by Paul Duffau
I’m toast either way.
“Fine,” said Mitch, anger stitching the words together. “Gimme the thing.” He held his hand out, read the satisfaction like a lion stalking an impala on Hunter’s face. “You got my back, right?”
Hunter licked his lips, looked him dead in the eye, and lied. “Absolutely.”
Chapter 23
Kenzie stared at the clock with desperate intensity, doing her best to ignore her abused right quad. Five on, five off, those were the instructions from Jules. For three hours, she had moved from a left-footed front stance to the right every five minutes. Her jaw twitched with spasmodic regularity in sympathetic reaction to the fiery tremble in her thighs. The muscles at the base of her back and in her butt added to the complaints. She counted down with the second hand on the face of the clock.
Three, two, one . . . shift . . .
She stumbled at the changeover. Within seconds, the vibrations started all over, punishing the other leg.
Jules ended the final class of the evening. Kenzie could hear the black belt giving instructions, but the words swirled past like leaves on a fall wind, gone before Kenzie could note them. For Kenzie, all that existed was breathing and holding the stance and counting down seconds. At the start of the exercise, her thoughts had sprinted past, a jumble of competing worries, each demanding attention. The tumult in her mind, about her mother, about Elowyn’s Star, Mitch, all of it faded beneath the inexorable movement of the clock. Each tick of the long slender hand marked another step into exhaustion. There was a clock and a pattern and the ever-increasing ache.
A shadow intruded between her and the clock. Kenzie squeezed her eyes shut, opened them, and focused on the face near her. Hyperattentive, she counted the creases at the edge of the woman’s brown eyes, inhaling and exhaling in a perfect rhythm past trembly lips. After counting, she forgot the number. Another thought blew in and drifted away. Why is she so sad?
“Look at me,” said Jules, “right here.” She tapped her temple.
Kenzie made eye contact. The attraction of the ticking clock distracted her. Willing herself to disregard it, she won her battle to focus on Jules’s gaze.
The black belt scrutinized her face. “Break,” she said.
It took a moment for the word to percolate into Kenzie’s brain. With a groan, she released the stance. Jules steadied her as she swayed. She bent at the waist to rub her quads, and her back spasmed. She emitted a gasp. Only Jules’s powerful hand kept her from toppling.
“Marley, could you get a cup of water for Kenzie, please?”
The buxom brunette, shorter than Kenzie, hustled to accommodate Jules.
“Walk,” order Jules. “Slowly, five laps.”
Kenzie began a counterclockwise circuit of the training floor. Marley met her at the rail and handed her the water. Kenzie gulped it down. The tinny taste lingered on her tongue. Sweat broke out on her skin as though the water immediately coursed through her body and exited again. Her nose crinkled.
I stink.
The other students, in their bustle of bag packing and putting on of shoes, made a studious effort to avoid looking at her. Not sure what she had done to earn such a punishment, they did not want to chance the same fate by making eye contact. The realization brought a faint smile to her lips. Jackson was the exception; he kept her in sight and tracked her progress, face bland.
Marley waited for her as she completed a lap. “Need more?”
Kenzie glanced at the empty cup. “Yeah, please,” and handed it over without stopping. She looked over her shoulder. “Tell them I asked for it, asked for extra training.”
Marley paused, doubtful. “Can do.” She fetched more water. The brunette flashed a broad smile at Jackson as she passed the bodyguard. Jackson offered a noncommittal expression.
Kenzie lost count of the laps, but walking felt good so she kept moving. When the last student left, Jules fell in beside her. Two laps went by without either of them speaking.
“Mr. Jackson is back.”
Kenzie rolled her shoulders in a shrug. They were tired, too. All of her was.
“Do you know why I had you doing this exercise?”
Kenzie, before her brain blanked out, had wondered. “To test my . . . obedience?” she answered, voice rising at the end. It seemed more reasonable than You like to hurt people.
