by John Conroe
Then I put the phone back into the case, started to hold it out to him, but suddenly threw it down hard on the polished floor. The phone banged and smashed, bouncing off the hard tile high enough that Stacia was able to snag it out of mid-air. She looked at it, ready to wince, but instead becoming slightly amazed. Finally, she handed it to Chet, immediately pulling her own phone out of her pocket.
“Mine next,” she directed, even as Chet looked his baby over for any damage. I got to work on hers while Chet considered what he’d just seen and the fact that his phone was still pristine.
“How protected is it?” he asked. I held out my hand again, telekinetically pulling it from his palm. Holding it in my left, I pushed an arc of electricity from my other hand, shoving it right down onto the phone. The blue snapping tendril jumped all around the outside edges of the phone, but refused to touch it directly.
“It’s pretty safe from most trauma, except, ironically, water. Fire, electricity, and hard impacts—no problem. Looks like you picked a water resistant model anyway.”
He studied it at length, silent while he considered. Finally, just as I was putting Stacia’s case back on her phone, he spoke up. “I want him to do this to the mainframe and the special project room first thing.”
“Chris already put those first on the list for today,” she said with a smile.
“Right after I set some on the broken elevator,” I said. They both looked surprised. “It’s gonna take a couple of days to get back to normal, so I should get it started now. I broke it; I gotta fix it.”
“Where did you find him again?” Chet asked, a slight smile on his face.
“In a hole in the ground… in New Hampshire. Chris said we could keep him if we promised to take care of him,” Stacia replied.
“Yeah, well, I need lots of treats,” I said, finishing Stacia’s phone. It too bounced off the floor, only I needed a little telekinetic help to snag it. “Keep it dry,” I said, handing it over.
“Why not water?” Chet asked.
“I have no affinity for it. Fire, earth—you bet. Water—nothing,” I said.
“Amazing,” Chet said, wheels turning in his head. “And obviously electricity?”
“Sort of a middle ground between fire and earth. My aunt says my strength is likely why I can talk to machines.”
“Talk to machines?” he repeated.
I felt myself frown. “Not truly what I do, but I pick up code and some part of my mind has learned to interpret it, whether it’s a car computer, a smartphone, or a mainframe.”
“That would be the superpower I would choose,” he said, a little wistful.
“I would pick flying,” Stacia said.
“You already have super powers,” Chet retorted.
“Yeah, to cloud men’s minds,” I muttered into my glass of water. She snapped around, frowning.
“You’re super beautiful. That’s what Chet was talking about,” I said by way of explanation.
“I actually meant her werewolf capabilities,” he said with a slow grin.
“Oh, well yeah, you got those too,” I said, feeling my face go red.
Chet laughed and Stacia just smiled a little. “We’ll talk later, Declan. I’ve got fussy geniuses to corral,” he said, getting up.
“I’ll bring our little charmer up as soon as he’s voodooed the elevator,” Stacia told him, still smiling at me.
Face burning, I concentrated on my food. It was going to be a long summer.
Chapter 7 – Chris
Darion’s wide shoulders blocked most of my view of the room, but Grim had already scanned it, using the rest of my senses, and come up clear. Still, I was usually the first one into a room. But in this case, letting my attorney go first was a smarter move.
The place was a dump. A seedy little motel in the Bronx that looked like it hadn’t been updated in decades. That was good. We needed a place with few modern conveniences. The less technology the better.
The first person I saw was a guy in a rumpled suit that I didn’t know. His haircut, body language, and direct gaze all screamed cop. The bulge under his left arm reinforced the image.
The second guy, also wearing a suit, I knew. Larry DaltonLieutenant Larry Dalton, NYPD. Commissioner Rielly’s aide.
“Gentlemen,” Darion greeted them. Dalton nodded at him, but the other guy just glanced at my attorney before turning to watch me. “You two leave all your electronics outside?”
“Cornell, Gordon,” Dalton said, looking tired. “Yeah, we did and why?”
I just walked over to the old room phone and, after establishing it indeed worked, I unplugged it from the wall jack. Then I glanced from him to the other guy.
“This is Detective Ballini,” he introduced his companion. “So, Gordon, whatcha got for us?” Which was Daltonese for go ahead and speak in front of him.
“Any complaints of a bit of a commotion a couple of blocks north of our building last night?” I asked, silently sending a pulse of aura around the room to knock out any devices that might be still around.
“Seems there was something to that effect. Let’s see, people talking about shots fired, flying objects that might have been drones, and did I mention shots fired?” Larry asked.
“Yeah, about that… what did your first responders find?”
