by Kathy Reichs
We’d contracted the supervirus, here, in this building. Our break-in six months earlier had started it all. Had triggered our evolution into something unique. Had made us Virals.
Goose bumps. So much had changed since that day.
Ben yanked on the doors leading to Lab Six. They didn’t budge.
“Locked?” I hadn’t planned for that.
“I didn’t bring my picks.” Shelton looked almost relieved.
“Another building?” Hi suggested. “Maybe try to wrangle Lab Two again?”
“Maybe.” We needed a quiet terminal, one that wouldn’t be observed. I was racking my brain for a likely spot when Shelton surprised me.
He pointed to the staircase. “What about up there?”
“Karsten’s lab?” That hadn’t occurred to me. “You think it’s still functional?”
“The secret, diabolical torture chamber that nearly caused a major scandal?” Hi looked dubious. “Pretty unlikely Kit would keep it running.”
Shelton shrugged. “It had a computer. I remember that much.”
“Worth a look.” Ben was already moving.
We followed him up the steps and down a dark hallway, retracing the path we took on that fateful May afternoon. Every stride triggered memories. Being soaked by the thunderstorm. Chasing the echo of a dog bark.
Déjà vu.
We reached the end of the hall.
My spirits plummeted.
The lab had been gutted.
The hulking security door was propped open and deactivated. The racks of medical supplies and scientific equipment were gone. All that remained were two file cabinets, a half-dozen folding chairs, and a battered wooden desk.
With a desktop computer centered on its surface.
“Hell-o, beautiful!” Shelton quickly assessed the wiring. “Extension cord. Check. Ethernet cable. Check. Let’s see if this baby still puts out.”
Shelton booted the PC while Hiram and I arranged chairs. After the hard drive sputtered to life, the monitor displayed LIRI’s intranet homepage.
“We’re live.” Shelton input a series of commands I didn’t follow. A new portal appeared. “I’ll log in under system maintenance and override the tracking protocols, but I can’t erase our session altogether.”
“That’s fine.” I scooted closer. “We only need the one application. Should I email the photo?”
“Give me a sec. Gotta open Gmail to receive.”
“Explain what we’re doing again.” Ben was standing behind me. “Some program scans the picture?”
“It’s called Spotter—Kit went on and on about it once.” I tried to remember his exact words. “The software uses facial recognition technology to match uploaded images to pictures on the Internet. The idea is simple, but Spotter’s techniques are cutting edge. Expensive too. Kit said most clients are security organizations, law enforcement, or part of the gaming industry.”
“So why would LIRI buy it?” Hi asked.
“Kit learned that the technology works just as effectively with primates. He wants to track the Loggerhead monkeys without tags or tattoos, and hopes facial recognition is the answer. It’s brilliant, actually. He’s going to hire professional wildlife photographers to build the database.”
“But today,” Shelton said, “we’ll use Spotter as its developers intended.”
Hi gave a thumbs-up. “To stalk people online!”
Ignoring him, Shelton tapped the screen. “Send the pic to this address, Tor.”
Pulling up the image killed any good vibes I’d been feeling. Reality crashed back. I was forwarding the image of a corpse.
My email blipped on-screen. Shelton dragged it to the desktop, then searched for Spotter on LIRI’s network. An imposing black-and-white start page welcomed us to the program.
“Seems simple.” Shelton’s lips moved as he read. “We upload the pic, select full Internet search, and click run. Then we wait.”
“This has to be a scam,” Ben said. “How can a program search the entire web?”
“It’s legit, noob.” Shelton dragged my image to the search window. “The software measures facial features and dimensions, converts them to data form, then cross-checks thousands of databases in a blink. It’s bawse.”
“Which features?” Hi pointed to his own face. “A manly schnozz?”
