into a horror story, I came back to my system to find Rob waiting for me.
“He knew I’d been using his programs, and he had more to offer.” Caitlin shook her head. “It sounded so cool — getting together some kids who could be trusted, dropping trapdoors by day, coming back in disguise by night…I even helped recruit the guys. Gerry I just asked. With Luc and Serge, I planted trapdoors in their computers. They thought it was funny. So did I, at first.”
“Then it began to change?”
She nodded. “Rob had all these virtual tools, stuff you couldn’t buy. Incredible proxies. Sneaky ways into all kinds of systems. That program to make people feel a virtual punch. But he had chores for us, too. Places we had to go and drop trapdoors. At first it was easy — we could take care of our assignments at virtual parties. But he kept getting more and more demanding. He’d been on our case about McArdle for a couple of weeks.”
“What about the baseball game?”
“That was Gerry’s idea. He was getting a little antsy about being ordered around by a guy he considered a pipsqueak.”
“The Savage always hated baseball. He thought it would be a hoot to disrupt a major-league game. Rob went along to keep Gerry cooperative, even though it took a lot of special programming.” She looked even sadder. “Sometimes I think it was the Savage’s way of yelling for help — a very public commotion to get people’s attention. After that, though, things really began coming apart. Shooting those people — it upset me. But it just made the guys worse. And…well, you know the rest.”
“I said I’d try to help you,” he said slowly. “But it’s not like I have a program all set for activation. We’re going to have to see how this plays out. You’d better be careful.”
Caitlin looked a little disappointed that he didn’t have a quick fix, but finally she nodded. “I’m just glad that there’s somebody I can talk to about all this.” Her voice grew sharp. “And you’d better be careful, too. I haven’t heard from Rob since he sent me into your system. I’ve got no idea what he intends to do about you.”
“That’s a nice thought,” Matt muttered. Then he said, “Go on home. If I come up with anything, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Smiling gratefully, Cat Corrigan headed back to her car.
Matt waved, but he wasn’t smiling as he watched the classic sports car recede into the distance. If Cat had talked about Rob Falk earlier, maybe Gerald Savage would be alive now.
Somberly, Matt walked back to his house. His mother smiled when he came in. “Is that the reason you decided not to go to your meeting? She seems like a nice girl. I don’t think I’ve met her before.”
Matt could feel his face turning red. He wanted to say, “She’s a Senator’s daughter in a lot of trouble and she’s only using me because she thinks I might be able to help her.”
Instead he shrugged and said, “She’s just a girl from school.”
His mom nodded. “Yeah. And I can remember when your father was just a boy from school.”
Matt had nothing to say to that, so he just retreated to his room. He sat in his computer-link chair, but he still didn’t want to enter his veeyar.
If Matt tried to go on-line and find out more about Rob Falk, it might warn the boy that he was on to him. But there was
Matt finally snapped his fingers. He had a bunch of stuff downloaded from school last year, just compressed and left in memory until he sorted through or erased it.
He ordered the computer to set up a holo-screen, and began bursting out documents. Here was the school’s virtual yearbook. Even though Rob Falk had left before the end of the year, his face was in the class pictures — they were shot early in the year. Matt silently shook his head as he zoomed in. Rob had obviously forgotten about picture day. He seemed to be a worse mess than Matt even remembered. His hair was all over the place, and there was a stain on the collar of his shirt.
Matt banished the image. It made Rob look like a clown, when he knew the guy was a cold-blooded murderer. He turned to another file. Here was the school newspaper. Sometimes Matt ran through it, but even if he didn’t, his school terminal was ordered to download, compress, and store the
Wait a minute! That was where Matt remembered Rob Falk’s name. Something in the paper….
Matt ordered his computer to burst out the newspaper files and scan them for Rob’s name. It took several long minutes, but the computer was still faster than Matt would have been.
An image formed on the holo-screen. It was a story about a memorial service for Marian Falk, Rob’s mother. She’d been crossing the street when she became the victim of a hit-and-run driver.
Matt had often read about people’s blood running cold. But this was the first time he’d actually felt the sensation. Police had caught up with the driver, who’d turned out to be a Middle-European diplomat, driving drunk. The man hadn’t been brought up on charges, however, because he’d claimed diplomatic immunity. He’d even run back to his home country, escaping scot-free.
That’s right, Matt remembered. Rob Falk’s father had been with the government, in the Customs Service. Ironically, his job had been to work with foreign diplomats about trade shipments entering and leaving the country.
There were no more references to Rob Falk in the newspaper, and Matt knew why. Mr. Falk had not done well in his job after the accident. Things must not have been too pleasant at home, either. Rob’s classwork had begun to suffer. David Gray had known the guy — he’d said that Rob had begun to lose himself in his computer. In the end, Mr. Falk had lost his job and Rob had lost his Bradford scholarship.
Matt turned off his computer. A kid who’d retreated into his computer, who had good reasons to hate diplomats. Now he’d come back out, recruited a bunch of diplo-brats to commit illegal acts…and maybe had run one of them down, just as his mother had been run down.
From the moment Matt had promised to help Cat Corrigan, he’d known there was only one way out. Oh, sure, turning Cat and her diplo-brat friends over to the proper authorities might officially rate as “help.” But that wasn’t what she’d asked for. No, Matt couldn’t bring himself to rat her out to Captain Winters. But he could catch her alone tomorrow and convince her to go to Net Force with the whole story. She and her friends would probably get off lightly, and Rob Falk might get some help.
The next day at school, Matt caught up with David Gray before they went in for Prep period. “You in touch with Rob Falk anymore?” he asked.
David looked at him, his eyebrows rising. “There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. No, I haven’t heard from him since he crashed and burned.”
Matt winced, and David looked embarrassed. “Guess that’s not the best way to put it, considering what happened to his mom and all,” David said.
“Do you think any of your friends might still be in touch with him?” Matt asked.
David shrugged. “Let’s go and find out.”
Matt knew a bit about computers, but David was really serious about them. And some of his pals could only be described as ultra-nerds. He led the way to a knot of sloppily dressed guys who seemed to be arguing in another language. It was something about computer logic, but Matt was lucky if he understood one word in five.
“Anybody been hearing from Rob Falk?” David asked.
The nerds stared at him as if he’d just beamed in from another planet.
“Falk,” David went on. “Used to go here last year. I think he was in the programming club.”
“Right, right,” one of the future scientists said. His hair was a wild mass of carrot-colored curls. “Couldn’t keep up anymore. Had to leave.”
“Family emergency,” a plump guy said.
Carrot Top gave him a lofty “as if that would mean anything” look. Then he pulled himself back to the real — boring — world. “I haven’t heard from him, neither voice nor e-mail.”
David looked around at the others, who shrugged.
