Blame it all on Shy Hagen, Cameron thought. He shook his head, running a hand through his blond brush-cut before starting down the hall again. He remembered reading the news links about how a growing manufacturing company, JANs Corp., had found Shy. She seemed an ordinary little girl who’d turned the R&D plastics division upside down during a company field trip. So, the corporate heads at his company rethought their visitation policies, desperate to find the next Einstein at a young and impressionable age. Shy became a well-looked-after wunderkind on her way to the fast track once she graduated from high school. In the meantime, without advertising it, companies began their own searches.
As head of security, the nursemaiding aspect of his job gave Cameron endless headaches. Sure, the kids were bright, intelligent, curious, or just downright disruptive and obnoxious, but any one of them could spell the future for MNOS Ltd. When the executives up on the Balcony decreed the new schedule of invitations/invasions, Cameron could only plan ahead and try to make the best of it. As he moved along, occasionally glancing downward to check for text updates that appeared in the lower edges of his glasses, Cameron ran his tongue over his teeth. A nervous habit, but it kept him from thinking about missing a cigarette. Passing by a cross hallway, a shadow caught his attention, one too small to be cast by an adult.
The boy was just another kid dressed in one of those slick jackets that the whole field-trip group wore. Of course, he didn’t belong near the hallway leading to some of the more sensitive areas of MNOS. The kid should be with the rest of the tour group starting to play the VR games specially designed to search for nascent talent. Sometimes, the children occasionally managed to drift away from the group. To a point, it wasn’t necessarily discouraged because just such a situation led to Shy’s discovery. An intelligent, inquisitive child might be bored with the basic tour, and everyone needed to keep an eye on them. Cameron kept an eye on them for other reasons.
“Hey, pal, the group’s back this way. Did you miss a turn?” Cameron crouched down slightly to bring himself closer to the boy’s frame of reference but didn’t go down on one knee, which could be interpreted as condescending. He looked the child squarely in the eye and smiled in a reassuring fashion. He briefly considered the kid’s jacket. The material had an oily sheen. Silver with a slight overlay of some reddish and bluish material that shifted as the light caught it. The effect reminded him of something, but he couldn’t place what that was right away. He tipped his head forward, meeting the child’s eyes again. Maybe seven or eight years old, the kid wore the same black, fringed bowl cut as more than half the boys. No real identifying marks. The child just looked bored. Fine, just a lost sheep, get him back to the flock, and all would be fine.
Cameron reached out to put a hand on the kid’s shoulder to swing him around back toward the rest of the tour. The fabric felt funny, and then he recognized it. Made of an optical fabric, the jacket carried images on its surface like a television screen. In fact, he remembered schools of fish swimming on all their jackets when the group had come in. The Customer Relations Representative had the children turn off the jackets before starting the tour because they were too distracting. But the material under his hand reacted to his touch, changing color. At some level, the jacket was still on. The coloration reminded him of a reflector but in reverse. A nasty suspicion formed in his mind.
Designed to collect light and store that information maybe, he thought. Then the real revelation hit home. No wonder it looked familiar—light sail material. They weren’t too far from the materials lab. Most kids were only mildly interested in the section where MNOS developed a film for solar sails. Showing them the optics area tended to fascinate them more.
The boy sensed his hesitation and started to step back. Cameron grabbed a fistful of the jacket as the kid turned to run. The runaway struggled for a moment, and the jacket snapped him back into Cameron’s hands. Then things went all to hell. For a second, out of the corner of his eye, Cameron saw a mermaid. It flowed across the back of the jacket, winked directly at him, and then the side of the jacket facing Cameron flashed with blinding white light.
Suddenly, he hit the floor, the pain so intense. The only thought he could form, at least I still have the jacket. Luckily, he hadn’t been looking directly at the jacket. Subvocalizing as he struggled to his feet, he called the security center to alert the team. The bead mic at his throat recorded the vibrations, interpreted them, and displayed the relevant text on every security officer’s glasses display. He warned them about what happened with the jacket and set the alert.
What are we dealing with? he wondered. Cameron paged Loris, the security officer with the group, asking where the children had been for their first tour of the day. She hesitated a moment and replied.
LORIS: MORNING TOUR AT PELIAGIC INC.
The text appeared in red on his glasses, and he struggled to read it through the pain and the yellowish-green afterimage that swam in his vision. Peliagic Inc. competed with MNOS’s in the development of solar sail and optical fabrics. Peliagic gave the kids the jackets as promotional swag. The jackets must be designed to passively record their surroundings, as well as display those fish images. Had the tour passed in front of anything sensitive? Fortunately, Cameron retained the jacket, which could contain the most damaging information. But what might the others have garnered? he wondered. He could just imagine Peliagic issuing a recall for the jackets a few days later to retrieve their intel.
