"You got a guy named Kantowicz?" I asked Rebeckah out loud. "A Lieutenant John Kantowicz?"
"Not that I know of, but that doesn't mean anything necessarily. We organize in cells. I only know the ringleaders."
I glanced at the other names one more time. Like a tap on the shoulder, I felt my icon being chosen for chat-mode. Deidre? Is that you?
I turned to see the image of a police shield floating in front of me – no fancy, handsome avatar, just a shield. It could only be one man: Captain Morgan. I'm sorry? I'm afraid you've mistaken me for someone else.
It was a lame lie, but I prayed the armor's defense would keep the captain guessing. I hung up quickly, then selected Kantowicz's name from the menu. I had to act quickly. If I knew anything about my former captain, it was that he was very by-the-book.
Are you Danny's ... ? I started to ask Kantowicz, but, before I could get more out, I was interrupted by a loud click. A larger version of the New York police badge floated in front of the cafe's logo. The captain worked fast, I thought ruefully, and you've got to admire that.
A synthesized female voice calmly intoned, This is the police. We have secured a warranty and are initiating an address lock-down. Please stay on-line until your identifications have been processed. Any attempt to disconnect at this time will be considered a hostile action. We are authorized to use deadly force. Repeat. We are authorized by the warrant to use deadly force. Do not disconnect or your LINK connection could be irreparably damaged. Your cooperation is appreciated."
"Shit," I shouted over the roar of the engine. "I was IDed. The cops just crashed the party. Sharron, are you off?"
"Powered down and out."
"Dee," Rebeckah's voice was urgent with concern, "you've got to get out of there. Drop the contact. We'll find another way to get ahold of Daniel."
"No. They've already got a lock-down – I'm busted either way. I might as well try a little evasive maneuver. Hang on."
Rebeckah yelled something, but I switched my concentration back to the LINK. I used the fact that Kantowicz and I were still connected by virtue of the chat volley and mentally pushed his avatar down on the floor of the club. I extended my senses outward.
What are you doing? Kantowicz shouted in protest. I could feel him resisting dissolution.
We're going under the door, like a mouse. Trust me.
Trust you? Who are you? Your ID keeps shifting.
A friend of Daniel's. I continued to pull him down, underneath the LINK the way Mouse had coached me earlier. We dropped through the floor easily. When we came to the police lock-down barrier, I felt a slight electric shock as we squeezed under it. Kantowicz and I got as far as Mouse's door before I realized I didn't have a key or a password.
Glancing back up at Kick's, I knew we couldn't go back. If the cops arrested my LINK address, I'd be a comatose homing beacon until they found my body. Rebeckah would keep me moving for a while, but she was a practical woman; she'd have to abandon my body eventually. I'd wake up in a holding cell, where I'd rot until they could prosecute me for what I did to Dorshak and the FBI agents during my grand escape from the precinct. Arrest now would mean the end of everything. No chance to see Daniel again. No chance to fix things with Michael, if that's even what I wanted. The rest of my life would be nothing but regrets.
There was no other option; I had to try to hack mouse.net.
* * *
//This electronic story, can be viewed either in full virtual reality LINK-interface, or is available in faux leather-bound hard copy for only 100 Christendom credits.
How the LINK-Angels Spoke to Me: A Collection of Personal Stories
A Boston Activist
Tony Delapalana, of Boston, who refers to his former life as that of "your average delivery guy," used to spend much of his time in the service tunnels delivering goods and removing garbage from the city. Since receiving a personal message from the archangel Pha-nuel, he now devotes his time to caring for the dead.
"It was like this," he explains. "A lot of people are afraid of death, but I'm a good Catholic boy, see? So, when Phanuel started haunting my dreams – being all spooky and that – I figured it was like Scrooge, you know, in that Christmas story: the ghost was trying to tell me something. For all my catechism, I never even heard of this Phanuel character before, but a miracle is a miracle, right? Anyway, I keep having these dreams where Phanuel is crucified. Only, instead of being nailed to a cross, he's, like, hanging from this big redwood. There aren't that many of the big trees left, so I figure this must be really important.
