It did seem that way, but worry still tugged at Janis as she reread the juvenile exchange.
“Let’s find out just how close,” Scott said.
He donned his helmet and took a seat on the car hood. Janis felt a part of him shoot past her, toward the tower and the device he’d installed to capture a signal direction. Scott had constructed his messages to prod his counterpart’s enormous ego, to stoke him into overconfidence. But as she read the responses, Janis wondered if Scott’s counterpart wasn’t doing the same thing.
Beside her, Scott’s head dipped between his slumping shoulders. Janis squinted up at the tower his consciousness was now occupying. A second later, something detonated near the tower’s top, casting off a plume of white smoke.
Scott jerked up beside her and began thrashing, a high-pitched babble growing from his helmet.
“Scott, what is it? What’s wrong?”
When she grasped his arms, he flailed away and nearly fell. She bound him with threads of space, as much to keep him from harming himself as her, and pulled his helmet free. Janis choked back a scream. Scott’s eyes bulged at her, his head ticking at odd angles, lips contorting around piles of words that translated into insanity. And was that blood in his nostrils?
She grasped the sides of his head. “Scott, can you hear me?”
He stared all around her before baring his teeth and snapping at her hands.
As Janis struggled to restrain him, the Walkman with its orange headphones slid from the hood of the station wagon and landed near their shuffling feet. Janis had no doubt that somewhere—somewhere close, possibly—Scott’s counterpart was clutching his stomach and laughing madly.
18
Scott slipped into the calculator device he had installed on the repeater. A quick check told him it had worked as designed, grabbing the signal directions of his and his counterpart’s latest exchange. He grinned to himself as he assembled the bits of data.
Got you now, you little sh—
A shot of voltage imploded the thought and blew his consciousness to pieces.
In an instant, he was scattered everywhere. Nothing to connect to. Desperate, he focused on his body. His eyes jerked open, but the inside of his helmet appeared odd and splintered.
It took Scott a moment to realize his limbs were jerking like an epileptic’s and another that the torrent of babbling bouncing around his helmet was his own. He fought to restrain himself, to staunch the outpouring of speech or at least give it some meaning. But he couldn’t gather enough of himself to override the primitive parts of his central nervous system. His brainstem and reflexes controlled him. He was a prisoner to their madness.
Someone pried his helmet from his head.
Janis!
He tried to communicate with her telepathically, but he no longer had that ability either. His heart broke at the terror that flashed over her face. But then muscles stiffened around her jaw and his limbs stopped moving. In the next moment, his head was in her hands. He could only observe in horror as he tried to bite them.
If you don’t want to go full Cujo, he thought, you’re going to need to pull yourself together.
Literally.
He strained, but even his thoughts were becoming hard to keep in one place. The force of whatever had detonated inside the repeater had overcome the bonds that held him. Like the epicenter of a mini Big Bang, Scott was dispersing. His consciousness fragmenting beyond his capacity to communicate among the pieces. He felt himself fading into the cosmos.
Scott…
Janis’s voice. Calling him back.
Her green eyes swam into focus, and he fought to hold them there.
Slowly, the space grew around them. Scott saw that he was on the ground. He felt the cool metal of the station wagon against his back. Janis was kneeling before him, the hair that spilled down the front of her forest-green sweater framing a tense face. His muscles softened inside her bonds.
He tested his voice. “Wow.” He coughed away some hoarseness. “That was intense.”
Janis sighed and sat back on her heels. “Welcome home.”
The bonds slipped from around Scott, and he cracked his neck to one side and then the other. He tested his arms before taking Janis’s face in his hands. “If you let me kiss you, I promise I won’t bite.”
Her lips leaned into a smile as they met his.
They held each other for a long time, her body warm against him, before Scott spoke in her ear.
“Thanks.”
“Trap?”
“Big time.” He collapsed back against the car and regarded her concerned face. “Your intuition was spot on. He knew about my abilities. He baited me here. When the repeater detected my energy, it hit me with a crapload of power. If you hadn’t been here, I’d be in the outer spirals of the Milky Way about now. And this”—he gestured to his body—“would be a gibbering mess.”
A sigh trembled from him as he understood just how close he had come.
“C’mon,” Janis said, standing and pulling Scott to his feet. “I’ll drive us home.”
“No argument here.”
Scott started to gather the items from the top of the hood. He stopped when he got to the printouts, his plastic geometry protractor and red grease pencil acting as paper weights.
Nineteen degrees south of due west.
“Just one sec,” he said, separating the printout that showed their present location. He lined up the protractor in relation to the tower and eyed the degrees. He made a pair of marks, then, using the straight edge of the protractor, drew a line along them. Perhaps two miles from the tower, his line entered a small clearing in the trees. In the center of the clearing was a house.
“There,” Scott said, stopping and circling the small block with his pencil. “He’s in there.”
“Scott…”
“No, listen. His plan wasn’t to hide. It was to lure me to the tower and then blow me apart, right? He thinks he’s done that. So now we use the element of surprise to nail him.”
