by Guy Garcia
But Tom and Xander had managed to beat the odds, both of them still in a state of suspended disbelief, trying to digest the magnitude of what had just happened. What difference did it make that Tom had engineered Xander’s stardom from the shadows? None of it would have happened without their unique combination of ability, guts, and ambition. After all, Xander’s talent and charisma were real, the ARK extravaganza was real, the lavish suite they were staying in was real. Zeph.r was real. The power of its signal had outstripped Tom’s expectations, but he had also witnessed its limitations. He now understood why the Meta Militia had passed it on to him; the software was a ticking time bomb. In its present form, zeph.r was too unpredictable, too blatant, too random. But what if it could be tamed, focused, and controlled?
Xander poured some stiff drinks from the bar and motioned for Tom to follow him out to the terrace, which overlooked the famous fountains of the Bellagio. Tom’s eyes followed the river of light flowing like lava past their hotel and down the Strip to the edge of town. Just a few minutes ago, they’d been running for their lives, and now they were on top of the world. Tom felt a shiver of vertigo, a tremor of understanding that by breaching the boundaries of what was possible, they were now teetering on the threshold of the unthinkable.
Arms resting on the railing, Xander gripped his glass with both hands and leaned in toward Tom. “It was ‘Stardust,’ man,” he said. “That’s when everybody went nuts, dancing like maniacs, tearing off their clothes. It was a goddamn free-for-all out there. It was like, like …”
“Like The Rite of Spring?”
“Yeah, exactly!” Xander blurted. “You know what I think?”
Tom waited for Xander to tell him.
“I think we’ve got a monster hit on our hands.” He held up his glass. “We did this together, Tommy. We’re a team. I want you to come on tour with me as chief of technology and visuals. Full partners in crime. I keep the publishing rights but everything else we split down the middle, fifty-fifty.”
Tom glanced at Xander to make sure he wasn’t kidding. “Gee, Xan, thanks. I mean, when and if that happens …”
“It already did.” Xander grinned like a dealer pulling an ace from his sleeve. “ARK asked me to join the tour as one of the headliners. Ten cities in thirty days. All expenses paid. Fabian just texted me. He’s working on the money part, but it’s middle six figures minimum. Are you with me?”
Tom wasn’t particularly fond of traveling, and he didn’t need the money, but the chance to keep testing zeph.r in public was enticing. He had assumed that its signal could only affect people within a few hundred yards of the speakers, but there also seemed to be a halo effect of some kind passing from person to person across a much larger area. Doing more ARK festivals would give him ample time to fine-tune the software and probe its uncharted dimensions.
From their perch on the twenty-ninth floor, Tom watched the Bellagio’s swaying strands of pressurized water flex and twine like a double helix of DNA preparing for cellular mitosis, the chemical chain that had programmed the destiny of every human cell since the dawn of the species, including the occasional mutation, a random glitch that reshuffled the genetic deck and opened the door to variation and, under the right conditions, biomorphic evolution. In fact, it occurred to Tom that the entire Vegas strip was an annotated history of human civilization, from the Bellagio’s spurting gene pool to the Egyptian pyramid at Luxor, on through Caesar’s imperial Rome, the canals of Venice, and even the Eiffel Tower and its saucy American sister, the Statue of Liberty, with her beguiling gaze and promise of unfettered democracy in the home of the brave and the land of ATMs that spat out crisply minted hundred-dollar bills.
“Hell yeah,” Tom said, gripping Xander’s shoulder. “I’m all in!” Then he opened his wallet and tossed a wad of twenties into the air, the buddies howling as they watched the money corkscrewing like confetti into the fountain’s fanning tendrils.
14
Duggan stared at the document in his hands in utter amazement. Then he shoved the redacted report into the shredder and took a Maalox. He had never had an internal memo censored before, and he’d never heard of it happening to anyone else either. Gupta wouldn’t return his calls or e-mails, which only intensified his anger and disappointment. Was the pressure on NCSD coming from inside or outside or both? He was going to find out even if it cost him his job. He had every intention of walking down the hall to Gupta’s office for a showdown, but when he opened his door, JT was blocking the threshold, looking sympathetic and gently pushing him back inside. “Easy, easy, I know how you feel, but don’t ever do anything while you’re still mad,” he told Duggan. “C’mon, buddy, you know better than that.”
“They censored my report, JT”
“I know, but what makes you so sure it was Gupta?”
“Then who?”
“I’ve been getting some vibrations,” JT told him. “Give me a chance to find out what’s shaking. Meanwhile, keep your head down and don’t do anything rash.”
For the next couple of days, Duggan pretended to stay busy, tracking routine cases and pitching in on investigations when asked, wondering when the ax would fall.
Then the word came that Gupta had agreed to grant him an audience. Duggan braced himself for the worst and walked down the hall, past the cubicles and meeting rooms, to the corner office. Gupta was waiting, his desk scrupulously cleared of clutter.
“Jake, have a seat. I want to apologize.”
“For what, sir?”
“Your memo, the edited version that was sent back to you, was a mistake. I’ll take responsibility for that. You did good work, Jake. There are some patterns and issues you raised that merit our attention, especially the possibility of interagency manipulation. That’s serious stuff. And I promise to look into it.”
