The Demon Maelstrom, Excerpt #4

Dear Readers,

Here is the fourth excerpt from The Demon Maelstrom, the second book in the SubVersion Trilogy. I hope you enjoy, and I hope it keeps you guessing! Stay tuned for more news and content about the book, and as always, Let There Be Life!

Excerpt #4

“I'm here,” Sam admitted, “to talk about one person in particular who happens to interest me greatly. Someone who has been needing thorough investigation for months now.”

Farkas shot him a despairing look. “Is that person the next in line to the Secretary's desk, perchance? Is it a woman? Is she the one redesigning our entire computer and database system here at Central Admin? And is her name Annalise McLean? Because if the person you're talking about bears any resemblance to that woman then I can assure you that I am not interested.”

Color flushed into Sam's face and he moved to the edge of the seat in his anger. “How could you not be interested?”

“It's easy, Sam,” Farkas shot back. “You have absolutely nothing on her. I have nothing on her. She is as clean as a whistle, and I am not interested. You've had seven months and you've failed to change my mind.”

Sam dropped his briefcase next to the chair and slammed a fist onto the armrest, causing the metal to vibrate dully. With an oath he verbally tore into the other man. “Her commex stayed in her house in exactly the same place for eighteen hours! And after she came back to Central Admin was when everything began to fall apart! And speaking of falling apart, she fell apart when I- when Captain James died, and now on top of everything else she's pregnant! There's a pattern here, I tell you, and nobody else is concerned about it!”

Farkas jumped to his feet and propped himself over the desk, his burning eyes fixed in a glare on Sam's face. “She's clean, Sam! She's clean, cleaner than anyone I've ever known! Jim Jarvis in IT has scanned her personal office computer and found nothing, three separate times! We've followed her movements throughout Central Admin and they represent nothing erratic! We've run trace after trace on the wedge file data dump that Vérité pulled on you and Jim, and the only thing we've been able to find is that it ends in the UK, nothing else. Miss McLean is either completely innocent of any attachment to Vérité or she is one of the best hackers on the planet.” He glowered at his old boss. “In short, if she is Vérité then she's a ghost.”

 Sam stared back incredulously. “And you've done nothing else? Like have her followed to her home?”

Farkas groaned and sat back down. “Don't start on this again.”

“Answer my question!” Sam insisted. “You didn't have her followed? Why in the world not?”

“Because I was not authorized to do so,” Farkas replied wearily. “As a matter of fact, I was told to avoid doing so at all costs.”

 

The Demon Maelstrom, Excerpt #3

Dear Readers,

Here is the third excerpt from The Demon Maelstrom, the second book in the SubVersion Trilogy. I hope you enjoy, and I hope it keeps you guessing! Stay tuned for more news and content about the book, and as always, Let There Be Life!

EXCERPT #3

Her hands fell from her face and she glanced out the window again. It must be almost three o'clock, she thought. She checked her watch and confirmed the time as two forty-five. Her expression softened as she stared off through the falling snow to the west, trying to divine what lay beyond the city, beyond the beltway, inside a house miles away in the middle of a snow-covered field. Three o'clock was the prescribed time for a meeting more important than anything she was doing at Central Admin today.

She was startled from her reverie by Bridgit, who somehow had materialized right next to her without her noticing. Bridgit stood staring down at Anna's large belly with a serious look on her face, her manner uncharacteristically hesitant and quiet. She had only been part of Anna's coding team for a week but had already demonstrated an extraordinary aptitude for her work; she had also shown a penetrating mind that picked apart every bit of their project with a fervor that disturbed Anna to no end. If Anna was worried about any of her team discovering her secret, she was worried about Bridgit.

The younger woman stood wordlessly for a full minute, glancing out the window in the same direction as Anna before licking her lips and clearing her throat to speak. “I've got two questions before you get all gussied up for your party downstairs. If you have the time, that is.”

Anna nodded, her stomach clenching with a vague dread but her face betraying nothing. “I have a couple minutes. Go ahead.”

Bridgit's cocky grin half-appeared, but without its usual gusto. She scratched her chin nervously, the tattooed snake that encircled her wrist flexing with the movement. “I'm concerned about the new module code. I didn't want to say anything in front of Jeremy, but I think he's hit on something. A generic operating system process shouldn't be conflicting with the security software the way it has been.”

