Apprentice Superhero

Chapters One & Two

COLIN COWSBOTHAM LIVED WITH HIS PARENTS on what he dimly remembered as a quiet-ish, upper-working-class street. His memories, though dimmed by the years, were perfectly correct. It had been a pleasant and safe community to grow up in. Back then, but no longer. East Avenue stood at the outer edge of a district that began life as a council housing estate. Some joker in the planning department had christened it ‘Bleakwinter Farm’ but it was known locally as the pit estate. Even long after there was no pit. And after right-to-buy turned council tenants into owner-occupiers. Once upon a time, as older people still remarked, virtually everyone living there either worked at the pit or in one of the many secondary industries and businesses it supported. At that time, Bleakwinter was irrefutably lower-working-class. What that meant in real money was rough streets with frequent fights outside school and at closing time but no serious injuries from those fights and certainly no deaths nor any likelihood of one. Full-time employed plus overtime, was how Sergeant Smith, the local bobby at the time, used to put it. Economically speaking. But after the pit closed, Bleakwinter’s terminally wounded economy limped on, each year shedding more and more jobs and businesses until it finally gave up fighting and accepted death. Now the estate had no employment of the PAYE kind, not enough of the cash-in-hand type and far too much of the other kind.

Colin grew up watching the estate decline, deteriorating from proud homeowners tending their gardens and decorating their houses to iron gates, gang tags, Rottweilers, litter-strewn streets and abandoned cars. Colin’s life deteriorated alongside it, from hiding in the library at playtime to hiding at home once the streetlights came on. His parents hid too. Anyone with half a brain did unless they trained at Howard’s Boxing Club. The local police responded to burglaries the following day, at least half the time anyway. Fights at chucking out time didn’t reach their to do list. Serious inter-gang violence, once or twice with guns and a drive by shooting, did. But only rarely, and after having spent resources the police committee described as unsustainable, did charges, prosecution and convictions follow.

At night Colin watched, with his bedroom light off and with the curtains half closed as Audis, BMWs and Subarus screamed up and down the street. The noise didn’t end when the racing did. In the warm weather, parties spilled out onto the street and bass-heavy electronic music spilled out of car doors and boots. Sometimes they’d last until the returning daylight drove them home to sleep the day away until darkness returned and the cycle began again. Through those curtains, Colin had watched, horrified, scenes that haunted him when he tried to sleep. Gang fights, vicious beatings and stabbings. And deaths. From, Colin supposed, overdoses, to which ambulances either arrived too late, protected by three or four police cars, or not at all. On those same grass verges he’d played marbles on what seemed like lifetimes ago. Other scenes he watched prompted feelings quite different from horror. Colin supposed they must be called drug-fuelled orgies. They certainly surpassed anything he’d ever seen when he’d clicked on those icons that popped up when he innocently searched phrases like milk jugs or big dongle. Words that turned out to be double-entendres. Those scenes affected him at night as well, but in a different way.

When Colin’s anger got the better of him and he couldn’t help himself comparing the peaceful retirement his parents had hoped for versus the hell they’d got, he’d load Grand Theft Auto and machine-gun all the criminals down. Then, sometimes, he’d cry. Because that simulated revenge was all that the jeering, swaggering young men and women ruining his parents’, neighbours’ and his own life would ever receive.

Colin’s bedroom was his escape from the outside world. Not only could he completely lose himself online but cyberspace was infinitely safer and more malleable than the cruel real world. He could immerse himself in coding and programming projects so deeply he could stay in there forever — or at least until his numbed backside or cramping calves forced him back into grey reality.

His bedroom also held his physical film and documentary library and his streaming ‘library’, though Colin wondered sometimes if that was the right word. The floor-to-ceiling shelving on two walls was crammed with DVDs, with some, though not many, in their original store-bought cases. Most were from charity shops. Below his worktop, hard drives stored fifty thousand films. Even in such an giant haystack it wasn’t hard to find his favourites. He’d categorised and organised every one into multiple lists. Genre, alphabetical order, lead actor, director, screenwriter and a dozen more.

