The security system had a panel inside the side door, handily accessible when you’ve tripped your own alarms while intoxicated. Fergus popped open the panel and took his confuddler out of his duffel, wiring it in and waiting for it to establish itself slyly on the network. When it finished, less than twenty seconds later, he had it run a system analysis.
The first, and most interesting, thing the confuddler returned to him was that Barrett Granby’s security system was a closed network, with absolutely no outside connections to SolNet or anything else. Highly unusual but smart, Fergus thought, particularly if you know Digital Midendian is out there and eventually going to come after you.
From the boathouse he could hear voices as people emerged from the main house, more laughter and the sounds of easy happiness. He leaned against the wall in the boathouse, out of moonlight or view from any windows, and listened.
“. . . turn the water on,” someone was saying. “Oh, and show her the lights, Barry!”
“Hang on,” another voice said. Moments later, there was an exclamation of surprise from multiple voices, and Fergus edged toward the window to risk a quick glance.
The expansive deck along the back of the house, set off from the beach by a long, sloping lawn, was now aglow in red, the silhouettes of people, none distorted by the outlines of clothing, moving back and forth and then disappearing down into the glow. Not sure he’d understood the source of the glow, he took a second look, and had to put his hand over his mouth to keep himself from chuckling out loud. Barrett ‘Barry’ Granby, Mastro of Fajro Promeso, living a life of devotion and austerity, had an enormous hot tub shaped like a volcano, lit red from inside.
Poor Peter, Fergus thought, and hoped the man found some better, healthier group of people to attach himself to when he reached Kansas.
Two of Granby’s guards stood unobtrusively, unmoving, near the sliding doors into the house, as a trio of servants emerged with trays of food and drink. If the party was just getting started, that worked in Fergus’s favor, but he still needed to get across the lawn from boathouse to main house without being seen.
The security system itself would be difficult to crack, and the attempt could give him away, but non-critical controls were under much lighter protection. It took him about two minutes to break the encryption with a third-party algorithm via his confuddler and get full access.
Taking some deep breaths, centering himself in his physical self mujūryokudo-style, he peeled off the diving suit and pulled the black cowl attached to his bodysuit over his head, leaving nothing but his upper face showing. Then he put his nice, expensive, infrared diving mask back on; it didn’t care one way or the other about the presence of water, and it was a lot more anonymous and replaceable than his exosuit goggles.
Using his connection, he turned off the hot-tub lights. Complaints were immediate. He heard Granby immediately call for his staff to go turn them back on and find out who had hit the switch.
Fergus unplugged his confuddler and stuck it back in his front-pouch. He crossed over along the back wall past the small, very pointy, very red speedboat bobbing idly in the second bay and to the window on the far side. From there he could see the lights of the neighboring estate to the north. Feeling around the frame with his gloved fingers, he found the spot where the on/off relay for the alarm sat below the surface, and very, very carefully sent a tiny charge in to flip it to off.
There was no other sign of change, so he slid the window open carefully and then pulled himself through it and out, landing and rolling on the far side before getting back up to his knees and closing it behind him.
He sneaked along the wall, under the trees, past the boathouse, and into the deep shadows of the side yard. There were several staffers standing around the deck, arguing about the lights, and finally someone decided to reboot the system. There were a brief few seconds where everything was plunged into darkness, and the incessant gurgling of the hot tub cut out, then everything came back on, including the volcano lights. The partiers cheered, the staffers dispersed, and Fergus had already crossed the one lit patch of lawn in that moment of darkness, and through a door into what the architect’s drawings had labelled a “mudroom.” The motion-sensor lights were easily turned off at the wall switch, no tampering necessary, and the door was safely closed behind him before the external lights and sensors came back on.
Functionally, the room seemed to be exactly as advertised, with a half-populated coat rack, boot tray, and a small sink and counter, but Fergus was pretty sure more money had been spent on that one room than on any house he’d ever lived in. The counter and walls were decorated with polished red stone and obsidian, and the accents on everything from the wall switches to the sink controls and door frames were covered in thin gold leaf.
He listened at the door of the mudroom for a while but heard no one nearby, so he closed his eyes and tried to feel for core fragments around the barrage of electrical noise from the house itself. There should have been three there, unless he’d guessed completely wrong that Granby would choose Nevada over Kansas to keep them.
After many long minutes, he decided that maybe, just maybe, he could faintly feel them. The distant, muffled calls didn’t feel up, as he’d expected, which ruled out the second and third floor of the house. It would make escape easier to be on the ground floor, but at least upstairs he’d have much less chance of blundering into anyone until the party broke up. If the party broke up.
All senses alert to the point of near-panic, he peered out of the mudroom door into the corridor, a tasteless blend of faux brown stone and red walls with the same gold leaf detail running along the moldings and door frames. The dining room was ahead on his right, with two of Granby’s black-suited guards sitting there with coffee and flicking a paper triangle back and forth across the table at each other in turns. When the one facing his direction bent down from his chair to pick the paper off the floor, Fergus sneaked past as quickly and quietly as he could.
