The voice on the computer fell silent, and Janis imagined its owner watching Scott intently. But something in the certainty with which the person had last spoken made Janis wary.
“I’m waiting,” the voice said.
Scott took aim at one of the computer towers, hesitated, and then powered his laser down. The voice had called his bluff. Janis felt Scott struggling to prop up his crippled confidence.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Scott said.
That low, irritating laugh. “Before you make a complete fool of yourself in front of your girlfriend, I’m going to tell you why you wouldn’t dare harm my computer. Because you know it’s your only chance of finding me. And guess what? I’m going to give you that chance. Go ahead and right my chair. Pull it up to the console there. Give it the ol’ hacker’s try.”
Don’t, Scott.
But Janis didn’t have to warn him. Scott was already backing from a computer that, given the voice’s eagerness, might as well have been flashing the full-screen message TRAP! TRAP! TRAP!
“No?” the voice asked. “Well how about we make it interesting?”
From the computer’s speakers, Janis heard the clacking of keys. In the next instant, a red gridwork of lines went up over the walls and doorway of the data room, boxing Scott inside. Janis grunted as her protective shield around Scott dispersed, the energy rushing back to her.
“I have erected an ultrafine magnetic field,” the voice said. “Any attempts to breach it, physically or telekinetically, will detonate the twenty units of C-4 plastic explosive beneath the house.”
Janis looked around and realized that the field was covering all the walls and doorways. Meaning Scott wasn’t the only one boxed in. Janis was confined to the hallway and the old man to the room at her back, thin red lines of light separating them. Janis froze where she stood, afraid to move.
“By my calculation,” the voice continued, “only one of you has the ability to survive that kind of blast, and even that wouldn’t be a sure thing.”
He was right, Janis thought. Assuming he was telling the truth, she wouldn’t be able to extend her powers into either room without alerting the field. She could no longer shield Scott or the old man.
Only herself.
“But all of the solutions are right before you, my friend. Inside the system. You can deactivate the field, render the explosives harmless—and who knows? You might even be able to pinpoint my calling location. Or are you too gun shy from our last encounter on the tower? Hee-eeh.”
His laugh sounded like a thick nail being drawn through rusty metal.
“I’m game,” Scott said, “if you let Janis and the man go.”
“Why would I do that? Janis and the old man are part of the game.”
“The man’s got nothing to do with this,” Scott shouted. “Show some humanity, for God’s sake!”
“I could have ended his puny life outright. It’s my humanity that has kept him alive.”
“Oh, cram it,” Scott said. “You knew about Janis’s psychic abilities. The only reason you kept him alive was to get us to mistake him for you and lure us inside.”
And damned if I didn’t fall for it, Janis thought.
“I’m waiting…,” the voice said.
Put everything you have into your defensive shield, came Scott’s voice. I’ll see what I can do.
Janis turned from the old man, alarmed to find Scott lowering himself into the righted chair and scooting toward the console.
“Attaboy,” the voice said.
Scott, no!
I’ve already checked, he replied wearily. He’s got the field on battery backup somewhere. Any disruptions to the computer—pulling the plug, blasting it—will trigger a field violation. The computer’s the only way out of this. And hey, you brought me back once.
Just barely, Janis said, thinking of how far she’d had to stretch herself.
Well… Above the top of the backrest, Scott’s eyes seemed to shrug. I don’t see an alternative.
Janis bit her lower lip and wrung her brain for ideas. There had to be a weakness, something the person had overlooked, something she and Scott could exploit. She didn’t know much about these kinds of setups, but…
Can you take out the battery? she asked.
Not without some pyrotechnics, he answered. And given what we’re sitting on, that would be bad.
Janis’s watch beeped. She glanced down distractedly to find a message from Steel’s number two.
“WE’RE AROUND THE HOUSE. DO YOU REQUIRE BACKUP?”
Janis looked from the detection fields over both doorways to the outside and then back to the watch. “NO!” she typed. “DO NOT APPROACH THE HOUSE. I REPEAT, DO NOT—”
The display fragmented into pixels.
“That should make things interesting,” the voice said. “How many more minutes before they decide to come investigate, I wonder?”
What’s he talking about? Scott asked.
Dutch’s team, Janis answered. They’re outside, and my watch isn’t working. I can’t warn them away.
Scott turned his wrist up, shook it, and inspected his watch again. Out too, apparently.
I tried linking to them psychically, she said, but something’s interfering. He must have a stronger field set up around the house.
Be ready to shout, then, Scott answered. And keep that shield up around you.
This time, the clacking of keys came from Scott’s fingertips.
I’m going in.
Scott took a lingering look at Janis before rotating back to the computer. He hoped it wouldn’t be his last. The situation was even worse than he’d wanted to let on. The computer had all kinds of trip wires. They weren’t sensitive enough to detect a cursory scan, but anything more and Scott was going to get his consciousness blown to pieces again.
He would have to go the conventional route.
He scooted himself in closer and punched a command to get him into the system’s root level. Maybe he could underwrite the system’s machine language, disable the detection field that way.