“Not only that.” I’d done some research myself. “Every face has landmarks—various peaks and valleys that compose our appearance. Spotter identifies seventy of them as focal points. Things like the distance between your eyes, the length of your jawline, the structure of your cheekbone, or the shape of your eye sockets. Those points are translated into a numeric code called a faceprint. Once calculated, the program searches the net for a match.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Ben scoffed. “These programs never work.”
“Watch and learn, punk.” Shelton clicked the mouse.
An hourglass appeared, rotated, was replaced by an estimated time to completion.
Shelton ripped off his glasses. “Seventy-four hours!?”
Ben smirked. “Told you. What do you wanna bet it comes back with nothing?”
“Can we narrow the parameters?” Hi asked. “Search smaller, somehow?”
Tempting, but I didn’t want to miss anything. “Will this keep running if we exit the program?”
Shelton nodded. “We can check back later, but we have to use a LIRI terminal.”
“Then we should let it work. We need to be as thorough as possible.”
“Seventy-four freaking hours,” Shelton muttered as he logged out. “I could buy a handgun in less time.”
“I’ll shut this down.” Ben nudged Shelton from the seat before the terminal and took his place.
“You know how this system works?” Shelton asked skeptically. “It takes a while to exit all these programs.”
Ben nodded. “You guys check the lobby. We don’t want any surprises.”
“Yes, sir!” Hi gave a mock salute, but headed for the door. Shelton and I followed on his heels.
The three of us snuck downstairs to the ground floor. The coast remained clear.
Minutes later Ben appeared and we slipped from the building, heading for the front gate. We were halfway across the courtyard when I spotted trouble.
“Crap. It’s Hudson.”
The security chief made straight for us from Building One. Unable to avoid him, we halted by a pair of wooden benches.
“Act natural.”
“Right,” Hi whispered. “That always works.”
“State your business.” Sunlight glinted off Hudson’s silver shades.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Hudson.” I didn’t bother with fake smiles. “We came to look for conchs on Turtle Beach, but Ben just remembered we have choir practice. We’re leaving now.”
“You failed to sign in at the security desk.”
“I know. We forgot. We’re very sorry.”
“You must sign in each and every time you visit Loggerhead Island.”
“Understood. It was an oversight.”
“There are no exceptions to this rule. Not even for family.”
“Won’t happen again.” I edged around his looming figure. “We’re out of here, so don’t worry about us. Have a good one.”
Hudson pivoted slowly as we moved past him toward the gate.
“Conch shells? Do you think I’m stupid, Miss Brennan?”
The question startled me. “Of course not, sir.”
Hudson peered in the direction of Lab Six. “Conch shells, huh?”
“Right.” My sweat glands kicked into gear. “But we didn’t get a chance. We have to go home.”
“Well then, Miss Brennan.” The reflective lenses hid Hudson’s eyes, making him impossible to read. “By all means, be on your way.”
Uneasy, I turned and herded the boys toward the front entrance. Hudson stood statue still, watching our departure.
“That guy has it in for us,” Hi swore as we hust
led down the trail. “He’s like that second Terminator, the liquid metal one. I bet his arms turn into knives.”
“‘Choir practice’?” Ben rolled his eyes. “Perhaps your worst cover story ever.”
“Not my best,” I admitted. “Feel free to step up next time.”
Casting nervous backward glances, we hurried for the dock.
CHAPTER 34
“IT HAS TO mean something!”
Hi slapped a knee in frustration. Shelton glanced up from his iPhone, but when Hi didn’t elaborate he resumed surfing.
Ben had Sewee aimed toward home. The open ocean between Morris and Loggerhead can be unnerving. At the midpoint, both islands disappear from view, and for a short span one seems adrift in the endless Atlantic. It’s my least favorite part of the voyage.
“Care to elaborate?” I was sitting between Hi and Shelton in the stern. “Or was that a yoga move I don’t know?”
“The hard deadline still bugs me. Friday at nine p.m. Why so specific?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Shelton leaned closer so Hi and I could hear over the wind. “Everything the Gamemaster has set up seems meticulously planned. Agreed?”
