AMPED

by Douglas E. Richards

  32

  David Desh gazed at his wife sleeping soundly beside him and once again reflected on just how exceptional she was. She was a sleeping goddess, a Helen of Troy who would have a greater impact on the world because of her brains than Helen had because of her beauty. And while she was undeniably appealing physically, this was true of any number of women. The truth was that a person’s personality and intelligence affected how others perceived their looks. A beautiful woman with an ugly personality wasn’t quite so beautiful anymore. But a beautiful woman with Kira’s personality was beyond breathtaking.

  In other rooms, Griffin and Connelly were sleeping as well, although certainly not as majestically.

  Desh himself had slept poorly. The entire night was spent searching his memory, as if by repeatedly going over the same neuronal real estate he would somehow find the memory of his throat-slitting actions like a roach hidden under the floorboards. But as hard as he strained, he kept coming to the same conclusion: he had done nothing more than search the men for ID.

  But then his mental unrest took a troubling turn. He thought about his interactions with Kira. Of discrepancies between her words and actions he had noticed over the past few years. Times when she had said she was one place but he had seen evidence she had been somewhere else. When he noticed a slight change in the location of her laptop and she had later lamented that she’d been unable to do any work on the computer all day. Minor discrepancies to which he had previously paid no attention. Kira was overworked and overwhelmed. Who could blame her if, like Einstein and other great scientists before her, she could be a little scatterbrained on occasion.

  But now it was possible to see these discrepancies in a more troubling light.

  He slipped from beneath the covers silently and pulled on a blue silk robe, cinching it at the waist, and quietly exited the bedroom. It wasn’t rare for one or the other of them, having trouble sleeping, to steal away for several hours during the night to continue to nibble at their never diminishing mountain of work.

  Only this time would be different. This time he wasn’t being whisper quiet so as not to wake his beloved Kira. This time he was leaving to spy on her. And himself.

  What had happened, or what had not happened, in the basement of a safe-house years ago was driving him mad. Had he really killed three men in cold blood? Or had Kira made this up for reasons of her own? But for what reasons? And had the video been faked, despite Kira’s certainty to the contrary?

  And if it was real, was it possible that some of the evidence Jake had against Kira, which they had yet to see, was real as well?

  Desh had to know. He would investigate himself, and while he was at it, her as well.

  He removed her laptop from its charging station and crept soundlessly through the halls until he reached the enhancement room, relieved not to have run into Connelly or Griffin in the wee hours of the night, which would have forced him to abort the exercise. He entered the enhancement room, set the timer on its vault-like door for eighty minutes, and closed himself inside.

  He slid his left thumb over his keychain and a gellcap fell into his other hand, the replacement for the one he had dropped in the woods. Kira had the keys to the pills, and this was the only way to become enhanced without her being aware of it. Which would mean he wouldn’t have an emergency dose if he needed it. But this couldn’t be helped.

  Fireworks erupted in his mind.

  Like a neuronal big bang, his consciousness expanded to fill a universe that hadn’t existed the moment before. A feeling that was now quite familiar to him, but was always exhilarating.

  He knew instantly. The video footage Kira had seen was accurate. All of it.

  Desh could see himself killing the men in the safe-house basement in his mind’s eye like it was happening that moment. He felt the handle of the knife as its sharp blade sliced through each man’s carotid artery with surgical precision. He knew his slower self would find the memory grisly, and would find the utter helplessness of these men horrifying. But he knew it was neither. Killing them had increased his and Kira’s chances of success and survival, nothing more.

  But there was no longer any reason not to let his dimwitted self have access to these memories, given the circumstances. Suspecting he had a false memory was driving this other Desh mad, and maintaining this fiction would help neither of them any longer.

  He searched his mind in an instant and knew he harbored no other secrets from himself. Other than this one false memory of the events in the basement, he had played it straight with his dimwitted alter ego.

  His normal self would remember his enhanced self had not been hiding anything else, but of course, that version of him could never know for certain if this was just another implanted memory. Not even he, with all of his brilliance, had an answer for this conundrum.

  He manipulated Kira’s computer, digesting entire screens of information in a literal blink of the eye. He caused the computer to spit up page after page of time-stamped logs, indicating to the tenth of a second every session Kira had ever had on the computer. He crosschecked this against his memories, which he could pinpoint precisely in time to match the records of the computer.

  A pattern emerged. For several hours each week, Kira Miller was engaged in computer work that she either didn’t know about, or was concealing from him. He found hidden files, imbedded in innocent programs, which were set to automatically transfer to yet another file—this one not only well concealed but tightly protected.

  And even he couldn’t break in.

  There was no encryption that could be written by a normal, no matter how expert, that he couldn’t break through in minutes in his current state. Which meant this one was built by another enhanced mind. It was the only possibility. A mind even more capable than his own.

  Laptops were prohibited from the enhancement room. Only the main Icarus computer could be accessed from here to ensure online activity was properly monitored and controlled to prevent the sort of mischief Jake had taken part in. But Kira had obviously disregarded this rule, had encrypted this large file on her laptop while enhanced. She was the keeper of the pills, and accounted for them, so she could use them off the record any time she wanted.

