“No. Not yet,” Dent admitted, not even looking up from the photos comparing Mike and Jamie’s wounds.
“You should go home. Get some rest,” he remarked, a faint sound of concern in his voice. “Fresh eyes would do that case better then tired ones.”
“Tim, there have been two teen attacks in the last two nights. Tonight could mean another one for this killer. This kid may not be as lucky as the last two.”
“Yeah, and it’s an hour before sunset,” Tim sighed, motioning toward the open window with his head.
Dent looked down at his watch in genuine astonishment. He had completely lost track of time. “Man oh man oh... wait.”
Tim’s eyes went up. “What?”
“I’d probably need another victim to prove this theory, but both Harris and Dawkins were adopted.”
“Come on, Carl,” Tim said, sighing as he shook his head at his friend. “So are thousands of kids all over America. You’re grasping at shadows. What about the Kennessy girl?”
“She could have been just an innocent, in the way of the killer’s attack.”
“I think I liked your gang theory a little better. Besides...” his voice trailed off for a minute as he looked out the window at the sun. “It is now fifty-five minutes to sunset. I don’t think you have time to run birth records on every kid in this town before then.”
Dent cursed under his breath, running his hand over his mouth as he watched the sun slowly set. He glared at the bright orange orb as if it had betrayed him horribly.
“It’s going to happen again, you know,” he said finally, in a defeated, barely audible tone.
“Yeah,” Tim reciprocated, pulling up a chair next to him. “I know.”
“Dammit!” Xander yelled as Mike won his third straight game of air hockey. Xander had won the first game, but once Mike had gotten a handle on playing in the wheelchair, there was no hope. Goal after goal -- Mike had just hammered them in without remorse.
“I guess that means I win... doesn’t it?” Mike gloated, getting as much enjoyment out of the moment as he possibly could.
“Get up out of that chair. You’ve gotta be milking it or something.”
They all laughed. Cathy came over and gave Mike a short kiss, and there was an awkward pause between Xander and Sara.
“Ugh,” Xander let out a little grunt.
“What is it?” Cathy asked, coming to his side.
“Um...” he paused for a second, putting pressure on his right side. “It’s nothing. Really, it happened last night too. It’s just a lot of pain in my right side.”
Mike’s eyes widened momentarily. Could it actually be some kind of... sixth sense humans had to danger? he thought, his mind going a mile a minute. Was it possible that the killer was close by, in the building even.... no. God no, of course it wasn’t. He laughed at himself as he took Cathy in his arms again. Coral Beach was a big enough place that whoever this sicko was he didn’t need to come looking for his targets.
“Come on,” Sara chimed. “We have to call our parents if we’re gonna be home in time for dinner.”
Xander got home at around quarter to six. It was only just beginning to get dark. He ran up the stairs two steps at a time, knowing that his dinner would be waiting for him in his quiet room at the top. He opened the door and the smell of fried chicken made his mouth water. He sat down next to it and turned on the computer, taking a copy of the Beach News Daily that his mother had left on the keyboard and tossing it to one side.
Taking a sip of his coke from the large cup, he started browsing through his files looking for something to do.
He decided to check out that website that Soul had been talking about.
What was it called?
He took a big bite of gravy-covered chicken breast and licked his fingers, then checked his computer’s chat history, pulling up the conversation he’d had with Soul earlier.
“hello Pinkerton.
Oh. Hi soul. How’s life?
Alright. I’ve been looking at something weird online. I discovered some kind of bizarre... thing. I don’t have a password decoder as sophisticated as you do, I thought you might wanna take a look at it.
Sure. What’s the site?
Something called engen.com. Oops. Gtg!
‘got to go’?, why?”
“There,” he said to himself, reading aloud off of the screen. “Engen.com.”
He punched the address into his computer’s web browser. Automatically, odd midi music started to play. A badly done gif animation of what he could only assume was the Engen logo came up onto the screen. It was a blue circle with a spike running through it from side to side, containing the word ‘Engen’. When that was done, the main home page loaded up. It was filled with a bunch of different links going down the side, stuff like music, comic books, novels, the names of a few people he didn’t recognize... all the trademarks of a well-designed and never visited personal web site.
“Welcome to Engen.com,” a muffled voice recording said loudly, forcing Xander to turn down the volume on his control panel. “Your one-stop location for all MP3’s and other music files, comic book updates, and everything else you could have read on the side bar, you illiterate fool.” Then the voice went away and was replaced by a looping midi rendition of Highway to Hell by AC/DC.
Xander wasn’t all too impressed. He was expecting some kind of freaky government place.
“But why would Soul need a decoder for this place?” He frowned, his eyes darting over the information presented. He scrolled down further. The site seemed to go on forever, with links to every torrent and hack he’d ever heard of.
Music by title, music by artist, music by style, music by date, music by era... the list seemed endless. Then he saw a little symbol on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, set apart from the menu. Someone would have to scroll down a long time after the menu had ended to have even noticed it.
