CHAPTER 1: The Boy Who Couldn't Read the Scoreboard
1230 Words
The first thing Malik Carter hacked was not a computer.
It was a basketball scoreboard.
The second thing he hacked was the computer controlling it.
The third thing was an argument.
The argument belonged to three boys, two cracked basketballs, one referee who had clearly abandoned all interest in justice, and Malik himself.
It was a Saturday afternoon in a neighborhood court outside Columbus, Ohio, where the asphalt had more scars than some of the players.
“You said that was twenty-two!”
“It was twenty-four.”
“Man, you can't even count.”
“I can count better than you can shoot.”
“Say that again.”
“I said—”
“Both of y'all shut up.”
Malik's voice ended the argument.
Not because he was the loudest.
He wasn't.
Not because he was the biggest.
He definitely wasn't.
It was because Malik had developed a strange reputation in the neighborhood.
When something stopped working, people called Malik.
When somebody's phone froze, Malik appeared.
When a bicycle chain came loose, Malik somehow had it moving again before the owner had finished complaining.
When the old community center's Wi-Fi disappeared, Malik had once stared at the router for approximately thirty seconds, unplugged something, plugged it back in, and announced:
“Your internet is back.”
Nobody had understood what he had done.
Least of all Malik.
He simply knew it worked.
That was how his brain functioned.
It did not like instructions.
It liked problems.
And the more impossible the problem appeared, the more interested he became.
Basketball was the same.
Malik did not understand every coaching diagram.
He hated being handed thick playbooks.
He once received a basketball training manual from an assistant coach and returned it three days later.
“You read it?” the coach had asked.
Malik had stared at him.
“I looked at it.”
“That isn't the same thing.”
“I know.”
“What did you learn?”
Malik had shrugged.
“The pictures were pretty.”
The coach had nearly thrown the book at him.
But put Malik on a court and everything changed.
He saw angles.
Spaces.
Habits.
Weaknesses.
He could watch a defender move twice and somehow know what that defender would do the third time.
He didn't know the formal name for half the things he was doing.
He simply called it watching people.
And right now, he was watching a scoreboard.
It read:
47–47.
Malik frowned.
“That thing's lying.”
His friend Jamal looked at him.
“How can a scoreboard lie?”
“Because it's broken.”
“You sure?”
Malik walked toward it.
The scoreboard suddenly changed.
47–48.
Everyone stared.
Malik stopped.
Then the scoreboard changed again.
47–49.
A girl sitting on the fence laughed.
“Maybe it's scared of you.”
Malik looked up.
“That's not funny.”
“It is a little.”
“No.”
“It really is.”
Malik walked to the control box beneath the bleachers.
The box was supposed to be locked.
It wasn't.
“That's not good,” he muttered.
He opened it.
Inside was an old control unit, several wires, a cheap digital interface, and enough dust to qualify as a historical artifact.
Jamal leaned over his shoulder.
“You know what you're doing?”
“No.”
“You're always saying that.”
“Because I don't want people expecting too much.”
Malik touched two wires.
The scoreboard went blank.
The entire court went silent.
Someone shouted:
“Malik!”
“I got it.”
“You just killed the game!”
“I said I got it.”
“You said that last time!”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I was wrong last time.”
Jamal sighed.
Malik pulled his phone from his pocket.
The screen was badly cracked.
He connected it to the controller.
For a few seconds, nothing happened.
Then the scoreboard flickered.
00–00.
Everyone groaned.
Malik smiled.
“See?”
“That says zero!”
“It's fixed.”
“You reset the whole game!”
“Oh.”
Malik looked at the scoreboard.
Then at the players.
Then back at the scoreboard.
“Okay.”
He reached for the controls.
Before he could touch them, the scoreboard changed again.
47–47.
Malik froze.
He hadn't done that.
Jamal noticed.
“Malik?”
“Yeah?”
“You did that?”
“No.”
The scoreboard flickered.
Then displayed:
MALIK CARTER — 17
Nobody spoke.
Malik stared at it.
A basketball rolled slowly across the court behind him.
“That's creepy,” Jamal whispered.
Malik walked backward.
“I didn't put my name in there.”
The scoreboard changed again.
SPEED TEST: READY
The laughter disappeared.
Someone said:
“What the hell?”
Malik looked around the court.
A small black device had been attached beneath the scoreboard.
It had not been there earlier.
At least Malik didn't remember seeing it.
A tiny blue light blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then Malik's phone vibrated.
He pulled it out.
There was no phone call.
No text message.
No notification from any application he recognized.
Just a black screen with a single sentence.
YOU HAVE BEEN OBSERVED.
Malik stared.
Jamal leaned closer.
“Who sent that?”
Malik shook his head.
“I don't know.”
Another vibration.
A second message appeared.
YOUR FIRST EVALUATION BEGINS IN 10 MINUTES.
Malik's expression changed.
“Evaluation?”
Then the third message appeared.
DON'T TELL YOUR COACH.
Malik looked toward the parking lot.
An old silver sedan was sitting beside the fence.
Its engine was running.
The windows were tinted.
There was nobody visible inside.
Malik stared at it for several seconds.
Then the car drove away.
Jamal swallowed.
“Was that them?”
Malik didn't answer.
“Malik?”
He was still staring at the empty road.
“No.”
“You don't know that.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Malik picked up the basketball.
His eyes moved across the court.
The broken fence.
The street.
The parking lot.
The scoreboard.
The device.
His phone.
Everything.
Then he smiled.
Not because he was relaxed.
Because something had finally become interesting.
“Because if they wanted me scared,” he said, bouncing the ball once, “they wouldn't have left that car's tire tracks facing the wrong way.”
Jamal blinked.
“What?”
Malik pointed.
“The car came in from the other side.”
“So?”
“So whoever drove it wasn't watching the game.”
Malik looked at the strange device beneath the scoreboard.
“They were watching me.”
For perhaps the first time in his life, Malik Carter wished he had paid more attention in English class.
Because there was one sentence on his phone that he desperately wanted to understand.
YOU HAVE BEEN OBSERVED.
He understood the words.
What he didn't understand was the reason.
And ten minutes later, the reason would begin moving toward him.
From Ohio.
Toward Detroit.
Then Manhattan.
And eventually Los Angeles.
But Malik didn't know any of that yet.
All he knew was that somebody had found him.
And whoever they were, they had made one serious mistake.
They had given Malik Carter a problem to solve.
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