"So, I'm really wracking my brains: why is the angel of death the first guy to show up? Why am I dreaming about trees? So I start LINKing to all the sites about what the Church is saying, and my priest starts this whole study group and, anyway, it all sort of gels for me. It's about the apocalypse. It's coming soon. And, then I remember how on the Last Day, we're all supposed to rise up bodily, like Jesus. This realization freaks me out, right? It occurs to me that people aren't getting buried anymore because there ain't no more room in the inn, as it were. Only Orthodox Jews get to be buried, because they all seem to got the land somewhere ... maybe in Israel, I don't know. Then, I realize that this is what Phanuel wants me to do: take on those crazy Earth Firsters and reclaim the forests so people can have good Christian burials. So, I get on the shuttle to Oregon, and I start kicking tree-hugger butt."
Mr. Delapalana is personally responsible for starting the "Last Day" movement, which has wrestled 5% of the national forest lands out from under the secular ecoterrorist's control. His organization sees to it that anyone who wants a traditional burial can now have a plot set aside for them. Many consider the rough-and-tumble Mr. Delapalana a wild-man figure, like John the Baptist. By resanctifying burial, as John did for baptism, Mr. Delapalana has proven to be a prophet for our times.
Chapter 15
We’re going in, I told a shell-shocked Lieutenant Kantowicz.
Going in where? he protested. Where are we?
Uh ... I realized I just took a total stranger to Mouse's front door, and cop no less. So, I lied, My secret hideaway.
With my avatar extended, Mouse's doorway blended into the surrounding chaos. The door shifted around packets of information and strings of code, disappearing and reappearing like a cave beneath a waterfall. Blindly fishing through the wavering stream, my fingers swept over the smooth surface of the door. I needed a portal of some kind to access mouse.net, a keyhole or command line. I wished I'd been paying more attention to the page when he brought me here the first time.
Where are we? Why do I feel so weird? Kantowicz asked.
It's the undercarriage of the LINK, I explained, not thinking. This is mouse.net. Mouse's house.
So, Kantowicz said appraisingly, you're the Mouse?
I was so absorbed in finding the lock, Kantowicz's question threw me off guard. Oh, damn. What? No, he's just a friend.
Interesting friends you keep.
The same could be said for you, I said, as my hands continued to grope for the keyhole. I dared a glance up at the LINK, but the whole datastream flowed into one glittering mass; it was impossible to distinguish Kick's from any other specific address. I had no idea if the police could pursue us here.
Even though I knew that only a few minutes had passed in real time, I could feel myself starting to panic. This was taking far too long. We would have to return and give ourselves up for arrest if I didn't find that command line soon.
Beside me, Kantowicz strained against our enforced connection. Why not just off-line here? His electronic voice crackled with distortion. We're out, aren't we?
Not really, no. We're in between. I extended us "under" the door, but we're not inside yet.
Can't we just log off?
Kanowitcz's questions were driving me buggy. I didn't really have time to explain all the nuances of how mouse.net worked, especially since I'd only recently understood it myself. I was tempted to let him go, let him fry his receptors, but I
needed him to survive – if only so that he could get word to Daniel. Sure, you can log off if you want, I said; though I made no move to let him go. But I don't want to be there when they find your body. Your internal LINK processors are already overextended. Tell me, Kantowicz, what are you seeing right now? Is it clear? Even our avatars have mostly dissolved. What do you think a hardboot is going to do to your brain right now?
He was quiet as I continued my search. Lines of information slithered between my fingers, making it difficult to latch on to anything solid. Mouse was no fool. It was not going to be an easy task to break into his hub. My fingers connected with something, only to drip through my grasp. Damn it, I said, almost had it.
