Immaculate Spirit c1-242

by Newbiel

  Starting with the sense of smell he had made some research prior that morning and found out some interesting things. His ability to smell was coming from specialized sensory cells called olfactory sensory neurons situated high inside his nose who were connected directly to the brain. These cells could pick up microscopic molecules released by substances and then translate them into smells in the brain.

  Knowing that, he took only a bit of his power and tried to stimulate that area. After what happened the last time he had worked hard to refine his control over the power that he had in him. He was not that good yet, but he was still miles away from his first try where he had dislocated his shoulder. Stimulating that particular spot he started coughing uncontrollably.

  "Sweetie, are you alright?"Mary asked, concerned.

  Getting his breathing under control he answered.

  "Yes I'm a good mom. I tried to better my sense of smell but it did not seem to work."

  "Oh okay." She answered, relieved.

  Trying a more few times, the result did not change which started to make him doubt himself. He was certain that he was missing something important and chose to change to the sense of touch in the meantime. The sense of touch was the largest sensory organ because it was located at any specific space throughout the entire body.

  Picking up the vase that he had prepared beforehand he tried to stimulate his touch receptors present under the skin of his fingers. Besides getting goosebumps, none of the results that he expected to see happened. Frowning he was sure he was starting to get impatient. Trying something else he touched the object and began to look inside of him. He looked at his touch receptors beneath his skin and the nerves sending information upward. Following the information moving from his finger to his arm and then his neck and finally up into his parietal lobe.

  Nathaniel wanted to hit himself for not thinking about it before. That was what he was missing so far. The parietal lobe was the place that represented the sense of 'self'. It was where all of the senses' information were integrated to form a spatial representation of 'me'. It was so obvious now that he wanted to laugh.

  Taking a bit of his soul power he sent it to his parietal lobe. At that moment time seemed to stop. His five senses were boosted at the same time. His vision became so sharp that he could see a fly hovering outside the window one hundred yards away. He could hear people three floors below arguing about bills and he could smell a peppermint candy in the vest of his mother hanging beside the door. It was a sensation so exhilarating that he started to feel light headed, lost in all of what he was hearing.

  "Nathaniel! You are bleeding!" Karine yelled.

  Detached of all emotion, he touched his nose where blood was flowing abundantly. Touching his own blood he could feel his very cells. It was the pain that brought him back. An excruciating pain came from his head shocking him out of his fascination. Yelling from the pain he cut off the power that he was feeding his parietal lobe, willing himself to stay awake. Focusing the little that he had of his willpower to heal himself.

  His vision was starting to turn black and the only thing in his mind was the yearning to sleep. He knew that if he let that yearning overrule him he would never wake up. Nathaniel was in a critical condition and it was vital to stay awake. He was going to black out at any moment when he felt someone take him in her arms. There was noise around him but he could not focus on them at the moment.

  Feeling the pain finally recede, his vision started to clear. His soul was going at full power to heal the huge damage that his parietal lobe had taken. He could now hear his mothers crying and yelling at him. At one point they had taken him into their arms.

  "I'm here" He said, choking a little.

  "Nathaniel! Are you alright?" Mary cried.

  "No but I'm getting better. Let me be for a moment." He croaked.

  "Of course, rest, we are here, we will not let you go." Karine said, smoothing his hair, her eyes damp.

  He stayed in the embrace of his mothers while his body was busy healing itself, not moving even an inch. He could feel that he had lost a lot of blood and was feeling weak. It was a whole ten minutes later that he finally allowed himself to move and pat his mothers who were keeping him in their arms.

  "I'm better now, what happened?" He asked, his voice still a little weak.

  "You started to bleed from your noise and then from your eyes, mouth and ears! It was terrifying!" Mary shouted.

  "What did you do?" Karine asked sternly. Now that she could see that Nathaniel was fine, she was quite pissed off.

  "I was trying to heighten my senses but it was not working. I tried different things until I realized that all senses were integrating in my parietal lobe. So I kind of used my soul power to boost it." He said sheepishly.

  The words that were pronounced after that are better left unheard but it involved some of Nathaniel's ancestors being farm animals and his IQ being below that of a chair. Knowing that he was in the wrong Nathaniel took the abuse quietly, letting them vent their anger on him. He had been stupid and almost died because of it and had frightened his mothers. He was deserving that and much more.

  It was much later when they finally felt calm enough to stop yelling at him and just give him a hug which he happily returned.

  "I'm sorry moms, it will not happen again, I promise."

  "You better be or we are going to ground you here until you turn 21!" Mary shouted. Nathaniel could see that she was not joking in the slightest.

  "Did it work?" Karine finally asked curiously.

  "For a second yes. I could see a fly outside of the window almost two hundred yards away. I could hear the people living three stories below arguing about shopping bills. I could even smell that peppermint sweet that you had in your navy jacket beside the door." Nathaniel answered.

  "A peppermint sweet? My blue jacket you said?" Karine asked, going to the entreeway and picking it up.

  Bringing it back, she searched inside it and found nothing.

  "There's nothing there sweetie. Maybe it was a hallucination caused from the pain." She said kindly.