“He could have a backup plan.”
“Janis, he’s a hacker. Our self-worth is predicated on getting it right the first time. We don’t do backup plans.”
When her lips pursed, Scott was sure she was going to shoot him down. She’d just brought him back from the abyss after all. Instead, she held up a finger—one minute—and closed her eyes. Scott took the opportunity to check his head, to make sure he really was back from the abyss. His thoughts felt sludgy, like they did when he overslept, but aside from that, he seemed to be all there. Thanks to the most awesome girl who had ever breathed.
That girl opened her eyes. “There is someone in the house.”
“Could you tell who he was or anything about him?”
“Not really. There’s a lot of electronic interference.”
“Sounds like our guy.”
Janis didn’t answer, and Scott could see her mind working behind her green eyes. Scott admitted that a big part of his motivation now was to get even. But regardless, their dilemma hadn’t changed. They could either challenge the future or wait for it to plow into them.
Janis apparently arrived at the same conclusion.
“All right,” she said. “But on the condition you not enter any of his systems. I don’t care how well you think you understand his personality type, he could have another trap waiting for you.”
“Deal,” Scott said.
Janis drove now while Scott navigated. She’d had to scoot the seat way forward and familiarize herself with the controls, but Scott thought she handled the rig like a champ. Their route took them down a couple of country roads before he had her turn off onto a gravel road.
“Let’s pull over up there,” he said, consulting the printout. “It will put us a safe distance behind the house.”
Janis did as he suggested, and the station wagon ground to a stop. Outside the car, they took stock of where they were. A low barbed-wire fence separated the limestone road from an expanse of oak trees. Throug
h seams in the trees, Scott could make out slivers of an open field.
“I’ll blur us,” Janis whispered. “You scan for any monitoring devices. Scan, not enter.”
“Got it.”
And from now on, we communicate like this, she added.
Scott pulled his helmet on and extended his mind into the trees, tensing for the least sign of a trap.
He let out his breath. Woods are clean.
They waded through a sweep of tall grass toward the fence. Scott was about to spread the strands for Janis when a force grabbed him. He was raised into the air and then gently lowered on the far side of the fence. Janis landed next to him, her helmet donned now as well.
Thanks, but a little warning next time? he thought toward her.
Sorry, didn’t want the fence to squeak.
They separated and picked their way through the trees toward the clearing. Janis was visible to Scott only because he knew where she was. Otherwise, his eyes kept wanting to color in her space with the surrounding environment. Thanks to Janis’s blurring effect, the two of them were as close to invisible as they could be.
It wasn’t long before Scott got his first glimpse of the house, and it gave him pause. The house was an old shotgun-style farmhouse with wood siding and roof tiles that had begun to gray. Saw palmettos sprouted against the back of the house, where what looked like an old refrigerator and some other appliances had been cast out. Not the tech center Scott had imagined.
Do you still feel him? he asked uncertainly.
A lot of interference still, but yeah, there’s someone in there.
Scott spotted a power line running to the rooftop. He peeked to make sure Janis wasn’t looking before concentrating toward the service drop and accessing the current. He was taking a big risk, but if he and Janis were going to barge in, they had to know they had the right address. From the weather head, the current fell through a vertical conduit into the house.
Whoa.
Where most residential service drops were on the order of 240 volts, someone had rigged the wiring to deliver closer to 1000, splicing the excess around the meter to avoid detection. Which meant some serious devices were being powered inside—the interference Janis was feeling.
Hey! came her accusatory voice.
Scott jerked back to himself and straightened. Yeah, was just, um, scanning something. We’ve got the right place.
I can protect your body, Janis said, not your mind.
He peered around and found her crouched behind a tree at the edge of the clearing to his left. He moved forward until the house was in full view. A small porch behind the house lead to a back door. On either side, two dark windows looked out. From the close distance, Scott could feel the energy field that pulsed from the house. He activated his helmet’s laser.
I say we bust in, he thought, hit him hard.
He’s already lured us into one trap, Janis reminded him. I think now’s the time to alert Kilmer. We can keep an eye on the house until reinforcements arrive.
Scott shook his head. This guy’s good. Better than I wanted to give him credit for. He could be hacked into our communication devices with whatever he’s got set up in there. The second we hit send, he’ll know what’s up. We’d be handing him back the advantage.
It took Janis a moment to respond. Dutch’s team has a perimeter up. If things go sideways, I guess they’ll have to be reinforcement enough. But listen, no entering systems. I mean it.
Noted.
All right, she said, then seemed to pause for a breath. You take the back. I’ll enter through the front. I should be able to shield us from whatever he throws our way. We’ll meet in the middle.
Sounds like a plan. He rose from his crouch, excitement pumping through him.
And, Scott? If you reach him first, just take your shot. No trash talk.
I’ll save it for after he’s down.
Now! she said.
A blur launched from the trees to Scott’s left, and it took him a moment to recognize it as Janis in flight. By the time Scott started into his sprint, Janis was already above the house. Grass and saw palmettos whacked Scott’s legs as he trained his focus on the back porch and door. He lined up a shot and released. Two wooden detonations sounded as the back and front doors blew open.