Cameron came to a halt at the top of the stairwell. He issued several directives to the other members of his team to begin their search of the R&D floor. Then he returned to Loris.
MAINTAIN YOUR POSITION AND OBSERVE, he sent.
Then he paged Means, trusting that the well-muscled former bodyguard would be alert.
TELL ME YOU ARE ON YOUR WAY TO THE DOORS. NOBODY, AND I MEAN NOBODY, LEAVES UNTIL WE HAVE THIS STRAIGHTENED OUT. CLEAR?
MEANS: ALREADY HERE, BOSS. YOU All RIGHT?
WONDERFUL. I’M CHOOSING TO LAUGH NOW INSTEAD OF CRY SINCE IT HURTS THAT BAD.
Switching to the team band, Cameron broadcasted:
NOBODY TAKES THE JACKETS OFF, OKAY? JUST MAKE SURE THEY STAY ON. MEANS NOW HAS THE FRONT GATE AND THE OTHER AREAS IN LOCK-DOWN. WE’VE GOT CONTROL OF THE HALLWAYS. LET’S FIND OUR MISSING SHEEP.
HALVER, I EXPECT YOU TO LET US KNOW AS SOON AS THE KID SHOWS UP ON ANY FLOATING SECURITY CAMS.
Cameron looked at the steps ahead of him. This part was not going to be fun. He leaned a shoulder into the wall and started down. His vision blurred, and he misjudged his step, putting his right foot over the edge on the tread. He quickly locked an arm around the handrail, just managing to stop himself from pitching forward. Leaning against the wall with a hand clamped over his streaming eye, Cameron blinked, and pain shot like a white-hot bolt through his head. He really wanted the solidity of his gun in hand but considering the situation, better to keep it holstered. After all, they were just kids taken advantage of by an unscrupulous corporation. The searing image continued to waver in the right-hand side of his vision, jumping in time to his accelerated pulse. Cameron shook his head, trying to clear it. His depth perception still suffered.
GIVE ME A REPORT, PEOPLE, he sent.
HALVER: KEEPING AN EYE ON THE MONITORS. WE’RE STILL MISSING ONE VISITOR. I’VE GOT LORIS AND THE OTHERS IN THE LOUNGE. SO FAR, NONE OF THE SCANNING CAMERAS HAVE PICKED UP ANY OTHER MOTION.
SAMUELS: I’M WALKING THE OTHER SIDE WITH DRAKE. ALL QUIET HERE. WE ARE LOCKING THE SECTIONS AS WE PASS THROUGH THEM.
Fine, Cameron thought. She’d made a good call. That meant that the west side was now cut off from the east and their little issue.
FELDMAN: WELKIN AND I ARE HEADED IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION. DO YOU WANT US TO BREAK PATTERN AND SWEEP AHEAD OF YOU?
NO, STAY WITH THE DRILL, Cameron answered.
He tried squinting again. Did the yellowish-green blob in his vision shrink? He hoped so. No way he wanted retinal damage, although it might be proof of the incident later.
Loris better still be there with her charges. This whole delay would give them a few extra minutes with the games, which worked in the company’s favor, Cameron thought.
Even though he hated the interaction, Cameron knew that the techs were also supposed to be open to their visitor’s questions and encourage them to participate in the tour. Cameron hated this part the most.
The techs were the vulnerable underbelly of MNOS. They weren’t supposed to be doing anything sensitive or really working hard while the kids had their hour-long tour. But techs never listened. Cameron could bank on that. It gave him nightmares that young impressionable eyes with memories honed by schoolwork potentially observed hard-gained research on a weekly basis. Unless they had another junior Einstein, most of it existed as code, graphs, or numbers. It still bugged him, just like the thought of exploiting the young like a resource irked him at a moral level.
LORIS: CAMERON, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE HAPPY. THE LOST SHEEP IS BACK. I MISSED HIS ENTRANCE. HALVER IS TRYING TO BACKTRACK HIS APPEARANCE WITH THE CAMERA LOGS. THIS KID IS LIKE A GHOST. HE LOOKS JUST LIKE ANY OF THE OTHER ONES. I CAN’T BE SURE I CAN PICK HIM OUT. HOLD ON.
The connection cut as Cameron doubled his pace, not quite ready to start running. He had a bad feeling he’d just pitch forward. Had the blob of light bouncing with each step started to get smaller?