He looked at me evenly for a moment, obviously weighing how he wanted to play it. Finally he snorted. “They found a swarm of feds locking down the neighborhood, black vans and black suits everywhere. They couldn’t get in for forty minutes or so. When they did, they didn’t find a goddamned thing,” he said, then grimaced. “Sorry about the language.”
“Your damned language doesn’t bother me,” I said, managing to surprise him.
“Really? What with all the… you know?” he asked.
“Lieutenant Dalton, my client’s Heavenly origins aside, I think we were talking about evidence, or a lack thereof?” Darion asked.
“Oh right. Anyway, the place was sterilized. They did find a couple of shell casings that the feds missed, but just a few. Nine mil and some five-five-six. Residents wouldn’t say much, acted like someone put the fear of Uncle Sam into them. That close to the Tower, we figured you for whatever happened.”
“Drones is an understatement,” I said.
“Not that my client is admitting anything,” Darion said.
“Naturally, counselor. Naturally. Drones? Like the feds are using drones now instead of Tomahawks?” Dalton asked.
“I think they lost control of their drones just like I think they lost control of that Tomahawk,” I said. “Which is why we asked you to leave the tech toys behind for today’s meet. I fried anything else you might have forgotten about, by the way. The thing we’re facing uses anything electronic at will.”
“Thing? What kinda thing you talking about?” Larry asked.
I handed him a typed page, created on a real typewriter, that outlined what we knew about Anvil. “Don’t read that out loud. Don’t say the name out loud. Don’t put it anywhere a camera might see it. It can take over anything connected to the Internet. Smartphones, tablets, computers, Internet of Things. If you went to Home Depot and installed a smart thermostat in your house that you can check from your phone… well, this thing can freeze your pipes come winter.”
“Is this why you and Miss Demidova keep appearing on the OFAC SDN list every goddamned day?” Larry asked.
“Yes, we believe so. It’s also attacked our business and financial resources.”
“How do you fight a thing like this? Especially when it goes all Skynet on you?” Larry asked.
“Aside from the best computer brains money can buy, we also have an ace. A way to use the supernatural world against it,” I said.
Larry snorted. “Of course you do. Hey Ballini—look at my surprised face. Gordon’s got a hold card. Shocking.”
“Well, I just wanted to keep you and the commissioner informed. The feds and I don’t get along. But you guys have been good with Tanya and me,
so I thought you should be aware of this thing. Just stay away from it and it should leave you alone. It seems to only attack people it deems a threat to the country,” I said.
“But you friggin’ saved the President, for Christ’s sake,” Bellini suddenly interjected. Larry gave him a look and he shrugged, not all that abashed.
“As you know, my client has been linked from time to time with the asteroid impact in New Hampshire, without concrete evidence, I might add. We feel that… association could be enough for this guardian software,” Darion said.
Both officers smirked. “Linked—hear that, Bellini? He’s linked to the possibility of an asteroid strike. Like anyone else could do it,” Lieutenant Dalton said. “Just like the whole world knows to stay the hell away from a certain little girl, currently living in upstate Vermont.”
“No evidence, Lieutenant. No evidence,” Darion said.
“Okay, well I’ll take this back to the commish. Thanks for the explanation of recent events. Good to know we’re being invaded by the damned Terminator. Just try and keep the collateral damage to a minimum, huh Gordon? Don’t need Wall Street collapsing because of bankrupt insurance companies, do we? Or do you fall under the Acts of God clause?” Larry said.
“That’s being contested,” Darion said, tugging on his white dress shirt cuffs.
I laughed and turned to the door, opening it just in time to see a vehicle, a blue van, barreling straight at the doorway and the four of us.
Grim took over, analyzing and discarding options at lightning speed. I could just run, removing myself from the path of the van, but that would leave the others to die.
Grabbing all three men and taking them with me was out. Their combined weight was well within my capabilities, but there was no way my arms could reach around all three, and the violence of the action would might harm them just as much as the van.
So option three it was. I moved, accelerating diagonally to a telephone pole twenty feet away, but only about ten feet from the path the van was speeding along.
Posting myself to the side of the pole, I crouched my body straight out, parallel to the ground, waiting the split second till the van’s front right fender was even with me, then I jumped, pushing with both my body and vamp energy.
My impact, helped along by a line of vampire power that ran back to the telephone pole, was enough to overcome the van’s inertia and change its vector for the last eighteen feet, so that the impact, when it came, was five feet to the side of the doorway. It was also enough to crack the telephone pole right at the spot where my feet had been.
The van smashed through the motel wall and into the room we had just occupied. Grim hurdled over the top of the still-settling van, arriving at the driver’s door. The door tore like paper, but there was no driver to assault. Instead, the entire driver’s compartment was filled with the stuff of automation. The van was a self-driving version. I looked at the crumpled door, just able to make out Goog, the last two letters folded into bent and twisted metal.