Scott took the back steps in one leap and was inside. Janis’s descending form blotted out the light at the far end of the shotgun. Scott whipsawed his head to the right and left where two doors opened off the hallway. He processed the information quickly, his helmet visor changing tinting to compensate for the dim light. To the left was an empty bedroom with a stained box spring in one corner and little else. The room to the right had been heaped with wooden furniture and, as indicated by dust and cobwebs, not disturbed in a long time.
He and Janis met in the middle as planned. While Janis faced the closed door to Scott’s left, he turned to the doorway opposite—and nearly crapped himself.
“Holy mother,” he whispered.
A hand on the door frame, he stepped into the warm room. On either side of him, floor-to-ceiling servers hummed and flashed lights. They proceeded around the perimeter, meeting at a large console against the far wall. Two of the tallest computer towers Scott had ever seen bookended a glowing monitor. Beside the monitor, thick wires converged on some sort of modem. A quick scan impressed Scott with the volume of data the computer was absorbing and processing. It took all his will power to keep from probing deeper.
His eyes fell to the swivel chair set in front of the computer console. No head showed above its tall backrest, but that didn’t mean the chair was empty. It was large enough to conceal someone of short stature.
“Scott,” Janis called.
The urgency in her voice pulled his gaze from the chair.
“The person I could feel earlier,” she said as he turned. “I think I just found him.”
Faintness washed over Scott. “Oh God.”
He gripped Janis’s shoulders as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. From the far end of the room, an aging man faced them. He had been stripped of his clothes and was seated in what looked like an electric chair, wrists and ankles bound to the armrests by metal cuffs. A halo circled his head, dark blood clotting where screws bore into his skull. Fluid dripped from several IV bags hung around him. Their lines converged into his neck and the crooks of his arm. Judging by the putrid smell of the room, the man had been there a good while.
Scott and Janis hurried toward him.
“Sir?” Janis called. “Are you awake?”
“Can you hear us?” Scott asked.
The man’s eyelids trembled, but they were sealed by a crust of mucous. His sagging lips mumbled something. Scott looked over the man’s wasted body. Freckled skin hung from his breast plate and ribs. He was seated on some kind of commode. Two PVC pipes ran from the bottom of the chair and disappeared through a hole in the wall.
Probably the owner of the house, Janis said, removing her jacket and spreading it over his lap. Your friend must have appropriated this place.
Scott peeked around into the data room. The tall swivel chair continued to face the computer console. He heard the snap of metal as Janis used her abilities to free the man’s ankles and wrists.
Are you sure he’s the only one in here? Scott asked, turning back. The screws were twisting from the man’s head now.
The only person I’m picking up, yeah.
At that moment, a sound grew from the data room: the clap of slow applause. It was soon accompanied by laughter. Scott moved between Janis and the doorway and aimed his laser.
“Is it game on, maggot?” a deep voice asked from behind the chair. “Or game over?”
19
Janis was removing the final head screw when she heard laughter followed by a deep, taunting voice. Instinctively, she reinforced the shield around Scott and the old man. With her remaining energy, she reached into the room opposite them to detain whoever it was.
After a moment, her b
row furrowed. “Scott, I don’t think—”
A blast shot from Scott’s helmet. In a burst of foam stuffing, the computer chair flipped twice, ricocheted from the console, and landed on its blown-open back, the casters spinning crazily.
The chair was empty.
“And it had such good lumbar support,” the voice said.
Scott crept to the hallway and craned his neck into the data room. Janis could feel his nerves. Like hers, they were on a hair trigger. She touched the old man’s knee and rose from his side.
Be careful, she thought toward Scott.
It’s coming from the computer, he said. He must have set it up to receive and transmit signals on the same frequency as the Walkman. Meaning, he could be anywhere with a telephone connection.
Janis followed the rest of Scott’s thought process: if Scott could access that connection, he would know where this guy really was. Before she could warn him off the idea, the voice spoke again.
“I see you’ve met my better half,” he said as Scott looked over the computer. “Impressive, huh?”
The angle of Scott’s helmet shifted from the computer to take in various corners of the room, where there were no doubt monitoring devices.
“You’re welcome to tap your response,” the voice said. “But a spoken exchange would be nice.”
“I’ve seen better,” Scott replied.
“Oh, really? Might I ask where?”
“The discount bin at Radio Shack.”
“R-radio Shack?” the voice sputtered. “I’d like to see 1.5 gigaflops of computing power on one of their shelves.”
Scott, this is pointless, Janis said, stepping into the hallway behind him. We need to get the injured man to safety. We’ll notify Kilmer of our findings. Dutch’s team can monitor the house in the meantime.
Just one more minute, Scott answered. I think I can coerce him into giving away his location.
“Well, they’re not gonna want any of this crap once I’m through trashing it,” he said.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Watch me,” Scott said, powering up his laser.
XGeneration (Book 6): Greatest Good Page 10