by P. W. Child
Nearly ten hours later, not long after sunset, Purdue declared that they were almost at their destination.
"Are you sure?" Sam looked around dubiously. They were in Silicon Valley, he knew. He had seen enough signs to make him sure of that. However, the area they were currently driving through seemed desolate and abandoned. Street after street, he saw small McMansions that looked as though they had never been lived in. There were no cars in the driveways, no basketball hoops, no pools, and no trash cans out for collection. All the lawns were a little overgrown and the flowerbeds untended. As darkness fell, not a single window was lit.
"Yes, this is definitely the right place," said Purdue. "I remember visiting when these houses were being built, shortly before the crash."
"Let me guess," said Nina, watching a stray dog dashing through the empty yards. "The global economic crisis happened, then no one could afford these places anymore, and they've all sat empty?"
"It is true that they have always been empty, but not that no one could afford them. FireStorm was already considering establishing a base of operations in the San Jose area. It would be a technological base, rather than a place where they could recruit via their Vision Quests. When the world's economy collapsed, they simply bought up the lot."
"But I don't see a base," Nina was puzzled. "Is it underground?"
"In a sense." Purdue tapped Sam on the shoulder and pointed to a sign up ahead that read Pinewood Mall. "We need to follow that sign." He returned to his conversation with Nina. "What you see here is a sort of defensive border, Nina. The technology being developed by FireStorm is extremely sensitive—both in the sense of having to be protected in case it is tampered with, and in the sense of needing to be kept secret to avoid spreading alarm. As long as that base was operational, these seemingly innocuous streets acted as a corridor between it and the outside world. The approach of an unknown vehicle would trigger a massive security shutdown. Anyone who took a wrong turn onto these streets would find they had a chance meeting with a police car, and the police would politely check the driver's destination and set them on their way with a warning that it is not safe to drive around abandoned areas, even in predominantly middle-class Silicon Valley."
Sam gave a long, low whistle. "They've got the police under their thumb?"
"Sam, they have everyone under their thumb." Purdue's voice took on a tone Sam could not remember hearing before. He actually sounded somewhat defeated. Still, it was only there for a moment before he continued in his usual more upbeat way. "Fortunately, now that this base has been replaced by a more remote—and frankly infinitely more suitable—option in Canada, only minimal security remains. Of course, FireStorm's idea of minimal security is still considerable compared to most places, but I am glad that we are not trying to infiltrate an operational base!"
"Wait," said Nina, "Why exactly are we trying to infiltrate anything? We've taken it on trust that we needed to come this far with you, Dave, but you really need to tell us what you're getting us into this time."
While listening to Purdue and Nina, in the shadow of his own thoughts, Sam observed something which tickled his cynicism about their relationship. He did not wish to entertain such notions, but the selfish part of him condoned it entirely. For two lovers, their interaction and discussion was significantly cool and impersonal. Even if it was just sex, there was no sign of any intimacy between them, not in speech or in body language. Nina's words, "that we needed to come this far with you, Dave," distinctly inferred that they were somewhat detached. Would she not come this far with him at all costs if they were a couple? Perhaps, Sam thought, he was just more romantic than he had thought he was to doubt their closeness.
"And I will," he said. "I was simply waiting for the apposite moment—early enough to give you all the necessary details, yet late enough that you will not have time to overthink things and become unduly nervous. Despite the fact that this base is abandoned, it is still used to store some of the servers that FireStorm will require in order to bring the full version of its network online. We must destroy those servers, otherwise the network will be launched at the end of the Mind Meld with the backing of all the powerful people they have recruited, and it will catch on swiftly.
"Within days, millions will have signed up. Within weeks those millions will find it indispensable. Within months, billions will be using it—almost the entire developed world, and it will have begun its spread into developing countries. Within a year, we will scarcely be able to remember our lives before we all used FireStorm, and within two years the death of privacy will have been achieved. By the time anyone begins to realize how foolish they were to hand over so much valuable information freely, it will be much, much too late."
The long line of identical houses ended at a T junction, beyond which lay an expansive strip mall. If I didn't already believe Purdue's story about this place having special protection, Sam thought, that signage would convince me. It still reads Pinewood Mall! Surely it ought to be missing at least half its letters by now.
"Turn left here," Purdue instructed him. "We need to go to section D."
Section D of the vast parking lot, it turned out, looked remarkably similar to sections A, B, and C. The white lines had begun to wear away through time and lack of maintenance, and the whole place was completely empty apart from the minivan. Sam turned the vehicle around so that it was parked across four spaces. Despite the expanse of other spaces and the fact that the mall would never have any actual customers clamoring to park there, he still felt the faint thrill of wrongdoing.
"Really, Dave?" Nina groaned, raising an amused eyebrow at Purdue's chosen point of access. "This is where you stored the servers? If this is your idea of camouflage . . . well, you have an overdeveloped sense of irony."
Sam followed her gaze to the sign on the monolithic shop front ahead of them. Target. He laughed.
When they arrived at the double doors, Sam waited for Purdue to bring out his tablet and start cracking the access code, but he did not. Instead he simply marched straight up to the door, waited for it to open and walked through.
