The Man Who Vanishes_a gripping horror thriller spanning 3 timelines_One Man. Everywhere.

by J M Gonzalez Riley

  Hopper had the card now, so that was the end of it.

  She managed to unhook her bathrobe and drape it over her shoulders, dragging herself to the bathroom, whimpering quietly, humiliated.

  How did the bastard get inside the house? The house is fucking burglarproof!

  The bathroom mirror loomed close and she caught sight of a face in which lips quivered and her red eyes were awash with tears.

  Bastard Hopper. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.

  She slid down to the bathroom floor, sobbing uncontrollably, and then, weak and drained, she passed out into oblivion.

  28

  The Near Future

  The short melody woke Adain from his deep dream. He stared at the ceiling, slowly waking up. Warm air circulated through the room, carrying faint sounds of music and the smell of strong coffee and toasted bread.

  Adain sat up in bed, yawning, flicking his long blonde hair back with one hand and tying it back with a rubber band. He pulled the duvet away from him.

  A sleepy moan drew his attention to the girl beside him on the bed. Gina. Or Jenny. One of the two. She was on the e-talk project at SunCorpSoft, working alongside him. And she was good in bed.

  Adain threw more parties than the mad Hatter in Wonderland. He often dwelled on the fact that, like the mad Hatter, his birthday was probably the only time he did not feel like partying. The rest of the time, he liked to surround himself with friends and girls. His friends these days consisted mostly of SunCorpSoft programmers like himself, as did his flings.

  The short melody chimed again, diverting his attention to the console in the corner of the bedroom. It was the SunCorpSoft jingle.

  'Hey, where are you going?' The girl was awake, probably feeling horny again.

  Adain looked down at her, pulling his trousers up.

  'Who are you?' he asked, scowling.

  The girl glared at him for a moment, then went back under the duvet, away from his gaze.

  'And you can get yourself out of my bed,’ he added. ‘And quickly.'

  Adain’s self-imposed code of conduct was never to sleep with the same girl twice. There were simply too many of them to justify restricting his activity to just one.

  Turning toward the console, he wondered who might have sent the message, unable to think of anybody he knew who might be working over the holiday.

  Beyond the door, the music beat louder and the smell of coffee gained strength. SunCorpSoft could wait: today was a holiday and he was the master of his own time.

  He pushed the door open and stepped barefoot and shirtless into the living room. The place was a mess: bodies lay scattered all over the furniture and floor; puddles of alcohol made it look as though the stuff had been leaking in through the ceiling all night long.

  He grinned.

  What a party.

  'Hey, Adain! Want some coffee?'

  Nickel was calling from the kitchen, naked but for a makeshift piny around his bloated waist. Two girls who Adain did not recognise where standing behind him in the kitchen, staring and giggling at his hairy backside.

  Bodies stirred awake, complaining about Nickel's loud voice; others snoozed through it, until those recently woken kicked them awake.

  Adain accepted a mug of strong, sugared coffee, but passed on the breakfast offer, feeling full from whatever he had consumed the night before. Coffee in hand, he strolled back into the bedroom and over to his console, slapping the lump in his bed hard, to awaken it.

  'Out!' he said.

  A dozen new messages flashed on his screen.

  He scrolled past them, running his eyes over each message header in search of the message from work. He could deal with anything else tomorrow.

  He found the message he sought: it was from Hopper. Adain pulled a leather footstool up to the console and sat himself down, wondering where his chair had gone. Outside the room, Nickel was making the girls laugh. Sipping hot coffee from his mug, Adain clicked on the message and read:

  adain, i have an urgent proposition. come and see me. i’m in my office all day.

  J.Hopper, Marketing Director, SunCorpSoft

  Interesting. He had never before received an email directly from Hopper. The man’s style was lazy and careless.Feeling slightly annoyed for some reason he could not quite explain, Adain walked over to the wardrobe and pulled out a thin lycra jumper. It was cold outside, and he hated the cold.

