Young Writers Society

[1]One

[2]Two

[3]Three

[4]Four

Black and White [3]

The bags under her eyes told of sleepless nights gone by. She’d lie there, until it was too late for sleep and too early to get out of bed, counting her mistakes. And she’d counted four of them. Four moments in the last six months that should have happened differently.

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Three.

Quinn twisted her nose at the lingering scent of expensive cologne and the nauseating acrylic fumes of new furniture. She stood at the corner of a sleek and spacious office room, holding her elbows in her folded arms as she peered through the aluminum-framed windows and into the overcast evening sky.

Stark & Nicholson had a spectacular view over the silhouetted buildings of the Boston skyline. The law firm was a post-modernist business tower, rising over the federal courthouse next door. It was unquestionably an architectural marvel, but Quinn couldn’t help feel out of place. Maybe she just wasn’t used to the luxury. Or maybe it had something to do with her profound naivety of the whole situation. She felt overwhelmed just thinking about it, trying to convince herself that she was lucky to be here at all.

The glass office doors swiveled open behind her, and two men in slim-fit suits – one charcoal black, and the other a glossy gray – sauntered into the room, casually laughing together about whatever it was they had been talking about.

Joe, the taller one in black, plopped down in the seat behind his desk, beckoning Quinn to join him with a gesture of his hand. She took a seat in the chair opposite him.

“We have some good news,” said Dan, the one in gray. He sat cross-legged in the couch off at the side, itching his prickly orange beard as he skimmed a small heap of papers in his lap. “And then some potentially not-so-good news.”

“We had a talk with Heymann,” Joe added.

Steve Heymann was the DA leading the prosecution against Aaron. Quinn had never heard of him before the case, but she did her research. He was an expert in electronic crimes, apparently, with a ruthless reputation for prosecuting computer hackers.

As strange as it sounded, Aaron was less afraid for his own safety than he was for Quinn’s. He was angry at himself for having gotten her involved, and embittered over the whole investigation. He had become even more secretive in the past few weeks. Sometimes he would refuse to see her for extended periods of time, trying not to get her any deeper into this than she already was. And they had begun to fight, accusing and forgiving each other of meaningless things almost daily. But every now and then, they had to try and put it all behind them; they knew that they needed to be held. And they’d hold on, telling each other that everything would work out.

In the end, Quinn figured that her total ignorance on the matter would protect her from Heymann’s advances. She had heard about the things that happened to “hacktivists” like Aaron. She had read articles and even communicated with people who were the subject of inexcusable harassment and excessive legal action at the hands of the criminal justice system. Some prosecutors were passionate about fighting hacktivism and cyber crime, while others were unmistakably in fear of things they didn’t fully comprehend. Whatever it was that was motivating Heymann, it was frightening. If her ignorance would save Aaron from a similar fate, so be it.

“The prosecution is offering you immunity,” Joe continued, guardedly.

“Immunity from what?”

“The grand jury.”

Quinn had thoroughly read the subpoena issued to her. She learned that she had been “commanded to appear in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts” to testify before a grand jury.

Every case goes through a grand jury before a criminal indictment is issued, Joe and Dan had explained to her. The whole process was intended to prevent spurious accusations from going to trial. Quinn didn’t fully understand how it all worked, but they had told her that the grand jury had the power to indict anyone involved in the case, if they found reason.

“And they’ll lock me up for what?” Quinn demanded, unconvinced, “I’ve never even set foot in MIT.”

“It won’t be for the whole JSTOR fiasco,” Joe warned, slowly shaking his head, “They’ll have your computers. They’ll go through your logs. They’ll find something, you know they will.”

He was right. Quinn was a journalist of hackers, and she’d been logging her communications throughout most of her career. Her hard drive contained interviews and communications with confidential sources for stories dating back half a decade. As it was, the subpoena required her to deliver the materials stored on her computer, and not the machine itself. She certainly wouldn’t let Heymann get his hands on it. But if the prosecution thought that she was being dishonest, they’d move against her and seize everything. And she would rather go to jail than turn over her password.