The hallway bent around the dining room, into a well-lit, open great room that soared all three stories high. Columns carved to look like flame reached to the beamed ceiling and splayed out, as if shooting flame across the woodwork, and more red lights were embedded somewhere in the carvings to cast an ominous glow the entire length up. A boulder with a flat plane cut across the top and polished to a shine was covered with plates and glasses and more than a few empty bottles. Someone was lying on the black velvet sofa, out of sight, snoring.
He moved as quickly as he dared along the backside of the great room, letting the bees in his gut guide him, and emerged into another hallway on the far side. A billiards table stood in the room across the hall, the door half-open, and he could hear two women arguing inside. He sneaked past the game room just as the next door opened. One of the guards was coming out, straightening his tie and not looking up, and barely managed a small grunt of startlement when Fergus put a hand on his chest and zapped him. He caught the guard before he could hit the floor and carried him back into the bathroom the man had just left, sat him on the toilet hunched over with his head leaning against the sink, and backed out and closed the door.
On his right, a winding, ornate staircase headed up to the next floor, while on the opposite side, two doors remained before the hallway led back out to the heavily occupied deck. The first door led to a study with a big, promising desk and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that were dusty enough to suggest they weren’t well used. As he stepped in, a moth-sized security drone lifted from the desk, and he ducked back out into the hall and flattened himself against the wall.
The drone emerged at eye level, and Fergus grabbed it out of the air, frying it in his fist, before he stepped back into the room. Somewhere in there, if all the movies he’d watched and mysteries he’d read as a kid had any realism to them, would be a hidden safe. How long would it take him to find it, and how long before some system realized one of its drones wasn’t answering
a ping?
He closed his eyes, anxious he would be instantly tackled from behind by a guard in that moment of vulnerability, but the fragments felt, if anything, farther away.
And down.
He stepped back into the hall, hearing the sounds now of the party from the deck heading closer, and reached out for the handle of the last door. Signals exploded in his senses, and he let go hastily. Whatever was down there, this was the most heavily secured room in the house. A second bright noise came from the wall next to the door, but all he could see was seamless stone and wood. One block of faux stone, though, seemed slightly brighter than the others. Aha, a hologram! he realized, and waved his hand across it. The block disappeared, revealing the security control panel.
He didn’t have time to finesse his way past it. He could hear the guards at the sliding doors, and people talking loudly on their way in. They seemed upset, angry. Was he already caught?
I’m not caught until they take me down, he thought, and stuck one index finger against the center of the panel and shorted the entire thing out in one go. The door clicked as the lock disengaged, and he stepped in and closed it tight, holding the handle to keep it closed, as the outside party came into the hall. “. . . guy from earlier,” one of the guards was saying.
“Hang on,” he heard Granby say, then louder, “everyone head on to the great room until we clear up a small security matter, okay? I’ll have wine brought in a few minutes.”
In a short while, the hallway was quiet again. “Now, what the fuck were you saying?” Granby asked.
“The guy from yesterday. Outside the gate,” the guard replied. “We’re not sure where he went, but we’d like you to stay inside until we’ve found him and dealt with it.”
“Fine, whatever,” he heard Granby say. “Maybe this time instead of a gold coin, give him a broken leg or two. I thought you said he was on a fucking train.”
Peter? Fergus thought.
“The tracker says the coin is on the far side of Colorado and still moving east,” the guard said.
“You think he’s working for them?”
“He didn’t seem bright enough, sir,” the guard answered.
Granby let out a sigh of exasperation, which didn’t quite cover the faint click of the door as the lock system booted up and reengaged. “What was that?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Check everywhere. Send extra drones out to the perimeter, and I don’t care if my damned neighbors complain about them again. If he’s on my grounds, shoot the little bastard.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said, and Fergus heard them both walking away.
He upped the night vision on his mask and turned around to see where he was. He was standing on a small landing at the top of a stone spiral staircase, no doubt leading to the basement. The fragments felt closer, the signal sharper. Despite reluctance to get trapped in a dead end, he headed down. The stairs ended in another door, this one wood and not locked but surprisingly heavy to swing open. The air that emerged from behind it was cold and damp, though not at all musty or stale.
Fergus stepped in and the lights in the room came on, overwhelming his mask’s vision. He slid the mask up to the top of his bald head and waited for his eyes to readjust. The room was a wine cellar, with large, movable racks of bottles on casters on one side, an oak barrel that seemed mostly there for show, and a beautifully polished bar with carved satyrs dancing in fire. On the bar top, instead of the expected array of glassware and accessories, there was a computer console and several books and papers spread out next to it. In an olive tray on top of it all sat the three fragments, clamoring for his attention.
He picked them up. They purred in his hands, the electricity spreading through his palms and wrists as some answering buzz welled up from deep in his gut, and he smiled. “Hello, friends,” he said, and then all the alarms went off at once, loud enough to drown out even coherent thought.