“Scott, Scott, Scott,” the voice sighed through the speakers. “You disappoint me.”
He ignored his counterpart and hit return on his command. The computer screen froze.
Crap.
“So much for that action,” the voice said. “Hee-eeh, eeh.”
“That’s what I thought,” Scott said. “Scared I’ll out hack you.”
“Not particularly. I’ll just enjoy it more if I get to hear you scream.”
“Who in the hell are you anyway?” Scott asked as he tried different key combinations to unfreeze the computer.
“Since you asked nicely, the name’s Techie.”
“What’s your beef, Techie? What have we ever done to you?”
“It’s more what you are about to do. Or were about to do.”
“You don’t know anything, then.”
“Far more than you realize. I knew you’d come here, for example—provided I supplied the proper incentives. I also know that the probabilities of your leaving are zero to zilch. How’s that?”
“Sounds like a bunch of egomaniacal crap.” Scott unlocked the computer. “Ha!”
Techie went silent, and Scott could hear him typing frenetically. But Scott typed more efficiently, punching out the commands that would prevent Techie from relocking the computer.
“Now,” Scott said, cracking his fingers, “let’s see just what kind of a system you’ve thrown together here.”
“I could blow the whole place right now!” Techie cried.
“But you won’t,” Scott said, reading through the machine language that scrolled down the screen. “And I’ll tell you why. Because in the back of that insecure little mind of yours, you’ve wondered whether your system is truly impregnable. It’s kept you up at night, knowing one teensy, weensy oversight could throw the curtain back on that cockroach nest you call a team. You’ve both feared and anticipated this day of hacker judgment.”
&n
bsp; Don’t egg him on, Janis warned.
Scott nodded, but in the last two minutes, he’d become even more sure of the kind of personality he was dealing with. This was Wayne squared. Baiting him into a hack off was the only chance Scott had of getting them out alive.
“So, keep me out,” Scott said. “If you can.”
More typing burst through the speakers.
Scott braced for a flash and explosion. Instead, the screen split into two windows, as Scott had prayed it would. His counterpart had blundered into his hack. Every move Techie made from then on would be right there on the second screen for Scott to read and counter.
The confidence that pumped through Scott greased his mind and finger joints. His eyes flicked between the command screens. The first several minutes were spent blocking Techie’s attempts to shove him from the system. Then, little by little, Scott started looking for openings to take his own jabs. With a quick one-two, he broke through an outer layer of security.
A noise of exasperation sputtered through the speaker.
“All day long,” Scott said as casually as he could. “All day long.”
He blocked another of Techie’s flurries and then sized up the next layer of security. This one was trickier. But the second screen gave Techie away. Having watched Scott break through the outermost security obstacle, Techie was less sure of himself and was scrambling now to seal a backdoor. With a single line of code, Scott kicked that backdoor in.
“Avon calling,” he said cheerily.
A bang sounded from the speaker, and Scott knew Techie had just broken something. Scott kept his eye on the second screen as the sound of typing resumed in exasperated bursts.
“Little does he know,” Techie said, as though speaking to himself, “he’s walking right into my trap. Hee-eeh.”
Scott burst out laughing. He’d just heard a variation of the “you’re only winning because I’m letting you” excuse that children often used to bolster their wounded egos. The fact was, Scott was kicking this guy’s ego—not to mention his ass—all over the digital playground.
He was almost through a third layer when Janis began to shout.
“No, no, stop! Get back!”
It took Scott a moment to realize she wasn’t talking to him. Dutch’s team? he asked in alarm. He imagined them advancing on the doorways, guns raised, reaching the gridwork of red lines…
No, the old man, Janis replied. He’s out of that chair and crawling toward the hall.
“Stop!” she cried again.
Scott ventured a look around. Janis was kneeling before the opposite doorway, her hands held up while the man dragged himself forward, trailing leaking IV lines. He was moving slowly, but the room wasn’t very large. At his current rate of travel, he would hit that field inside the next minute.
Pulse pounding, Scott spun from Janis’s shouts back to the console. He hesitated as a new realization speared his heart. The second screen, the one with Techie’s commands, was gone.
“What’s wrong?” Techie asked. “Lose something? Hee-eeh, eeh, eeh.”
Scott resumed typing, but he was fighting blind now. He executed the equivalent of a shoulder charge at what remained of the third security layer. A clumsy move, but maybe one that would catch his opponent by surprise. Techie responded with the equivalent of a knee to the groin. Scott grunted and watched helplessly as the third and second layers of security popped back into being.
No, no!
An instant later, he was thrown from the system. He glanced around to where the old man was nearly to the opposite doorway. Close enough that Scott could see the tremors of his eyelids.
“Face it, maggot, there’s only one way out of this, and you know what that is.” The sound of final keystrokes punched though the speaker. “You’ve already failed as a hacker. Will you fail as a hero, too?”
Scott watched the old man reach a trembling arm forward.
20
Janis waved her arms in front of the old man’s face. “No! Stop right there!”
