Alias (6 page)

I made a pseudonym – a deliberately common one. And Angel (ANG3L for fun) was born. There was something nice about my alias having wings, given what I was up against.

It’s crazy the way having a different identity frees you. I was everywhere, making friends with unsuspecting users on all sorts of forums, gathering information and building a network of contacts that might be useful. I got a second phone, because a guy from a protest group said he wanted to check I wasn’t an informer but in fact wanted to say rude things to me. I took it all in my stride. My goal was clear. The drone wars needed to stop.

No matter what I came up with, nothing was as perfect as the plan Sayge and I had put together. And the more I thought about going ahead with it, the more certain I was that it was meant to be.

Fate had thrown Hugo and I together.

Fate had made me overhear the conversation in the café.

Fate had given me Sayge to help me devise the plan.

Fate had shown me when I no longer needed him.

Fate had sent me the faces of the little brother and sister.

(For fate, read Allah, luck, God, the zodiac, tarot, The Force – whatever suits.)

Obviously Hugo would realise it was me – what were the chances of another activist stumbling on the same idea? But if he told anyone,
he’d
be implicated big time. Knowing Hugo as I did, he was the last person to martyr himself for the greater good. And anyway, he wanted me to do it – like those weirdos on the web who goad people into committing suicide.

Deciding to go for it brought relief. It brought fear too, but fear meant adrenalin. And adrenalin was way better than procrastination.

Although my hacking was strictly script-kiddie level, I’d learnt enough jargon along the way to blend in with the elites. I’d always been good at adapting – immersing myself in the dark web was no different. I knew it would be a slow burn, but I’d waited a year. Time didn’t matter. Success was what mattered.

Hackers turned out to be unexpectedly generous people. My first gift was a few simple mods of code to use when playing
Starcraft
, which meant no other players stood a chance. Soon after, someone magicked up a subscription to Netflix for me. Proof that I was making the right kind of friends.

I had a lesson in bots and how to use them to launch a DDoS attack, which basically paralyses a
website, and saw a way to make the impact of my plan even greater. If, just as a drone flew over, the ticketing site for the subway happened to go down, there’d be the maximum number of people panicking on the street. Good job.

Angel quickly became a popular member of the online community. Making friends you couldn’t actually eyeball was just as easy as making face-to-face friends – basic things like reflecting back their own opinions made people think I was like-minded. Being witty helped too.

As I roamed around, I was constantly on the lookout for
the
hacker who might have the capability to hijack a drone, and considering how best to coax him into helping when I eventually did.

I spent hours online, but still went to school, did my homework, talked to Mum and Dad, went out with Lucy (occasionally), ignored Hugo and Juliette and put in my UCAS application just before the October deadline for Oxbridge. If I was serious, which I was, I needed to blend in like everyone else – loners who withdrew from society got noticed.

Mum came with me to parents’ evening, wearing a spotty dress and nice make-up. Dad was at football training, desperate to keep a place in the reserves despite hitting forty.

‘As you know I’ve predicted you an A* – hard to come by in this subject,’ said the head of English. Everyone else said more or less the same.

The last appointment was with my maths teacher, Mrs Abrahms, who’d written me a brilliant reference for Cambridge.

‘The interview can be unpredictable, but I doubt Samiya will have a problem. Once she decides on a thing, I find there’s no stopping her.’

Mum was bursting with pride, imagining me in legal robes and a wig, but I felt nothing. My future was to be a game-changer … a political activist … a rebel with a cause …

The plan got better as time went on, but it was still just a plan. My web of contacts got wider, but it was still just a pool of potential. The armed drones continued to invade from the skies with no comeback. It was agonising to watch the numbers of dead and injured grow, like Scrabble scores but with only one possible winner. But I had to wait, and keep the faith.

Often, when I was walking to school and back, I’d imagine a drone appearing from nowhere – a dark silhouette, flying low. It was my way of trying to feel the fear of the Pakistani children in the video, my way of staying connected. They said that they didn’t go out in the sun any more because they were too frightened. Only when it was cloudy and the drones couldn’t see would they go to school. They were by my side, together with every other family who had lost someone because of a grainy image on a screen.