“Absolutely,” Hi said. “Some of his toys are expensive, too.”
“I think your instincts are dead-on, Hi.” Shelton shifted to face us. “Here’s my theory. The Gamemaster began setting this game up a long time ago. Did serious planning. I’m talking weeks, maybe months.”
“Or even years,” I said. “How’d he run those wires beneath the eighteenth green?”
Shelton nodded rapidly. “I’ve been meaning to check when Kiawah’s Ocean Course was last resurfaced. But you get my point.”
“Yes. But not where you’re going.”
“We found that first cache—the Loggerhead one—right after it was registered online.” Shelton pointed to Hi. “You said it’d been on the geocache site less than a week.”
“Okay.” Hi wasn’t following either.
“Then we were forced into a series of tasks with varying time limits—Castle Pinckney was untimed, we had forty-eight hours to locate Kiawah, and then seventy-two to find Mepkin.”
“And now we have a specific deadline—Friday at nine.” I tried to calculate the total hours, but gave up. “More than five whole days. It makes no sense.”
“Unless,” Shelton said, “the endgame was always going to be Friday at nine.”
Deep in my brainpan, a faint bell began jingling. “Keep going.”
“Maybe, for some reason, the game has to end then.” Shelton made a chopping motion. “Right then. No matter how much time the earlier legs might’ve taken us.”
“Because the early legs were variable.” I felt a rush of insight. “We could’ve taken much longer to find Pinckney, since it didn’t have a time limit. And though we came down to the wire that night on the golf course, we still had hours remaining at the abbey when we found the … last clue.”
Corpse. Why couldn’t I say it?
“Exactly.” Shelton slid from the bench to crouch before Hi and me. “So the upshot is this—the Gamemaster couldn’t know how long it would take us to reach this particular point. He had to allow enough flexibility in his sick schedule for his pawns to complete all the tasks.”
“Assuming we didn’t get killed along the way,” Hi grumbled.
“So he couldn’t use a timer.” It all made sense. “Not if the final task requires a specific hour and date. Because he couldn’t know when we’d actually get to the crypt.”
“That’s why the last note is different. The Gamemaster just needed us to have reached the crypt before Friday at nine, when he obviously has something planned. If that left seven days, five days, or two days, so what? We’d still be on pace for his timetable.”
Hi grabbed Shelton by the cheeks. “You, sir, are a genius.” He leaned forward to kiss each one.
“I try.” Shelton flailed as Hi planted his first sloppy smacker. “Man, get off me!”
I ignored the doofuses.
This changed everything. If the Gamemaster’s finale had to take place Friday at nine, we might be able to determine what it involved.
The jingling in my head morphed to gonging. What?
“Combine what we’ve learned,” I said, wheels spinning. “Add this deadline to the mix.”
Shelton moved back to the bench. “It’s definitely going to be a problem.”
“Problem? Why?”
Hi looked at me strangely. “We’re a little busy Friday night.”
“Busy? Doing what?”
The boys exchanged a look. Hi snorted.
“I don’t know about you,” Shelton said, “but I’m escorting my friend Victoria to her debutante ball.”
“Oh. Right.” How could I forget?
Willful blindness.
“We’ll all be stuck at The Citadel,” Shelton went on. “No boat, no ride. No way to sneak away with your dad there. Plus, don’t you have to walk the runway?”
“Sometime after eight,” I said glumly. “I’m not sure where I’ll be in the order.”
“Aim for back of the line,” Hi said. “Those with swag should strut the castle last.”
Thunderbolt.
Facts coalesced in my mind.
Friday. Nine. Smack in the middle of my debutante ball.
Combine what you know.
The Citadel.
Combine what you know.
Castle Pinckney. The answer to the Gamemaster’s first clue.
Combine what you know.
“The Citadel is a castle,” I breathed. “That’s what ‘citadel’ means.”
