“We still don’t know where it’s from, how it got there or how to get rid of it.” BB’s face betrayed no hint of worry or apprehension. No surprise there.
I took a sip of vodka, savoring the clean taste and smiling at the pleasant burn as it trickled down my throat. Blue Ice, distilled in Rigby Idaho and made with potatoes, like a vodka should be. BB always did stock the good stuff.
He’d called me in shortly after I’d returned from an alligator hunt. The New York City sewers were notorious for the things and every time you killed one, another took its place, just like roaches. This last gator measured nearly thirty feet and had skin whiter than a Klan member’s sheets. Fortunately for me, it wasn’t bulletproof.
The team and I had stuck around the Big Apple for the next event, confident in the ‘where there’s one, there’s another’ law of Supernatural occurrences. Turned out that a troublesome troll came up from the World Under to take up residence under the Brooklyn Bridge. It had eaten two cars and their passengers before we finally managed to dispatch the armor-skinned beastie with an anti-tank weapon. I had been cleaning bits of troll out of my hair when the Director called.
Now BB wanted to talk about some spook that inhabited the Bureau’s computer system. “Are you sure it’s not just some genius-level hacker?”
BB swirled the cognac in his snifter before answering. “Special Branch is pretty sure. They’ve tried an exorcism, but without its true name there’s nothing they can do.”
“Well, you didn’t bring me here and serve me your best vodka just for a chin wag, BB. What do you want?”
“Must you always be blunt?”
“Blunt is good. I like blunt, blunt works for me. I’ll leave subtle to the politicians.”
“To the point then. Special Branch’s focus does not lend itself to … investigation. In fact, they don’t know diddly on how to go about it. I need you to see what you can find out about this ghost in our machine.”
Cute. Since it showed up six months ago the spook had been the talk of the Warehouse, a cybernetic spirit that had Special Branch scratching their heads in wonder and confusion. What could I do that they couldn’t? Then it hit me. “You want me to find out its true name, don’t you? How the hell can I get that? It’s not like the spook’s going to tell me.”
BB slowly inhaled from his snifter and took another sip Louis XIII cognac. At $1,600 a bottle, it was the only vice I’d ever seen him indulge. “If it was easy, it would have been done by now. You’ve got eight weeks to find something out. Start by talking to the new Special Branch member, Alex Dumont. He might be of some help.”
“The new uberkid from MIT? Heard he was smarter than a sack of Einsteins.”
“That he is. I think between you two you might achieve a desired result. As an added bonus, your team members will have rotating vacations while you’re gone. If you succeed, you’ll get an extra week for yourself.”
Two weeks vacation? Sure I’d be monitored, observed the whole time, but two weeks? I felt like I’d hit the Lotto.
BB almost smiled at the look on my face. “I see we have a deal, then.”
We did.
Cornering Alex took a while. Seems he made his home in R&D and rarely left, surfacing only for Twinkies and Jolt Cola. It was during one of his infrequent breaks that I managed to trap the elusive geek.
“You should check your email and answer your phone, kid,” I remarked, while pulling up a chair and planting my fundament. A Hot Pocket disappeared down his gullet faster than money into a politician’s bank account. He spared me only a cursory glance from his iPad before gulping down a full can of soda and letting loose a resounding belch.
“Mmm …” Was all he said.
Crack! My hand hit the aluminum tabletop hard, sending soda and Hot Pockets flying, decorating the young man with Jolt. “Now kid,” I smiled sweetly as he gaped at me through cola dripping from his lank hair. “It’s only polite to answer someone fully when they address you. Didn’t your mama ever teach you manners?”
He continued to stare at me, mouth half-open, an unfinished bit of Hot Pocket in one cheek like a chaw of tobacco. “Um …”
“Um? Strange word that. Usually employed by idiots and halfwits. Which one are you?”
Face flushing crimson, he shook his head, caramel droplets flying. “Neither, sir.”