The shifter suddenly jammed back into reverse and the still-running motor revved. Grim’s instant response was to tear out the pistons, servos, and motors, basically everything that was running it, which killed the whole thing in a shower of sparks and smoke before it could get enough traction to pull out of the wall.
The other three were just coming out of the door, eyes wide with shock, when I hopped back over the van to their side.
“Jesus, Gordon, stop doing that. It freaks me out,” said an already freaked out Dalton. Bellini was silent and wide-eyed. Darion was trying to stay cool, but he looked a little pissed.
“If it’s any consolation, I think it was just aimed at me,” I said.
“Not much. Not real happy with being collateral damage, Chris,” Darion said.
“Yeah, well, it seems to operate on a good of the many outweigh the good of a few philosophy,” I said.
The telephone pole chose that moment to fall over onto the van in a flash of electricity and sparks.
Larry Dalton sighed. “Why don’t you and your attorney toddle off and we’ll call this in?”
We moved off, headed for Darion’s Mercedes, Grim on high alert.
“So you really got something to fight this thing, or was that all bullshit?” Darion asked, glancing over his shoulder at the disaster behind us.
“Not something—someone,” I said.
“Someone? A person who can fight a computer? What, like some super blackhat hacker?”
“Some would say his ancestors wore black hats, but he favors ball caps.”
Darion grunted, eyes narrowed in frustration. “What do you mean by black hats? You mean like black top hats or bowlers or those fruity beret things?”
“Think cone shaped and pointy.”
The light of understanding dawned on his face. “Like black cats and broomsticks?”
“Yeah, although he likes vintage Toyota Land Cruisers.”
“No cats?” he asked.
“They don’t let you keep pets in the dorms,” I answered.
“Shit, how old is this asset?”
“He’s not legal to drink yet.”
“And he’s going to shut down Eagle Eye for you?”
I frowned.
“You know, Shia Labeouf, Billy Bob Thorton, Michelle Monaghan?” he asked.
“Oh? Yeah, I remember that one. Not sure what can shut it down, but he’s already shutting it out,” I said. “Probably working on that right now.”
Chapter 8 – Declan
I spent the afternoon warding the computer center, which took up the whole tenth floor. Chet followed me around, watching warily as I applied runes with paint and an artist’s brush. He started to object at the first application of the rune Yew to the back of a server rack. I just looked at him and waited. He was nervous and picky about everything involving the computers. It was obvious he was anal about his domain, which is a good trait in a Chief Technology Officer. But when his internal dialogue dragged on too long, I told him I’d be down checking the spell I’d put on the elevator. Quickly, he snapped to. “No, go ahead and do your thing. It just freaks me out to see paint on my hardware.”
We kept moving about the floor. The back half was a sealed section and I could only ward the walls and armored door, as Chet just shook his head when I asked if they needed the inside done. A basket stood on a stand near the door. A sign above it said ‘Deposit all electronics here. No cell phones, tablets, cameras, watches, wearable or personal technology past this point.”
Technicians and programmers were openly curious about the symbols I painted on their stations and monitors. More than a couple objected, even in the face of Chet’s permission. Openly dubious until I finished a string of runes and linked them to the building and the electrical lines, the sharp snap of arcing electricity jumping from the nearest outlet to my hand shut them up. When I motioned for one geek to step away from his monitor and then proceeded to test it with ball lightning with no apparent effect, well, let’s just say I got some cooperation.
“How will we protect our remote computers at our satellite offices around the world?” Chet asked Tanya when she appeared to check up on my progress.
I jumped in with a question before she could answer. “Are they all as large as this one?”
“No, but they’re not real small either. Why, Declan? What are you thinking?” she asked.
“If you can have some representative elements from both the computers and their buildings shipped here, I could ward them, we could ship them back, and they could be hand-placed around the centers,” I said.
“What kind of elements, Declan?” Tanya asked.
“Leftover bricks or tiles from the same batch as used in the building, spare server blades, a few ceiling tiles maybe, some spare keyboards, stuff like that. I’d also need a blueprint of the building and a map of the layout of each computer center.”
“This would work? Truly?” she asked. Chet looked like he was having gas cramps.
; “Yeah, particularly if they just remove some of the existing tiles, both ceiling and floor, unplug a few spare stations and stuff. That way, after I ward them and create an install map, they could plug it all back in and it should link up.”
Chet popped. “You could have warded my computers without having to put paint directly on them?” he asked, teeth clenched.
“I can ward anything—how well it works is another matter. This center, the heart of everything you do, well yeah, I could have done a sloppy job on it and you could have taken your chances.”