Ms. B returned and gave them all a lecture. One more outburst like today’s and there’d be no more eSports club. She meant it. They could go.

It was too early for the late bus, so everyone either had to hang around school and wait, or walk home. Saying she had papers to grade, Ms. B went back to her room. She warned them not to touch the computers. She wanted the district tech to check them before they were used again.

The Axis squad left, but Zach stayed behind. Emma did, too. Zach wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. Was he hoping that Caleb would come back from the yearbook office so they could walk home together? For Zach, hanging out and skateboarding with Caleb after the eSports club had become the highlight of each week.

But then the thing at the mall happened, and Zach began to have doubts. Why hadn’t Caleb invited him to hang out with his cousins? Part of Zach’s brain said that it proved that Caleb wasn’t a real friend. But another part said that of course Caleb would want to be with his cousins. Especially since he didn’t see them that often. Zach knew that deep down he really did want Caleb to be his friend. But there’d been kids in the past who’d only pretended. And nothing was worse than that. Given a choice between a fake friend and no friend, he’d learned the hard way that it was best to have none.

“Zach?” Emma’s voice brought him back from his thoughts.

He raised his head, surprised that she’d spoken to him.

“Any idea how that hack happened?” she asked.

It was a good question. Zach was familiar with the typical hacks and spam, like some griefer’s lame attempts to troll a chat, or some joker using basic user script to flood screens with offensive messages. But he’d never seen image spam before.

“Not sure,” Zach said. “I’ll have to research it.”

Just as he said that, Nathan came in. “Research what?” he asked, fetching his backpack.

“How that malware attack happened,” Emma said.

“What difference does it make?” Nathan asked. “They were being jerks. I say next match we hack ’em right back. Go for the jugular. Spawn kill ’em.”

Emma wasn’t surprised by Nathan’s knee-jerk response. Someone hits you, you hit them. Maybe in the end you’d win the fight. Maybe you wouldn’t. But either way, you were bound to suffer cuts and bruises. “And then they hack us again. And pretty soon it’s not a game anymore, it’s just an all-out hackathon.”

“Oh yeah? So, what do you suggest?” Nathan challenged her.

Zach wondered why Nathan always acted like such an aggro jerk. He wondered if Emma was thinking the same thing. There was a lot to think about. Not just how the malware had been launched, but about all the hate symbols. Why those images? Who had chosen them?