Someone must have spiked the tea at the café and he and Rysa got the worst of it. Which meant she was probably sleeping it off on her mother’s couch right now, in the same position he’d just woke up in.
But another little flash burst into his mind’s eye: No, she’s not.
Gavin pulled up one of the texts from the University: Last night’s car fire in the Fairgrounds parking lot…
Blinking rapidly, he browsed to one of the local news sites. Gas leak explosion in Shoreview…
His stomach knotted into a tight ball. Rysa and her mother lived in Shoreview.
… police are looking for Mira Torres, 46, and her daughter, Rysa, 20, a junior at the University of Minnesota…
Gavin swiped back to his texting app. Are you okay? he tapped in. I know your phone is on. She never turned off her phone even though it had a shitty battery. He tapped out several other messages.
No response.
The cops are looking for you and your mom.
Nothing.
The knot in his stomach turned into an iron kettlebell. One he just now realized he’d swallowed last night.
He swiped again. Maybe she’d answer a call.
His phone rebooted.
“What the fuck?” He shook the damned thing. It never did shit like this. It—
A message popped up the moment the phone clicked back on. No welcome screen. No entering into an app. Just a message: Do not attempt further contact.
The phone rebooted again.
Gavin dropped it the way he would have dropped a hot pan and yanked back his fingers. They wiggled next to his ear and for a brief moment, his body thought it had just gotten burned.
Did someone kidnap Rysa? he thought. Should I call the cops? The Feds?
The phone winked back on: Your friend is safe. You are not. Stay silent or they will see you.
Gavin kicked the phone. It skidded across the carpet and stopped a few feet away, its screen up and still readable: I cannot protect you. You must help Daisy. Stay silent for her safety and yours.
When the phone finished rebooting again, the normal welcome screen blinked on.
Who was Daisy? Where the hell was Rysa?
He grabbed his phone off the carpet. Fucking hackers think they can play spy games? Everything that flicked through the world’s data streams left trails. The Feds could—
The screen on his phone blinked to black.
A new message appeared, letter by letter: You are the expendable player in this game. If you speak, they will kill you. If you interfere, I will kill you.
Then one last flash: I will not contact you again.
The phone went dark.
Gavin stared at his phone with wide, unblinking eyes. Rysa and her mother had vanished into the night, after explosions rocked campus and their home. And a death threat just killed his cell phone.
He willed his body to straighten its muscles and to tamp down its anxiety. Panic helped no one. He had to figure out what to do.
More morning light cut through the window and a slice slid across his forearm, shining a bright spot onto his skin. A singular spot that held all the warmth and the clarity of the approaching early summer day.
A threatened life, he had. Hackers out for his blood? He had that, too. But why did they care about him?
Clarity, though, he did not have.
Maybe this Daisy knew. How hard could it be to find a flower?
Chapter Five
Over the next week, Gavin found six boutiques with the word “Daisy” in their names, all filled with bored clerks and whiny customers, and no one in any of the establishments seemed spy-worthy or out of sorts.
Not that he knew what “spy-worthy” looked like, anyway. But the act of looking helped keep his mind off the threats.
The nail salon smelled particularly chemical-filled, and for a moment made him sniff and wonder. There’d been chemicals involved when Rysa vanished, but he remembered adjectives like hellish and smoldering, and the salon just smelled like artificially happy-scented disinfectant.
It still did nothing to calm his now-constant state of high alert.
An internet search yielded several cats with their own social media accounts, and three dogs.
Random images filtered into his consciousness. Red eyes. A car. Graceful legs.
Gavin kept his head down and went about his life, praying that whoever threatened him wasn’t watching him twenty-four-seven as well. He did his best not to be so distracted by death threats that he failed his finals. Or acted weird and obvious. But he watched every shadow and paid attention to every twitch and tug exhibited by the people around him.
No cops showed up at his door asking questions about where he was the night Rysa disappeared. No more threats appeared on his phone. Nor did he catch anyone following him or stalking his movements.