“But you want me to back off,” Duggan said.
“I want you to wait.”
“Wait for what, sir?”
Gupta grimaced. “Just give me some time, Jake. These are serious allegations that raise sensitive questions. We’re on tricky terrain here. We’ve got to proceed carefully.”
“And what about me? Am I expected to forget what I know?”
“I expect you to be patient. Take some vacation. We’ll talk again when you get back. I promise.”
“Is that all?” Duggan asked.
“Yes, Jake. That’s all.”
There was no sign of JT, so Duggan decided to call it a day and sweat out his frustration at the gym. The brisk walk cleared his head, and he was looking forward to a rigorous workout when he opened the combination lock and reached for his sneakers. The Post-it was stuck to the inside of his locker. It said that a ticket to see the Washington Capitals at the Verizon Center for that night’s game was waiting for him at will call. Duggan peeled off the sticky square, which was the same lime green as the one that had been left for him on Westlake’s laptop in Kandahar. He was pretty sure the Post-it would be free of fingerprints, as would his ticket. Duggan pulled on jeans and took a cab to the stadium, fully aware that whoever left the ticket probably had zero interest in hockey.
The arena was noisy and crowded, and his seat was good—third row of section 111, right behind the penalty box. Spectators were already lambasting their favorite players, and Duggan did his best to look involved in the brutal ballet. His understanding of hockey was limited to knowing that it was dominated by Canadians and brawny brawlers with incomplete sets of teeth.
The seats to Duggan’s left were occupied by an older man and a boy who appeared to be his grandson. The seat to his right was empty, and it stayed that way until the end of the first period. The score was still zero to zero when the spot was claimed by a man casually dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, carrying a beer and a box of popcorn. Duggan regarded his companion askance. Middle-aged. Nondescript. Could be anybody. Especially since he was wearing a red-and-blue Capitals Warfac
e hockey mask, just like the ones for sale in the fan merchandise store.
“Hey, buddy, did I miss much?” the stranger said to Duggan.
“Hockey mask. I have to remember that one.”
“Team spirit is an undervalued virtue,” the man said, his voice muffled by the mask and the noise of the game. “It’s getting too risky to have a conversation like this online.”
“Works for me, as long as you’re not here to talk about hockey.”
“I know about your memo,” the man said, “and I know why you’re being told to stand down. Interested?”
“Is hockey a contact sport?”
The puck was slapped toward their section before being intercepted at the last second, sending it ricocheting against the Plexiglas barrier, which afforded them an excellent view of the ensuing shove-fest. They waited for the commotion to settle.
“You were right about the DOD trying to cover something up, and you were also right about Westlake being in a covert program involving mind control.”
Duggan nodded. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”
The man paused to sip his beer and clap for a visitors’ goal. “What do you know about microwave experiments by the US government?”
“I know that that there was a horse race between us and the Soviets during the fifties and sixties,” Duggan said. “I know that offensive uses of microwave beams were tested by the United States on its own personnel until the shit hit the fan in the seventies, when the whole shebang went underground. I’m guessing that whatever Westlake was exposed to is just the latest iteration of something that isn’t supposed to exist.”
The visitors charged and nearly scored again with a zinger right up the middle. “C’mon, you pathetic losers!” the man shouted. “Get it together!” He gulped his beer and belched. Without turning his head, he said, “It’s kinda funny, don’t you think?”
“What’s funny?”
“Well, everybody’s all upset about the government wanting a back door to your smartphone, and meanwhile it’s busy building a back door to your brain.”
“Keep your day job,” Duggan said.
“Tough crowd tonight,” the man said, clearing his throat. “The program is called zeph.r, and it was being tested to increase the learning curve and effectiveness of drone operators, or at least that was the idea. At some point along the way, as you have already deduced, the experiment went awry. Something about increasing the bandwidth, but it’s all too technical for me. Anyway, after the massacre, as you know, the DOD did their best to build a cover story. But one of the scientists who worked on the project underwent a change of heart, you could say. His name is Kenneth Ulrich, and he went AWOL with a copy of the zeph.r code. DOD thinks we’re holding him hostage to keep them off balance and take back some of their jurisdictional turf.”
“Are you?”
They were interrupted by the older man getting up to take his grandson to the bathroom. When the kid saw the man’s mask, he said, “Cool! Grandpa, can I get one, please?” The grandfather gave Duggan’s companion a sour look.
Hockey Mask waited for them to leave before continuing. “The answer, unfortunately, is no,” he admitted. “At first, we thought he might have been a mole for the Chinese or the Russians, but now we believe that he’s still in the United States.”
“Doing what?”
“That is exactly what we’d like to know. But there’s reason to believe that he has turned against his previous employer.”
“You think he’s a domestic threat?”
“Westlake and Ulrich were close.”
“How close?”
The man shrugged. “Who am I to judge? But Ulrich’s former colleagues say that he blames the air force for Westlake’s death and for publically lying about the actual causes, depicting a patriot as a nutcase. Ulrich thinks the military behaved less than honorably and should be held accountable.”