  I wonder what the proposition is.

  The lump in the bed was playing dead. He grabbed the duvet and pulled it off the bed in one sweep. The Gina-Jenny girl curled up, quickly covering herself as if the room was suddenly freezing cold.

  Adain laughed.

  ‘I’ve already seen it,’ he said, picking up his sneakers on his way to the door.

  Most of the living room dwellers had moved into the kitchen by now, drawn by the smell of Nickel’s frying bacon like mice to the bagpiper. The big man seemed to be feeding them the contents of Adain’s refrigerator and dehydrating them with his best coffee. Adain suddenly realised who the two girls laughing at Nickel’s backside were: canteen staff at SunCorpSoft, now sitting on his kitchen worktop, munching on his muffins. He made a mental note to bed them both sometime.

  ‘I’m nipping out,’ he told anybody and everybody.

  Nickel flashed him a smile, tilting the pan toward him.

  Thick rashers of bacon swam deep in oil.

  Adain waved his hand.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ he said. ‘And put some clothes on, you beast.’

  SunCorpSoft's parking lot was almost deserted but for a few cars alongside the main building. Adain drove his replica classic, fire-red Ferrari Testarossa into the grounds, his sound system sending ripples across the stillness. He pulled up into an empty bay, checking whether had enough solar juice to skip topping up.

  Adain had been working for the browser giant for just under a year, receiving a direct offer from his previous job as project manager for a small team of developers in a prestigious software house. Despite his credentials, Adain had been dwarfed by some of the talent at SunCorpSoft, and so he’d had to earn his recognition starting from scratch. He had risen to the challenge and made a name for himself, rising up the ranks fast enough to make the Seek team, where his excellent programming skills had got him noticed by James Hopper himself.

  He strolled confidently across the parking lot toward the main building. As he approached, he saw Hopper's Range Rover in one of the executive bays. He was not surprised to see the bitch Dayna's Porsche further down.

  He checked in at reception, then made his way over to one of the elevators. On his way up to the top floor, he wondered whether Dayna ever went home. He’d had very little contact with her during the Seek project, where she and Kayn Lorensen had been working closely whilst he had been assigned to the graphical interface team, known as GUI. Had he been with the company a little longer, he had no doubt he would have earned enough credits to join the core development team.

  After Seek went live, he’d been assigned to work on the company’s new pet project: e-talk. It was a smaller project than Seek, but the flip side was that in this smaller pond he was a bigger fish.

  The elevator chimed and he stepped out into an empty white corridor. He strolled toward Hopper's door at the end, wandering what the man wanted. Promotion was high on his mind. Why else would Hopper call on him on his day off?

  He rapped on Hopper's polished door, twice, and then let himself in. Hopper sat facing him, grim-faced, wearing a brown leather waistcoat over a hand-made Italian shirt, his dark green blazer draped over the back of his chair. Behind him, his office window framed an impressive backdrop of the business district.

  'Thank you for coming,' Hopper motioned Adain to sit down.

  Hopper's attitude was not that of one about to give good news. Adain sat on the low chair, slowly, wondering suddenly whether he was in for a reprimand of some sort. He did not recall seriously screwing up on any of his work. Unless bedding fellow programmers was now a
company offence.

  'Can I ask what this is about, Mr Hopper?’ he said, looking up at the man. He felt like a schoolboy looking up at an angry headmaster.

  'I'd like you to jump teams, Adain. I know you’ve probably put in a lot of work into e-talk, but you’re moving to a bigger project, which should in itself compensate for the inconvenience. Also, it may mean working over the festivities.'

  Adain watched Hopper silently. Then said: ‘Is there a bigger project than e-talk?’

  Hopper smiled thinly.

  ‘There are bigger things going on behind the scenes, Adain.’

  Adain clenched his fists, out of site. He didn’t like the man’s patronising tone. Hopper stared back at the younger man, as though sensing his thoughts. He went on however, unperturbed.

