“I don’t know. Maybe the phantom is hiding in the machine code, trolling along the lower levels of the Internet like some big-arsed shark cruising around the ocean. But when it breaks surface, that’s where it’s leaving the crushed remains of the code. Maybe if we analyze the pattern of code fragment sites, we can find the source, track its location.”
“This is nuts,” Sam said. “Let’s at least wait until Vienna gets in. She and Kiwi can help me cover your backside while you go do your bait-dangling thing.”
“I’m not going to let this trail get cold.”
“Dodge, I’m serious. It’s not just the Internet firewalls the phantom is breaking through; it’s getting through neuro-firewalls as well. Into your brain!”
Dodge shook his head, concentrating on his center screen.
“No way. I’m getting out of here,” Sam said, reaching for his headset. “Seriously, the phantom probably knows what we’re thinking right now. It knows we’re after it and—”
A million bolts of lightning flashed behind his eyes. A searing pain ripped at his temples. A spasm of pain pulsed through his arms, which jerked wildly, flicking the headset from his scalp. It clattered onto the floor by his chair.
“Get your headset off, now!” Sam shrieked, turning to Dodge.
Dodge’s eyes were white, turned upward in his skull. His hands were claws, gripping the arms of his chair, and the tendons in his neck strained as his head thrust backward. His mouth opened in a cruel, demonic grin, and he began to scream.
WISDOM
28 | TYLER
Cuthbertson, the watch officer, met Tyler at the door. “It’s a full team scramble.”
“What’s the alert?” Tyler asked.
“Something going on in the main control center,” Cuthbertson said.
Tyler strapped on his weapons kit and crossed to the operations computer.
“ ‘Arthur Philip Dodgerson and Sam Robert Wilson,’ ” he read off the screen. “Dodge and Sam. No way. I’ve known Dodge for years.”
“I don’t know what they’ve been up to,” Cuthbertson said, “but Jaggard wants us to bring them in, and to do it now.”
“Okay. Where is the team?” Tyler asked.
“Already assembling in the Go Room.”
“Good. Let’s take these guys down now and worry about what they’ve been up to later. Lock down their keycards so they can’t get out.”
Tyler picked his neuro-headset up off his desk and pulled it firmly down over his head, squashing his hair.
This doesn’t make any sense, he thought. He plugged his neuro-headset into the waistband receptor unit and switched it on, immediately immersing himself in the flurry of questions and messages flying back and forth from his team.
“This is Tyler,” he communicated. “I want a team of four. Sergeant Hutchens, you pick three others. We go in two minutes.”
There were confirmations from the team.
Surely not Dodge? The other kid is new and maybe hiding something, but not Dodge. No way.
There seemed to be something wrong with the headset, and he repositioned it slightly on his head. There was a buzzing, low and annoying, inside his head, as if a blowfly had flitted in one ear and was trying to find a way out.
He checked the connection at the receptor unit, but it was firm. The buzzing continued, a tickling at the base of his brain. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and after a moment it faded.
He checked the position of his headset again and retrieved his sidearm from the equipment locker.
What had he been thinking about?
Dodge and Sam, of course. Sam had looked shifty from the start, he remembered. And several times he had caught him accessing unauthorized information.
Why hadn’t he remembered that before? The memory was vivid, with the clarity and focus of a dream you had just woken up from.
And Dodge. He had always had his suspicions about Dodge, with his bald head and tattoos. He was too anti-authority. He could not be trusted.
Tyler checked his weapon and headed for the Go Room.
29 | JAGGARD
John Jaggard stared at the alert message on the screen in front of him. A seize-and-detain notice for Dodge and Sam. What was that about?
According to the screen, he was the one who had given the order. But he hadn’t. Unless he was going mad. It had been a mad kind of an afternoon, but he’d know if he had given an order like that!
He’d
According to the notes on the action command, Dodge and Sam were implicated in the attack on Swamp Witch. But they hadn’t been involved as far as he knew.
He would have remembered something like that too.
The terrorists were back. That was the only solution that made sense. They were back, and they were using the system, his system, to issue fake orders.
A flashing alert on his computer screen warned him of an incoming message. Urgent. A neuro- communication. He grappled with the headset, still not used to the technology.
He plugged it in and waited for the message.
And then he remembered everything.
30 | ESCAPE
Sam launched himself off his chair, his arm stretched out in front of him. His fingertips caught the thick black cable that extended from the base of Dodge’s skull, wrenching it sideways.
Dodge’s head snapped to the side. The screaming became a strangulated gurgle as his windpipe choked. There was a cracking sound from the plug in the receptor unit, and the casing fractured, pulling it from the receptor socket.
The horrible strangled screaming sound stopped.
Sam hit the ground at an angle, and there was a crack from his shoulder and a twist of pain that ran from his neck to his rib cage.
Dodge’s head snapped back, then lolled forward onto his chest.
Sam got back to his feet, ignoring the pain that shot through his body, and lifted Dodge’s head with his hand.
“Dodge!” he shouted.
Dodge’s eyes moved toward Sam, but he said nothing.
His eyes were dull but not vacant like Swamp Witch’s had been.
That was a good thing, wasn’t it?