My smile was beatific. “Ahh ... two words strung together coherently. Very nice. But I’m not a ‘sir,’ I work for a living.” Leaning forward, I extended my hand. “Agent Kal Hakala.”
“A-Alex Dumont, sir!” A smile pasted itself on his face. “Hey, you’re the agent who saw the Class Five!”
Yippee. Another one who wanted to hear that story. My smile faded at the edges. “Before you ask … no. Just read about it.”
He looked so hurt … like I told him there was no Santa Claus.
Keeping my tone conciliatory, I said, “Alex, they tell me you’re the best thing to come along since sliced bread and I need to pick your brain.”
He threw me a puzzled look and removed his birth control glasses, wiping the lenses with a corner of his cola splattered shirt. “About what?”
“The Director seems to think that between the two of us we can figure out how to get rid of that cyberspace spook.”
“Did you know that I’m working on the source of magic?” he said quickly, picking up his iPad (slated for release in 2010), scrolling through his notes until he found the one he wanted. With a nervous smile, he showed me a screen filled with equations that instantly put me into snore mode. “I have a theory that magic is really just Dark Energy, which permeates all of space. Dark Energy currently accounts for 74% of the mass-energy of the universe! Isn’t that amazing?”
The kid probably couldn’t play poker to save his life. I’d spooked him bad. Holding up my hands, I said, “You had me at The Force, Luke.”
“Not quite,” he commented with something like pity in his voice.
“Oh really? Dark Energy surrounds us, permeating us and binding the galaxy together. Right?”
“Right.”
“Well for such a smart guy, you don’t know your movies that well. Obi-Wan said that in the first Star Wars.”
“Ummm …”
“Your sparkling wit never ceases to impress, kid.”
It started slow, but built up until it burst forth fresh and joyful, infecting me with its purity. Minutes passed as we laughed, drawing amused looks from passing agents grabbing coffee or something to eat.
“Oh, damn, sir. You’re right.” He wiped his eyes. The kid looked a lot less stressed and nerdy when he smiled. “You’re really quite right. It does sound like The Force.”
“It’s okay, Alex. When Lucas left Special Branch in 1970, the money he earned helped him fund THX 1138. Which, of course, led him to American Graffiti and then Star Wars. Hey, kid, close your mouth. You’re catching flies.”
The poor sap hunched over the table, looking like he’d been sucker punched. I don’t think he would have been more surprised if I had told him Christ was secretly into S&M. All traces of the mirth had evaporated ... zero to serious in six seconds flat. “But … but … Dark Energy was discovered in 1998 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Australian National University. How could Lucas … but …”
“Don’t worry, kid,” I soothed. “Lucas was just trying to find God or a connection with all living things.” Inside I laughed and laughed. Had I ever been that young?
“Oh thank god!” He moaned in relief. “I thought you were saying that I was decades behind the times here. Research wise.”
“Listen, I know you probably signed up for the cool toys and research, but did you opt for basic at Parris Island?”
“Yes.”
Hmm … that surprised me. He looked like he’d blow away in a gentle breeze. “Then get on a team as soon as you can. You magicians in Special Branch need to see what the front lines are like.”
“Why?”
Taking a few calming breaths, I resisted the urge to shake him. “Look, you research guys are great. Don’t get me wrong. What you do is important and a lot of times saves lives, but when you’re out in the field, you see what’s needed to improve our ability to save lives. Not to mention our own. You also develop a deeper appreciation of the value of human life when you see it ripped to shreds firsthand. It’s so safe and insulated in R&D and reading our reports is a crappy way to see how the World Under works.”
I rose and headed out, a little hot under the collar, leaving him to ponder my words. I’d come on a little strong, but the subject had been a sore spot for agents for a long time. It’s easy to view the world from an ivory tower, but that vantage doesn’t let you see the dangers that lurk in the underbrush.
Okay … It was time to chill a little and concentrate on what the kid didn’t say. He’d changed the subject pretty damn quick when I mentioned the ghost.
