by Julie Hyzy
Kenna stared away for a long moment. “And when is the right time to execute the payload?”
“We could use six months. We have less than a month.”
“What’s happening in a month?”
“Less than that.” he said. “They’ve already ordered a rush production of Sixes to replace the ones we stole. They’ll be ready in a couple of weeks. Worse, primaries begin next month. If Celia isn’t stopped, we’ll have new leadership in the White House come November. She and her protégé, Nick Rejar, will be our new president and vice president. Once they’re in charge—once all of Celia’s handpicked congressmen are in office—VR will have a free ride. There will be no need for envoys, because the government will sanction Virtu-Tech’s version of VR no matter the consequences, no matter how many people die.”
“Celia as president?” Kenna said. “No way. She hasn’t campaigned or anything. She has no experience. All she’s known for is her position at Virtu-Tech…And I’ve never even heard of this Nick Rejar.”
“Right, and a month ago nobody bought Flaxibars.”
Kenna rubbed her temples as Patrick continued.
“Right now, Celia is simply a candidate with a strong business résumé. But she will take the primary and then win the nomination by a landslide. Come November, she’ll be elected our next president. I’ve seen this VR system work. Virtu-Tech doesn’t intend to imitate reality—it intends to create reality.” He looked at his son, then to her. “This is big. Bigger than Charlie’s death. Bigger than you or me.”
Stunned, Kenna remained silent. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. And yet, everything Patrick said made sense—it resonated with the shattering clarity of unexpected truth.
“This is all so unbelievable.” She reflected again—this was what caused Charlie to put his life on the line. What better reason? “You’ve verified all this?” she asked, knowing the answer even as she asked the question.
“I have a contact—Simon Huntington.”
“The inventor of VR?” Kenna asked. “I thought you said he was responsible for creating that remote interface device.”
“He was, to his great regret. He despises what the company has become since Celia took the reins. He’s been against consumer manipulation from the start, and now that he’s been made aware of her plans, he’s racked with guilt.” Patrick’s face tightened again. “He’s an older guy, brilliant—unpredictable. He’s been feeding us information to slow Virtu-Tech’s assault on free thought, but even he didn’t see the scope of Celia’s plans until recently.”
“Are you sure we can trust him?”
“Completely.” He stared off into the wall for a moment, then took a deep breath. “In the spirit of trust, there’s something important that I haven’t told you—haven’t told very many people, as a matter of fact. Werner Trutenko—”
“The man in charge of Chicago?”
Patrick nodded. “What I haven’t told you—what no one else at Virtu-Tech knows—is that he’s my brother.”
“What?”
Ryan lifted his head, blinked.
Kenna got to her feet. “You tell me this now? You get me to buy in on all this crazy talk and then you sit there and oh so calmly mention that it was your brother who had Charlie killed? And you didn’t stop him? What is wrong with you?”
Patrick didn’t budge. He rubbed Ryan’s back and cooed softly until the little boy rested his head again. “Please, Kenna,” he said, directing his gaze to the chair she’d vacated. “Hear me out.”
Shaken, she stared out the window, wildly uncertain about absolutely everything.
“Please.”
She weighed her options, sat.
“Werner is actually only my half brother, not that the distinction matters. Our mom was—I could say she was flighty, but that would be too kind. She was an incompetent parent, atrociously so. Werner’s father was a bully and a thug.”
“A rough childhood doesn’t excuse murder.”
“Of course it doesn’t. What Werner did to Charlie was unconscionable.”
“Then why are you giving me his background?”
Patrick gave an abbreviated shrug. “I started at Virtu-Tech believing, as Simon did, that we could harness this amazing technology to open people’s minds. Give them experiences they might not otherwise be able to achieve. We thought that it would encourage people to continue expanding their horizons in real life. To learn, to strive, to explore.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, I know. With these past few upgrades, we’re seeing more isolation, not less. We should have anticipated that.” He frowned. “We were guilty of hubris.”
Kenna lifted her hands. Where was this going?
“Back when Simon helmed it, I believed in Virtu-Tech. I only stay on now because it offers our best shot at keeping Celia from corrupting us all. No one there knows that Werner and I are brothers. He trusts me, and, from the very start, we saw no need to share our blood relation. Now we keep it to ourselves because—well, such information in the wrong hands could hurt us.”
“But you’re telling me.”
“Charlie was my friend. He died trying to save us all. I trusted him. He trusted you. I need to give you reason to trust me.”
Kenna blew out a breath.
“If Celia fires Werner, I’m her best candidate to replace him. We need to get him out from under her thumb. He’s lost himself. He’s become fearful, angry, and cruel. I not only want to save the world, I want my brother back.”
“If Celia’s truly guilty of everything you suspect, will she let him go so easily?” Kenna thought about Charlie. “I mean…with everything he knows, will she allow him to…stay alive?”
“I think so. Alone, Werner couldn’t stop her if he tried.”
“But the dissident faction can?”