  Without saying anything he picked up the jacket and put his hand in the right pocket. Moving the jacket down he finally found what he was looking for. Taking his hand out, he put the candy in the hand of his mother.

  "You have a tiny hole in your right pocket mom." He said simply.

  Looking at the candy in her hand, Karine and Mary exchanged a glance mixed with awe and worry.

  Chapter 90: :

  New York, Lyndon building. 31/10/2012. 09:05.

  Nathaniel was walking into the IT department with a coffee in his hand. The coffee was not for him of course as he hated coffee, but for Lina. He was trying to check on her as often as he could even if it was not easy with his agenda. So far he had learned quite a few things about her, namly that she loved double latte coffee, the same drink that he was bringing her right now.

  He was walking into the open office when he noticed something that he did not like from the corner of his eyes. Changing his trajectory, Nathaniel walked in the direction of the man who upon seeing Nathaniel coming his way closed the game that he was playing.

  "Morgan is it?" Nathaniel said, reading the name tag of the twenty something young man in front of him.

  "Yes sir." He said, preparing himself to get an earful.

  "Do I need to remind you of the company policy about personal games played on work computers?" Nathaniel asked sternly.

  "No sir, I know that it is forbidden. I'm sorry sir, it will not happen again." He said, expecting to be fired at any moment.

  "I know better than to try stopping geeks from playing video games but if you are going to play a game at the risk of losing your job, I urge you to play a more skill related game than a vulgar Call Of Duty. Do we understand each other?"

  "Yes I understand sir. Thank you sir." He finally smiled a little.

  "You are on my radar now Morgan. It depends on you if it's for the good or worse. Now, go back to work."
Nathaniel smiles, tapping him on his shoulder.

  Resuming his walk, he could see a couple of other IT guys and women trying to hide their smile while looking at him. Nathaniel had made a lot of friends in this department with only a couple of words and it made him smile internally. Never underestimate the power of geek people, especially when they had the technical skill to make your life a living hell.

  Entering the office of Lina after knocking, he could see her working on her computer with a headset over her ears. Putting his hand on her shoulder to notify her that he was there, Lina jumped out of her skin.

  "Argh!" She shouted in fright, putting her hand on her heart.

  "Lina, It's me! Just breathe slowly and it will be okay." Nathaniel smiled.

  "You scared me!"

  "You know I knocked on the door but you did not even hear me. What are you listening to by the way? It sounded like hardcore rock."

  "It is hardcore rock, it helps me focus when I'm in a long period of coding." She said, more calm now.

  "Here, this is for you, double latte coffee. Wait, did you work all night?" Nathaniel said, noticing her disheveled hair and her messed up attire.

  "All night? Wait, what time is it?" She asked, a little lost.

  "It's a little after nine AM."

  "I guess I did then. I just found something in the system and was going to call you." Lina said, sitting back in her chair.

  Taking a second chair nearby, Nathaniel took position beside her looking at the screens, curious.

  "Do you remember the leak incident that happened on the 19 july in Seattle?" Lina asked.

  "Yes of course, my mother was the one who handled that case to find out who the culprit was. It turned out it was one of our employees working in our Seattle branch. Why?"

  Nathaniel was quite familiar with the case. The incident happened the day that he came back from NY after filming his movie and his mom was quite pissed off about it so she had talked about it often. It had cost his family company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue and more if the loss of values in stock was taken into consideration.

  "This is the thing, it wasn't our employee that was the culprit. Look at this." Lina said, showing a registry on the two screens.

  Looking at this, Nathaniel did not understand what she was trying to show until something caught his eyes.

  "Wait, what is this?" He said, pointing at one line of code on the screen.

  "You noticed." She said smiling happily. "That is a line of intrusion into the system. It was not one of our employees but someone else who hacked into our system."

  "If we have been hacked, how come it did not appear in our security log? And why did it show that it was our employees login code that had been entered into the system to download that album?" Nathaniel asked, frowning.

  "It's because our logs have been tampered with. The hacking has been hidden from the database and the logging access has been used as a scapegoat. The company that we contracted for our cybersecurity did this Nathaniel. Their security protocols are complete garbage but they hid the cover up extremely well. I almost missed it."

  "Are you sure about this Lina?" Nathaniel asked gravely.

  "Yes, I'm sure. I have all the evidence we need on my computer."

  "Good, copy all the evidence that you have in a flash drive, we are going to my grandfather."

  Picking the flash drive that she had around her neck with a string, she plugged it into her computer and started copying the files on it.

  "Done." She said, putting the flash back around her neck, hiding it behind her pull.

  Looking at her critically, he sighed.

  "We have a problem."

  "What is it?" She asked, starting to get self conscious.

  "Let me put it as delicately as I can. Your clothes are a mess and you are kind of… smelly. My grandfather does not like his employees looking like that and if I take you to see him in your current state, he will not listen to you at all." He said smiling in the hope of taking the edge off of his words.

  Blushing bright red, Lina looked at her clothes and took a whiff. He was right, she was smelly. Working frantically all night did have a secondary effect.

  "I can go home to take a shower and change really fast" She said in a small voice.