We all have a ‘Duh!’ moment, and mine kicked in right then, stopping me in my tracks. As my dad would say, “The wheel is spinning, but the hamster’s dead.” BB, however, had no such lifeless rodent issues. He knew there was a connection between Alex and the spook and he threw me at the kid to find out. He’d needed a blunt object and blunt is what I do best.
Time to go back to school.
Driving a Crown Vic is like wearing a fur coat … you’re a little embarrassed, but the feeling is awesome. The Vic sailed across the New Jersey Turnpike, the I-95, and the Massachusetts Turnpike smoothly, almost stately, with plenty of power to keep me firmly rooted in the fast lane.
MIT was a good 450 miles from Warehouse and, although some might think me nuts, driving all the way seemed to be the safest route, considering I was investigating a spirit who could plunge into any computer on the planet and wreak untold damage if upset. Besides, it had been years since I drove just for the pleasure of it and BB hadn’t given me a deadline.
Paying cash for gas and food kept me off the radar in case the spirit suspected I had my nose in its business, which I figured, by Alex’s reaction, was the case. It didn’t take a genius to figure things out; Alex and the spook showed up at the Bureau at roughly the same time, so the probability of those two events being connected was high.
Six hours and one pit stop later, I parked the Vic in the lot of the biggest and best brain factory in the world. MIT had been affiliated with fifty National Medal of Science recipients and seventy-five Nobel Laureates. It received billions in endowments and the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT grads would equal the seventeenth largest economy in the world.
Yeah, stepping onto those grounds, I felt like a hick from the sticks.
How do you find the registrar’s office in a place that extends over one mile along the northern bank of the Charles River Basin, has five schools, one college and a total of thirty-two academic departments? Easy, tuck your pride down someplace deep inside and ask. Several times. Then proceed to get lost and ask for more directions from smirky, sarky students who, if they knew what you did for a living, would pee their pants and run home crying into their pocket protectors.
“You lost?” The pretty girl had straight blond hair and cornflower blue eyes, artfully ripped jeans, Converse sneakers, and a black Pogues t-shirt. But that’s not what made her stand out in a crowd, not what made her unique in my eyes. She had to be at least six-two, barely two inches shorter than my own six-four, the only girl I’d ever met I didn’t have to stare down at.
I hit her with my pearlies at full wattage. “Is it that obvious?”
“Only to the sighted,” She said, dimpling irresistibly.
“I need to find the registrar, Miss—?”
“Stephenson. Juliet Stephenson, Mr.—?
Smiling, I pulled my FBI badge out of the inside pocket of my charcoal suit. “Hakala. Special Agent Kal Hakala.”
Juliet gave my badge and ID close scrutiny. “You don’t look like a fed. More like a football jock.” No trace of disdain in her voice.
“Used to be, about a thousand years ago, but I grew up and joined the really real world.”
She laughed, a full hearty sound. “The really real world? What’s that?”
“A world of responsibility, of finding your place and making the most of it.”
“So you’ve found your place?” she asked, face serious. “That’s a rarity.”
I decided to be truthful. “Not sure if I found my place … I think it’s more like I found something I feel passionate about.”
Those dimples again. “What makes you think that’s not finding your place?”
Damn. My heart started doing the Rumba. I covered it with a chuckle. “I’d love to continue this philosophical chitchat with you, Miss Juliet, but I need to get to the registrar. Can you give me directions?”
A slow sway later and she took my arm. “I’m going that way, cowboy, come with me.” Her long fingers intertwined perfectly with mine and I felt a gentle heat from our contact. This was no party girl at a rage, tarted up in a short skirt with ‘screw me’ pumps on, a one-night stand that satisfies physically yet leaves you empty. No, she was something special—a tender, yet strong, woman whose warmth I felt down to my bones.
How was it that a girl I’d just met had such an effect on me? I don’t know, but something about that tall drink of water woke a small part of me that I thought had been stowed away for good. Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Here be dragons …
Some things are best left alone.
Maybe she saw something in my face. “What’s wrong, Special Agent Kal Hakala?”