“Not your obedience,” said Jules. Three paces later, she continued. “Three reasons. One, to push your self-discipline. I can’t make you do anything. You have to want to do it, to put in the work.” She hesitated, and Kenzie’s heart fell with her next words. “You didn’t prove anything to me.”
Kenzie bit the tip of her tongue and, embarrassingly, tears started to form.
“You didn’t prove anything to me, because I already knew that you had this within you, this and much, much more. But, until you believe it, too, your potential will stay out of reach. So, the first lesson for you is to believe. Believe, believe, believe. Nothing happens until you know deep down inside your guts that you will achieve your goals, regardless of obstacles.”
Kenzie lurched to a stop and turned her back on the black woman. When Kenzie sniffled, Jules swung her back around, and with a gentle swipe of her thumbs removed the tears.
“That’s just a stress reaction,” she said. “When you exert as much effort as you just did, it puts you in contact with the most innate parts of you and reorganizes your brain chemistry.”
“What are the other two reasons?” asked Kenzie. The first one sounded pretty bogus.
“The second one is easy. I want you to trust me and trust the training. I have reasons for everything that I’m going to make you do.”
Okay, duh. “What’s the third?”
Warmth glowed in Jules’s face. “What happened to your brain in that last hour, Kenzie?”
The question caught Kenzie off guard. “Quiet?”
“Exactly the opposite of the way you started. Your thoughts were jumping all over the place when you started. I could see it in your eyes, the way they kept darting all over the place. By the end, you were fixated on the hands of the clock.”
Kenzie scrunched up her face. “You hypnotized me.”
“No, I let you do it to yourself.”
Kenzie bit her tongue again. Big fat hairy diff!
“I was expecting more of that third eye stuff that you were teaching me,” said Kenzie, referring to the lessons that Jules had started with her before Lassiter interrupted her life.
Jules stopped her patient stride. Kenzie halted beside her. Beyond Jules, she could see Jackson watching intently.
“I think I made a mistake with you,” admitted Jules. “I widened your perspective and congratulated myself when you took to it like a duck to water. I should have seen, then, that you didn’t need to go wide. Instead, you need to drill down to shut out the world, all of it, except for the one thought or purpose that engages you, otherwise you’re dissipating your energy in wasteful extravagances that might even pose a danger to you.” Kenzie detected a blush under the dusky features. “Am I making sense?”
“I think so.”
“Good, it will make your homework easier to understand.”
“What homework?”
“I want you to take twenty minutes a night and practice quieting your mind. Expect this to be hard when you first start it. Our minds abhor stillness and will create distractions for you.” Jules brought her forefingers and thumbs together. “While you are practicing this, focus on breathing.” Jules laid a hand on Kenzie’s shoulder. “We’ll only do this once every couple of weeks, or variations of it.”
“Good, because I don’t want to be a monk.”
A rich laugh rolled out of Jules. “I doubt that is your particular destiny. Plus, your forms will need significant work for you to earn your black belt.” She inclined her chin toward Jackson. “We’ve kept your companion waiting long enough. Change and go home. Don’t come back for at least a couple of days. You’re going to be sore.”
Kenzie bowed with a groan. “Yes, ma’am.”
First, she made sure her door was shut and locked.
Elowyn’s Star.
She held the choker in her hand. The green stone was quiescent. What attracted her attention was the broken setting at the center of the hearts of filigreed leaves. The prongs of silver were scorched as though blasted with a torch. When she first got the necklace at the lagoon, she had looked at it and thought it curious. Now, it represented something more ominous.
It had to be her mother’s. Why else would the Glade deliver it to her? But why give it to her broken? And what was she supposed to do with it?
She held it up to the light and envisioned the stone that would reside at the center. It would be about a half inch wide, she estimated, based on the space between the prongs. What kind of shape? Square? Round? Teardrop? The spacing of the metal was regular. That ruled out the more exotic shapes.
Maybe with just a touch of magic . . . ?
At the attempt, the emerald awoke and fractured her sight with a scintillating green shimmer. She growled to herself. She didn’t understand the purpose of the emerald, but it kept getting in her way when she tried to do anything with the choker. Resigned, she stood and re-hid it in her closet.
