The Recluse

by D A Rice

  “Religious now?” Damion’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief.

  “Not religious, really, it’s more than that. It’s a living thing. This light, this peace, it’s a living, breathing thing.” Rei paused and glanced down, “I can’t really explain it.” How could she? Eli had talked about faith so passionately, so poetically, but Rei found she had no words for what had happened to her. The change and the confidence that Eli brought with him into her life was indescribable. She had no words to convince Damion that what she needed now had changed from what she thought she needed before. Damion wondered how Rei could trust this man she had just met; but Rei couldn’t tell him.

  Her phone buzzed in an oddly familiar way and she knew it was a message from Eli. She glanced over at it, scooping it up from the couch. Damion followed her gaze down from over her shoulder.

  You’re about to have inconveniently-timed company.

  Time for a walk?

  Damion’s phone buzzed next. His eyes widened in incredulous surprise as he pulled it out of his pocket. Narrowing his eyes at what he read there, he slid the phone back into his pocket before Rei could see. She could only assume it was also a message from Eli. Had he just given himself away to help them? Damion met her gaze and nodded towards the door. She nodded back, and he strode quietly to it. Opening the door a crack, he peeked outside, his back to the wall beside it.

  He cursed, “it’s that cop from the cafe, Detective Jackson. And he’s not alone. Looks like hacker boy gave us just enough time to evade them. We can get around the corner before they get here and pretend like you were never home. I have a feeling Eli knows something that we don’t.” He reached out his hand for hers without looking back.

  Why would Eli warn them to run after telling her to give the device she had to Montoya? What had changed to make him take it instead? She wasn’t sure, but she trusted Eli enough to take Damion’s hand when he offered it. She trusted Damion too, but she had this feeling that there was something Damion wasn’t telling her. With all the secrets she’d kept, she couldn’t bring herself to ask him his. It didn’t stop her from wondering how much she could truly trust him, however, and that was disconcerting.

  Damion smirked as his fingers closed around hers, then pulled her after him out into the hall before they could be seen.

  …

  “She’s made progress,” Dr. Heek’s voice penetrated Nikki’s head as he tapped her journal next to him. She’d written in it, just as he’d asked. What she wrote she had no idea, her mind had erased it after she was done.

  Slender fingers lifted the cover of the book smoothly as someone grunted in response. The temperature in the room was that of a freezer, but Nikki didn’t really notice, and neither, it seemed, did the two men in her room. “She’s properly vegetated, so at least there’s that,” another voice said in a soft detachment. “It would seem that you’ve been able to inject her IV with ample amount of the Titus drug.” The room was darker with him there, it was one of the few things Nikki could register of her surroundings. “It’s a pity you couldn’t accomplish this before now, but I’ll take what I can get. Do you know who this girl is, Lars?”

  Dr. Heek had sweat dripping off his brow. He looks terrified, Nikki thought, then deleted from her mind. The other man’s voice, that was the one she needed. Without that, she was nothing more than a body without a soul. Hearing his voice now was like a balm.

  “It looks like her body is responding to the medications the same way Rei would have,” Dr. Heek almost stuttered. Medications? Is that why she felt so numb?

  “I asked,” the voice said in a cool, clipped voice, “if you knew who this child was, Lars.”

  “I don’t.” Dr. Heek replied after a pause.

  Then there was a gurgling noise, as if someone was being choked. In another moment, Dr. Heek was taking in deep breaths, coughing and wheezing with the intake of air. “This girl,” the other man continued, calmly, as if he hadn’t even flinched, “will be someone very important to you. I suggest you get to know her well, Lars.”

  “Important?” Dr. Heek choked out.

  “Indeed. It will be through her that you’ll redeem yourself. If you can properly utilize her to get to Rei, that is. Find out how much of a dosage the girl will need, then report back to me. You have your task.”

  And then the voice was gone again, leaving Nikki to her own tormented mind.

  …

  Damion had his proof.

  Eli had sent a message to his phone in a way he never should have been able to. As with all his technology, Damion had programmed the firewalls and uploaded them, himself. There was no way Eli should’ve been able to get anything past them unless he was exceptionally skilled. Eli had to have had some form of technology on him, something that was running a program in the background as they spoke. This program would’ve found a way into Damion’s phone, downloading something into it. Damion clearly had a security breach he now needed to fix.

  There was no way Eli was’t the Recluse, but his little pranks were about to come to an end. Damion had Eli’s face. All he had to do now was run it through every government database he had access to, to find a match. Eli was good now, but there was no way he’d learned to stay hidden so well without experience. Damion could find him. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  But only if he could get out of Rei’s building before the police caught up to him. How inconvenient their timing was. With Eli’s implied connection to Rei that Damion had orchestrated, he had expected them to persist--just not while he was around. Especially now.

  Damion couldn’t risk getting caught with her when Eli had a good idea who he was. The message Eli had sent was a game-changer. Now it would be a battle of skill to see who got ahead of the other first. Eli had the upper hand right now. Even just a whisper that Damion could be connected to Arachnid would cause the FBI to turn in his direction in a way he didn’t want.