"What happened there?" Sam asked. "Shouldn't that have been a bit more of a challenge?"
Purdue shrugged. "No one else was ever going to get close to this place, and even if they did they would have to know exactly what they were looking for. Not everything has to be complicated, Sam."
He led the way into the shop. Their footsteps echoed through its cavernous interior. Despite the standard cheerful signs welcoming no-existent customers to retail heaven, the atmosphere was unsettling. Half-emptied boxes littered the aisles between the half-stacked shelves, as if at some point during the initial setup, the store had been evacuated and nobody had ever returned. That's probably not a million miles from the truth, Sam thought. I wouldn't be surprised if FireStorm had the resources to buy this place lock, stock, and barrel.
"We should take some of these," Purdue suggested, reaching into an open box and pulling out a baseball bat. He handed one to Sam and one to Nina, then took one for himself and gave it an exploratory swing. "They might come in handy when the time comes to destroy the servers," he explained.
They crossed the store and made their way into the main walkway of the mall. The strange atmosphere was even more pronounced among the empty corridors. A food court occupied a suspended space above the atrium, its colored fast food outlets shuttered and unstaffed.
One of the escalators leading up to it had collapsed, presumably due to lack of maintenance, and had crashed down onto the children's rides below. A grinning sun hung lopsided, dangling from a single wire, the other snapped and hanging aimlessly from the Plexiglas ceiling. The remains of a giant pink plastic teddy bear lay crushed under the fallen concrete, its glassy, heart-shaped eyes fixed eternally on the distant JC Penney sign at the far end of the strip.
"Get down!" Sam cried, grabbing Purdue and Nina and pulling them to the floor behind a bench.
"What?" Nina whispered. "What is it?"
&
nbsp; "I saw someone," he said quietly, "over that way."
"What did you see?" Purdue asked urgently, gripping his bat tightly.
"I didn't have time to make it out," Sam replied. "It was just a flicker of movement. But I think there's more than one."
"Ah." Purdue got up, shaking off Nina's whispered protestations.
They waited. Sam could hardly draw breath. Purdue stepped out from behind the bench.
"I see you!" he called, his voice growing a little fainter as he walked away. "You needn't think you can hide from us! Sam! Come here! I think you might be interested to see this!"
Reluctant and confused, Sam stood up. He could see Purdue standing in the open doorway of a branch of Urban Outfitters, gently slapping his bat against his palm. Expecting to see the acolytes at least, or perhaps a company of soldiers like the ones they had encountered on their first collaboration at the ice station, Sam sidled over to join Purdue.
Two men stood facing them, one tall and skinny with round glasses, the other a little shorter, with a more wiry build and sandy hair in need of a trim. Another figure stepped into view in front of them, this one small, female and limping.
"Us?" Sam said. "It was a mirror?"
"Correct," laughed Purdue, waving a hand at the wall of mirrors that lined the back of the unstocked shop. "Still, no matter—at least we know that you're vigilant. Come this way."
They continued through the mall until they came to an alcove containing a couple of photo booths. Purdue pulled aside the curtain of the first booth and laid his palm against the view screen. He bent his head and looked straight into it, then leaped back as the booth began to move, sliding aside to reveal a white door with a number panel. Purdue tapped in a code and that door swung open too. "That is why the entrance to the mall itself did not require greater security," he threw over his shoulder as he led the others through. "Even if someone was able to get here without being intercepted and find the correct booth, there is no way into the facility itself unless your handprint and iris scan are in the system."
What lay beyond the door was a long row of stacked servers in metal cases, towering over Purdue. The row extended into darkness, further than they could see.
"Is there a light switch somewhere?" Nina asked.
Purdue shook his head. "They come on automatically. We will simply have to work our way along."
"Right then." Nina hoisted her bat. "Let's get smashing."
Sam gasped for breath. He heaved the bat up and took one last swing, sending a glittering cascade of shattered glass and plastic cascading to the floor.
"That should suffice," Purdue panted, lowering his own bat. "The data we have destroyed by annihilating these servers is crucial to the operation of the whole system."
"Won't they just rebuild?" Sam asked. "I mean, even if the servers are split up across different locations, surely they have a contingency plan for what to do if anything . . . well, if someone strolls in and smashes the place up, say?"
Purdue opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak a light flashed on behind Sam and another voice rang out—a twangy, nasal voice that set Sam's teeth on edge.
"Sure, we have a contingency plan, Sam," Cody said, training his gun on Purdue. "Did Dave not tell you about this part? Honestly, I don't know what kind of game this guy's playing, but there is so much he hasn't told you. You can't take down the FireStorm network just by destroying some servers! We've got backups. Of course, we have backups! And as long as we've got the activation keys, bringing everything online as planned won't be a problem." He took a few steps toward Purdue, holding out his hand. "Speaking of which—I'm sorry, Dave, but I'm going to have to ask for your key. I don't think you can be trusted with it anymore. Now, are you going to hand it over? Or do I have to take it from you?"