She changed for bed, remembering to unlock the door in case her father looked in on her. With a yawn, she nestled into her comforter and snapped the light off. Relaxation came with the closing of her eyes, her body finally allowed to fully rest.
Her last semi-coherent thought was of Elowyn’s Star.
Gonna find it . . . gonna find my mother . . . believe, believe, believe. . . .
Drifting into a light sleep, she imagined she heard a deep rumble accompanied by flashes of blue lightning, but the thunder came first, out of order with the lightning, and she clutched the downy cover close under her chin.
Chapter 24
The chip sat in Mitch’s shirt pocket like a brick as he passed through security and into 3rdGen’s lobby. He navigated the mass of hallways, hopped onto the elevator, and made his way to his eight-foot-square cubicle. With a vague sense of disgust, he plopped into his cushioned chair, spun, and turned the workstation on. Around him, other interns and new engineers settled in for a day’s work.
He kept a particular eye on Garrett’s cube, two down from his spot.
He had a plan. It had taken most of the night to formulate, and it was a truly sucky plan, but he calculated he had a ten percent chance of pulling it off. Much more likely, he was going to get busted for spying, then he’d be arrested and never work in tech again.
He wished he had hit Hunter harder.
He scanned the work schedule. His current project was due in two days. Plenty of time. He pulled up the related files. This new project was another model of robot, less humanoid than the last, an industrial workhorse. Near as Mitch could gather from the drawings, it was targeted at the factory and warehouse market. He grunted. How long it would be before nobody except the engineers were employed? With the advances coming in automated equipment, a slew of jobs were about to disappear. His backup plan of flipping hamburgers after 3rdGen canned him didn’t look too hot.
His shoulders drooping, Mitch dodged the future by diving into his work. The bot was a lot easier to work with than his previous project. No awkward linkages complicated the design. Low to the ground and compact, the tank-like machine had a carry capacity of hundreds of pounds, with sophisticated sensors to guide it.
Behind him, he noted the blobish shadow of Warnicke pausing to look over his shoulder. Mitch kept his head down, entering a series of commands that cleaned up the drawing. He abruptly stopped rotating the images.
“Leo?” he called, looking up from the screen.
“What?” Warnicke looked like he had been sucking sour pickles. Though company policy was to keep communications informal, Leo Warnicke had voiced his disgust at the use of first names. Leading by non-example, he reinforced his control by blasting everyone by last names. “I think we have an issue on the WH-11,” said Mitch, using the model number for the robot.
“Just do your job,” Warnicke responded, “which I remind you is not design. You just clean up the drawings for production.” His eyes convulsively twitched to the empty workstation two cubicles down. Mitch avoided following the track of the glances. He was invested in the dude showing up. Better to face his fate sooner than later, and he needed Garrett, the missing employee, to arrive.
“But—”
Leo’s beady eyes zoomed to focus over Mitch’s head. “Garrett! What the hell time do we start work?”
“Sorry, boss,” came the breezy reply. “I got here though, right? No biggie.” Garrett walked past Mitch to his cubicle. From the bitter smell wafting behind him, the caffeine junkie had swung by Starbucks.
Warnicke spluttered impotently, and stomped off.
The screen in front of Mitch faded to black, so he jiggered the mouse and brought the computer back to life. He checked the documents, located one of the principal engineers, and tapped out an e-mail. Maybe I’m missing it, but on the WH-11, it looks like the lower port sensor at the roller engagement is missing? What if it fouls? He hit Enter and the message zipped away on the intranet.
Mitch diddled away at the drawing to distract himself from the rats gnawing at his gut. When Garrett left to hit the bathroom, Mitch needed to be ready to move. Surreptitiously, he pulled the SD card from his pocket, wiped it with his shirttail, and hid it under a notepad. He removed a second card, this one a mini SD mounted in an adapter, and put it under a pile of jotted-on index cards next to his computer. If he was going to spy for Hunter, he might as well borrow the extra files on his hard drive. The mini-SD would be easier to smuggle out.