  Desh continued searching, probing; trying to piece together and read whatever tea leaves he could find, no matter how ephemeral. He made attempt after attempt, beating his genius against the computer’s will like a diamond sledgehammer.

  Finally, a measure of success. Hints of files that had been erased, but which he could reconstruct just enough of to make them somewhat meaningful. A little more than two and a half years ago Kira had done considerable research on world affairs, wars, infighting, political systems, dictatorships, and nuclear capabilities of countries around the world. She had actively searched for the Achilles’ heels of world governments, gaps in their defenses, pressure points. She had studied the effects of various stimuli; military, political, and economic, on world order, paying particularly close attention to those that would cause widespread devastation. This work was barely concealed at all.

  A few months later she had broken into classified government computers that held detailed information on the construction of weapons of mass destruction, both nuclear and biological. But this work, which had occupied her for considerable time, was far better encrypted, so much so that even with a mind of incalculable power, he was only able to nibble around the edges.

  Then, abruptly, she must have instituted an even tighter layer of security, and he wasn’t able to catch even a whiff of the skunk she had trapped inside her files. He was completely shut out from that day forward.

  What did this all mean? Had she thrown in the towel? Had she given up on faster-than-light travel, on infinity, and decided to take matters into her own hands and thin the human herd—for its own good? To reduce the population so her longevity discovery could be revealed?

  Good for you, Kira, he thought. Finally making the tough choices without artificial ethics and morals—t
hrowbacks to early human development that were now as unnecessary as a pair of tonsils—getting in the way.

  Or was her intent something else entirely? He had only seen the tip of the tip of the iceberg, and since this was being orchestrated by the enhanced version of Kira Miller, it could be one hell of an iceberg.

  Regardless, he needed to find out. And his dumber half could assist in this effort.

  But better to keep this from Kira herself. Whether she knew about it or not, anything he did to tip her off would tip off her enhanced self as well.

  And if that were to happen, then his investigation would be over before it started.

  And as arrogant as he was in his current state, as supremely brilliant, an enhanced Kira Miller was the one entity against whom he knew he would be overmatched.

  33

  Desh knocked on the door of the yellow one-story home that was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Small but impeccably well kept, with a bright white picket fence in front that was as quaint as it was cliché.

  An older man opened the door. He had white hair and was obviously retired, but he had a vigor to him that suggested his retirement had been recent and he continued to stay active.

  “Dr. Arnold Cohen?” said Desh.

  “Yes,” replied the man at the door. “And you must be Detective Nelson.”

  “That’s right,” said Desh, “David Nelson.” He held up a fake badge, which was a flawless forgery, but which he might as well have pulled from a cereal box for all the scrutiny Cohen gave it.

  Desh gestured to Jim Connelly beside him. “And this is my associate, Lieutenant Jim Tyler. Thanks for agreeing to meet with us.”

  Since Desh had made the initial contact, they had decided he would do most of the talking while Connelly would take notes.

  Cohen shook their hands, invited them in, and sat them at his kitchen table. “Can I offer you anything to drink? My wife just made up a batch of iced tea before she left for her book club.”

  Both men politely declined. “As I mentioned over the phone,” said Desh, “this has to do with an investigation we’re conducting. Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to disclose the nature of the investigation. But I appreciate your cooperation.”

  Cohen nodded. “Glad to help in any way I can.”

  Desh had begun trying to learn who Eric Frey had become, what new Phoenix had arisen from the old psychopath’s ashes, right after his dinner with Kira a week before. He had immediately discovered that two weeks after Frey’s supposed suicide, the detective on the case had turned up dead. The papers quoted police sources who speculated his death was related to several murder cases he had been working on, but Desh knew better. The detective must have discovered evidence that Frey wasn’t as dead as he had been led to believe, and had paid for it with his life. Learning of this had only served to rub salt in Desh’s wound. If he had done even the smallest amount of follow-up, the situation would have been obvious, and Frey would have been removed from the board long ago.

  Desh had compiled a list of Frey’s friends—of which there were basically none—and people who knew him well. Almost all would be contacted and interviewed over the phone, but Vernal, Utah was close enough to reach by car, and nothing could take the place of a face-to-face interview. Besides, Griffin was on a plane, so this would give Kira some alone time, which was good for relationships no matter how loving the couple.

  And it was especially good for him right now. He was finding it hard to maintain the fiction with Kira that nothing had changed between them. He could chalk it up to stress, but he had to find a way to shake off the misgivings he now had. It was possible that the intent of Kira’s alter ego was relatively harmless, and he was misreading things. And he was certain that the woman he loved was still the woman he loved, unaware of what her altered self was doing. Even so, there were subtle differences in their relationship that she would pick up on if he wasn’t careful. He loved her, but feared and distrusted what might be lurking inside. While making love to a woman who’d been bitten by a werewolf, it was almost impossible not to cast an anxious glance up at the moon on occasion—afraid to be caught off guard when it became full.

