19. My Son Too #3
"No. He told me he could shoot me and no one would hear anything over the sound of the train. A silencer only suppresses noise. It doesn't eliminate it. Only a whisper gun could be that quiet."
"Like I said, smart boy." Conor pats the prisoner's destroyed foot hard enough to cause a yelp of pain and stands.
"Don’t encourage him," Brice mutters. "He stole my phone and trapped me in the locker room."
Fitz squares his shoulders. "I'm sorry about the Guardian spray, but I knew if I didn't get away from you fast, I wasn't getting out of the Bunker."
"And how did you manage that, might I ask?" Conor washes the blood from his hands. "You didn't use Brice's phone to unlock access to the elevator, not without his fingerprint too."
We upgraded to that system after Wraith broke into the Bunker six years ago.
"With my admin account."
No one speaks.
Conor turns his head slowly. "Your what?"
"My admin account."
"You do not have an admin account," I point out.
Fitz shrugs. "I didn't, but now I do."
Conor dries his hands. "Since when?"
"A few months ago."
Conor looks at me. I look at Fitz.
"What were you doing with an administrator account in the Bunker’s security system?" I ask.
"Practicing."
My heart gives another hard thump, but this one has nothing to do with fear.
"Practicing what?"
"The hacking techniques you’ve been teaching me."
"You hacked the Bunker," Brice says. "I don't feel so bad about you being able to trap me in the locker room now."
"I didn't have to use my admin account for that. Once the door was locked, you could only unlock it with the app on your phone and I had your phone."
"The locker room is a low-risk area," Conor says like he's justifying it not requiring the biometric combo.
He doesn't need to. "It was not a failure of the system," I tell him. "We want the Bunker impenetrable from the outside, not inaccessible to the men who live in barracks there."
Except Sector I. No one gets into the weapons development labs without top security clearance.
Except maybe our son.
"I didn’t hack the whole system," Fitz offers.
"That is not the reassurance you think it is," Conor tells him.
"I only accessed the secondary security controls. I wanted to see if the privilege escalation method Mom showed me would work on an isolated system."
Brice and Conor look at me with matching expressions of censure.
I lift my hands. "I did not tell him to test it on the Bunker."
"You said a real system shows weaknesses a sandbox won’t," Fitz reminds me.
"I meant our home network."
"You hardened that after the last time."
"Because you got in."
"So, I needed a different system."
Eyes still swollen from the pepper spray, Brice rubs one hand over his mouth. He is trying not to laugh.
Conor doesn't look even a little amused. "You created a hidden administrator account in the most secure facility owned by the Shaughnessy Mob because you wanted a more difficult practice target."
"Yes."
"How did none of my people find it?" Conor asks.
"I hid it."
Conor's nostrils flare. "I gathered that."
"I cloned the permissions from a maintenance account that only activates during diagnostics, then altered the audit log so access from my device registered as an automated systems check."
My mouth falls open a little. I taught him each of those techniques separately. I didn’t show him how to combine them and I definitely didn’t teach him how to hide an unauthorized account from Conor's security team.
"How did you get into an isolated system?" I ask.
"The training-room environmental controls use the same maintenance network during software updates. I accessed it when Uncle Brice left me alone to change after sparring."
Brice closes his eyes.
"Did you find anything else?" Conor asks.
"Three vulnerabilities."
"Three?" I can't help the surprise in my tone. I helped the blackgloves design that security system.
"One is fixed."
"How?" Conor asks.
"I fixed it."
Conor visibly counts to ten in his head. "Why didn’t you tell me there were two others?"
"I wasn’t finished testing them."
Conor swears.
Brice loses his battle and starts laughing.
"This is not funny," Conor grouses.
It's not but also? It is.
"No," Brice agrees between breaths. "It’s fucking hilarious."
"Did you create an avenue for outside access?" I ask.
"No. My account only works from an authenticated device already inside the maintenance network."
I don't point out his phone is not authenticated. Clearly doing so was part of the hack and being able to do so is no doubt the vulnerability he shored up.
Mick was right. Fitz is my son too.
"Did you compromise operational data?" Mick asks, going to the crux of the matter.
"No."
"That's grand then," Mick says. "You and your mam go and get something to eat while I finish up here."
I balk instinctively. Not about leaving. My twelve-year-old son is not witnessing an interrogation.
But there's nothing grand about our son being such a good hacker at age twelve. But then I remind myself that an Irishman saying grand is like he's saying fine. Though, again…is it? Is it fine?
When I think of the things I used my hacking skills to do, a shiver of parental dread runs down my spine.