  'Are you familiar with Ms Dayna Zoff?'

  Adain sat back in the leather chair, trying to appear casual.

  'She was part of the Seek project,' he answered matter-of-factly.

  'She was the Seek project, Adain.'

  There was the tone again.

  Adain bit his tongue. Whatever Hopper might be driving at, he had not come here to beg. He had come because Hopper had asked him to, because Hopper needed something from him. If he was moving up the ladder then it would be on his own merits.

  'I thought she worked with Kayn Lorensen,' he said at last.

  'Wrong,' corrected Hopper. 'She leaned on Kayn for his expertise, but she practically drove the whole show.'

  Patronising bastard. Every chance you get.

  Adain decided not to ask any more questions. It would only give Hopper a chance to correct him yet again. Just let the man speak, without giving him a chance to sharpen his ego on him. He was, however dutifully impressed by what he learned about Dayna. Everybody knew she had guru status at SunCorpSoft, but even he had been unaware that Seek was actually all hers.

  'And for the past twelve months, she has been working on her own project,’ Hopper told him.

  Adain moved forward on his seat, involuntarily.

  ‘On a new browser,' Hopper said, watching for a reaction. ‘The mother of all browsers, in fact.’

  'On her own?’

  Hopper was pleased to detect awe in Adain's response. It pleased him to manipulate this spoiled, egotistical brat so easily, simply by using somebody else's achievements as bait.

  Adain checked himself, quickly falling back into his casual pose. But he could not conceal his curiosity.

  ‘Nobody writes a browser that big on their own,’ he said. ‘It’s ludicrous.’

  ‘If anybody can, Dayna can,’ Hopper said. ‘But she’s not starting from scratch. In fact, she is using the code from Seek as her basic platform. She wanted to develop the new browser herself, from the onset, out of pride probably. Under our agreement, she will lead a team to put the final pieces together. But that is precisely the problem: her secretiveness, her dramatic streak. If something should happen to her, twelve months of brilliant work would be wasted and lost forever.

  ‘She must be documenting her work,’ Adain said.

  Hopper seemed annoyed with his constant interjections. His eyes flashed for an instant.

  Adain checked himself again. He was prepared to put up with this arrogant bastard, now that the reason for summoning him here was becoming clear.

  ‘So,’ he said, moving on quickly. ‘Nobody else has been involved so far. She has used every resource available to SunCorpSoft, including various departments of the Royal University for her own research, and ran up a considerable bill on hardware.’

  ‘What hardware?’

  ‘The loan of a particle assembler from the Royal University, for instance.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘They use those to work at the molecule level,’ Adain said. ‘Nanobots, and all that.’

  Hopper nodded.

  ‘To rearrange particles, to be precise.’

  This was turning out to be one hell of a browser. The mother of all browsers, Hopper had called it.

  ‘Dayna asked for Kayn twelve weeks ago,’ Hopper said. ‘She’s been working round the clock from day one. It’s not unusual for me not to see her for a week or more at a time. Kayn, on the other hand, is a different matter. He has not checked out of the building for two days now. So I suspect her work might soon be concluding. I want somebody else besides Kayn to get involved in the project before a team is assigned to tidy up.’

  Adain nodded, listening intently.

  Hopper seemed to be waiting for his response.

  Adain pretended to consider the proposal, barely able to conceal his excitement. He was already sold on the idea: to work alongside Dayna was a privilege that not many people could lay claim to. If her reputation was true and she was as much a genius as a complete bitch, he stood to learn a few neat tricks, as well as enhancing his own reputation by becoming the first programmer in SunCorpSoft to bed her.

  'Why me?' Adain asked innocently.

  Hopper regarded him coldly over his desk.

  'Cut the bullshit, Adain!' he snapped.

  Adain sat up straight, as if slapped. He realised he had pushed his luck a little too far, but he had not expected Hopper's sharp reply.

  'You know you're one of the best, after Dayna and Kayn, that is,' Hopper said dryly.