Kantowicz twitched nervously. I tried to shut him out and concentrate on finding that slippery line. I wished that I could call up a real-time clock, but since I'd have to be a registered user to log a request to the atomic clock, I left that option behind when we sank beneath the floor of the LINK cafe. I reached once more through the waving waterfall in front of Mouse's door. I connected. Before I could lose it again, I wrapped my fingers tightly around the command line.
Got it! The distortion that flowed around us disappeared. My vision became black and white. Looking above, I could no longer see the glitter of the LINK. Kantowicz's avatar vanished completely, although a line of text informed me that we still had a solid handshake. We were in a kind of nebulous space that was neither LINK nor mouse.net.
Now entrance was a matter of a password or a key of some kind. On a hunch, I threw the standard battery of words in the direction of the keyhole. It would be very Mouse to protect the most precious hub in the world with something so simple as the phrase, "God," but, after trying all the typical passwords I knew, I came to the sad realization perhaps Mouse preferred safety to irony.
This is crazy. White words appeared against the blackness surrounding me. A whisper, like wind through trees, hissed in my ear. Cracking Mouse's house is the quickest way to a blank slate.
I wasn't sure if the words came from Kantowicz or were a part of a security program Mouse installed; either way, I ignored them. Even though I doubted they would do any good, I tried a few more words and phrases associated with Mouse: Koran, alms, Cairo.
The door stayed closed.
We should give ourselves up. God only knows what's happening up there, the haunting, electronic whisper tickled my senses again.
I stared angrily at the glowing words and entered a command to check on the status of my connection to Kantowicz. I still held him firmly. My action jogged an idea loose in my mind. As I grimaced at the glowing text warning that hung in front of my face, I suddenly knew why this place felt familiar. It was like my computer screen.
Thanks to the excommunication, I'd been using the same kind of computer terminal that, according to Mouse's page, made up the ground floor of mouse.net.
My stubborn refusal to be completely isolated from the LINK had led me to ferret out and use an antiquated read-only process called "ftp." I'd only used ftp to connect to the main LINK nodes before, but, if memory served, the process was supposed to open directories of any sort to one another. If this didn't work, I'd have to surrender myself to the police or fry my brain with a violent off-line. Neither option was very pleasant. I steeled myself for failure, and entered the anonymous user password.
The blackness remained unchanged.
Damn it all to hell. I sighed. Just as I was about to send the release command to Kantowicz, a gray light appeared on the horizon. Like a sunrise, it seeped slowly over the darkness, until it warmed the entire space. Above, pinpricks of light widened until I could, once again, see the LINK. Next to me, Kantowicz's avatar shimmered like a ghost, then, solidified. The image of thin features and round, vanity glasses was a welcome sight. I'd done it. I could've hugged him, but we still had work to do.
Okay, we're in. Here's the ground rules, I said. It's bad enough that I've exposed my friend's hub to an outsider, so we're only staying here long enough to slide out from this address, got it?
Kantowicz frowned, obviously curious about the hub, but he didn't protest. I continued to hold his hand as we stepped through to the next directory. The cobwebs brushed my face as we moved easily over the boundary. I saw Kantowicz's eyes widen, as mouse.net's true nature dawned on him.
This is like the old web, he said, the glee of a brilliant hack illuminating his face.
I smiled in acknowledgment and wondered if all LINK-cops had such an appreciation of the criminal mind.
Our avatars reached a spot clear of directory threads. Though a roiling mist hung in the gray space, I could see the LINK without obstruction. We would have a safe reentry from here. Schooling my avatar's expression, I warned, Just remember I saved you from arrest. If you use this against my friend, I'll find a way to tell your captain that you're associated with the Malachim.
Disappointment showed on his face, but he nodded gravely. It was the first real indication that I'd nabbed the right guy.
I pointed to the twinkling river above. Once we get back there, tell Danny to meet me at Yankee Stadium.
It'll take us some time. We're still in Manhattan, and moving slowly.
I can wait. I wasn't sure why, but I felt the need to remain a bit cagey. I didn't want to tell Kantowicz that the Malachim's firepower was backing me up. Just be safe.