Chapter 17
“Aaaaaaaaugh!” Fergus shouted, shoving the fragments down into his pouch and covering his ears as if he could somehow block out the hellish din. Even his teeth hurt. If Granby had been there to tell him it was the actual fucking apocalypse, he’d have believed him. He dragged a barstool over and stood on it so he could reach and disable the speakers.
The alarms in the rest of the house were still going off, but at least now he could hear himself think. There was only one way out of the wine cellar, and he didn’t honestly think he could get away, but it marginally beat hanging out there, drinking expensive wine, until they came to shoot him. He grabbed the memory cube from the console and the loose papers, stuffing them into his growing pouch, then took out the wallet he’d stolen off Mitch in the shuttleport bathroom and kicked it into a corner, as if it had fallen there accidentally. He wasn’t sure what good that would do him, but it certainly wouldn’t help DM, and it might open up unexpected opportunities.
He killed the lights and went back up to the landing, prepared for the door to pop open any second and make him have to fight his way out, but although he heard a lot of commotion directly outside the door, so far, it remained closed.
“. . . on the grounds!” someone yelled. “We don’t know how he got in. Find him! Everyone out and search now!”
Shit, Fergus thought. Now what?
He heard more running. “I saw him,” someone else said, badly out of breath. “He’s circling the house. We’ve got him on camera but that skinny little bastard is fast. Brian and Greg are chasing him.”
“I can’t fucking hear anything over this noise!” the first guard yelled, and Fergus sympathized with him entirely too much. “Can we cut the alarms? Why are they still—”
“It’s the fire alarms!” someone shouted, running toward the talkers. “The roof is on fire. He’s lit the garage, too! We need to get everyone out.”
The roof is on fire? Fergus thought just as, above his head, a sprinkler turned on and drenched him in stinky, gross water. Over its rhythmic whine he heard someone else run past the door, shouting, “Incoming!”
The electricity went out, like a vast blanket settling over everything around him except the fragments in his pouch and the bees in his gut. The door unlocked. He put one hand against it, checking for heat, and when it didn’t burn his hand, he cracked it open.
Fire ran across the floor in a stream from the remains of a broken bottle just inside the open door from the deck, and was licking its way up the wall. Thick black smoke roiled across the high ceilings. Fergus ducked low and into the bathroom. The guard he’d stunned was still sitting on the toilet, muzzily half-conscious. Fergus grabbed a washcloth, ran it under sink water, and pressed it against his own nose as he hauled the guy upright as best he could with his free hand and dragged him out the back door onto the deck. He shoved the man over the edge into the grass away from the house and ran for it.
Fire drones were coming in, and there were people everywhere, shouting and pointing. The entire roof of the enormous house was engulfed, flames leaping high into the sky. “Whoa,” Fergus said, impressed and dismayed at the same time, as he ran for the cover of the boathouse ignored by everyone else.
He had almost reached the dock when he heard gunfire, and instinctively threw himself to the ground. When it was clear he hadn’t been shot, he rolled himself around to look back.
“Got him! I got him!” someone yelled, standing on the deck and pointing down. Several of Granby’s guards milled around, kicking and poking someone lying there, until a large chunk of roof blew out and down, crashing in an explosion of sparks and burning debris atop the volcano tub.
A fellow guard grabbed the shooter’s arm. “You got him. We have to get out of here before the whole house comes down!”
They ran away.
Other than the sirens, distant shouting both from the estate grounds and from people out on the lake, fire drones swooping in to dump wate
r, and the popping and groaning of the house itself as the monstrously roaring fire devoured it, things were quiet. Fergus got up and dared to head back to the deck.
Peter lay there, his body oddly contorted on the ground, and his eyes shifted to Fergus as he approached. What Fergus had first taken to be a red tie-dyed tunic of some kind was, horrifically, still his original linens, soaked in expanding, overlapping circles of blood.
“Hang on,” Fergus said, and as gently as the urgency would permit, threw the man over his shoulders. The man was so thin, he was hardly heavier than Fergus’s pack.
Inside the boathouse, Fergus laid Peter down as carefully as he could on the deck and started checking his injuries, seeing if anything could be done to staunch the bleeding. Five bullet holes, each a reminder of Isla’s one that made him want to scream in frustration and anger.
In the orange light from the window, Fergus could see he had Peter’s blood on his hands, on his shoulders and arms from carrying him, and it seemed like more blood than a single man should have in him to start with.
“There might be a first aid kit in the boat,” he said, nodding his chin toward the red speedboat in the far bay. “I can go look.”
“D . . . don’t bother,” Peter spoke.
“I can get you out of here,” Fergus said.
Peter laughed. “No, you can’t,” he said. “You can’t even get yourself out of here.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Maybe.” Peter coughed. He was smiling and ghastly pale. “I had a terrible childhood that brought me to this bad end. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?”
The Scavenger Door Page 31