  “So you’re here to learn more about Eric Frey, correct?” said Dr. Cohen.

  “That’s right,” replied Desh. “I understand that you worked with Dr. Frey fairly extensively at USAMRIID for a number of years.”

  “I did.”

  “What was he like at work?”

  Cohen hesitated. “Can I speak freely?”

  Desh smiled warmly. “That’s what we’re here for,” he assured him. “Whatever you say will be kept in strict confidence.”

  “Well, I hate to disparage the dead, um, you know . . . who can’t exactly defend themselves . . . but in my opinion, Frey was a psychopathic asshole. And that was on his good days.”

  “Go on,” said Desh.

  “He was pure poison. But he was talented poison, I’ll give him that. And he was a political maestro. He would backstab, cheat, suck-up, badmouth colleagues, take credit for the work of others—you name it. Anything to further his career. He could lie with more conviction, and less sense of shame, than I could tell the truth. And he could be charming when he wanted to be. He’d be smiling at you while he slipped the knife in your back, and he was so good at it you had to be stabbed five or six times before it really sunk in that it wasn’t accidental.”

  “You’re obviously aware that he was a serial pedophile,” said Desh. “And he was thought to be involved in other illegal activities as well.”

  Cohen nodded.

  “Did you suspect anything when you were working with him?”

  Cohen shrank back in disgust. “If I had any idea of how big a monster this guy really was, I would have turned him in in an instant. Pedophilia is the most horrible crime there is, in my opinion. But you know how a lot of guys, they turn out to be pedophiles or serial killers and the cops interview the neighbors, and they say, wow, who’d have ever thought it? Seemed like such a nice guy. Well, with this guy, you would have thought it. I had no idea he preyed on kids, but after it came out, it didn’t surprise me at all.” he shook his head. “I’ll tell you what does surprise me, though. That he committed suicide. That I would have never guessed.”

  Perfect, thought Desh. Rub it in some more, why don’t you. “Why is that?” he asked.

  “Suicide indicates remorse, and after several years working with this nut job, this wasn’t in his lexicon. Pedophiles aren’t treated well in prison, as you know. I understand that. But I’d have expected him to flee to an island somewhere and prey on kids there.”

  “This is helpful,” said Desh. “We’re trying to build as complete a profile of him as we can. So anything and everything you can tell us about him would be huge. Favorite sports teams? Did he smoke? Any unusual foods he liked? Was he into opera? Nascar? Did he collect wooden ducks? Favorite restaurants? Type of books he read?” He paused. “Nothing is too trivial.”

  “I’ll tell you everything I can remember, and point you to some other people you should speak with. But I don’t get it. I mean the guy’s dead. How will a complete profile on him help you in your investigation? ”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Desh with just a hint of a smile.

  ***

  Kira Miller sat at her desk in front of a computer, once again attending to administrative duties, the only person present in the large headquarters facility that principally provided housing for the core council. She had booked hexads at the facility, and in the enhancement room, for several months in advance—with the next group due on site in two days—but she had a few slots that had been booked by members of Rosenblatt’s hexad that she needed to reassign until they were ready to resume their activities.

  Given the loss of the decoy building, the flurry of activity the alien craft had set in motion, and the new threats against Icarus that had grown like weeds in recent weeks, recruitment, which had been slow previously, was now stopped in its tracks
.

  She turned her thoughts to Anton van Hutten. He was the first member of what would be a new hexad, but they weren’t about to wait until the full unit had been recruited. He was a star, their great hope to finally conquer faster-than-light travel. In the short time since his first enhancement, he had already been back twice, and was scheduled for two more visits next week. She just hoped he wasn’t tapped to be part of Copernicus, which had been on the news nonstop since this world cooperative effort was first announced.

  Kira heard a faint shuffling behind her and twisted around in shock to see what it was. “Anton?” she said in confusion, recognizing the cherubic-faced physicist immediately. “I was just thinking of you,” she added.

  “Hi Kira,” he said as he continued to walk toward her.

  Van Hutten had been here only yesterday, but he wasn’t scheduled again until next week. Had one of the core council changed the schedule and failed to notify her? Highly unlikely. And even if they had, who had brought him here?

  Something was horribly wrong.

  As she struggled to understand what was happening, van Hutten pulled a stun gun from his pocket and pointed it at her.

  Her eyes widened. “How did you find the facility?” she asked, instinctively stalling, trying to establish a connection, trying to get him talking.

  “I hid a tiny GPS locater here the last time I visited. Your cloak and dagger attempts to keep this location secret only work until one of us actively tries to find it. Then it’s easy.”

  Kira tensed, ready to spring from her chair and dive on van Hutten the moment he let down his guard. “But why? What is this all abo—”

  Twin electrodes shot like harpoons from van Hutten’s weapon and attached to her shirt, stopping her in mid-sentence. She convulsed and slid to the ground, unconscious.

  When she regained her senses five minutes later she was lying on her back on the floor, and there was no sign of her attacker. Her mouth was covered in duct tape and her arms were crossed tightly against her chest.