Colin found it easy to work and play anonymously online. He operated multiple encrypted identities and avatars through encrypted VPNs and IP addresses, never keeping one for too long. Colin’s heroes were Blackhat and Whitehat hackers from his favourite movies. He could quote every line from the Warlock in Die Hard 4, Lyle in the Italian Job remake, Nicholas Hathaway in Blackhat. And Lisbeth Salander in, well, all of them, even the remake that left out the answer to the mystery which drove the whole story.

Online, Colin lived his heroes’ lives — vicariously. He imagined himself living a fully undercover life like Brill in ‘Enemy of the State’, but rather than hiding, like the paranoid Brill, he dreamed he would use his skills to foil crime, expose phishers, scammers and malware writers, investigate cyberterrorists and - his favourite fantasy - emptying the accounts of corrupt politicians and corporations. In those reveries, Colin kept himself securely hidden in his e-castle and just as importantly, safe. Safe from the revenge of those he exposed and whose funds he liberated. Safe too, from real world villains and enemies. In the movies those villains were written as corrupt, lazy and stupid FBI or CIA agents, or in the British ones MI6 operatives or police detectives owned by politicians. Colin detested those characters, workshy sloths whose job titles granted them the power to force hackers to help them, to hijack the skills they didn’t have and couldn’t be bothered to learn. He hated it when the CIA suit threatened the hero with arrest or the Inland Revenue or the Securities or Competition Commission or any number of government-owned ‘regulators’ they could corruptly sick on anyone they wanted. Colin would seethe with anger, then seethe even more that all he could do about it was seethe. At this point he’d remember exactly where seething had got him. In the fifth form, inspired by some film he couldn’t recall, some American high-school coming of age probably, where the bullied hero fights back and wins, he’d called a real school bully a wanker and, spilling over with righteous anger, punched him in the face. Once. Like in the movie. The bully didn’t fall over against his locker, didn’t sit up rubbing his chin, chastened and embarrassed, ever afterwards to respect Colin and work hard to change his bullying ways. Instead, he laughed, insulted Colin’s mother and set about pummelling every inch of Colin’s face and body until a teacher rescued him and walked him, limping, to the school nurse. The experience didn’t reduce Colin’s burning anger by a micron, but it did teach him how to keep the fire banked down low. And to remind him with a stab, even as he seethed through the chink in the curtains at his life on Bleakwinter, that Grand Theft Auto was the closest to real-life violence and revenge as he would ever be capable of.

Once in a while is his daydream, he’d become like Hathaway, not only a hacker but strong, brave and able to fight. A glance in the mirror as he got dressed blew that one away like smoke in the wind. Still, although it was only a daydream, Colin found himself strangely attached to it because Bleakwinter, in fact the entire city, indeed the whole country were as good as doomed unless someone like a superhero appeared out of nowhere. A snappy line from another hacker movie bubbled up. ‘Who else is going to change the world, Greenpeace?’ Except, Colin thought dismally, when the cold light of day dawned, nobody would. Saving the world or short of that, the Bleakwinter Farm Estate, was a pipe dream, like one of Bilbo’s smoke rings that dissolved a few seconds after it entered the real world’s air.

Chapter Two

ONE MORNING IN LATE SEPTEMBER, Colin had to walk half-way across the estate to an appointment at the Job Centre. He didn’t actually need his benefits — although his parents depended on them — and in this, he was in the same boat as the patched gang-members, senior dealers and fences. Although of course, they claimed them nonetheless. Colin earned a good – if secret - income from scores of profitable online businesses, including software and game beta testing, product development and reviews, and website and e-commerce site building. And investigations - what his parents would probably call hacking - though it was never as exciting as the movies made it seem. His e-friends, a handful of other hackers, to whom he passed on work when he was busy or not interested, found that keeping their identities firewalled and secret was hard and took a considerable portion of their time and energy. Colin found it so easy that they had a nickname for him — Phreak-Boy — because he’d broken into networks they’d been rebuffed from. And quite easily too, Colin thought. I didn’t even notice what they found hard. Almost like riding my moped to work on autopilot – back when there were real jobs on the estate.

However, the corner dealers and footsoldiers -whose income was so irregular it didn’t always make it home — claimed every benefit going. That meant they were frequently called in for interviews and put onto courses. Colin hated having to queue with them. He always requested the day’s first slot.

“Morning Mum. Dad.” He poured cornflakes in a bowl, looking around the warm kitchen with its happy childhood memories. The wallpaper had changed a few times but the sink, cupboards, worktops and blinds remained the same, if you didn’t count the fading colours.

