“Not likely. The client gets what he wants, and apparently he wants you.”
“Is that so?” This is a bullshit assignment and all I care about is money, Brant thought.
“Follow me.”
By Level 4 Brant Wilson didn't know what to expect; however, the assortment of torture devices, both medieval and contemporary, did not surprise him. The only shocking aspect to this floor was the flat-screen monitors mounted to the walls. One monitor, via a surveillance camera, featured a real-time display of a young boy being stretched on a rack. While the sound had been muted, the boy's moans echoed throughout the dingy chamber.
“What's this?” Brant said. “I thought I was being brought in to consult about a modern computing facility. Instead there is a Token Ring linking a group of 386s and a three levels of felonies taking place. Where's the machine your dumb terminal is connected to? Please don't tell me you transfer kiddie porn on five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies via sneaker net.”
“No. The server farm is the next level down.”
“Great,” Brant annoyingly said without hiding sarcasm, “an actual server farm. This I've got to see.”
When Frank unlocked and opened the door to Level 5, a rush of heat met them head-on.
“What the hell?”
The recommendations began stacking up.
Upgrade technology to current standards
Beef up security
Move prisoners and activities to remote location
Install redundant air conditioning units and raised floor in server room
Retain a good lawyer
Never mess with a Ouija board again
Shoot me now
Well, Brant supposed, Josh Elliot must be a good lawyer to have been retained by his fucked-up client, although retaining Elliot himself, should Brant decide proactively to retain a lawyer of his own, for protection against felonies taking place would undoubtedly result in a conflict of interest. The sinking feeling in Brant's gut hit an all-time low and an icy chill ran down his back. The server farm, racks upon racks of caged and locked servers of all makes, models, and vintages, filled the space and put off enough heat to fry their drives and CPUs. Brant began to sweat within a few minutes of entering the room.
“So you,” Brant thought allowed, “shoot videos, digitize them, and then host them here on the servers. With all the different locked cages, though, you must be renting space to other...” Perverts or sickos. “Other clients who don't want indemnifying evidence at their own location. Is that all this place is? Not that it matters, really, except that my report will reflect an even stronger need for increased security.”
“No...” Frank sighed. “There is more.”
“Don't tell me you also host teen blogs and grandmother's home cooking recipes. I must have missed the teen webcam girl floor.”
“Some link remotely. But what you truly want to see,” Frank said, “begins on Level 6.”
“Level 6? You only mentioned four subterranean levels.”
“As far as I'm concerned, that's all there is. But you...” Frank shook his head in disgust. “You want to see everything.” He pointed to a ramp descending further into the earth. Its entrance had been tucked away behind concrete stairs and partially obscured by a wall-mounted fire extinguisher. “Beyond this point, you're on your own. You know how to make your way back to ground level.”
Good riddance, Brant Wilson thought as he watched “Frank” disappear upstairs. He took the master key to the floors with him but Brant didn't suspect he'd need access to them anytime soon. With a deep breath he started down the hidden corridor.
More a tunnel than corridor, the passage had been dug out as opposed to being formed of concrete. Light from the stairwell faded away as Brant descended. Darkness filled a brief midsection of the passageway before flickering light at the end proved useful in maintaining footing. While the stairwell had come as a cool if dank reprieve from the heat of the server room, this subterranean depth grew noticeably warmer as Brant neared the doorless opening to Level 6. Its source of warmth became apparent as he entered the chamber.
“Holy shit,” Brant muttered. Many men, men perhaps not unlike Frank, might have balked at the sight, but not Brant Wilson. He'd always had an ability to detach himself from reality and gain an emotionless bird's eye perspective of surrounding events. His mind switched into fact-gathering mode as he saw raging fires burning at each of five points of a star painted across the floor. A ring spanned the points to encircle a large wooden desk where a man was systematically using a flatbed scanner to digitize the text of a stack of ancient tomes.
The man, if he could be called man, swiveled his head at Brant's interruption of his work. Gray, withered skin that Brant had mistaken for a robe hung loosely on a withered frame. But what did disturb but also amazed Brant were the dead black eyes upon which the man gazed at him and a stitched-shut mouth muffling the man's cries.
“You're the man who was hired,” an amused girlish voice behind Brant stated. “You're the bad man who's been hired to help.”
Brant spun to see a girl (or was she a hologram?) standing behind him. She stood in a dirty ruffled dress holding a teddy bear, blood dribbling from a nostril and down the inside of one leg. She giggled before dashing away, deeper into Level 6. “He's here! He's here!” she said before fading away corporeally, her voice echoing disturbingly throughout the chamber.