I was right, she is sharp, Anna thought uncomfortably. She put on a thoughtful face and regarded Bridgit with a cocked head. “Probably not. This module has been rewritten several times now, though. Did you think to check for any conflicting code from the previous version?”

Bridgit gave her a strange look, somewhere between respectful disagreement and incredulity. “That was the first thing I checked, before you even got here this morning. There was only new code. The conflict is occurring right where the module turns on. You get like two commands in and it just dies.” She narrowed her eyes at Anna. “Jeremy told me once that you sometimes set him up to look like the fool with some sort of 'lesson' in the code for him to pick apart. As fun as it is to do stuff like that to him, please tell me that's not what you were doing here.”

Partial relief washed over Anna and she gave a little smile. Jeremy must have been lying to gain sympathy, but it worked to Anna's advantage. She put a hand on Bridgit's arm. “No, I wasn't trying to test anyone, except maybe my own patience. I'll bring it home with me tonight and try to fix it, I'm sure it was just a stupid mistake on my part.”

Bridgit raised an eyebrow at her, not looking entirely convinced. “But you don't make mistakes.”

“I try not to,” Anna replied, growing wary again. “But statistically we're all bound to at some point.”

Shrugging, Bridgit appeared resigned to the answer. However, she still didn't turn to the door, only stood there with the same hesitant attitude. Anna frowned at her.

“You said you had two questions?” she inquired.

“I did, yes.” Bridgit's gaze moved back down to Anna's stomach. “You're . . . pregnant, right?”

The SubVersion Complex, Chapter Fifteen (Revised)

Continuing the march of revised chapters, this one has been more rearranged than rewritten, with hopefully a better end result and a better fit with the story as a whole. It is by far my favorite scene of the entire book so far, and one that made me cry when I wrote it.

Also, a tidbit: Sonya is the Russian-derived nickname for the feminine name "Sophia", which comes from Greek and means "wisdom". I'll let you draw your own conclusions . . .

Here is the new Chapter 15 of The SubVersion Complex. This book is intended for a more mature audience, so be advised.

╗ FIFTEEN ╚

SONYA

It took much longer than a couple hours for the brain scan to complete. Anna and the doctor worked on everything else they could think of in the meantime waiting for it, but it seemed like it would never finish. The doctor's optimism didn't appear to wane much under the pressure of waiting, but his energy levels definitely did. He was moving quite a bit slower by the time four o'clock rolled around and he found himself continuously yawning. Anna on the other hand grew more and more tense as the hours passed, consumed with thoughts of Daniel and his hacker buddies and the code slicer in the bag silently but persistently chipping away at the encrypted files.

At four fifty-five the doctor yawned one last time and grabbed his coat from a nearby workbench. “I have officially had enough for one day. That's what I get for going sleepless last night.” He chuckled and patted Anna's arm. “You're younger and hardier than I, Anna. Would you be able to stay and make sure that the brain wave sequencer finishes correctly, if indeed it finishes tonight at all? It looks like it shouldn't take more than hour, I hope.”

Anna nodded as casually as she could and Dr. Jarrod thanked her and turned on his heel towards the door. At the door he gave Anna a little wave and disappeared, leaving her all alone in the room.

She glanced up at the ceiling and frowned. Not quite all alone, she thought as she stared into the electronic eyeball of a security camera. After double-checking to make sure her hands could not be seen by the camera, she turned slowly to the other workbench where her tablet sat and peeked into the bag to see the status of her files. With a flop of her stomach she saw that both files were done. She unplugged the slicer, pulled the tablet out of its case and spun back around in her chair, attempting to maintain a sense of nonchalance despite the thumping vein in her temple. She crossed her legs and set the tablet on her knee with the screen away from the cameras and began to peruse the files.

The first one she opened was a collection of vital statistics running for many, many long pages, but a picture at the top of the data readout caught her attention. The image was of a woman, a very young beautiful woman with pale skin, long brown hair, and piercing brown eyes. The eyes were the picture of sadness and resignation, and the mouth was drawn in a taut unhappy line.

Anna gazed for a long time at the picture. What was this? A personnel profile? She couldn't be sure what she felt, but a hunch began to form in her mind. She stared at the picture for a long pregnant moment, then began skimming again. The middle section of the data ran in a monotonous string for pages and pages but Anna was not interested in that part. She skimmed towards the end and was eventually rewarded with something intriguing.