“Morning love,” his Mum kissed his cheek. His father managed a thin smile. Mum slid Dad’s dosette box of tablets across the table. They swapped their daily enquiries about when they’d finally dropped off to sleep, any especially loud noises during the night, finishing as always with the expressed hope tonight would be better. They joined hands around the table as Colin’s father Ralph said a short grace and prayer for protection through the day.

Colin walked down Perry Street, the halfway point to the Job Centre, copper and lemon-yellow autumn leaves crunching under his feet. Nobody about so far. He adjusted his tie and for the umpteenth time, hitched up his black trousers. He’d have liked to tighten his belt but it was on the final notch already. How long had he owned these anyway? There was so much nylon in them that sparks flew off when he crossed his legs. It must have been in his chubbier phase. A year ago he’d forced himself to walk into a men’s clothing store in the town, with a half-formed idea to replace them. Two salesmen were hovering around the till. One had pointed at him and nudged the other, making some comment he couldn’t hear. The other had half-stifled a snigger. Shame burned Colin’s cheeks and he’d fled, abandoning the stupid idea.

Turning the corner onto Moorhouse, he could now see a row of poplars which flanked the edge of the Job Centre’s secure fence. As he turned the corner onto Conway, a blast of cold air made him shiver. Leaves skittered toward him, swirling around in circular eddies once they reached the junction and lost the wind’s strength. Quickening his step he walked past what had once been proudly well-kept front gardens. Now both the gardens and houses were fully blocked from view by six foot fence panels. He walked past a corrugated iron fence either side of a fortified front gate. A small hatch, hinged and bolted on the inside indicated what the house behind it sold. There was no letterbox. He skirted puddles of vomit left outside last night. Silver nitrous oxide canisters rolled against one another in the gutter. Cigarette packets and crumpled advertising flyers blew down the street.

Colin reached the centre, pressed the intercom, gave his name. Stepping inside, he felt relief when the automatic gate clicked behind him. He walked past the staff cars and bike rack. Another secure door buzzed and he was inside. From behind the glass the girl pointed to a row of plastic chairs. Colin looked around the foyer. Tags, nicknames and gang insignia were still readable beneath fresh white paint.

His routine interview over, Colin walked back into the foyer. The chairs had been dragged into one corner of the long room and were now filled with dark-skinned Africans. They stood out, not by their matching tracksuits but by their blue and white kofias which must be some sort of insignia, Colin thought. What country was that flag printed on the hat brim? A dredged up memory told him Somalian. A handful of overweight white women, hovered nearby, leaning on pushchairs and buggies. The room stank of stale cannabis and tobacco smoke. The Africans ignored him, staring menacingly instead at another, smaller group, slouched against the opposite wall, near the exit. Albanians, who owned the estate. Colin had learned this from the court reports the local online paper copied and pasted. He walked, head-down, between the two groups to the door, praying he wouldn’t be noticed. What point would there be in picking on him anyway? He hadn’t brought his wallet or phone, nor his best trainers. And what idiot had thought it would be a good idea to give identical appointment times to two gangs who stabbed, kidnapped and sometimes murdered their rivals. If Colin remembered the reports correctly, there were significantly more Somalian deaths than Albanian but even so there was never a shortage of replacements for the Africans.

When the door clicked shut behind him, Colin breathed out a sigh of relief, trying hard to make it inaudible. He walked down the path, out of the automatic gate and froze. A dozen Somalians were pacing and stretching on the road, out of sight of the Job Centre but unable to stop flicking glances toward it. Colin bit down the impulse to run. Most of them seemed to have legs twice as long as his and in any case, he mustn’t lead them back to Mum and Dad’s. Staring at the road, he took a wide loop around the gang.

“Hey,” a thickly accented voice nearly froze him. Colin sped up. Unintelligible angry orders flew behind his back and he heard running feet. When hands grabbed him, he raised his arms in surrender. He was half dragged, half marched back to the overgrown hedge that hid the gang from the Job Centre. They forced Colin backwards until the hedge protruded either side of him. Strong hands forced his arms out wide. Empty plastic bottles, Coke cans and chocolate bar wrappers scrunched under his feet.

