* * * *
Clay woke in his own bed, his left shoulder and right upper arm professionally bandaged. Dolores, fully dressed, slept on the covers next to him, her hand resting on his chest. He put his hand on hers and she woke with a start.
“How are you feeling?” She sat up.
“I'm fine, what about you and everyone else?” Looking at his bandages he added. “How did I get here?”
“Do you need anything? Are you hungry or thirsty? Joshua left medicine on the table” She nearly babbled as she ran to the night stand for a prescription bottle. “Joshua said that these are for pain. You've been moaning in your sleep... he said it was a good sign, but I still didn't like it.” Clay swallowed the pills with the help of a glass of water.
“What's all the commotion?” Alec and Jodi poked their heads in the door. “Are you feeling all right? You sure gave us a scare.”
“I'm OK, maybe a little tired and sore. I remember getting in the car but not much else.” Clay said. “I take it you got us home without much problem?”
“The car might have a couple of dents.” Alec replied. Clay gave him a pained look as they sat on the edge of his bed.
“Alec, how come you didn't tell me about that secret lab of yours?” Clay asked after a few moments.
“That’s where I’ve been working on the other inventions I told you about. I was worried we might not be able to keep control of GraviTych once it became successful.” Alec replied.
“As it turned out, we weren’t successful… and we still couldn’t keep control of GraviTych.” Clay sadly shook his head. “Now what's the plan? Where's Joshua?”
“He bandaged you up and left the medicine. He’s arranging our transportation. We're packed and ready to go. Just waiting for you.” said Jodi.
“What about Taylor and Rusty?” Taylor was the McCoughe's Golden Retriever while Rusty was the Matteson's cat.
“We’ve got Rusty in his cage. It took us over an hour to round up that darn cat” Jodi said.
“One more question.” Clay asked Alec. “What's with all those computers, and why did you take that broken down hard drive?”
Alec chuckled. “Decoys... all those servers are just decoys; my real work was being done on that broken down computer. I figured if anyone ever got in the lab, they'd never look at that piece of junk. Anyway, that was best broken down piece of junk computer in the building.”
“There had to be something on the other computers.” Clay wondered out loud.
“Everything on those machines is fully encrypted and I left a ton of clues. They should have it all decrypted in about 2 or 3 months.” Alec said with a grin.
“Why would you want them to decrypt it? What's on them?”
“Anime” Alec responded.
“Anime? What?” Dolores asked.
“Japanese cartoons.” Jodi laughed. “You left them Japanese cartoons to decipher?”
“Hundreds.” Alec couldn’t hold back his laughter while Clay and Dolores joined him.
“Also, once I removed the hard drive and turned that computer back on, it released a program that will clean up any remnants of my activity anywhere on our network.” Alec added with a touch of sadness. GraviTych was no longer theirs.
Chapter 14 ~ Company Zero
Alec's Dream Page 29