Danny gave me a message for you. Kantowicz grimaced and coughed, as though he found the role of errand boy distasteful. He said: "Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio."
My heart skipped a beat at the familiar, yet alien name: Michael Archangele. Unbidden, the memory of Michael's naked body flashed before my eyes.
Are you all right? Kantowicz peered at me over the rim of his glasses. The image of your avatar shimmered. I thought for a second you were going to yank me out with you.
Oh. I looked down at our hands, still joined together, symbolic of our systems' connection. I released him. You should probably go.
I'm sorry. I didn't know it would bother you so much. What's it mean?
I shook my head. I'm not sure exactly. Don't worry about me. I don't know why I reacted that way, I lied. It was thoughtful of Danny to pray for me, really. I didn't know he knew Latin. Tell him thanks.
Sure. Kantowicz looked doubtful. Daniel wants to meet at Yankee Stadium.
I smiled at that. How like Daniel.
Kantowicz gave me the time and other particulars. Then, with a nod good-bye, he jumped back toward the information stream. I watched until his avatar melted into the entertainment traffic of the LINK. Part of me knew I should be heading back, but I stood there thinking about Michael. Of course Daniel had given me a prayer about the Archangel Michael – after all, he was the patron saint of cops. But the mention of his name made me wonder where he was and what he thought of my sudden disappearance from Eion's church. Michael might even be looking for me. I should find a way to call him or drop him a message to tell him that I was all right, physically, at least.
Psychologically was another matter entirely. Rebeckah's steady faith and calm pragmatism kept me from dwelling on the rift in my sense of reality that Michael's presence had caused. Rebeckah's wisdom had reassured me that, on some day-to-day level, defining God didn't matter; I still had to face the unsteadying concept that Michael's presence meant there really was a God.
I shook off my growing terror. I had too much to do to waste time worrying about religion. Rebeckah and her team were waiting for me.
I jumped, but was rebuffed by something solid. My avatar landed, sprawling from the impact. I picked myself up and tried to examine what had happened. Reaching out with a tentative hand, I touched an invisible barrier. I frowned. In read-only mode I shouldn't be able to affect anything in the directory, nor should anything be able to touch me. I pushed against the barrier. It stood solid, like a pane of impenetrable glass. It must be a kind of directory guardian, I figured, though I was still at a loss as to why it could affect me.
I sen
t a message into the hub. Mouse, it's me. Deidre. Call off your guardian.
Mouse is unavailable at this time.
Page? Are you out there? Call off your guardian.
Mouse is unavailable at this time.
Great, I muttered. As I moved to try to feel my way around the mass, it began to shift under my fingers. Hard, but liquid, the guardian moved like muscle beneath my palms. I tried to keep ahold of it, but tiny electric shocks quickly discouraged me. Pulling my hands back, I watched an inky darkness coalesce in the fog-draped, gray expanse of mouse.net. Swirling, the blackness grew until it filled the space above me, obscuring my access to the LINK.
The guardian bobbed overhead strangely, as though mimicking the movements of a blackbird caught in an updraft. Dread filled me. I'd seen a shadow of this creature before.
Phanuel.
The LINK-angel's glossy black feathers materialized in full detail. Black, like raven's wings, they swallowed the light rather than reflecting it. In the center of the dark plumage floated the hooded figure of a man. The tattered cloak hugged his bony frame. I could see the sharp points of his hipbones standing out against a shrunken stomach.
Something moved beneath the robe at his abdomen, and I gritted my teeth at the thought of maggots devouring his exposed entrails. He lifted his head, and I stepped back, unwilling to look into the face of the Angel of Death. Despite my best efforts, I caught sight of thin lips pulled back in a skeletal grin. A spider crawled out of his nose, and I watched in horror as the arachnid scuttled across his cheekbone to disappear into the folds of the hood. After that I kept my eyes focused downward.
A pale, bone-thin hand pointed at my avatar. You do not belong here.
Archangel Protocol Page 20