting, but after what just happened my brain won’t quiet long enough to let me sleep. Only punching something can help me now. That is … if I can even stay upright long enough to do it.
I start jogging on the spot, letting my arms hang like a dummy’s. They swing from side to side as I turn my head around and bounce on my toes. My body feels supple enough in spite of the lack of sleep. Okay, I guess I’ll go. I try to never skip practice. The emotional focus that martial arts give me is critical. It keeps the shadows and the fear away.
Looking back at my desk, I’m tempted to stay to assess the damage to my computers. Tension bites the back of my neck at the simple thought of what that good-for-nothing cracker just did to me. Anger flares again, but I get it under control after a few deep breaths. It looks like I really need to go to the dojo to clear my head. I can’t let emotions control me.
This is how my life goes. Every day is a struggle. An endless array of do’s and don’ts designed to keep the shadows at bay. And after what happened last night, after discovering the torture I would endure if I let my defenses down, I can’t afford to make any mistakes.
If only my worries