She tried not to imagine what her incarceration would mean for Ada. Over and over again, she’d thought about how to explain all of this to her, not wanting to repeat the same mistakes that her father made. They’d locked him up at San Quentin when Quinn was in her late teens, and the only communication she had with him after that was through letters.

She never realized how poetic her father could be until after his arrest. He’d written her revolting tales of life in prison, often plagued with emotional distress. He’d describe his fellow inmates wading from their cells and into the yard as an ocean of soulless faces.

Their eyes turn gray. Their backs break with unspoken torment, he’d written to her one time. Agony feeds on unrequited hope. They were already dead inside.

They wrote back and forth for years, but Quinn still felt that she didn’t know what had happened to him in the slightest. She had never gotten to a place where she could really talk to him and ask him, and never came to know what her father had hidden from her about prison. He died when she was 23.

No, it would be impossible and unfair to keep Ada in the dark about everything. She was wrong about not being completely honest to her before. She decided that she would tell her the truth about all this. Ada might be overwhelmed, confused, and scared, but Quinn would never abandon her daughter.

“Immunity is the best deal you’re going to get,” Dan advised, interrupting her tangent thoughts. “I’d take it, if I were you.”

“What’s the not-so-good news?” Quinn asked.

There was a long pause before Joe spoke up, “Well, you’ll have to refrain from communicating with Aaron for a while.”

“A while?” Quinn snapped. “How long is a while?”

“Likely until the investigation subsides.” Joe brushed his hand over his receding hairline as he tried to reassure her. “The less he and his attorney hear from us, the easier it will be for all of us to move forward.”

Quinn didn’t understand how severing ties with Aaron would help. Their situations were inextricably linked together; moving forward meant working toward a common end. But they hadn’t entirely explained to her what this whole deal was about.

“Immunity in exchange for what, exactly?”

Joe and Dan exchanged worried glances.

“A proffer,” Dan said.

“It’s just a small talk with the prosecution,” Joe insisted.

She realized, then, what this meant. It made her blood boil. They were negotiated deals for lighter sentencing in exchange for information. Heymann wanted her to rat Aaron out, and her own attorneys were being compliant.

"I won't!" she asserted, raising her voice. She didn’t want a deal, she didn’t want immunity. Not if it meant hand-delivering Aaron to the executioner. The proffer was off the table, she declared over their persistent rebuttals.

They fought with her. They brought up things from her past that could be used against her, they stressed the importance of the data on her computer, and the possibility of the prosecution using it to incriminate her. They told her that accepting the offer was the only way to ensure a safe and promising future for herself and Ada.

Quinn was incredibly disturbed, and her stomach was knotted with frustration. When her friend had introduced her to Joseph Garcia and Dan Castle, they had agreed to represent her without compensation, pro-bono. At the time, she thought that she had been tremendously fortunate. But without payment, the two of them seemed to have little to lose. She began to suspect that they were never whole-heartedly invested in any of this, that they didn’t fully appreciate the fragility of her situation. All they seemed to care about was getting the case over with and escorting her out the door.

She was standing now, arguing on with Joe and Dan over the desk. Her forehead pulsated, and her eyes began to well up with tears. She hated the way she became emotionally unstable when she was angry.

“This isn’t the kind of talk I wanted,” she cried, exasperated. The argument had begun to simmer down. She began pacing around, trying to step away to find a comfortable place to stand as Joe and Dan looked on, scratching their heads.

“No one is asking you to rat Aaron out,” Joe promised.

Quinn stood in silence for a moment. Her fingers quivered as she tried to keep herself from breaking down. The investigation was so obviously a ridiculous application of justice, but she felt helpless. “I just want to make them stop all of this.”

“Meeting with Heymann will give you that opportunity,” Dan insisted, “And they might listen.”

“It’s possible.”

They nursed the idea. Quinn looked skeptically from Joe to Dan as they encouraged her. Would she really be able to dissuade Heymann from pressing charges against Aaron? If she could just somehow explain all of this to the prosecution, that the case wasn’t worth their time, and that Aaron didn’t deserve their attention, maybe she could make the whole terrible business go away.

Her third mistake was giving in.

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Let me know what you think! Will be continued.