  "I think I have a way better idea than that." Nathaniel said with a broad smile, a hint of mischief could be seen in his blue eyes.

  Lina looked at him and even without knowing what he was thinking, she knew she was in trouble.

  Chapter 91: :

  New York, Lyndon building. 31/10/2012. 10:15.

  In the CEO office located on the top floor of the tower, Nathaniel's grandfather, Robert Lyndon was busy signing papers. As the CEO, the thing that he was doing the most was signing paperwork and it was kind of tiring.

  "Don't forget father, we need to be at a meeting downtown at 4PM." Mary said, taking each paper once signed and putting one which wasn't on his desk.

  Making sure paperwork was carried out was not normally Mary's job but the character of her father was legendary by now and she was the only one who could talk back to him and in certain measure, force him to do things. Like the paperwork right now. Before she came along, it was not surprising to have two weeks of backlog because he hated doing paperwork.

  "You know, you are supposed to take work away from me, not add more onto my plate." Robert grumbled coldly.

  Mary did not even dignify that with an answer and kept putting paper on his desk. Near the door, Jean and Amal were watching the show with a hint of amusement in their eyes even if the expression on their face was stoic. They were here to talk about the next trip in terms of security viewpoint but in the meantime were happily waiting for him to finish. Seeing that his daughter did not answer him, he looked at his bodyguards for a second.

  "So, how is the pet project of my annoying grandson going so far?" Robert asked.

  He had tasked Jean to observe how Michael Campbell was doing while Amal was keeping his eyes on the hacker. Even if he respected the opinion of his grandson, he was still young and too trusting with a criminal. Robert did not have that weakness and would not endanger his company for that.

  "So far I'm satisfied with Campbell. He is hard working, serious, competent and very loyal. I was actually going to put him as the personal security detail of your daughter effective next monday." Jean answered first making Mary frown when she heard him speak like she was not even there.

  "His loyalty is not that surprising. My grandson is still inexperienced and too giving but saving that man's family was a sure thing to win him over." Robert nodded.

  Jean did not agree with what his friend just said but he knew better than trying to change his mind. Robert was of the stubborn type and the more you tried to convince him of something, the more he was holding on to his belief. The only thing that Jean could hope for was that Robert finally noticed how extraordinary his grandson was and accepted it.

  "What about the hacker?" He added, looking at Amal.

  "I put a tracker on her work computer like you asked me to and I observe everything that she did. Like you know Nathaniel put her on security protection. She is not the best hacker I have ever seen but she's not that far off either. She has not even been here for two weeks and she already patched a huge number of security breaches. She could very well have saved the company millions in terms of confidential information." Amal answered in his usual deadpan voice.

  Hearing the answer of Amal, Robert knitted his brow while Mary turned to hide her pleased smile. She was not happy when she learned that Nathaniel had recruited two nobodies into the company but now that it seemed he was right, she could not help but be proud of him.

  That's when the door of the office of the CEO opened without warning. Amal and Jean had their gun in their hands in a second when a playful voice was heard.

  "I come in peace gentlemen." Nathaniel said with a big smile on his face.

  Seeing it was him, Amal and Jean put their gun ba
ck to their holster and nodded to him as a welcoming sign. Entering the office, he was followed closely by a cute looking brown haired girl with her head lowered to the floor. Looking disapprovingly at her son, Mary was curious about the cute girl behind him. Her hair was impeccably dressed and she had slight make up on her face which complimented her cute appearance. The thing that was surprising was the fact that she was wearing a beautiful Prada dress and Jimmy Choo heels.

  "Nathaniel can you stop entering my office without even knocking? This is my company, not your backyard." Robert said with an angry voice.

  "Sorry grandpa, no can't do, it's just too fun." He smiles silly, impervious to his grandfather's anger.

  "Who is the girl?" Mary asked, curiously.

  "This is Lina Campbell. She has a gift for us." Nathaniel answered, pushing Lina in front of him.

  Looking at his grandson with piercing eyes, Robert finally sighed and looked at the shy girl in front of him.

  "What do you have for me, Miss Campbell?" Robert asked with a severe expression on his face.

  "Sir, I did… find… euh thing… on computer.." She stuttered in a barely audible voice before Nathaniel put a hand on her shoulder.

  "Lina breath and calm yourself. Try speaking a little louder too, we need to be able to hear you." Nathaniel said encouragingly, smiling at her.

  Seeing her scared eyes and her shy demeanor, Nathaniel knew she could not do it. The severe expression on his grandfather's face was scaring her too much to even talk. Giving her a comforting look, Nathaniel sighed slightly.

  "We will need to work on that." He said, before turning to his grandfather and mother.

  Explaining to them what Lina had found in their system, the two of them got madder the more they listened to what Nathaniel was saying.

  "I presume that they did it because they get a bonus if there are no intrusions into our system each year." Nathaniel finished talking.

  "Close enough, their contract says that if an intrusion is detected, they will get a penalty of fifty thousand dollars. On a four hundred thousand dollar contract a year, it's not that much but I take it they did not want people to know that their security was garbage." His mother said coldly. As the one who had handled the case and fired the employee in question, she was the angriest here.