Nor did Rysa contact him. No calls. No texts. Nothing.
The news reports were real. Rysa’s house was nothing more than a smoking crater. He’d driven by the second night after she disappeared. Sat in his car and stared and almost puked all over his steering wheel. Almost called the cops and filed a report. But what could he say about her disappearance, really?
Was she okay? Was she dead? Did the same person who threatened him threaten her? The news about an explosion at a hospital in Wyoming caught his attention. All explosions caught his attention, when he thought about it. Gavin spent an hour checking the local Rock Springs media for pictures and video, hoping maybe he’d see something.
He took his finals and busied himself looking for someone named Daisy. But every time he pulled out his phone he stared at the screen, wondering just how hacked his life had become. And why he’d been abandoned.
Today, though, he had his life to live. His last final of the semester started in four hours. He wasn’t worried. An hour in the Student Union going over his notes and he’d be good.
Right now, he sat on the edge of the new exam bed in his audiologist’s new exam room, down the corridor of a different floor in the same old needs-a-lot-of-upgrades University building.
Time for his monthly check-up.
Here, the walls were beige and forest green instead of the old blues and grays. The exam bed felt cushier, too. It smelled fresher, like the clinic installed new, more efficient air filters. He should be calm. But he hadn’t been calm for a whole fucking week.
He pulled out his phone and flicked his finger across the screen. Quickly, he pulled up Rysa’s number. Maybe this time his phone wouldn’t reboot. She vanished over a week ago. How long was the hacker going to keep this up?
He wouldn’t talk to her. He’d just make sure she answered.
His finger pressed dial.
The phone died. The screen blanked.
Parts of his brain wanted to throw it at the wall. Other parts wanted to cower behind the exam table. Another part wanted to yell. Yet another part narrowed its eyes and said Oh, yeah, motherfucker? Challenge accepted.
Gavin had done what he was supposed to. He’d kept quiet. But all the spinning wheels just ground him deeper into the mud and did nothing to move the situation forward.
The screen flickered back to life as the phone rebooted. He’d try again. Whoever was fucking with him needed to know he wasn’t going to hide like a frightened child anymore.
A knock at the door interrupted his churning. Gavin tucked his phone back into his pocket. He’d try again after his appointment.
His audiologist, an angular middle-aged woman named Maddy Montgomery, peered out from under her red-dyed hair as she stepped into the room. “How are you today, Gavin?” She grinned and stuck out her hand to shake.
He smiled and did his best to act nonchalantly normal. His monthly appointments were part of his life, and no matter how pissed off he might be, his life hadn’t ended.
Threatened, yes. Ended, no.
Dr. Montgomery spun her doctor’s stool and dropped in front of the room’s computer screen. “Any hospitalizations since I saw you
last month?” She peered through her friendly cat’s-eye glasses at her computer screen as she tapped. “Medical changes?”
Today, Dr. Montgomery wore a cartoon-character-covered lab coat and bright blue hospital shoes. She’d been his practitioner since the accident when he was eleven and, for the most part, specialized in pediatric cases. He should have transferred to a different specialist a couple of years ago, but he trusted her, and she often made exceptions for newly-adult patients, Gavin included.
“Maybe.” It slipped out before he had a chance to think about what he was saying. Something had happened a week ago. Allergic reaction kept popping into his head, but he didn’t know for sure.
To be honest, he should keep his mouth shut, but he wasn’t one to lie to a medical professional.
“Maybe?”
Gavin bounced his heel against the side of the bed, but stopped when she glanced at his foot.
Dr. Montgomery pushed back from the desk. “Any ER visits?” She watched him keen-eyed and ready, like a cat ready to pounce. Like any good doctor, she looked for signs needing follow-up.
Gavin exhaled slowly. What could he say that didn’t say anything at the same time? “Remember that car fire a week ago? The one in the Fairgrounds parking lot?”