“What the hell?” he breathed, straining his eyes to see the minuscule font, which was obviously not meant to be seen. It was three little letters.
GTG
“Soul wasn’t saying ‘got to go’...” he realized suddenly. “He was telling me what to look for.”
He hesitated momentarily, something inside him telling him not to proceed, then clicked on the small acronym. His monitor immediately turned black, and Xander wondered for a second if he had struck the off button. Then he saw it at the top of the screen. The link had opened up a kind of dos prompt within the site, and in very small letters read:PASSWORD PLEASE.
Xander grinned, resizing his browser window so that he could see his desktop, and clicking on a folder labeled family photos. When the folder opened there were no photos inside, just dozens of program icons. Some of them were of keys or padlocks while others had odd smiley faces or letters. One named Devil’s Advocate had a cartoon image of the devil on it, and he right-clicked on it and clicked open. A new program window opened, the devil face in the upper left hand corner. He went back into his browser and copied the link for the password prompt he had gotten, then pasted it into the address bar of Devil’s Advocate and pressed enter.
The hourglass spun for a moment, then three words popped up underneath it and the devil’s face turned to a frown:NO PASSWORD FOUND.
Growling under his breath, he closed out that program and opened up another, repeating the action. This time it was a smiley face that turned into a frown as the same words appeared on the screen.
He opened up a program with a key for an icon that he had created himself. The hourglass animation was replaced by one of a key turning in a lock, then after a moment the key broke.PASSWORD NOT FOUND.
One by one he tried with all his programs to figure out the password, but could not. He gave up, sliding a floppy disk into the drive and copying the site location onto it. Then he took the disk out of the computer and shut his bedroom door. He pulled back his dresser, revealing an old ventilation duct that wasn’t used anymore. It was where he kept all the things he
didn’t want anyone else to find. He put the disk in there and pushed the shelf back into place.
He thought he heard a sound behind him, like the metallic clicking sound an old-fashioned clock made. He turned around fast. Pain again erupted from his right side when he was in mid-turn, sending him to the floor.
The pain was unbearable. He ground his teeth together against it, digging his fingernails deep into his carpet.
What the hell is this crap? he thought as he fought back tears. It’s like my side is on fire!
Something inside him twitched and there was another burst of agony, stopping all coherent thought.
Struggling, his every move stiff and forced, Xander pulled himself into his bed. His muscles aching as if he’d just run a marathon, he rested for a moment and then quickly fell into a profoundly deep and dreamless sleep.
Carl Dent slipped silently past Mike’s hospital bed, snagging some of his charts. He glanced up at the sleeping child, making sure he was in fact fast asleep, then turned and opened the file.
He looked them over quickly, jotting notes on what medication he was on and when he was getting out. His eyes widened a bit. They were letting the kid out next week.
“Gawd dammit,” he cursed, biting his lip when he realized how loud he had said it, throwing another look at Mike to make sure he hadn’t awoken the child. That didn’t grant him much time.
Mike stirred.
Dent looked up momentarily, then quietly put the chart back in its rightful position. He looked at his pad with glee. It was Mike’s social security number, birth date, and all other information. With it, he could find out exactly where Mike had been adopted from.
As he left the room, he saw a small security camera aimed directly at him. He realized quickly that he had no warrant to have invaded this boy’s privacy. He reached up and unplugged the camera with one swift tug. No one could know. Frowning at his own actions he continued on, trying his best not to look back.
As Dent walked past the nurses’ station, a tall nurse with a pronounced upper lip and a nametag that read ‘Riley’ gave him a hard look as he hurried onto the elevator. As he got on, a man dressed all in black bumped into him while getting off.
“Watch it!” Dent stammered, his papers scattering.
The black man just walked by, barely noticing Dent was even there.
Dent hurried his papers together, then got on the elevator, muttering a long string of curses under his breath as he did.
The black man walked past the nurses’ station and over to the room where Mike was staying. A room whose security camera happened to be offline. He took a piece of paper out from under his arm. It was the same one that Dent had been copying notes onto, his jot notes scrawled onto it in his almost illegible shorthand. He compared the number on Mike’s door to the number on the paper and walked in. Smiling and as silent as the dead, he took an I.V. bag from inside his jacket and switched it with Mike’s. He moved with such swiftness, as if every move he made was calculated, no movement made for no reason. The new liquid dripped down into the tube, then pumped itself into Mike’s very veins, as the man slipped back out as quickly as he had come.
Dent walked down the street in a hurry. He wanted to get this information back to the station so that he could process it. Sweat began to bead on his forehead. It was unusually hot for this time of night. His bones began to ache as he walked faster and faster, accidentally dropping the stack of papers again.
“Fuck,” he uttered, bending down to pick them up. A small pain was developing in his right side, but he ignored it. He had to catch the creep that was murdering these kids. As the pain only seemed to get worse the more he tried to ignore it, he mentally swore off Dunkin Donuts for the third time this week.
He heard a sound up ahead of him. He looked up, but saw nobody. The streets were deserted, an eerie quiet surrounding them. The type of quiet that was almost louder than sound itself could ever be.