“ ‘I have miles to go before I sleep,’” I quoted quietly, filled with quiet regret.
“ ‘And I have miles to go before I sleep,’ she repeated. Robert Frost … one of the saddest poems I’ve ever read.”
I nodded, not wanting to reach for the warmth she offered. Instead I shifted the topic to inconsequential things and she rode with it without batting an eye.
Juliet walked me as far as the registrar’s office before patting my arm and, with a small sad smile, leaving. She didn’t know why I’d pulled away, but she respected the decision.
A kindly but slightly harried middle-aged woman with curly gray and brown hair gave me a smile. “What can I do for you, sir?” She and a few other women manned the office, pecking away at PCs and scurrying here and there with reams of files.
I hate being called ‘sir.’ Makes me feel like I don’t earn my money honestly. I flipped her my badge and ID. “Special Agent Hakala, ma’am. I need information on one of your graduates, a Mr. Alexander Dumont.”
She peered at the ID suspiciously through a pair of half-moon reading glasses she kept on a silvery chain around her neck. “Well, Special Agent Hakala,” she commented with a bit of frost. “I cannot let you access student records without a warrant.”
Once again I broke out the high-wattage smile. “Ma’am, I’m not here to dig into his student records. This is more of a background check.” The frost began to melt. “Can you give me the name of his Faculty Advisor, please?”
Mollified that I wasn’t there to raid her database, she looked down at her PC. “Spell his name, please.” After typing it in, she looked up at me over her cheaters. “You’ll want to see Professor Martin at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center.”
“Don’t suppose you have a map.”
Without a word she handled me a pamphlet. “Have a nice day,” she said, already returning to her work.
Opening the pamphlet, I looked at a map inside. M.C. Escher couldn’t have made heads or tails of it.
Wonderful.
“That’s a name I expected to be mentioned in the same breath as ‘Nobel,’ ” Professor Martin beamed at me, a slightly graying man somewhere in his fifties. Small and lean, he looked like a physically fit Mr. Rogers but had the forceful personality of a drill instructor. I took to him right away.
The mention of Alex’s name and the sight of my badge brought out a small, conspiratorial smile. Clearing a stack of files off a chair afforded me a place to rest the back of my front.
Steepling his fingers, he continued to grin. “So what can I do for you, Special Agent?”
I decided to forgo the false charm and hit him straight between the eyes. “Background check on your former student. It seems that during the mandatory Polygraph Test, he became evasive regarding his last year at MIT and I’ve been sent to find out why.”
“His last year?” he asked dispassionately.
“Yes. Did he suffer some sort of trauma you might know about?”
Where do professors learn the cynical, inquisitive stare? Is there a handbook? If so, I wanted one. I found myself facing the full brunt of his hazel eyes. “Is he in trouble?” he asked quietly and I could hear his mental defenses rising.
“Hardly. If he won’t come clean on why he’s so evasive or if I can’t find out why, he merely loses the opportunity at a position with a very high clearance level.”
“How high?”
“Stratospheric.”
He tried to think of some objection, some way to rationalize not telling me what he knew, but couldn’t find any. “Alex seemed shaken up after Christmas break,” he said, sounding resigned. “Had trouble concentrating, focusing and was generally on edge.”
Ding ding ding … we have a winner. “Any idea why?”
He shook his head, and I felt a twinge of disappointment.
I stood and extended a hand. “Well, thank you then, Professor. I appreciate the effort.”
Hard calluses met mine. “You’re welcome, Agent Hakala. Sorry I couldn’t provide you with more information, but I think I know who can.”
I threw him a raised eyebrow and he smiled in amusement. “Check out his roommate, Jamie Schenk. They shared a place close by.”
“Oh, please don’t tell me it’s on campus!” I groaned. I’d had to ask three different students to find Professor Martin and I’d still managed to get lost. Twice.
“Don’t worry, young man,” he laughed. “It’s a house off-campus. I was there once, checking up on him during that bleak period I mentioned. Let me give you the address.”