Dr. Montgomery didn’t twitch. Didn’t do anything that indicated surprise. “Yes.”
“You know I live over there, right?”
She nodded.
“I wasn’t far away. I breathed some of the fumes.” He tapped the side of his neck. “Made breathing difficult for a while, but someone helped me.” He shrugged, trying to look as nonchalant as possible. “I’m fine. Didn’t go to the ER.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Someone helped you? How? Was it another student?”
Another student…
Shit, he thought. He had no idea.
Why did he have to open his mouth? Now Dr. Montgomery would keep asking questions. “I’m fine. Like I said, I didn’t go to the ER.” He put on his best charming smile. “Thought I should say, you know? I can’t keep anything from you, Dr. Montgomery.”
She chuckled and leaned toward her screen as she tapped at the keyboard, seemingly mollified. “You’ve been filling out the surveys?”
“Every week.” Like the faithful study-participant foot soldier that he was. Even did last week’s the evening after Rysa’s disappearance. Figured it would distract him for the fifteen minutes it took to fill it out.
“And you’re sure you’re fine?” She waved a finger in his general direction. “If you feel any discomfort, you call your primary clinic, okay?”
Gavin lifted his chin high. “I promise.” At least she seemed satisfied.
But her question about another student poked at his mind.
Dr. Montgomery nodded but tapped the screen. “That’s strange.”
Gavin stiffened. Strange was not a word he wanted to hear right now. His over-sensitive weirdness-radar perked up. “Strange, how?”
Dr. Montgomery swiveled her stool and faced Gavin. “There’s an update for your software.” She shrugged. “Wasn’t due until next month.” But she wiggled her fingers expectantly anyway. “Right aid first, please.”
Gavin dutifully pulled it out. The right side of the world dropped into the same dull thumping of his life without his aids. Dr. Montgomery looked it over and clicked it into the special updating-slash-charging station that came from Praesagio Industries, the manufacturers of his wonders of meticulous technology.
When the study was finished and all the regulatory hurdles jumped, he’d get a new version of the station to take home.
She peered at her screen again. “Says here…”
Gavin twisted his head and leaned his left ear toward his audiologist, and stared at her mouth out of the corner of his eye, using lip reading to augment the sounds he heard.
She tapped the screen again. “… this update is from someone other than the study’s lead programmer.” Frowning, she turned toward Gavin. “I don’t recognize the name.” She pointed over her shoulder, at the screen. “I’ll check the Praesagio directory later.”
He hadn’t thought to check the University directory for his mysterious Daisy. What if she was another student, like Dr. Montgomery suggested? Gavin pulled out his phone again. Would it reboot if he looked?
Dr. Montgomery tapped her screen. “But I do recognize the person who signed off on it.”
Gavin had been given all the study’s information when he got the new aids, but he never interacted with the people in Portland who built the little devices he shoved into his ears each morning, other than to fill out their surveys. He only interacted with Dr. Montgomery.
“Dr. Eric Nakajima. He’s the head of Special Medical at Praesagio Industries. Met him once at a conference.” She leaned forward as if to share a secret. “He had bodyguards.”
He swiped his finger across his phone’s screen and quickly pulled up the U of M search page.
He shouldn’t do this now, while in his appointment, but he needed to know. Quickly, he tapped out the one name he had: Daisy.
Gavin’s right aid beeped and the indicator light on the back of the charger flipped to green. Dr. Montgomery wiggled her fingers again and Gavin dutifully popped out his left aid.
The deep, heart-driven thumping of the world blanketed his senses and jiggled his eyeballs. He felt, more than saw or heard, Dr. Montgomery switch his aids in the charger and hand him back the right side of his hearing.
His phone’s screen filled with about twenty names. He scrolled through, ignoring the obviously inactive accounts, and looked for someone who might have been on the St. Paul campus that night.