“I haven’t got anything,” he heard himself scream in terror. “Honestly, I wouldn’t - ” but when an angry finger was thrust in his face he stopped. He felt his knees shake when the leader beckoned over a youth who looked markedly younger than any of the others. His dark face appeared simultaneously staunch and scared. The leader pushed the youth in front of Colin and barked an order. The youth looked up at Colin for a second, then, with his face contorted in anger and hatred, began slamming Colin with punches and kicks. When a punch in the stomach forced Colin’s head down to his chest, the youth continued battering him until the leader barked another order. The youth stepped back, gasping for breath. His knuckles were red. The two men holding Colin’s arms relaxed their grips and Colin took a step forward, gagging and spluttering. The youth regained his breath, said something to them and they stretched Colin out yet again. The boy bent down and ripped off one of Colin’s shoes. Mocking laughter rippled around the gang. Colin’s arms were released and he felt a shove in his back that almost made him trip over the kerb. Holding back tears of shame, he ran away from the Job Centre and didn’t stop until Perry Street, where he forced himself to turn and check if he was being followed home. He ran up the stairs to his bedroom and silently sobbed helpless tears.  

A little later Colin recognised he needed something, anything to distract his thoughts. He forced himself to work on a simple software review. He gave up when he noticed his review was filled with words like useless, nonsense, pathetic, absolutely crap and deserves to be smashed to pieces. He stared at the dark screen, his tear-stained face reflecting back at him, realised he’d only been describing himself. What a waste of space I am. Can’t stand up for myself. Chickenshit. I couldn’t even pull one of those fatties in the Job Centre. What’s the point of me?

Several movies and a picked-at evening meal later, Colin noticed night had fallen. He quickly snapped off his desktop lamp and padded quietly over to the window. Every upstairs window on the far side of the road was dark. Colin saw that some of the downstairs rooms were lit, behind curtains, but the louts couldn’t see through the overgrown hedges and high fence panelling. The boy racers started gunning their engines. The smell of hot engine oil and exhaust fumes blew in through Colin’s window. A teenage girl standing on the kerb lowered a flag and the cars sped away, tyres screeching. Colin drew the curtains closed and decided to call it a night. He heard the screaming engine noise fade as the cars turned right onto Ramsay Drive. There’d be a few minutes of relative quiet until they completed the circuit and arrived back on East Avenue.

He stepped out onto the landing where he could hear his parents sleeping. Colin crept into the upstairs bathroom, peed, checked the timer on his electric toothbrush and brushed his teeth. Back in his bedroom he pulled on Spiderman pyjamas and thick bedsocks.

He heard a sliding noise by the door and turned to see an envelope had been slid underneath. Colin only froze for a second, then dashed to the door and pulled it open. Nothing. His father’s gentle snoring hadn’t altered its rhythm. He listened for his mother’s woodpigeon-like cooing as she exhaled. Yes, there it was. He froze again. Who’s got into our house? Not burglars, obviously. To deliver a note? Girding up his courage, Colin tiptoed downstairs and entered every room, his heart hammering. What will I do if I find someone? He checked every window twice and both doors. All were closed and locked just like his mother left them every night before settling down for the night. She made the house like a fortress. Nobody could possibly get in without breaking a window or something equally noisy. He stood in the darkness listening, counting to a hundred, then another hundred. Silence. Whoever it was had left, somehow. He heard the racing cars round the corner then the screech of brakes as they pulled up. Excited voices and slamming car doors competed with revving engines. Colin shook his head. No sense waking Mum and Dad. They’d be worrying the rest of the night, never getting back off to sleep and Dad didn’t sleep that well to begin with. He picked up the envelope and sat on his bed. Just an ordinary white one with ‘Colin’ written in a neat hand. Inside was a plain white sheet, folded once.

‘Good evening Colin,’ it began in the same tidy handwriting which somehow made Colin think of Bob Cratchit hunched over a Victorian writing bureau. He felt a shiver run up his back.

‘There is no need for concern,’ the writer continued. ‘I would urge you not to worry, except I am aware that you will. I shall make contact tomorrow. When you breakfast, would you be so kind as to ask your parents about the tree?’ There was no name or signature.

Colin lay in bed but couldn’t switch his mind off. A thousand questions pinballed around the inside of his skull but no answers came.