Better and betterer. Every clue seemed to lead to another clue, but it felt like progress. Once I got the address I shut the door on the cluttered office with its several jillion books and HP desktop and files and files and files everywhere.
Finding the Vic, hell … finding the parking lot took the better part of a half-hour, but I managed to leave MIT with all body parts and sanity intact.
Thanks to a portable GPS, I finally found the little run down two-storey house less than three miles away. The neighborhood looked crappy enough that I didn’t want to park the Vic on the street, but I didn’t have a choice. A battered white Neon squatted in the center of the house’s cracked and overgrown driveway.
Any redeeming qualities the place might have possessed a hundred years ago had long since become extinct. Not only was the paint a dim memory, but mold, rot and rust had taken over where it left off. Just standing at the front door made me want to get a tetanus shot, but I knocked on the bilious yellow wood anyway. No answer. So I knocked harder.
“Go away,” came a faint, high-pitched male voice.
“Open the damn door or I’ll set the place of fire,” I hollered, too tired to put up with any BS.
A few moments later, “Okay, dude … door’s open.”
Did I really have to touch the knob? It looked … infected somehow, as if the metal were a living, gangrenous thing. I put a hand in my jacket pocket and buffered the touch of the knob with linen. I made a mental note to burn the jacket.
Inside, the house told me a different story. The door opened into a cave-like interior that made me wish for night-vision. When my eyes finally adjusted, I found myself in an empty room barely the size of a small walk-in closet with stairs to my right leading to the second story. Directly in front was a white wooden door covering loud roaring noises and a bright light coming from the space beneath.
“Hello?” I called.
“In here, dude,” came from beyond the door.
The leather soles of my dress shoes clacked off of what I realized was a very nice, dark hardwood floor and the white door that led deeper into the house didn’t look scuzzy at all, a vast improvement over the diseased appearance of the front door. What the hell was this? On the other side, I had my answer.
Well, well, well … a large … very large living room dominated by a 64-inch flat-screen showing a computer animated fantasy show. A fat kid in an overstuffed beige leather chair sat directly in front. All the way on the other end was a kitchenette with a fairly fancy black Frigidaire. Between the two extremes stood an impressive desk arrangement that reminded me of BB’s, but without the interactive surface. Instead, twin Alienware desktops sat humming under dual 24-inch flat-screen monitors. Everything in the room sparkled and had that just-waxed lemony scent that made me nauseous. I was starting to get creeped out.
As for the fat kid, he didn’t look up once as I entered, his focus solely on the huge flat-screen, his fingers flying over a keyboard on his lap. His curly brown hair was cut short and his clothes looked new—from the white Air Jordans to the blue Tommy Hilfiger polo stretched tight across his wide belly. The standard set of geek birth-control glasses perched high on his pug nose.
“Kid, this is strange on so many levels. How come the exterior of your house looks like crap?”
“You kidding?” he asked, not looking away from the TV. “You see the neighborhood out there? I got over twenty grand worth of stuff in here. No way I’m going to get it stolen.”
“You Schenk?”
“Who wants to know?”
Was this kid for real? I laid my badge in front of his face.
“Hey, dude! You made me die! Now I gotta start this quest all over again!” He finally looked at me, his mouth curled into a pout.
Enough. I was tired and needed a drink or seven. “Listen, Schenk, I’m here because of your former roommate Alex Dumont and what happened over Christmas break.” I played the hunch with a straight face, hoping for the best.
It didn’t work. The kids face closed up faster than a miser’s purse and he went back to his game. “Don’t know anything, mister.”
Was helping the authorities such a bad thing? “Kid, do you want me to take you to Boston? I can question you there. Right now I’m doing things all nice and mellow. Please don’t make me pull out the stops.”
The kid smirked. “You can try, mister FBI dude, but you’d buy yourself a whole lot of trouble.”