“Say what now?” Shelton didn’t get it.
“So?” Neither did Hi.
The Gamemaster knew things about us: where we lived, who our families were, even the activities we liked. Could he know our schedule, too?
A chill spread through me.
He always seems to be watching.
The debutante ball was the perfect target for a madman.
“I don’t think we’ll have to sneak away on Friday.” Pulse racing, I gazed out across the open sea.
“I think we’ll already be in the right place.”
CHAPTER 35
THE NEXT MORNING, I couldn’t focus.
Up by the whiteboard, Mr. Terenzoni was explaining something about derivative functions and linear operations, but I didn’t catch a word. My brain remained on tilt from the day before.
Castle Pinckney. The Citadel. Two famous Charleston fortresses.
Were they really linked?
Was my freaking debutante ball the Gamemaster’s ultimate target?
My eyes wandered the room. How many classmates would be there on Friday? The guest list topped three hundred. If my intuition was correct, every single one of them was at risk.
What to do? The situation seemed unreal. But I didn’t doubt the Gamemaster’s willingness to kill innocent people. One dead body was proof enough.
The boys weren’t being much help. Shelton was openly skeptical of my theory, while Hi admitted to being uncertain. Only Ben thought my idea made a twisted kind of sense.
The “castle” connection was tenuous—even I admitted that. But I felt so sure. Trusted my gut. And that meant hundreds of lives could be at stake.
We need hard evidence. Something tangible.
But what? How could we find a lead with no clues to follow?
The bell startled me back to reality. Gathering my things, I followed Hi and Shelton out into the hallway.
The busy mass of Bolton blazers and plaid skirts brought home the danger.
We had to do something. We couldn’t let these people walk blindly into a trap.
After a quick locker stop, I hurried for second period. Conversational Spanish. The boys hadn’t waited. A stickler for punctuality, Señor Messi had a firm lockout policy.
Rounding a corner, I barreled straight into the Tripod.
Frick.
Madison stopped short, eyes dar
ting for an escape route. Ashley didn’t miss a beat.
“Boat girl!” Eyes gleaming, she flipped her glossy black hair. “Heard you crashed Jason’s party. Did he really beat up all your friends?”
“They were stealing.” Courtney was jammed into a cheerleading uniform three sizes too small. “Then the fat one almost drowned, or something.”
Madison wouldn’t meet my eye.
Six months earlier I’d have cowered before these bitches, but those days were over. “Jason invited us,” I said coldly. “So you can stop spreading rumors.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” Ashley flashed her shark smile. “But that’s what everyone is saying. You know how cruel gossip can be.”
I tried to hide my uncertainty. Were people really saying that?
Ben’s drunken rant replayed in my head. We’re just tonight’s entertainment.
Taking heart from Ashley’s attack, Madison grinned slyly. “That’s how I remember it.”
Their words bothered me. Which, in turn, surprised me.
After the misery of freshman year, I’d thought myself immune from caring what the A-list thought. This garbage was nothing new. What was one more hatchet job among all the rest?
You thought it was over. That people liked you now.
There it was.
Somehow, I’d let down my guard. Had started thinking things could be different. Hell, I’d been enjoying myself at Jason’s party, before the roof caved in.
Reality was facing me in that hallway. The Tripod had no intention of playing nice. So be it.
“Funny.” I stepped very close to Madison. “What I remember is you hiding in the cabana until I left.”
Madison’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
I raised a brow in challenge. She looked away.
“That’s what I thought.”
Courtney and Ashley exchanged exasperated looks.
“Say something, Maddy!” Courtney hissed. “She’s making fun of you.”
“Don’t let Brennan talk to you like that!” Ashley glared at her friend. “She’s nobody. A charity-case toddler from the sticks.” Then she whispered in Madison’s ear. “What’s with you? People are starting to notice.”
Madison’s gaze skittered left, then right. “I, uh … have things to do.” She bolted around the corner and was gone.