“God, I hope so. We need to take the entire network down. That’s entirely possible, especially if she promotes me into Werner’s position. I have to protect our future.” He passed a large hand over the back of Ryan’s head. “For him.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Sitting at his desk with the door closed, Werner dialed. “Where are you?” he asked when Tate’s image appeared on his phone screen.
The tall man spread his arms in frustrated abdication. “Why?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”
“Took a trip to DC. You got a problem with that?”
“When you don’t tell me about it beforehand, yes,” Werner said. “Why are you in DC?”
“You sure you want to know?”
Tate’s demeanor was off. Brash as ever, he carried himself with a heightened degree of impudence. Werner read the question as a taunt.
“Of course I should know. We have a lot of work ahead of us and I count on you being readily available.”
“Yeah, well,” Tate said with a head swagger, “look what happened when I counted on you.”
“What are you talking about?” Werner focused on Tate’s setting. “Are you at Virtu-Tech headquarters?”
“You promised me I’d get another shot at becoming an envoy. You haven’t done squat about that.”
“Not yet.”
“Yeah? When?”
Taken aback, Werner hesitated. He couldn’t tell Tate about Celia’s ban on future envoys. “Soon. I told you. We can’t move forward on your career prospects until the 6.0s are fully distributed.”
“What’s so important about those Sixes?” Tate asked. “Why wait? Don’t you trust me to tell me the whole story?”
“Where is all this coming from?” Werner asked. “What happened?”
“You blamed me for the missing Sixes.”
“I asked you about the missing Sixes,” Werner corrected. “That’s not the same thing.”
“Doesn’t matter. Why should I trust
you if you aren’t going to support me?”
“I have every intention of getting you envoy status.”
Doubt worked its way across Tate’s features. “How come you haven’t kept me updated about it, then?”
“I’ve had a lot on my mind.” That was an understatement. After a calming breath, Werner said, “We can talk more about this when you return to Chicago.”
“I’ll be back in town tonight.”
“Good.” Sensing that Tate had settled down enough for calm conversation, Werner tried again. “What took you out to DC?”
“Special assignment.”
“For Virtu-Tech?”
When Tate nodded, Werner spotted it again. An increased level of smugness.
“What kind of assignment?”
“Celia wanted me to do a little housecleaning, if you catch my drift.”
Werner sat forward. “Explain.”
“Well,” Tate said, drawing the word out as he massaged his chin. “Not really sure that Celia wants me to be telling stories out of school, but the news will hit today or tomorrow anyway. Can’t really see the harm in giving you a little advance notice.”
“Get on with it, man.”
Tate glanced both ways, as though to ensure no one was listening. “That old guy, Huntington, passed out in her office. Celia asked me to make sure he was properly taken care of.” He grinned again. “If you take my meaning.”
Werner’s gut rolled over on itself. “Simon? He’s—”
“Dead, yeah.”
Drawing a sharp breath, Werner steepled his fingers in front of his mouth.
“You’ve got a weird look on your face,” Tate said.
Werner stared away. “Call me when you get back,” he finally said. “In the meantime, stay out of trouble.”
After they hung up, Werner slammed his desk with a fist. The techs working outside his office glanced up at the jolt. Werner ignored them. He sighed, rubbing his eye sockets with the heels of his hands. Emotions warred for his head and heart.
Werner stared out over the busy office, wryly noting each time a tech shot a panicked glance his way. They’d been tasked with running diagnostics on the security system in an attempt to ascertain what had gone wrong at the warehouse. Their job was to determine who switched the 6.0s and when it had happened.
With a miserable laugh, Werner resigned himself to the fact that they would undoubtedly come up empty. Why should today be any different? No matter how meticulously he planned, no matter how excruciatingly accurate his calculations, everything in his life always went wrong.
Except for Patrick, that is. His one shining success.
He rubbed the stubble on his chin and down the front of his neck. Too warm in here. Too close. The office grew smaller, tighter. Shaking off sudden light-headedness, he got to his feet and strode out the office door. If the techs looked up, he didn’t notice. He had to get away.
THIRTY-SIX
Vanessa held the headset tight as she concentrated, replaying the recording for the fifteenth time in a row. There it was. A little bit of static. Same place every time. And definitely part of the original recording.
She marked the time on the recording at 02:11. Two minutes and eleven seconds after Charlie’s final VR scenario began someone had accessed the program. Whoever it was had embedded information into the stream. That code could provide clues they needed to uncover the hostile program’s designers. Vanessa scribbled notes.
She removed the headset, sat back, and stared at the control panel before her. All the rooms were empty; Kenna had left Vanessa alone at AdventureSome an hour ago, saying that she needed to meet with one of Charlie’s friends. Vanessa had opted to stick around a little longer. She had an idea about how to search for a remote-access program but didn’t want to get Kenna’s hopes up.
Vanessa pressed her fingertips hard against her temples for a long moment. Finding the werewolf had been only the first step. Now that they’d located the mythical monster—a mere avatar for a living, breathing, human being—they needed to determine how best to identify that human and confront him.