The “Notes” sections on all the other pages had remained blank for the most part, besides the occasional stray comment or odd observation. Near the end of the file, however, the notes sections transformed into a veritable diary of eventful happenings, and Anna examined them with growing interest and alarm. One note in particular caught her eye; it read, “Estimated date of unauthorized sexual activity between subject and D.M., will use to backdate pregnancy. Monitor for any continued contact.”

D.M.? Daniel Marcus, no doubt. This must have been the woman he had been involved with, and if the data was to be believed they had been lovers. No wonder he wanted to know where she was so badly. Anna's heart melted unexpectedly for him and for his pain; she could forgive some of his cruel behavior to her for that. But a question persisted in her mind that she could not shake, something she needed an understandable answer to before she would be willing to absolve Daniel of all blame. What was the Subversion Complex for, and why was this woman there at all? If it was indeed a prison, then there had to be a reason she had been locked up.

She scrolled to the end of the file and saw a final grouping of data points, followed by a note that read, “Subject put back into cold storage until further notice.” Above that was a box labeled “Subject Location,” and it read “SubVersion Complex, Cold Storage Room 3, Drawer 1049.”

Cold storage? Drawer? Anna's skin crawled and she sat back in her chair, as if physical space between her and the eerie file on her tablet could save her from its disturbing power. And she cocked her head at the spelling: SubVersion. She had assumed it was the word “subversion,” a surefire conspiracy theorist term used by crackpots who railed against the government. But looking at it now it seemed awfully similar to HomoGen's “Versions.” The only problem was she had never heard of a “SubVersion” before. Her puzzlement increased, and soon she was doubting whether they had any connection at all. She quickly closed out the file and opened the other, but it proved to be little better.

Grimacing at her from the top of the new file was the image of a child, probably six or seven years old, with a shaven head and prominent facial features. Although Anna knew it was a female from what Daniel had told her, it would have been difficult to tell just by looking at the picture whether it was a boy or a girl. The girl's sunken eyes exuded sadness and the tight line of her mouth only added to the disturbing effect. Anna stared for several seconds in a sort of fascinated unease at the face, then slowly began to comb through the text of the data. It gave things similar to the first file like running stats of height, weight, body temperature, and hundreds of other data points that stretched for pages and pages.

But that picture haunted her imagination. She realized that the woman and this girl bore a striking resemblance to each other, so striking that they could be mother and daughter. No, they have to be mother and daughter, it's the only way that this all makes sense, Anna mused uncomfortably. It all jived perfectly with what Daniel had told her and the notes section in the other file.

Finally, near the end, Anna found something interesting. The section featured the title “Subject Transfer History” and gave a short list of what looked like differing locations. At the end sat a small note, which simply read “Specimen signed out indefinitely to Dr. Konrath Jarrod. Final subject location: Laboratory A1A, Central Administration Complex.”

Below that, very clearly signed with a flourish, was Dr. Jarrod's signature.

A cold sweat broke out over Anna's entire body as she slowly put the tablet back into its case. So the transfer order ended up here, in this very room, she thought. The eerie conclusion clicked in her mind. That means that the little girl in the picture is somewhere in this room right now. She glanced around the lab in a futile attempt to divine where the girl might be, but nothing immediately presented itself. It was only when her eye fell on the main display of the reactive computer that a horrible thought came into her mind.

Behind the display, buried in its network of cables and paraphernalia was the heart of the reactive computer, the coffin-like black box that Anna had fleetingly thought earlier could comfortably house a small child.

No, it couldn't be . . .

The notion disturbed her so badly that it was an effort to remain outwardly calm. She walked over to the reactive computer and stood standing there for several seconds, running her fingers over the edges of the displays. Only two things surfaced in her mind: that there was someone inside the box, and that Dr. Jarrod knew about it. Not only did he know, but it seemed he had signed off on the little girl's transfer. And he had left Anna all alone in the room with it.

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

For the next hour Anna's spirit raged inside her as she waited in agony for the reactive computer to finish the scan. She could not shake the horrid feeling of being not alone.

Left alone with that . . . thing.