“How does he intend to do that?”
For the first time, the man in the hockey mask turned to face Duggan. “We were hoping you could help us find out.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
The kid was back, wearing an identical fan hockey mask and carrying a souvenir stick. “I’ve got a mask and a stick, so I can beat you up,” the boy said. The man playfully put up his dukes, and the kid pretended to bonk him on the head with his stick. Everybody chuckled and retook their seats.
Hockey Mask spoke again. “Let’s just say that there are two different camps on whether your investigation is a constructive development. As your boss knows, some of those people might go to considerable trouble to keep you from digging any deeper.”
“Well, at least I know you’re not DOD,” Duggan said. The man said nothing and sipped his beer. A player caromed into the Plexiglas with a loud thump, followed by a referee’s whistle. “But you still haven’t given me a reason to help you.”
“Do the words Meta Militia ring a bell?”
Duggan shook his head.
“The term popped up in a few of the e-mails Ulrich received before he flew the coop. It could be significant, or maybe not.”
“That’s not much of a lead,” Duggan said. “And how do I know it’s not just another red herring?”
Duggan thought he heard a sigh from behind the hockey mask. “Look, I’m not going to ask you to trust me, but protecting the United States from a domestic cyber-attack is the one thing we all agree on. The fact is, if there’s a rogue DOD scientist with a grudge running off his leash with a dangerous technology in his possession, we all want him stopped. And if he’s in this country and using the Internet to transfer or transmit the zeph.r code, then the responsibility lands squarely on the NCSD’s turf. Am I right?”
“I follow your logic.”
“That’s all anyone could reasonably ask,” the man said. “I’m only here to tell you that there’s more support for what you’re doing than you might think. Thanks for your time. Now I think I’ll go get myself another beer.”
Duggan stayed for the rest of the game knowing that the man in the hockey mask wouldn’t be coming back. In the last five minutes of the period, he watched men in padded uniforms rush the goalie box and pile on top of each other like seals. Then a Capitals player faked left and right before bouncing the puck off an opponent’s stick to set up a teammate who slammed home the winning shot. The maneuver was proof that under certain circumstances, even an enemy can help you achieve your goal. Duggan decided that maybe hockey wasn’t such a dumb sport after all.
Cara Park was at her desk having her usual working lunch of quinoa, roasted soy, and lemongrass tea when her office phone rang. It was Rosalyn Cooper from the CDC, calling to ask if she knew anything about the strange outbreak of mass hysteria and fainting reported at a recent techno rave in Las Vegas.
“I hate to sound old-fashioned, Rosalyn, but I don’t know anything about techno or raves.”
“I’m sure you don’t, Cara, and I’m sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but you’re the only person I know who might be able to help me,” Cooper insisted. “Local hospitals are required to issue reports of injuries that affect more than a few people, and normally this kind of thing would be of more interest to the DEA than the CDC. But this case is different. What got my attention is that the victims’ symptoms are nothing like the usual alcohol or ecstasy overdoses. I mean, some of them match—the euphoria and sexual permissiveness. But it’s not just the symptoms that have me worried.”
Cara put her lunch aside and reached for a pen and scratch pad. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“At this particular event, at least five thousand people experienced similar symptoms at pretty much the same place and time—simultaneous dementia, plus blackouts and memory loss, and the effects lasted, in some cases, for several days. Strange, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Cara agreed. “And it sounds li
ke you’ve ruled out controlled substances.”
“I’m double-checking with the DEA, but it doesn’t match the profile of any drug I’ve ever heard of. And how could so many people ingest it at the same time? Unless it was in a vapor or gas form.”
Cara’s eyebrows arched as she scribbled on the pad. “Or an airborne pathogen of some kind?”
“That’s the concern.”
While Cooper was talking, Cara started a search for reports on the ARK “Rave Zombie Riot,” as one journalist had dubbed it. “There’s definitely something strange about it,” Cara said. “But what kind of virus could induce symptoms like that across such a large group so fast?”
“Well,” Cooper replied, “that’s why I’m calling. There was something about the descriptions of the people that made me think of you. I just sent you some links. Take a look and tell me what you think.”
Cara said she would and then hung up.
She found plenty of news reports, most of them with sensational headlines like “Techno Beat Bacchanalia” and “Randy Rampage at ARK.” But none of them could explain the phenomenon of thousands of ravers apparently convulsing in unison, although one state senator proclaimed it “proof that our permissive society is poisoning its youth and sowing the seeds of its own destruction.” Even the police were flummoxed. The only article containing any useful information was by a reporter from the Las Vegas Sun, who had interviewed Monica Blair, an ER nurse at Desert Springs Medical Center. Blair had treated dozens of those who arrived at the hospital in various stages of disorientation or physical distress. “It was spooky,” she recounted, “I’ve seen plenty of kids on ecstasy, but this was something else. The symptoms were more like brain damage or high fever, conscious but unresponsive, lots of moaning, blinking, and twitching. But within twenty-four hours, most of them seemed fine, so we let them go home. There’s either a new drug out there or some kind of weird flu. Either way, it’s bad news.”