  Damion cursed silently again as they walked quickly out a back door of the building. It seemed they’d exited the apartment in just enough time. Neither one of them looked back as they left via an emergency exit. The alarm was conveniently disarmed. Eli? Damion’s eyes narrowed.

  Rei didn’t say a word as they walked. Damion circled around to the side of the building where his car was parked, and crouched low, peeking around the corner. Rei crouched behind him. He glanced at her and nodded. “Looks like they’re inside; let’s go.” She nodded, and they walked quickly towards the apartment building’s personal parking garage without another word.

  Once inside his car, Damion turned the key and took off, his mind racing.

  “Damion?” Rei asked, breaking the silence that had fallen around them. He grunted in acknowledgement. “He sent you a message, didn’t he?”

  Damion glanced at her and shrugged, his eyes trailing his rear-view mirror. “Nothing different than the one he sent you. Apparently, he knows I’m not as stupid as I look.” He would never tell her what the message actually said. Cryptic as it was, he knew a challenge when he saw one; everything about Eli was one.

  He rounded the corner, pulling into a parking garage across the street. Damion parked on the third story so that the car was facing Rei’s building. They both got out and Damion leaned over the railing in front of him, his eyes squinting as they watched from a safe distance away. Rei settled next to him, sitting against the hood of Damion’s car.

  “We’ll watch your building from here. Once they leave you should call your dad and see if he can call them off you,” Damion muttered in resignation. He knew the device he’d planted in Rei’s apartment was no longer working. He had to assume Eli’d taken it at some point before Damion had entered the scene. What would he do with it?

  Rei was watching him, but she nodded, “yeah…” She shifted uncomfortably, “why are you helping him now?”

  Damion shrugged, he couldn’t tell her the real reason, so he settled with, “meeting him kind of grounded me. He just seems like a normal dude, but I still don’t trust
him. Honestly, Rei? I don’t know what to do or think, but I definitely don’t want you taking the fall for him.” He twirled his phone in his hand, studying it, “but you clearly have a thing going with him.” He met her gaze again, schooling it into an almost defeated look. “I told you I would trust you, so I will.”

  It was the best he could tell her for now. Knowing for sure that Eli was the Recluse put the game in a whole new gear. He needed to take the other hacker down, to get him away from Rei. And he needed to do it without the spotlight falling on himself, or back on Arachnid. He would do whatever was necessary to take Eli down. If that meant convincing Rei to tell the police about Eli and risking himself, he would find a way through it as he always did. Only time would tell how all of this would play out.

  Rei’s own face relaxed as a shy smile broke out, “thank you, Damion.”

  Damion nodded, his eyes flicking down to his phone and the picture he’d taken at breakfast. He knew he still had it; had Eli even noticed?

  Eli was brilliant, able to take advantage of any given situation. He’d already proven this. Damion had no doubt that the other hacker was poised over the keyboard, waiting to take him out. Was he looking for some way to make Damion pay the moment he crossed him? Why else would he all but announce his identity only hours after denying it so profoundly?

  Once he had a positive identification on who Eli was, Damion could hit two birds with one stone. It would be child’s play to link his two identities together. He didn’t once believe that Eli was telling the truth about who he was. Something deeper drove the other hacker. Damion would find out what.

  It was clear now that Eli was the only one who could stand in the way of Arachnid’s massive technological takedown. This takedown was something Fenris was on Arachnid to accomplish as quickly and smoothly as possible. But it wasn’t easy, even before the Recluse had made his move. Arachnid had to do it in a way that caused chaos within the government as a whole. They needed to build up enough resources to attack every government agency at once.

  Arachnid was close to its goal, and Damion had no doubt that Eli knew it. Damion had to bring the Recluse to his knees and he would use any means possible, even if that meant using his best friend. Fenris wanted everything Damion could get on the hacker. So Damion would trace Eli to his hideout, find out everything he was hiding, and snare him into a web he couldn’t escape from. Damion glanced at his phone again, his grip tightening.

  Even though the message was no longer there, it was carved into his memory: The itsy bitsy spider came out to play, but the big bad wolf chased him away. Run, spider, run. Live another day. It was meant to mess with his head, and part of him knew that Eli was right about the Wolf being dangerous. It only fueled Damion’s determination to take him down as the Recluse. Why else would Eli warn him about a man he probably knew was Damion’s boss? Certainly not because he cared.

  There was only one explanation that fit, and Damion would teach the Recluse not to underestimate one of the eight.

  17

  Titus.

  It was a drug that was created to stimulate the mind, but the scientists of the Genesis Project failed. Titus had done the opposite. The drug created a pseudo-comatose state in people that made them easy to control, especially for someone like Fenris. Deeming it too dangerous for a human brain, the FDA ordered its immediate disposal. Fenris had stolen the drug’s formula from under their noses. Using Arachnid to plant a mole in the lab itself, he had his group watch the Genesis Project, seeing its potential, especially for him.

  The Wolf had the ability to get inside a person’s head. Most people never even noticed that he was there, manipulating them in soft nudges wherever he wanted them to go. Titus was a drug that Fenris planned to use for those who did. The drug numbed the mind, giving the Wolf easy access. Fenris could be a wrecking ball on a person’s mind. Dr. Heek had seen it firsthand. Fenris brought to him many of his subjects, those he tested his skills on, with or without the Titus drug. Sometimes he came in gently, other times he ripped a person’s mind apart.