☼
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nina felt the shiver of past panic take hold of her mind. She recalled the threat she felt on the mountain in Tibet when Walter Eickhart's goon pulled his gun and wasted Jodh, who was about to kill her. That same steely determination to survive pushed at the back of her head like an ice cold finger probing and with flashes of the barrel in her face overpowering the words of her therapist, the trauma reminded her that she was still alive. Behind her eyes something clicked, like the cock of a hammer, and she made her decision. With as much force as she could muster, Nina swung her baseball bat. She fixed her eyes on Cody's back, imagining him collapsing to the floor, winded, and giving them enough time to run.
Then he turned—only slightly, but enough to catch her movement in the corner of his eye. He dodged, but too late. He tried to duck the blow. The solid chunk of maple connected with his head with a sickening crunch.
Cody dropped to the ground and did not move. As Nina stared at him lying prostrate on the carpet of broken metal and plastic, a thin trickle of blood coursed down his face from ear to chin.
It was Purdue who had the presence of mind to kneel and check Cody's neck for a pulse. They waited as his fingers probed the fallen man's neck. Seconds ticked by. He adjusted his fingers, double-checking. Then at last he sat back on his heels and shook his head. "I think you might have fractured his skull, Nina," he said, his tone soft, even while his words were blunt. "Good work. You had to do it."
"He's right, Nina," Sam said, slipping an arm around her trembling shoulders. "If you hadn't, he'd have shot at least one of us."
For several minutes no one spoke. Nina stared intently at the corpse. Then she shook off Sam's comforting arm, stepped forward and picked up Cody's gun.
"We'll probably need this," she said. "Now, what are these activation codes he was talking about. How do we get hold of them?"
They strode swiftly through the empty mall, or at least as swiftly as Nina could manage, considering her injury. As they walked, Purdue told them of the three keys that could be used to activate the backup servers. They were essentially USB devices, each containing part of an encrypted access code that would not unlock unless all three parts were plugged into the same terminal. When used together, the three keys would reveal the passwords for the backup servers.
"If we have all three in our possession," said Purdue," we can take the whole thing offline once and for all. I can disable the most dangerous parts of FireStorm so completely that it would need to rebuild the code almost from scratch—and without me, that would take them years. The first will be easy enough to acquire, since it belongs to me. It is in my safe deposit box at the Verbena. The second belongs to Sara. I do not know who currently holds the third, but let us take care of the first two."
They found themselves back in Target, passing the long aisles full of half-stocked shelves. "Should we maybe take a few things before we go?" Sam asked. "I can't imagine the Verbena will be happy if we show up like this, and the last thing we want is for the staff not to let us in. Between the sand, water, bits of plastic, sweat, and blood, we could all do with a change of clothes."
"Good idea," said Purdue. "It's a pity the running water was cut off when the place fell out of active use, but you're right. Being presentable will help us considerably when we reach Las Vegas. Come on. We must be quick—if Sara is aware that I am no longer on her side, and she must be by now, she will surely try to take back possession of my key."
Swiftly they plundered the shop. Sam rummaged in a box until he found a pack of white T-shirts that looked about the right size, then searched for the most lightweight trousers he could find. He slipped on a pair, aware of how odd it felt to be changing in the middle of an aisle. Assured that they fit, he grabbed another pair for luck. Purdue reappeared in linen trousers and a black shirt, marveling at the sensation of polyester in a garment that was not intended as sportswear. Nina had chosen long, flowing yoga pants to cover her ankle, but she was carrying a smarter pair of slacks and a blouse for when they reached LA. She had also found a first-aid kit and raided it for a proper ace bandage, which she now wore in place of the makeshift one.
"Wait there a second,
" Sam told her, and he dashed madly through the aisles. When he came back, he held a folding cane in his hands. It was neon pink with splashes of lime green. Under normal circumstances she would have thought it the tackiest thing she had ever seen. Now she accepted it gladly, leaning heavily on it as she hobbled out to the parking lot. Sam glanced at her as they stepped out into the sunshine and she shot him the most heartfelt smile he had seen in a long time.
It was Cody's car that got them back to Las Vegas, another of the 4 x 4s from the FireStorm hangar. They found the keys still in the ignition. Cody must have been really confident that no one would find their way out here, Sam thought. This is a nice car. You don't just leave a car like this waiting to be stolen.
They drove hell-for-leather, Sam and Purdue alternating between driving and sleeping, while Nina kept a lookout for police speed traps. By 10:00 PM they had the lights of Vegas in their sights. They abandoned the 4 x 4 several blocks from the Verbena and hailed a cab for the rest of the journey, using the last of the cash from the minivan owner's wallet.
"So what's the plan?" Sam asked, as they entered the lobby of the hotel. "We get your key, and then head back—"
He was cut off by the approach of a tall, smartly dressed man with a businesslike smile on his face. "Mr. Purdue," the man said, extending a hand. "Welcome back."
"Thank you, Tyrone," Purdue replied, shaking the man's hand before dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I must ask for a little discretion on this occasion. My friends and I need a room, but I would prefer if it was not my usual suite. And if you could charge it to Mr. Brodie's account, it would be much appreciated. And could someone please bring my safe deposit box to my room? "