Brant's mind raced with information:
This couldn't be happening
It was happening
Which made this a once in a lifetime opportunity
When he most needed an opportunity
Cries of pain mixed with laughter echoed from elsewhere within Level 6. Those horrifying yet intriguing sounds lured him deeper into the level where witnessed things that made him realize:
The occult nature of this opportunity merely began with the Ouija
Everything he thought he knew (had denied) about the supernatural had been wrong
He longed to learn more
Much, much more
Only then could he provide the report he'd truly been hired to provide
Brant Wilson, having seen enough for one day, climbed the stairs to the main floor where he retrieved his backpack and went to the car. He had much information to process and to gain. He planned to research the occult on-line and perhaps visit a library or bookstore after check-in at the hotel. He replied to a text message Katie had sent before starting the rental car's engine. He expected a late night tonight and a long day ahead of him tomorrow. And he could hardly wait.
6
“Dude,” the voice in Gary Dowdy's ear exclaimed. “Head shot!”
Gary, chuckling, set aside the game controller and slurped from a tall can of Amp energy drink. Then he replied into his headset, “Thanks, man. Helps to have a sweet hideout.”
“Hell yeah it does.”
“Another round?”
“I wish. Gotta jet 'fore Mom yells at me again.”
“Damn school,” Gary agreed.
“Damn school. Later.”
That's the problem gaming with teens, Gary mused. Parents.
The alternative, though, was less competition because younger guys enjoyed expert reflexes and mad skills compared to guys his own age.
Gary powered off the game console, removed the wireless headset, and switched the television input to a stream of Twit TV. Background noise made the place seem more alive. He rose from one of two chairs in his cramped apartment and strode the few steps to the kitchenette. It was late but he was hungry. Wading through swamps of Viet Nam fragging teenagers always worked up an appetite. He crunched potato chips while a Hot Pocket spun in radiation.
Too early to sleep, Gary figured his options were:
Read (Wired magazine, posts on Slashdot.org, or start a sci-fi or weird fiction novel)
Install the latest version of Ubuntu Linux on a spare PC
Goof around on social media
While the Hot Pocket cooled Gar
y navigated his smart phone to the free dating app he'd installed a year ago. He'd yet to meet anyone off the dating site but hadn't given up hope. He planned to upgrade the phone soon and hadn't decided if should reinstall the app. Maybe if MissU42Long replied to his message. A notification of Message Successfully Sent floated across the screen. Gary figured a pudgy twenty-one-year-old woman with dimples, a cute face and quirky fashion sense might find a lanky gamer three years her senior appealing. Besides, he owned a car, had his own place, and a full-time job as network administrator at MediaHost, a web hosting and e-services company. He'd been there since graduating from University of Colorado - Denver. MissU42Long also enjoyed reading, gaming, and snowball fights. Snowball fights really wasn't his thing, but Gary figured if she warmed him up afterward it might be fun.
With a mouthful of chips Gary took the ham and cheese snack and can of Amp into the next room. No door separated the two rooms. Technically a bedroom, a twin mattress and box springs lay on the floor out of the way. Instead the room featured a long L-shaped office desk that spanned one wall and part of another. A server rack commandeered from MediaHost's decommissioned equipment stood beside the table. Gary's employer regularly replaced equipment and sometimes sold things. A little social engineering had earned Gary an assortment of hardware and operating systems to play with and better learn, including several each of HP and IBM varieties.
Now that school has started, Gary figured, I'll be gaming less and hacking more.
He sat down and rolled the office chair to a large flat-screen monitor and keyboard, toggled the KVM switch past an Apache web server, his Windows gaming rig, and stopped on the Linux machine he preferred to use to hack around with. As an afterthought he pulled on a white ball cap. The joke of course being good versus evil hackers: white hat versus black hat. All his close friends at CU had worn white, except Rafe, who wore black, and Gene, just to be different, who wore red because he preferred the associated flavor of Linux.
Gary bit into the pocket sandwich and – damn it – burned his tongue. Breathing out his mouth while carefully chewing, he launched XChat to connect with IRC – Internet Relay Chat – servers and Binreader to browse newsgroups. It had been a while since he'd done so and he figured a good challenge might be in order.
As he gnawed the Hot Pocket down to its icy core, he trawled the dark corners of the Internet for something that piqued his interest.
The effort might take a while – many nights, perhaps weeks – but searching offered its own sort of fun. Following leads, bouncing from newsgroup to newsgroup, lurking, earning trust, chatting with people all across the globe, only to hear rumor of other people who'd provide their own challenge to track down, and convince to chat. Each group, a sordid subculture with their own cryptic slang to learn and effectively use.
Gary Dowdy saw the trek as an adventure, an on-line way of playing deep cover operative for the thrill of infiltrating whatever it was he hoped to find. He briefly reflected on past experiences as he finished his snack:
A tip to police regarding an arsonist in Pasadena, California
A private reward offered by Southern Suites hotel chain to anyone who could gain access to their corporate network and then provide information regarding their firewall weaknesses (Gary earned $10,000)
Information he provided to UK Satellite regarding hacked set-top boxes that allowed users to receive free satellite TV reception
This time, though, he hoped to find something more interesting, more clandestine. More sordid. Perhaps a den of pedophiles engaged in human trafficking or help in tracking down one of many operating psychopaths raping and killing (and refrigerating body parts) in the United States. The possibilities were endless.