Well … time to take a different tack. Strolling over to the PC station, I wigged the mouse and the monitors came to life. “Hey!” the kid protested, struggling to raise his bulk out of the chair.
“Sit your butt down, chunk style.” I let my voice go harsh and mean and he flopped back into the chair as if his strings had been cut. “You spoiled rich kids are all alike, but I got you pegged.” Ahh, he’d left his mailbox open. Nice. “You got into MIT, but you gained admittance with your parent’s money.” I moved the cursor to GET MAIL. “You weren’t good enough to stay in. Your grades started slipping and you let Alex stay here on the cheap in exchange for tutoring, or help with your homework.” I scrolled through his old messages. One from Mom and Dad … how sweet. They were going to the Hamptons and had invited him. “Tell me if I’m getting warm.”
Silence from Mr. Chunky.
“I’ll take your lack of reply as an affirmative.”
“Dude, wait till I tell my dad …”
“You’re not going to do anything, kid. You wouldn’t want me to tell him how you’re floundering here, would you? Ahhh …” Looks like someone from caseypotrey@hotmail.com had sent an email with a good-sized attachment. I hit DOWNLOAD and watched the file open. Pages upon pages of what looked to be computer code, but I didn’t have a Hacker-to-English dictionary handy, so it remained so much gobbledygook. Then came pages of mathematical equations. Stuff that was light years above my head. Jackpot. “Lookie here, kid, how about I flush Casey’s email? You wouldn’t mind that, would you?” His stricken look said he would mind very much.
“Dude, what do you want?” he asked brokenly.
“What happened over Christmas break, kid?”
“Dude …”
“Spill it or I hit DELETE.”
“No! No! Wait!” He took a deep breath. “My parents got a cabin in the Adirondacks. Alex and my other roommate Casey borrowed it from time to time when my folks weren’t using it.”
“For what? Were they hooking up?”
“Nah, dude, they’re not gay. It’s a great place to get chicks. There are rich girls by the ton out there. They’d party, smoke a little grass, get laid, have a great time. That’s all.”
Who would have thought? Alex Dumont, loooove machine. “Go on.”
“Well, last Christmas break Alex comes back alone, says that Casey decided not to go back to school, wanted to travel and see the world.”
I looked at the email. Dated a week ago. Casey still wrote … or did he?
“But you think different, don’t you?”
“Dude, all I know is I get a call from my parents a few weeks later saying there was a weird burn mark on the floor and that it was coming out my allowance.”
Burn mark? Curious and curiouser. I considered the email. “What did Casey do at MIT? What was his passion?
“He was a programmer, dude. One of the best hackers I ever met, too. He set up my whole system.”
Interesting. “He’s still doing your homework. How do you keep in touch?”
“Just by his Hotmail account.”
“You have anything of his?”
“Yeah … he asked me to keep his things. Go upstairs. The second door on the left. His room’s the same as he left it.”
I grabbed him by the ear lobe. “Show me.”
Casey’s room looked like any young man’s, only cleaner. The spotless quality of the house told me that Jamie had a neat streak (judging by how lazy he seemed, doubtful) or a maid, (much more likely).
Not a big bedroom, but not small, either. A twin bed with a red tartan comforter, a plain pressboard desk and an equally plain chest of drawers. “Everything the same?” I asked.
“Yeah. Except for his laptop. Alex took that.”
Didn’t look like much—kind of drab and spartan. No posters, pictures, nothing that gave the room any sort of personality. It looked sanitary … lonely.
“This is how he lived?”
“Yeah, dude. He was more into his computers than real life.”
“His last name was Potrey?” I asked, remembering the Hotmail address.
“Yeah, dude.”
My mind raced, trying to connect the dots. It settled on a detail I’d almost forgotten. “You said there was a burn mark on the floor of your parent’s cabin. Can you describe it?”
He scratched his ample belly. “I can do one better, dude. Wait here.” Footsteps thudded heavily down the stairs and came back shortly. “Here you go, dude,” he uttered breathlessly. “My folks took a pic and sent it to me.” A Dell laptop thunked into my palms, screen up showing a pic that froze my blood.