LORIS: EVIDENTLY, THE KID WATCHED THE MOTION OF THE FLOATING CAMS AND STEPPED THROUGH INTO THE ROOM WHEN IT ROTATED AT THE FAR SIDE OF THE CYCLE. NOT ONLY THAT BUT HE ALSO APPARENTLY PICKED UP A JACKET FROM THE COUCH WHERE SEVERAL WERE LYING AND PUT IT ON. HALVER SAYS WITH TIME HE’D BE ABLE TO PINPOINT THE BOY. LOOK’S LIKE THIS IS WHAT HE DID WITH THE CAMERAS IN THE HALLWAYS.
Cameron stopped for a second, the next door directly in front of him. About twenty feet ahead lay the room with the children. Time had run out. He couldn’t have the jackets confiscated without a reasonable cause. What could he do now?
Cameron looked down at the jacket in his hands. More than likely, its defense activated by forcibly separating the two sides of the zipper- like pulling the jacket off someone. Did that mean that putting the zipper sides together activated it? He looked at the zipper tag. A lump of glistening greenish-blue plastic covered its widest part, bearing the embossed image of a mermaid. Now it made sense. If the jacket recorded, it had to store the information somewhere. How about right next to the off/on switch?
Cameron pulled out his flashlight. He hefted it briefly and, putting the zipper tab down on top of the doorknob, smashed the tab with the base of the light. It shattered satisfyingly. There were several fine golden wires visible in the pieces. He rubbed the flashlight back and forth several times, grating over the tab until the remaining greenish-blue material flaked away. What could he do about the others? Well, probably not a lot. For now, he needed to get the kids out of the building and assess the damage. He ran his thumb over the tab. It felt relatively smooth. Now, if he were lucky, whoever got this jacket back would never notice the difference. But what about the other ones? Suddenly, an idea occurred to him.
LORIS, FIND A REASON TO DETAIN THE KIDS ANOTHER TEN MINUTES.
SAMUELS, BREAK OFF THE SEARCH. GO TO THE MATERIALS LAB AND GET A COUPLE HAMMERS AND SOME SANDPAPER. HALVER, HAVE SOMEONE IN MAINTENANCE CRANK THE TEMPERATURE IN THE LOUNGE UP TEN DEGREES.
LORIS, WHEN THE JACKETS START TO COME OFF, GATHER THEM UP AND TAKE THEM OUT OF THE LOUNGE. IF ANYONE QUESTIONS YOU, YOU’RE JUST HANGING THEM UP.
EVERYONE ELSE, EXCEPT FOR MEANS, MEET ME OUTSIDE OF THE LOUNGE. WE’VE GOT TO WORK QUICKLY.
A few tense minutes later, he sent the other security officers on their way to their various assignments. Peliagic would be disappointed to discover the intelligence they sought to gather was gone. Too bad for them.
Cameron leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. Shortly, Loris led the kids out. They marched in a line toward the front lobby and the gate. He couldn’t help glaring at them. None of them looked back.
MEANS, THE KIDS ARE CLEAR. YOU CAN STAND DOWN FROM ALERT, Cameron sent.
MEANS: SURE, SIR. YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT THEY WANT TO SEE YOU UP ON THE BALCONY RIGHT AWAY.
A pause and another message ran across Cameron’s display.
MEANS: SIR, THERE’LL BE A SCOTCH WITH YOUR NAME ON IT AT PALAVAR’S LATER, IF YOU FEEL UP TO IT.
Cameron chuckled and then replied:
LET ME LIVE THROUGH MY DEBRIEFING (?), CLEAN UP THIS MESS, AND THEN I’LL SAY YES.
He clicked off. Briefly closing his eyes, he rubbed his hands across his forehead. He did not look forward to dealing with the executives up on the Balcony, but he couldn’t avoid it. On the good side, his sense of balance had returned, and the blot on his sight was definitely decreased in size. Pushing himself away from the wall, he began the long walk to the Balcony.
~*~
At Palavar’s, he asked himself if he missed something crucial. Cameron started to think along different lines. What if, as weird as it sounded, Peliagic weren’t sifting their tour groups for merely genius traits? What if they were searching for something else? Like perhaps potential corporate spies? What if you could train a spook from childhood on? A ghost who could avoid security and scrutiny, outfitted in a jacket that passively stole valuable secrets. The possibility chilled him. Had he met the equivalent of Shy Hagen today? His reflection in the scotch wavered, much like his resolve. Then he tossed it back and turned the glass upside down on the bar. He clapped Means on the shoulder in thanks and headed out into the heat of the summer evening.
Halfway home, Cameron stopped outside of a playground. He stood there for several minutes, hands in his pockets, watching the children running, swinging, and jumping. He looked at their faces trying to find something different in each passing glance, trying to weigh them as something more than just a child. He considered them like threats in need of an assessment, much like MNOS looked at them as potential commodities. For a moment there, Cameron didn’t see children, just a sea of possibilities.