She had been trying to connect with him telepathically, but it was like wading into a pot of oatmeal. The week or however long the man had been bolted to that device had stressed his mind to a delirious state. His thoughts were as incoherent as his muttered words.
Behind her, the jeering voice continued. “There’s only one way out of this,” he was telling Scott.
She hoped she didn’t need to remind Scott that under no circumstances was he to enter the system. In any case, there wasn’t time. The old man was pressing himself up onto his forearms.
“Stop!” Janis tried again.
With a trembling effort, the man reached forward.
“Lower your arm! Do you hear me?”
He was close enough that the red lines were reflecting from his cracked nail beds. Could she stun him with a low-level mind blast without triggering the field? She shook her head. Too risky.
She tried again to establish a telepathic link, probing for even the tiniest island of clarity.
Please, sir, Janis said. Hold still. You’re hurt.
The old man’s gaunt face leaned to one side, and he hesitated.
Good, Janis said, relief seeping into her tensed-up muscles. Now lower your arm.
The old man grunted from a half-opened mouth ringed with white stubble and flaking skin. Janis glanced along the fluid trail back to the chair, anger stewing inside her at what he’d been put through.
The man inched forward.
No, no, Janis said as soothingly as she could. You’re hurt, and I’m here to help you.
He collapsed onto both forearms again, white wisps of hair falling over the bloody screw-holes in his temples. He was panting. He mumbled something that sounded very close to a sob.
But then a weak voice penetrated Janis’s thoughts: Under … house.
What was that? she asked.
She felt the tide of delirium receding from the man’s mind.
Nothing under the house.
What do you mean?
The man got one eyelid open and peered at her from a phlegmy blue iris. He said he had explosives under the house. But I had all the crawlspaces filled in with cement. To keep the raccoons out.
Understanding clicked in Janis’s mind. She spun to where her boyfriend sat at the computer.
Scott, stop! He’s bluffing. There are no explosives. The detection fields won’t trigger anything.
Janis waited, but no answer came.
White electrical data flashing and crackling around him, Scott tried to relax, to make himself as diffuse as possible. That was the key, he thought—not concentrating his energy in any one place. Techie had armed his computer system with sensors. The instant Scott exceeded some preprogrammed threshold it would be the repeater all over again. Only this time, Janis wouldn’t be able to reach him to put him back together. Good night, sweet prince.
He cleared his mind, blocking out Techie’s prods and whatever was going on behind him. Somehow, someway, Janis would keep the old man from penetrating the detection field.
All right, first task is locating and deactivating the source of that field.
Scott chanced a little more energy to scan the computer towers. Within seconds, he located a circuit board camouflaged to look like a soundboard. He felt a hacker’s urge to gloat, but the board had very nearly fooled him. An abnormally high number of circuit breakers was the only thing that had given it away, and Scott knew they’d been placed there with one purpose in mind—to alert the system to his presence. He’d found the source of the field.
Using the least amount of energy he could manage, he roamed the board. Blowing the board was out. That required too much energy, and too much energy would trip the breakers.
He would have to switch the board off.
Easier said than done. He sensed two switches: an obvious one and a hidden one.
He knows I’ll go for the hidden one, Scott thought. Which means it’s a trap. The obvious one is probably kosher. He hesitated. Or is
that Techie’s plan? To get me thinking the obvious one is the safe bet when, in fact, it’s the one I should be worried about?
Scott stopped himself. That line of reasoning was an Escher staircase to nowhere. The fact was, he had a fifty-fifty shot. And knowing the old man might break the detection field into the hallway at any second, he couldn’t waste time on an eenie, meenie, miney, mo.
Scott braced himself. He just had to pick one and…
A force detonated, and he was blown backward. It wasn’t until he collided into something hard that he realized his body had been thrown, not his mind. He pawed the wooden floor and then his helmet.
All there.
He blinked past his outstretched legs to the computer chair, which had toppled. When his gaze returned to his legs, he saw in horror that they were penetrating the doorway’s detection field.
“Janis!” he shouted.
An arm slipped under his torso. In the next moment, he was shooting out the front of the house, his shoes batting through field grass. Janis lowered him to the ground. Scott saw that she was doing the same with the old man, who had been under her other arm. He peered back at the still-standing house.
“It was a bluff,” Janis said. “Techie only had eyes for you, apparently. Wanted to bait you in there to take you apart.”
Scott remembered the detonation he’d felt and rubbed his forehead. “He came damn close.”
Now, a series of small explosions did sound. With a sinking heart, Scott understood that Techie was cleaning his system. He had probably already wiped the data. The final step was to destroy the hardware. Which meant he and Janis had come all this way to arrive at another dead end.
He turned to where she was kneeling beside the old man.
“He’s in shock,” Janis explained. “I’ve shut his mind down, which will help until the clean-up team can get him to a hospital.”
Scott listened as she explained how the man had tipped her off about the nonexistent crawlspace beneath the house. How she had yanked Scott from the computer in the nick of time. Now that Scott could safely spread his consciousness throughout the house, he confirmed the absence of wired explosives. He removed his helmet and banged it against the ground.
XGeneration (Book 6): Greatest Good Page 11