A twisty line burned into blond wood snaked round and round in a pattern that confused the eyes, causing them to blur and strain. What the hell had Alex been up to? Magic, obviously, but what kind? And how had he avoided detection?
“Jamie, your parent’s cabin, can you get cell reception there?” I couldn’t take my eyes off that head-splitting pattern.
“Nope. Can’t get diddly squat. Only a land line.”
Well, that explained how magic went undetected. It cost an arm and a leg to make the sensors, and it was much more efficient to piggyback a cell phone satellite than to send up several of our own. The down side was that there were some places we could not monitor.
Mind spinning, I sat down heavily on the bed before my knees could weaken. I saw something there that put the whole thing together … The picture became complete.
The door had opened inward toward the bed, so I hadn’t seen the poster that decorated that side. Not until I sat on the bed. I imagine that Casey must have sat just as I had, staring at it … wondering … dreaming. Then he’d found someone who could make his dreams come true.
It was an old poster, tattered and worn, edges curling, old enough that the white border had started to turn a light sepia color. A poster of a man in a blue one-piece with an equally blue woman at his side against a black background. He had his arms raised, and a cobalt ray of light shot up unto the dark sky. A disk, also blue, floated in that ray just above his hands. I recognized it from one of my all-time favorite movies. In fact, I had that movie on my smart phone. The word emblazoned like a banner at the bottom said it all.
TRON.
Oh crap.
“Sorry, boss. I investigated the trail you set me on, but it was a dead end. Couldn’t find out a damn thing.” The pleasant burn of Blue Ice warmed me.
BB took a sip from his snifter and licked his lips, eyeing me steadily. “That’s too bad.”
“Yeah, too bad. What are you going to do now?”
He shook his head. “Nothing to do, Kal. We can’t get rid of it and it’s spread throughout cyberspace. We can only pray it doesn’t cripple the World Wide Web.”
I studied his carefully neutral face then raised my tumbler, looking at the light refracting through the clear liquid and ice. “You’re not worried at all, are you? You just wanted answers. I think that somehow you have a countermeasure to this ghost if it chooses to be malicious.”
“Yes.” His affirmation hung in the air between us.
I pointed a finger. “You, sir, want to use this thing to the Bureau’s advantage. An asset that no other agency possesses.”
BB snorted and took another sip. “A fine killer you are, Kal. So fine I forget sometimes that you are far more intelligent than you look.”
“A compliment?”
“An observation.”
“So now what, boss?”
“So now you and your team take your vacations. Go get drunk, get laid, or see your family. Have some fun.”
I let the rest of the vodka slither down my throat. “Thanks, boss.”
“You got a wifi signal, kid?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, Kal. ‘Sir’ is my dad.” I stretched on the steps, enjoying the view of the Washington Monument, America’s answer to an Egyptian obelisk. Made me wonder if all the stories of the Masons and the Illuminati were true. The afternoon sun felt warm and silky on my face and warmed the pale stone of the Lincoln Memorial. Honest Abe stared out of the shadows, his wise gaze piercing me through with stony wisdom. I tipped our fifth President a wink and turned to the young magician sitting next to me. “Kid, how did the Bureau find you?”
Alex looked up from where he sat next to me, his body bent protectively over the laptop resting on his thighs. “Kal?”
“You had to have done something to attract the Bureau’s attention. What was it?”
He nodded. “It was Elmo, my dachshund. A car hit him and I tried to heal him. That set off the sensors near my house.”
I pursed my lips. “Did it work?”
“No. I didn’t have enough knowledge of canine anatomy. He died anyway.” The kid sounded very sad.
“Good. That answers that.”
Silence stretched between us for a couple of minutes before he asked, “Why did you want to talk here, Kal?”
“What I want to say, kid, is something I don’t want the Bureau overhearing.” My level stare made him shift uncomfortably.
“What?” he asked.