  Adain narrowed his eyes at Hopper. He did not like to have any of the sugar taken away from his complements.

  He stood up.

  Hooper studied him from his seat.

  'When do I start?' Adain asked.

  Hopper smiled thinly.

  'Now,’ he told him. ‘Dayna's lab is on the first floor. Number four.'

  In the elevator, Adain thought that he would burst with excitement. He was especially looking forward to meeting Dayna. He knew she disliked him just by the way she looked at him, but she hated everybody. She would be a hard nut to crack, but he felt confident that he would charm her in the end.

  And what an end that would be…

  29

  The Near Future

  Dayna sat at her console. She was not thinking straight today. Hopper was playing a game of silence and she was not sure of what her course of action should be. She had lain awake most of the night, after waking on the bathroom floor. So far she had done nothing but think about the man who had attacked her. He had been dressed in sports clothes and sneakers, for comfort and speed. She was dismayed at the thought that Hopper had actually hired somebody for the hit. Yesterday, when she had threatened him in his office, he had shouted at her: ‘How much longer do I have to put up with this shit before you force me to shut you up?’ Had he now taken the first step to fulfilling that threat? Hopper was under tremendous pressure, and the cracks were beginning to show.

  Her attacker had been strong, and fast, pinning her to the wall like a mouse, applying just the right pressure to keep her aloft and in just enough pain to get what he wanted.

  The card, he had said. No explanations.

  But he had been scared shitless. She was certain of that. But scared of what, though? Her?

  He could not have bee a pro.

  Already Dayna could not be sure of what his voice sounded like. If winning a court case against the security company that had fitted the state-of-the-art thief-proof system in her home hinged on her identifying the intruder’s voice, then she did not stand a chance in hell.

  Had she finally pushed Hopper over the edge with the bluff? Maybe that had been a mistake, but she felt no regret. She needed a little more time to finish her work, at whatever cost. She had never blackmailed Hopper for anything other than time: she was not interested in anything else. Only her work mattered, and now more so than ever.

  Confronting Hopper about last night was something she wanted to avoid. If she pissed him off, now that he believed he had the card with the recording, he might decide to take away all her carte-blanche privileges. That would be disastrous. She was prepared to do absolutely anything to see her research through, but after
last night’s attack she did not dare a double bluff, at least not yet.

  The card was encrypted, of course: it was a backup of some of her work. She knew that he could always use the company’s cybersecurity team to break the simple encryption if he needed to. But she knew Hopper and he was not one to use resources that would have to be logged and potentially raise suspicion. Instead, he would be happy to know he had the card under lock and key.

  Although she wondered about his state of mind, she knew he was not a man that hesitated when it came to making decisions and Dayna suspected if he was going to put a stop to her research he would have done so by now.

  She taped her code on the screen and waited for her details to come up. Her personal firewall log was empty, indicating that nobody had tried to access her workspace in her absence. Had they done so, she would have been notified immediately, both at home and on her personal device.

  The binary was still there: Kayn, atom by atom, but flawed.

  She had made a copy of the binary yesterday. The card was still plugged into the console where she had left it, still useless. She had ran two simulations already, to be sure, on the closed-loop network that served her lab only, separate from SunCorpSoft’s main network. The simulations had shown the binary to be flawed.

  The essence of a human being, she thought. The soul? How to clone the human soul. How to break it down into its binary equivalent. Everything else in the universe can be mathematically modelled. So why not the human soul?

  Dayna felt her confidence ebb. She forced herself to think positively, to focus. Up until less than a week ago, she would have laughed at the concept of a soul. But right now she wasn’t even smiling at the thought.

  Her neck felt raw, aching from the inside out, a throbbing ache that spread to the base of her head, a thorn inside her.

  She thought of the man in her bedroom.

  Focus.

  There was a knock at the door.

  She froze. It had to be Hopper.

  She felt nauseous. She didn’t want this confrontation. Not now.