  Now the Genesis project had all but disappeared, not just from Alpine Labs, but from Arachnid’s own systems Whoever planted that virus into their software did so right in front of their eyes.

  Fenris was livid, but they still had the drug. Using it as a template, a new formula could be created, but it would take time the group was short on. So the Fenris only authorized sparing use of the drug. Its effects had already worn off with Rei; how long would they take to wear off with Nicole?

  Nikki was far more vulnerable to Titus as well as the Wolf, himself. Fenris expected the drug to take less dosage with less frequency. If it did wear off, Fenris already held a part of Nicole’s mind for his own. Having touched it with his cold, cruel presence, Nicole would do whatever he wanted with or without the drug. All he had to do was ask.

  So why, Lars Heek wondered, did the Wolf want Nikki to have this drug, if he didn’t need it to control her? Was it really all for Rei? Fenris had experimented with the dosages often and frequently, giving them to Heek to distribute.

  It all pointed to Fenris’s need to break Rei’s mind down no matter the cost. If he could capture a mind as easily as he had with Nicole, what about Rei made it so much harder for him? Rei was so very alive. Even buried underneath all her issues and Heek’s deceit, she’d known the drugs were bad for her. But how?

  The doctor looked down at the syringe in his shaking hand, then over at the girl with her vacant stare. Nikki never moved when he came in and she was never surprised to see him.

  The girl’s parents, out of the room at the moment, were a constant. Today, Heek had suggested they take a sabbatical for lunch. He told them that being here twenty-four hours a day would only drive themselves to the brink of exhaustion. They needed rest, he told them. Taking the syringe in a firmer grip, Lars pulled Nikki’s IV lead over to him and slid the needle into one of its openings. He hated lying.

  Dr. Heek didn’t want to be doing this. He had no idea which version of the drug he was giving her. Fenris had never said whether this was the one he’d used with Rei, or the one he was working to create now. He’d only said this drug was not to be entered into any computer. No reference of it was to even be hinted at in her medical file. Lars had hesitantly agreed because even he knew that what they were doing to Nikki was illegal. Fenris was using her like a lab rat to perfect this second generation of Titus.

  Lars Heek was a coward. He knew this, but he feared Fenris more than he did his own conscience. He pulled the syringe free and glanced over at Nicole to find her blank eyes on him and he shivered with what he saw there. Fenris would always be watching. Tossing the needle into the hazard basket, Dr Heek nodded to Nicole and pasted a fake smile on his face.

  “Hello Nikki! Have you been writing?” He shifted his attention to her bedside table and she blinked slowly as the drug he put in her IV took over. Heeks’ fingers grazed the journal he’d placed there. The journal was more a prop than anything else, but as he flipped it open out of curiosity, he snatched it up in an instant.

  Maybe the drug was not working as well as they thought. Some part of this girl’s mind was cognizant, just as Rei’s had been. He needed to make sure he took this journal with him, lest Fenris peek inside. If he did, it would be Lars who’d suffer the consequences. The doctor slid the journal into his coat as he glanced nervously back at Nicole, who’d found his eyes again. He smiled at her and backed out of the room, hoping he’d caught the journal before anyone else could read it. He’d have to show Fenris eventually, but at the moment, Lars was more determined to keep the journal safe.

  For written within the pages over and over again were only two words: Help me.

  …

  Eli leaned back against the wall in his darkened apartment. There was only one window in the living room where he sat. It was the one that led to the makeshift zipline on the small balcony. The sun was still shining, but not enough to hit Eli where he was. The soft blue glow of the tablet in his la
p hit his thoughtful face as he stared, without seeing, out into the waning daylight. He knew that no matter what message he sent to Rei’s friend, his time was limited. His next play had been obvious. It was coming time to reveal himself.

  Damion didn’t know it, but Eli could have erased the photo Damion had taken while Eli was inside his phone remotely. All Eli would have to do was modify one of his existing programs: the Black Widow. The program virtually ate other programs, corrupting them. He already knew Arachnid’s network, how they worked. Using the program, modified to eat its way through Damion’s phone, would’ve been easy. It was a dangerous bit of programming to have inside one’s firewall.

  Eli had many programs he could use. Which ones he sent out depended on what he needed. The Black Widow was his most ingenious, and his most versatile. Sometimes he used it as a malware virus. Other times it was more like an antivirus that attacked specific programs. Eli also had a version that served as a little centurion for his firewall. That one corrupted any programming that bounced off the wall before it could get back to its programmer. The main purpose of the virus never changed; it ate and corrupted everything that Eli coded it for. He just had multiple versions of the same thing.

  Eli had intentionally made his identity known to Damion, however. He was counting on the other hacker to find him in the FBI database using the program Eli created. He could’ve destroyed the program, but it wasn’t time for that yet, even if that time was coming. Eli was coming back to life, but he would never be B3oW0lf again. That season had passed. So he’d left the photo in Damion’s phone for the hacker to find out on his own who he was.