Perusing newsgroups from the bottom down alphabetically, ritual sacrifice caught his attention. It would be a late night, he assumed, and a long day at work tomorrow, but his friend caffeine would help him through.
By the time he finally crashed for the night, he'd found a few interesting leads... and hadn't received a reply from MissU42Long.
7
“Daddy! You're home. I missed you.”
“Missed you too, sweetie.”
Katie stopped bouncing with excitement to wrap arms around Brant. Brant hugged his daughter. It was nice not having to come home to an empty house.
“So this is why you asked my favorite color.”
“Your text said blue.” Katie shook her head and multicolored hornlike shocks of purple and blue – goth ponytails, she’d explained earlier – whipped over platinum-blonde tresses. “You like?”
“What's not to like?”
Katie grinned. “Hope you don't mind. I used some of the grocery money you left to buy hair dye. How was your business trip?”
“It was very interesting. I've got a lot of work ahead of me. A trip to the library tomorrow and plenty of books to read that I ordered on-line. How was your week?”
“I interviewed at Java Joe's coffee shop. I'll tell you all about it later. You should relax. Are you hungry?”
“Now that you mention it...”
“Fridge is empty; I'll order pizza. Maybe we can watch a movie together?”
“You do that – order what you like. I'll be right back. Just gonna put my stuff in the study. By the way, what kind of music is that?”
“Industrial. It’s one of my faves. Want me to turn it down?”
“Nah, that's okay.” Brant bobbed his head. “Good stuff.”
After placing his backpack in the study and unpacking the notebook computer, he wheeled luggage into his bedroom to find the bedsheets disheveled.
Katie's voice from behind him said, “The mattress on my bed is lumpy.”
The mattress had been replaced by a new set in his room two or three years ago and it made sense that her set also needed to be replaced.
“No worries,” Brant said.
“I was up late and slept away the day. That's why I'm still wearing jammies. Here, I'll make the bed really quick. Sorry, Daddy, I didn't know when you'd be home, else—”
“It's okay, sweetie. No need to make the bed.”
“I insist.”
“Suit yourself.”
Brant entered the en suite bath area and closed the door behind him. After he'd finished showering he found the bed made and his daughter absent from the room. He found her again, downstairs, music lowered, holding a bottle of beer.
“Sit,” she said, and he did. She handed him the bottle and went around back of the sofa to massage his shoulders. Her hands felt wonderful. He had a lot to process before he could start writing the report he'd been hired to produce. In fact, he had much reading to do first, but tonight he needed to relax. The shower had gone a long way toward rinsing away the sheen of sweat he'd gained down in the dungeon below the server room. Sitting here now, with his long-lost daughter kneading tensed muscles, the horrors he'd witnessed in Kansas seemed a nightmare away.
Except Brant knew:
Horrors originated from fear of the unknown
Knowledge can be gained through hard work and study
He'd been wrong to so easily dismiss anything not grounded in science; such things as supernatural phenomenon, things of an occult nature
Everything functioned on laws or rules, and those laws and rules could be controlled and bent to one's own devices, once understood
Brant pulled from the bottle of beer. “Thanks, sweetie. I needed that.”
“Daddies' girls know these things.”
“Now you sit,” Brant said. “Tell me about your interview.”
Katie sat down beside him on the sofa. He pushed away occult thoughts and focused on the happy innocence of a young woman thrilled with the opportunities of life.
The owner of Java Joe's had wanted to meet Katie to discuss her past experience as a barista while attending college. The interview had went well. She'd walked to Java Joe's and allowed plenty of time to get there. To avoid arriving early, she'd stopped at the hair supply wholesale store where sh
e bought the dye. Everything, as far as Katie was concerned, seemed to be looking up.
Her fingers entwined with Brant's. “I like being here,” she confided.
“I like you being here, too, sweetie.”
“Think you'll make amends with your wife?”
“I honestly don't know. Not only did she cheat on me, she left. Now, I suspect she's got another man. And hell, I'm convinced she's hooked-up with Abrams again, whether or not he's the one she's with now. Actually, she's much too smart to stick with him long-term, which means—”
A chiming doorbell thankfully interrupted him.
“Stay put. I'll get it,” Katie said.
“Have enough cash?”
“Think so.”
She disappeared from the room. Muffled voices. A moment later she returned carrying the pizza box, two plates, a stack of napkins, and two bottles – another beer for him and a soft drink for herself. Katie served slices of pizza – thin crust veggie – and resumed their conversation by saying:
“If you get back with Evelyn she won't want me around.”
“I don't see that happening anytime soon. Besides, there's plenty of room here.”
Katie shrugged. “You could meet someone else. She might not like me either.”
“Silly, you worry too much.”
“I just...”
“Just what?”
“I just... I just have thought about this – meeting you, I mean – a lot, and, well, I thought you might hate me, might not want to see me, might tell me to go away and never come back again.”
“Katie...”
“It's true. I've thought about you a lot. You always sent money, so I knew you were a responsible man, but...”
“But what?”
“But since I turned eighteen, your obligation is over.”
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