Christmas came and went. I got offers to study law from all the universities I’d applied to, including Cambridge – despite a surreal interview about the
alleged theft of a cat. Mum and Dad were over the moon, but I had a premonition that I wouldn’t actually be going. January drizzled past, and suddenly it was my eighteenth birthday. Mum and Dad bought me twelve driving lessons. I pretended to be thrilled, but all I could think about was the fact that it was a whole year since I’d sat in that café in Milton Keynes, eavesdropping on the table next door. It felt as though the second anniversary of the deaths of
Jaddah
and Lamyah might slide by and I’d still be in limbo.

And then someone called KP – like the peanuts – came on the scene.

I met him playing
EVE
, and we got on immediately. So much so that a couple of battles later, he offered me free credit for my phone – he’d put together a neat bit of code and wanted to show me how cool it was. I sent him the number of my second phone and, hey presto, fifty quid.

He clearly wasn’t bothered about stranger danger, letting slip his real name – Dan – and the fact that he was only sixteen.

He came online one evening in a bit of a state. His mate had been knocked off his bike by a white van, and Dan had just been to see him in hospital. It sounded quite bad. The driver didn’t stop, which made the whole thing much worse. My destiny changed because of a random suggestion I made to help him get even.

hack the council security cameras – get the reg of the van
– I typed

might just do that
– he replied.

We carried on playing
EVE
and I didn’t think any more about it. I was constantly dropping things into conversation, in the hope they’d lead somewhere, and being disappointed.

Two days later, Dan came to find me.

got the camera but not the crash

shame
– me.

good idea tho – got a present for you to say thanks

Dan sent me the incredibly useful series of indecipherable commands that, like magic, turned into pounds of mobile credit. I was very grateful, and immediately started to sell it online at half-price, which turned into a nice little income stream via a PayPal account. One particularly busy day, I made two thousand quid thanks to word of mouth. Insane. I was so going to be the richest kid at university.

I decided Dan was a definite possibility – if that made sense. He knew his stuff, wasn’t bothered about breaking the law and, bottom line, I had a good feeling about him. Of all my hacker friends, he was the one I had most fun with.

was it a long job?
– I asked.

took 2 episodes QI
– Dan measured life in episodes, not time. Quirky.

My instinct about him made me take the next step. He wanted to find the guilty driver who’d ploughed into his friend. I wanted to get inside the military. I saw an opportunity and went for it.

maybe try the spy satellite network
– I typed.

All I thought about was whether my casual remark had spurred Dan into action. Every time we met online I was tempted to ask if he’d had a go, but made myself stick to the usual chat. He’d got my gender wrong, which I quite liked, because boys talk to boys in a different way. Equal.

A few times we both stayed off school and spent all day gaming. It was a calculated risk – bad for my quest to appear like a law-abiding member of the Upper Sixth, good for building up the trust between us. I got to know all about his mum, his kid sister – who I wished was my kid sister – his mates, where he went in Bristol and much more.

Although I was closest to Dan, I touched base with Annacando, Expendable and Omen 11 pretty much every day. They were mischief-makers, up for bringing down sites, hacking competitions, getting free stuff – but none of them were political. I worked hard to make sure I used the right language. They had to believe that I was like them.

My other regular contact was an American I found on a home video group. When the time came, he was
going to make me a video to convince the UAV pilot that the drone had crashed, not been kidnapped. I’d told him I was doing film studies.

Guaranteed, they’d all have wet their pants if they’d had even an inkling of what I was really about.

The breakthrough came on a Friday. Dan and I were playing
GTA V
when he typed, with no warning, no ‘guess what?’:

infiltrated the US Military network

what?
– I replied, hands trembling.

got in through a remote base station near Camp Bastion – found the satellite system

He was so casual. I was ecstatic, but just wrote:

great job

I asked a few questions. Three-quarters of his answers were incomprehensible, but that didn’t matter. What I
did
understand was that he’d mapped the controls onto his iPhone to manipulate the live satellite feed.

Amazing
– I typed.

I could see, at long last, that the theory could work. If you could hack the US Military satellite network, surely you could hack a drone – they weren’t much more than cameras that moved to order.

Time to get serious.

I spent the whole of the next day waiting for Dan to show up. I had no appetite but forced a wrap down
at lunchtime so Mum didn’t fuss. The butterflies in my tummy were more like bats. I couldn’t concentrate on anything.