The sound happened again, louder this time. Metal on metal.
Dent drew his weapon from its holster. Maybe I won’t need to track down the dirtbag, he thought to himself, smirking a little. He put his back to the brick wall and slid on it to the corner, bringing his gun up to eye level. He swallowed hard and listened.
Several long moments passed, with no sound at all.
Then suddenly, a loud crash.
Dent spun around the corner and yelled “Police! Stop right there!”
The alley was dark and for a minute he thought the killer was hiding in the shadows, until he saw a small kitten crawl out of an old, dented garbage can. Dent sighed with relief, putting the gun back in its place. He turned to walk back toward the precinct.
He slammed face first into a large black figure. The person raised his long blade and drove it into Dent’s side, jigging it up even further once it was in.
Dent shoved past the killer and broke into a run down the street toward the station. Each breath caused his body to ache, every step making him want to bend over and throw up. He listened hard, hearing the click of the killer’s boots as they stepped past the rocky path. They echoed loudly, the sound reverberating off all the buildings then back again, making it seem as though it was coming from all directions at once. He felt the blood run openly from his wound as he tried desperately to tap just a little more speed into his legs. Dent sped around a corner at top speed, finally ducking behind a doorway. He pulled out his weapon again, then looked through the door of the house he was standing in front of. It was deserted. There would be no aid there. He once again brought the gun up to eye level, peeking his head around the corner. Nothing. The street and all those connecting to it were completely void of all life. Dent once again breathed a sigh of relief as he lowered the weapon.
Smash. A great black gloved hand broke through the window of the house, grabbing Dent. He felt the broken glass rip at his flesh as he was pulled into the home.
He looked around and saw the corpses of an elderly couple sprawled onto the floor. Dent could tell that they had been dead a long time by the way the flesh was beginning to rot away, their icy cold gazes begging him for aid he could not give. Then Dent realized... If they’ve been dead that long, this guy must’ve planned all this.
Dent’s eyes went wide as the killer stabbed once. Twice. Three times, then threw his now limp body to the floor. The killer put the weapon away, replacing it with a small scalpel. He bent over, stepping into the pool of fresh blood, letting the small, sharp knife cut through Dent’s tender stomach flesh, making a long line all the way down...
CHAPTER FOUR:
SPIDER WEB
Sara Johnson was home alone that night. Her parents were over at Jamie Dawkins’ house, helping his parents through this ‘hard time’.
Why do people do that? she wondered silently. They go over to comfort people they’ve barely spoken to before after a tragedy happens, to ‘make things better’, but they usually end up just making things worse. They remind these families of their loss, when these people should be getting into a routine to distract themselves from it. Some people think it best to face things like this. Sheyeah. Right.
Sitting at her desk with her laptop in front of her, she ran a hand through her blonde hair, messing it into a tangled knot on one side. Taking a bite out of her Kit-Kat bar, she signed out of her e-mail account after deleting all the old messages from Jamie. The chocolate goodness gave her a slight lift that she had been in desperate need of and she couldn’t help but smile as she took another nibble, brushing wafer crumbs off the breast of her shirt.
-BEEP- -BEEP- -BEEP- Sara’s instant messenger called out to her from her computer. She jiggled the mouse a bit to turn off sleep mode, then brought it down to the little yellow man in the corner of her screen.
“Spider?” she asked out loud, reading the name that popped up as the message’s author. “Who the hell is Spider?”
She double clicked on the name to receive the instant message, and began to read it aloud. Her eyes went wide with fright
and she backed away from the computer. She raced over to her door and locked it, then froze in mid-step and listened. From downstairs came the slow creek of footsteps.
“No way. It’s just some moron screwing with me,” she whispered to herself, then looked back at the screen.
I’m outside house.
She looked around the room carefully, her eyes darting every which way, searching for any sign of movement or life.
-BEEP-!
She jumped with fright, quickly putting her hand on her chest. With tears forming in her eyes, she went around to the computer and pressed enter.
Go to the window, came the new message, as cryptic and disturbing as the one before.
As salt water found its way down Sara’s cheek, she made her way over to the window. The blinds were closed. She grabbed the swinging rope that would open them, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Biting her lip, she mustered up the strength to pull down on it, causing the venetian blinds to rise.
Stepping over to the window and looking down at the ground below, she saw nothing. Leaning out, she turned her head to look out to the side of the driveway. Still, there was nothing.
She let out a long sigh, realizing she’d been holding her breath the entire time she was at the window.
“Sara!” the voice came suddenly as a head with scruffy dark brown hair popped out from the side of the window.
“Ah!” Sara let out a short yelp and held her chest as she realized who it was. “Xander! What are you doing here?”
“Good day to you too,” he said cheerily, climbing in through the window as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“You jerk!” she yelled, slapping him playfully on the arm. “What are you doing here?”
“My parents went over to Jamie’s too. I thought we could hang out a bit.” He looked her over once, chuckling. “Have a small heart attack, why don’t you?”
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