Dr. Montgomery waited to speak until he situated the aid in his right ear. “… must… vacation. I bet they… an authoritative signature.”
Gavin tapped the aid. As long as the aids worked, he didn’t care about the bureaucracy. Except this update seemed to be doing the opposite of what it was supposed to. He was having difficulty making out her words.
“How… feel?” Dr. Montgomery poked at the side of his head. “… fitting well?”
Gavin blinked. A name popped out on his phone: Daisy Pavlovich, Veterinary Science.
“… sound?”
He gripped his phone. Pulling his mind away from the possibility that he might have found someone who could give him some answers—the person he was supposed to help—and back to the now took significant effort.
But Dr. Montgomery stared at him expectantly. “Gavin?”
He tipped his head, listening. Outside the room, someone laughed. The sound bounced from the room the woman was in, against the opposite wall of the corridor, and again, against the wide glass windows across from the exam room where Gavin sat on the cushy new table. Some of it filtered under the door, while other parts of the wave moved through the wall and the door themselves, all distorting slightly differently.
“Wow,” he said. “This is freakin’ amazing.”
His left aid winked over to green and Dr. Montgomery held it out. Gavin immediately placed it in his ear.
The left side of the world suddenly stopped thumping, as if the new update not only differentiated the sounds of the world, but also canceled the non-sounds that accompanied his hearing loss.
“Let’s… tests.” Dr. Montgomery’s voice had a resonance he’d never heard before. A sweetness, as if he heard her intention and not her words.
Which was weird. Very weird.
He was picking up directionality and undertones he never had before.
Dr. Montgomery patted his arm. Her face looked concerned and she made sure she faced him, to make her lips obvious. “Gavin… hear me?”
But his ability to distinguish words hadn’t changed. In fact, it had gotten worse. A lot worse. Worse in that he heard now the same way he used to hear with his old aids.
Two floors below, workers pounded on the walls with three distinct hammers.
Three.
Dr. Montgomery peered at his right ear.
“…stay … hour or so… tests?”
“What?” He glanced at the name on his phone. Testing or finding Daisy Pavlovich? Plus, he had a final in a couple of hours.
He really should stay. He’d planned on studying in the Student Union, so it wasn’t like he needed to be somewhere right now.
Dr. Montgomery’s face scrunched up like a disapproving parent’s, but she faced him to allow him to read her lips. “Praesagio messed up big time, didn’t they?” She shook her head.
His phone dropped into power-save and the screen blanked, taking Ms. Pavlovich’s info with it, and Gavin’s stomach responded instantly, as if the phone had rebooted once again. What if he lost his opportunity? What if the spies had gotten to her already?
“It’s fine.” He’d come back tomorrow. He needed to be sure.
“Gavin, it’s not…”
“I can’t stay,” he said. “Final.” He pointed at the door. “I’ll make an appointment.”
“Do you…”
Gavin didn’t catch any more of what Dr. Montgomery said. He had to go. He had to find Daisy Pavlovich.
Chapter Six
The sun hung low and evening light spread across the St. Paul campus. An early summer breeze pulled the freshness of the grass and the trees—and the cow barns behind the classroom buildings—to Gavin’s nose. He did his best to ignore it and kept walking.
The usual evening mooing bounced down the street and between the buildings. Even with the distortion, Gavin picked out sixteen distinct cows.
For five hours he’d had the new software update in his aids. Five freakin’ hours of hearing every damned footfall and vibration within three hundred feet but not being able to hear what anyone said to him. He wondered if he’d made a serious mistake by leaving his appointment.
At least he managed to take his last final without issues. No lecture, just the test. Gavin finished early and booked it out of the whistling and throbbing building.
He walked through the early summer weather toward the Veterinary School’s Small Animal Hospital. He’d stop at the desk and ask to talk to Dr. Pavlovich, though he still hadn’t come up with an innocuous excuse. “The elephant in the room, Dr. Pavlovich? It needs your attention. A hacker told me to ask.”
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