Come on, Dan.

When I eventually found him playing
EVE
, we had a bit of banter about his geography trip at a residential centre in Wales, and then I suggested we meet at IRC channel #angeldust.

more private

I could tell he liked the idea.

Dan joined us on #angeldust to find we were planning a botnet. In fact, only two other members were real, the rest of the virtual gang were all me. It was a cute trick – being eight people at once. It meant I could guide the conversation.

this is a closed group – you are a guest
– I typed.

OK
– that was KP, aka Dan.

unless you pass a test
– me.

we all had to do that – nearly got me arrested
– me, as someone else.

are the 5000 bots my test?
– typed Annacando.

I made it seem as though everyone had passed an initiation to become a bona fide member of #angeldust, but deliberately didn’t issue one to Dan, although it was clear he’d have to do one. He obliged by asking:

Like what?

we’ll have to come up with something
– I typed.

Grooming is a slow process, if you do it right. I
couldn’t just chuck in the idea of a drone. It had to come out in its own time. His expectation was that he’d have to hack something – that was enough to be getting on with.

Dan got himself a girlfriend! Bad timing as far as I was concerned, because he was much more interested in seeing her than playing with me. He still popped up online most nights, but not till late and not for long. There was another annoying thing in his life called GCSEs. I tried not to stress too much. When the moment was right, I’d bring up the initiation. In the meantime, as I was meant to be a boy, I pretended to fancy girly girls with skinny legs. He said I should go out with a flamingo and that I was shallow. His girlfriend, Ruby, bit her nails and wore sloppy jumpers. She sounded hideous, but what did I know?

‘Do you want to come over later?’ Lucy asked in physics, a couple of weeks after I first introduced Dan to IRC #angeldust.

‘OK,’ I said, because it was better than waiting for Dan
again
. Not that I’d wasted the time. I’d found an American community college that had a drone-simulation programme and a pathetic firewall. Thanks to a lot of late nights, I was a fully fledged UAV pilot – or would have been if anyone had known about me.

Lucy’s mum was pleased to see me.

‘Stay for supper, Samiya. The table’s far too empty these days with the boys gone.’

I couldn’t see any reason not to.

We talked universities.

‘You’ll be in your element at Cambridge,’ she said. ‘I remember meeting you when you were about eight and being astonished at how smart you were even then.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, wondering if my memory of how she’d quizzed me about my Yemeni roots wasn’t entirely accurate.

‘Lucy can’t decide where to go,’ she said.

‘That’s because they all sound the same.’ Lucy tucked her straight brown hair behind her ear – it fell straight back onto her face. Mine had grown back into the non-style I used to have before my mission to be the same as everyone else.

‘I still can’t believe you’re doing engineering, Lucy. You can’t reliably refill a stapler,’ I said. Her mum laughed.

‘Luckily they don’t ask for an A in use of stationery,’ said Lucy.

‘It’ll be
all
boys,’ I said.

‘I hope so. If I don’t get a good degree, at least I’ll find a man with one.’

‘Lucy!’ Her mum pretended to be shocked.

They were more like friends. So different from Mum and me. Our house was like a B&B – all perfectly polite, but strictly business.

I got home at about eight to find that Mum and Dad had gone to the pub, like most Fridays. Dan came online at nine, live messaging on IRC as usual. There were only six of us – me, Dan, and four other mes with different names – because being eight people was too complicated. He started going on about how he’d watched rush hour in Tokyo using the spy satellites. I was immediately on high alert, hoping for an opening. Using one of my other usernames I asked:

what else have you spied on?

Dan was only too happy to supply a list that included the Great Wall of China and people leaving the Kremlin.

Various people commented – all me.

do something with it – don’t just watch

like what?
– that was Dan.

track a celebrity and sell the photo

catch a royal having an affair

spy on the US forces with their own cameras

hack a drone and fly it

could you do that KP?
– I typed as Angel, praying he’d react.

if I wanted to be blacklisted by the most powerful country on the planet I could
– Dan replied.

thats your challenge KP – hack a drone

I was convinced he wouldn’t smell a rat. It sounded spontaneous, despite being anything but. Job done. Either he would. Or he wouldn’t.