His computer flashed a notification that he had a new message. He clicked it open.
Crap! Looks like it got dropped on the last update. Good catch!
A satisfied glow temporarily replaced the rodent chomping at his entrails. The feeling faded to ice as he observed Garrett making preparatory moves to vacate his cubicle. Mitch drew a tremulous breath.
Now or never, before he lost his nerve.
Garrett rolled his chair back. Mitch took the adapter and inserted it into the slot on his own computer. Typing fast, he called up the folder with all the robotics plans and the MAGE documents.
Ctrl-A. The command mass-selected all the files.
A right click brought up options. He slipped down the list to “Send To” and directed them to Drive: G. He stood and had to grab the top of the carpet-covered separator. Deep breaths, in, out. He turned off the monitor to hide the icon showing flying files as the transfer began.
Garrett stood, stretched. Seeing Mitch on his feet, too, he grinned.
“You okay, buddy?” His head turned to an angle. “You look like hell.”
Mitch managed a weak smile of his own, knowing that he was about to shaft Garrett. “Still fighting that cold.” To demonstrate, he took a tissue from his pocket.
“Bummer, man.” With that, Garrett left his cubicle.
As soon as the other man’s back was to him, Mitch slid the notepad out of the way and retrieved Hunter’s memory card. His computer continued to chatter away, transferring data. Mitch worried briefly whether the card had enough capacity for all the files. Picking up the chip by the edges with the tissue, he disregarded the worry as rightfully the least of his very immediate concerns.
What was going to happen when he activated the program on Hunter’s piece of espionage/sabotage?
He shivered as though with a fever, hiding the fear. Garrett turned right, in the direction of the restrooms.
Now, go!
Mitch walked in the same path, headed to the same location. Heart thumping against his rib cage, he stopped at Garrett’s workstation. With temporary relief, he saw that Garrett hadn’t logged out and secured his computer against tampering. He placed the card into the machine. It whirred, clicked, and took forever to launch the spyware.
; Come on, come on, come on . . .
After a millennium or two, during which Mitch forgot to breathe, the promised autorun sequence started. Using the back of his right middle finger knuckle, he tapped the Enter key in the upper right corner. The command disappeared. The computer began assimilating the programming. Mitch’s heart continued operating erratically. It felt like every third beat went sideways, an engine missing on a couple of cylinders and in danger of tearing itself to pieces.
Three minutes. He could count on his coworker being gone for that long, no more. He marched to the hallway. Surprised, he saw Garrett just entering the men’s room. Drawing a panicky lungful of air, he trailed in behind him, choosing the first urinal. Garrett was in a stall. Mitch sent a thankful prayer out into the universe. He had time.
Finishing his business, he made a point to blow his non-runny nose. Garrett was flushing the toilet as Mitch ducked back out the door. He half-jogged until he reached the entry to the cubicle farm, then slowed to a normal walk. Despite his best efforts he couldn’t stop his eyeballs from twitching around the room in a guilty scan.
Nobody noticed, nobody cared.
He slowed at Garrett’s desk. The program had erased its presence from the screen. With the dirtied tissue, he pulled the card on his way past, crumpling the soft paper with trembling fingers around the incriminating evidence.
He sat in his chair and snapped the monitor back on. The progress meter showed the transfer as ninety-eight percent complete. Seconds later the icon stopped moving. He removed the adapter, slid the mini SD from the slot, and dropped the adapter on the desktop. Bending over, Mitch faked tying his shoelaces. He shoved the tiny chip into a cut in the rubber of his running shoes, pressing with a fingernail to make sure it was safely secured. A fast check confirmed the entire contents had transferred, so he deleted the empty folder with a sigh of relief, then emptied the trash folder. If someone did a forensic search on his station, they’d find the evidence of his activity, but a nosy boss couldn’t accidentally stumble onto Mitch’s foray into espionage.