Page 3 of Duplicity

He shook her hand. “Mr. Norris. I’ll be in 6B.”

She smiled and headed off, making little noise as she strode down the hall. Presumably going to watch over the lunchroom where the kids ate.

“I see you met our SRO.” The principal stepped out of the school office, holding a badge.

“I did.” Simon nodded. “Thanks for approving this.”

Dawnetta Cruise had a stocky, full figure and had to be at least five-ten. No way these kids would mess with her. When Simon had first come in to speak to her about the open position, and why she needed to hire the IT guy from Vanguard to fill it, she’d answered the phone and promptly left the interview to go into the hall and yell at a kid like a drill sergeant. The girl had been suspended for three days for shoving her teacher.

She shook his hand so hard he had to bite back the wince. “Here’s your badge, Mr. Norris.”

He hadn’t told anyone his real name. Though, he figured being Silas Norris—courtesy of a connection to the Accountant’s Office and their ability to craft completely anonymous fake IDs—was close enough that he wouldn’t slip up by getting anyone whoasked to call him Sie. Close enough to Simon that it wouldn’t feel odd.

His twin brother, Peter, would’ve wanted to do this assignment himself. Which was why Simon didn’t tell him where he was going. Certainly not on a backpacking trip to Wyoming—alone. Though, that was where he’d sent his cell phone in a package just in case anyone checked.

“Thank you. In 6B, is that right?”

The principal nodded. “Good luck.” She snickered a little and turned back to the office. Two women behind the front desk quit talking when she stepped in and walked by them. He heard the door to her office close.

Don’t go look in the lunchroom.He would only be trying to get a peek at Officer Alvarez again.

Instead, he headed for the classroom and switched the lights on. It was pretty sparse, rows of single desks for the students. A desk for him in the corner. A smart whiteboard he’d be able to connect with from the tablet in his backpack. He ignored the teacher’s PC and slid out his laptop, using the Wi-Fi to connect to the school network. He used that to piggyback through a back door he’d created that let him into the Vanguard system.

With access to their network, he could use tools he’d gathered or built himself to access every phone connected to the school Wi-Fi.

Kids started to trickle in. Once they were all seated, he looked around. “All right.” The chatter quieted somewhat. “I’m Mr. Norris. I love math, so that probably makes me insane, but you can just call me the Gatekeeper of Passing Grades. Or the Wizard of Algebra. I haven’t decided yet.”

Someone snickered.

As he spoke, he sent an app to each of their phones. “Grab out your cell phones. I know you’re not supposed to have it on inclass, but the first thing we’re gonna do is a game, and you need your device. Unlock it and accept the app I just sent you.”

Simon slid out the pen for his tablet and wrote a simple multiplication equation on the screen. As he wrote, it showed up on the board behind him. “Solve this on your phone and submit your answer.”

Before he finished, some of the answers started popping up on the screen as shown by a little icon. “Later, you can change your name and add a profile photo. Though, I get final say on both, and I don’t wanna see anything nasty.”

Simon read over the answers and saw most of them had it right. A couple were wrong. He started to solve it with the calculations showing up on the screen, but incorrectly so he’d get one of the more popular wrong answers.

Someone made a noise, recognizing his error.

Simon stopped and looked at the student who’d noticed. “Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

“The six is negative, so your answer should be negative.”

He spotted the recognition on a few faces. “Does anyone want to go in and edit their answer?” A couple of students did. “There’s a bonus question in the bottom right corner if you want to level up while you’re waiting.”

“What does leveling up get us?” The male student in the back corner had almost a full beard and a scar through his left eyebrow.

Simon said, “Try it and find out.”

He was being obstinate, but this kid was the one he’d come here looking for. Simon had a shot at getting to the root of the poison in his life, and Justice Spears was directly grafted into that root.

He looked at the screen of his laptop and spotted one phone in the room that was on the Wi-Fi but not being used to playthe game. Considering everyone had a phone out, that meant someone had a second phone.

Bingo.

Simon clicked on that phone and ran the program to put a virus on the device, which no one would ever find and which could never be traced back to him.

The game they were playing on the app didn’t go any farther than purely math problems. He’d explained it all to the principal, assuring her he was in no way violating their privacy. The system would forget any phone that closed the app.

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