The sun felt so good, the day so fine I almost let it pass for the moment, but plans had begun to spin round in my head and I needed to see clearly the terrain on which I found myself deployed.
Time to dive on in. “Alex, I know about Casey.”
The young magician’s face turned to stone.
“I know you and he tried to interface with a computer and that you wound up translating him directly into the machine. Am I right?”
Not a twitch. Alex stared at the laptop with his hands gripping it tight.
“You and he were friends, maybe for a long time. After discovering your affinity for magic, which you surmised was the manipulation of Dark Energy, you shared your knowledge with him. He grew excited. His favorite movie was Tron, so he had fantasies of the computer world twirling in his fevered brain. He bugged you so much, pleaded with you, that you decided to indulge him, because you were burning with curiosity yourself.
“After all this time you had opened yourself up to someone about your ability, which you had dabbled in and toyed with, and it felt so good to share that burden of knowledge. Hell, you had no idea what would happen. You and he figured that he would just attune himself to a computer, to accelerate his mind and truly understand the electronic world. How am I doing so far?”
He nodded, tears beginning at the corners of his eyes.
“You found an affinity between magic and silver, heck, maybe even gold.”
“Silver,” he croaked.
“Right. So you used silver wire to amplify your spell, but you got it wrong.” I sighed. “How did you even figure out how to Shape the spell?”
“From my research,” he whispered. “It was supposed to be a protection spell, to keep out evil influences while working magic.”
“And what did it turn out to be?”
“A minor Amplification spell.”
“So you amplified the Communion spell you cast on Casey and wound up translating him directly into the computer you used.” I shook my head in wonder. “It’s a miracle that you didn’t drain yourself dry right into the grave.”
“Almost,” he cried softly, scourged by memories. “I passed out and woke up two days later. By that time it was too late. Casey had used the DSL to get out of there and into cyberspace.”
“Oh, you idiots … what a pair of knuckleheads!” I shook my head. “So, to keep his parents quiet, Casey’s sending them emails and altering the records at MIT to show that he’s been attending classes. He’s even been helping Jaime with school in return for the illusion that he still lives in that house off-campus. Problem is, Jaime folds too easy, but he’s all you and Casey have.”
“You found Jaime?”
“Kid, I was born during the day, but it wasn’t yesterday. Of course I found him. And got quite the story.” I leaned in close. “How long did you think you could keep this up?”
“I dunno. Long time, I guess.”
Butterflies fluttered about my stomach as I contemplated my next move, the words that would have me skittering on the edge of betrayal. Of the Bureau, of my contract, of my conscience. Was it in me? To do this thing? Thinking back to Leena’s screams as she faced something beyond her understanding, a monster that defied reason, I came to one inescapable conclusion.
You bet your ass.
“Casey, I know you’re listening,” I stated firmly.
The laptop speakers gave out a buzzing, hissing sound that hung in the air for a few seconds before resolving into words. “I am here, Mr. Hakala.”
I grinned, feeling a little sick. That voice was well beyond creepy. “My father’s Mr. Hakala. Call me Kal.”
“Yes, Kal.”
“I haven’t given the Director your real name. You’re safe for now, unless you try something foolish or … unwise. I don’t think you were a bad guy, Casey, just naive and a little foolish.”
“I would have to agree with you there.”
“One thing … you’re a Tron fan. How is life inside the machine?”
Bzzzzz …”More terrifying, more fascinating that I could have imagined. This is a world of pure math and impeccable logic.” He paused. “I think I will be very happy here.”
“Good. A fulfilled spirit. I like that.” A deep breath. “If you do try something foolish or unwise, the Director has countermeasures in place to purge you from the system. If they don’t, your true name will be known and used against you in an exorcism. You got me?”
“Got you. But why tell me this?”
“I’m not that altruistic, trust me. I need your help and this is my way of buying some goodwill.” Alex’s head came up—hope lighting his eyes—and the speakers buzzed.
“Help?”
“Yeah. There’s a monster I need to kill.”