Vanessa jotted down a few more notes to discuss with Kenna tomorrow. They would figure this out together, of that she had no doubt. They hadn’t known what they were looking for when they’d started this investigation—all Kenna had insisted was that something wasn’t right. Now, it seemed they may have found it.
The remote hack—and, at this point, there was no doubt that that’s what they were dealing with—was a sophisticated incursion. The stream Vanessa listened to over and over was five degrees separated from the original. Each data stream consisted of a half-dozen other streams, each of them dedicated to key ingredients for delivery of high-quality VR. After Kenna left, Vanessa had gone through every one but kept coming back to this one. That little hiccup, two minutes and eleven seconds in, had caught her attention and sent tingles of anticipation up her spine. She scribbled down every bit of information she uncovered and wished Kenna would have stayed after all.
Stewart would be home, though, she thought, and reached for her cell phone. Her excitement at finding a clue to a remote system was too much for her to wait. She had to tell someone.
As she started to dial, however, the tiny instrument rang out a tune Vanessa had programmed to alert her to Adrian’s calls.
“Hello?” she said, hearing the smile in her voice.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said. “It’s Adrian. You busy tonight?”
She stared at the notes she’d written and thought about her phone call to Stewart. “A little,” she said coyly.
“Yeah?” The word came out disappointed. “Okay then, I guess I’ll catch you another time.”
“No, wait,” she said quickly. “Are you back from DC?”
“Hopped off the plane this minute and couldn’t wait to hear your voice.”
“I’m really glad you’re back.” Thinking about the conversation she’d had with Kenna, she decided to be up-front about what she wanted. “Want to meet for drinks? I have so much to talk with you about.”
“I’m kind of wiped tonight.” She could almost picture him shrug. “I was thinking I’d swing by your place. If you’re up for extracurriculars, that is.”
Vanessa bit her lip. He hadn’t outright refused to see her; he’d merely expressed a preference. It was now up to her to decide if she wanted to see him on his terms. Adrian was probably exhausted from traveling. And why not let him see how agreeable she could be. She’d worry about the state of their relationship later. “Sure,” she said. “What time?”
“I’m on the way now. ’Bout a half hour.”
Vanessa looked at the clock. It would take her at least twenty minutes to get there even if she left this minute. And she needed to tidy her apartment, change the sheets. Standing up, she stuffed her notes into her desk drawer. “Sure. I’m on my way home, too.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Werner pulled the brim of a baseball cap down almost to his brow. He wore a dark windbreaker, dark pants, and the look of a man in a hurry as he stepped through the automatic doors of Super V. The biggest and busiest Virtu-Tech franchise in the city, it offered deep discounts on annual memberships, and state-of-the art privacy options.
While there were no hard rules in place prohibiting him from accessing personal programs, as a principal member of Celia’s administration he understood that VR interactions were to be kept to a minimum. Any and all necessary time in a capsule should be limited to interfaces that propelled the company’s initiative or otherwise provided education. Celia’s team was to remain pure-brained, at all costs. She believed that only flawed individuals fell under VR’s spell, and she would not tolerate such weakness in her organization.
None of that mattered to Werner. Not today. He’d followed every rule. Forsaken his own needs in order to further those of his team. It was far past time for
him to encounter something real.
Real.
He might have laughed if it wasn’t so sad.
◊
Werner was seventeen, a high school senior again—wearing threadbare blue jeans and a faded Darth Vader T-shirt. Out of school early that day for teacher institute day or some other bogus reason. Heading home.
No one else was out along this shabby street. Of course not. He didn’t need them to be. He strolled slowly. Every home he passed was precisely as he remembered. The blue cottage with warped siding, its front yard encircled by a rusted chain-link fence. The boarded-up bungalow with crumbling front steps. The A-frame a young couple had painted bright pink and green before they abandoned it. And next door to his own home, was the old Polish lady’s brick three-flat—the only unspoiled structure on the block. It stuck out like a freshly manicured thumb on a coal miner’s sooty hand.
Werner, little Patrick, and their mom occupied the first-floor apartment of a ramshackle two-flat. Owned by an off-site landlord who ignored calls about leaky pipes but generously offered discounts on rent in exchange for “quality time” with their mother, it was the only home Werner had ever known. His father, Patrick’s father, and all the men who had come and gone in between had lived here for a time, too. Mom couldn’t afford to move. Where would they go? Unless she found a man willing to take on an alcoholic with two kids, they were out of luck.
Werner stole a moment before opening the back door to feel the brisk breeze on his face, the weight of the backpack on his shoulders, and a final moment of peace before his world fell apart, again.
He opened the door. “Dad?” he said. “What are you doing here?”
A tall, muscular, red-faced man, Werner Senior bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile. “Is that how you greet your old man, boy?”
Werner’s stomach twisted. His father’s presence here was bad enough. Worse was that he held little Patrick in the crook of one arm and a glass of whiskey in his free hand. Paddy rubbed an eye socket with a chubby fist. One cheek was bright red. He must have just woken up from a nap.