Thing, girl, monstrous creature, whatever it was. If indeed that was what was in the box, but Anna somehow had no doubt in her mind that the box did contain what she feared it did. There was no other place for the girl to hide in the lab, unless . . . she was in more than one piece. Anna shuddered at the thought and desperately thrust that possibility out of her mind. She would go with her first assumption for now.

There was nothing to do but wait for the scan to complete. Anna found she couldn't get comfortable in any position, whether sitting or standing or pacing around. The whole awful concept burned in her mind like nothing ever had before. At one point she turned toward the computer and the desperate thought occurred to her that she could pop the box open and confirm her suspicions once and for all, but she recoiled just as quickly and decided against it.

Her mind churned for answers but none came. Only questions bubbled to the surface. She knew Dr. Jarrod was more than aware what he was doing, but how the thought of using a little girl for an experiment ever entered his head she could not fathom. How many other people knew what was actually going on here? Did Adam know?

She felt her stomach growing sick again at the thought of the girl. What had they done to her? Why had they done it? And worst of all, why had she been trapped inside the SubVersion Complex for what looked like years before being shipped here to be used as part of an experiment? Which led back to her original question . . .

What was the SubVersion Complex?

She shuddered again and put it out of her head for the moment. There were bigger and more immediate problems at hand. She turned to the main display on the computer and with a shock realized that the scan had completed. The scan is complete. Theoretically that means that I can talk to the brain inside. The brain inside . . .

She stared at the display for a long time without moving. The brain wave pattern readout undulated in regular patterns like it always had, but now next to it there blinked an input window. Anna realized that the algorithm was working and that the computer sat ready to finally do what it had been designed to do. She fell into the chair in front of the keyboard but still hesitated. Equal parts morbid curiosity and revulsion mixed inside her as she considered trying it out.

With a sudden burst of either desperation or confidence she typed the opening command. The electronic side of the computer would be running standard QX code, but if the algorithm was indeed working it would translate whatever code she typed into the appropriate brain wave impulses on the other side. Once the opening command was typed in she struck Enter.

The brain wave pattern immediately contorted and stuttered, and Anna recoiled as she began to see the patterns speed up and pulsate. She looked back to her input display and her heart raced. Underneath it was a window labeled “Output” and text began to fill it in. It was one sentence long.

'Please stop you're hurting me.'

Anna froze. Could it even be possible? Or was it a trick of the code? She went back to her input window and typed 'I don't want to hurt you.' Perhaps it was not real.

A pause, then more text appeared. 'It makes my head hurt make it stop.'

Anna's heart pounded. She was talking to the girl in the box. In a fevered daze she typed 'Who are you?' She waited for a moment, and sure enough more text appeared.

'I'm Sonya and I'm trapped get me out I want to get out where's my mommy I want my mommy.'

The girl had a mother. The girl's name was Sonya. And she was in pain. Suddenly the humanity of the creature inside the computer struck Anna in a wave and she sat back in her chair, stunned. Her eyes filled with tears; she almost didn't know why. She reached for the keyboard again. 'I don't know where your mother is, I'm so sorry.'

A long silent moment passed before anything appeared again on the screen. Then a short burst of text: 'Please get me out it's so dark I'm scared.'

A tear ran down Anna's check and fell onto the keyboard. She sat motionless, unsure of what to tell this poor girl. Her hands trembled with an emotion she could barely understand, a surge of protectiveness and a feeling bordering on attachment. She was about to type again when the output window filled with more text.

'What's your name?'

For some reason the question caught her completely off-guard. She bit her lip, then typed 'My name is Anna.' Then she added, 'I wish I could get you out of there, I wish I could find your mommy for you.' She had never really spoken to or interacted with many children before so she felt suddenly awkward speaking to one even through the stilted interface of the computer.

No response appeared on the screen. Anna waited for what seemed an age but still no answer. Fearful that somehow she was losing her subject's attention, she wracked her brain for something to say. Then something occurred to her, but she found herself wincing as she typed it: 'I lost my mommy too.'

Sure enough a reply was not long in coming. 'Oh do you have the same mommy as me? We should find her.'

Anna found herself smiling grimly at the suggestion, and another tear trickled to the end of her nose. She realized that she liked this girl. She began to type again when another message from Sonya appeared. 'I like your name Anna it's pretty.'

Anna stopped typing her own message and sat still, listening to herself breathe and the computer hum. The situation was surreal. The biggest dream of her life, the reactive computer, sat in front of her and all she could do was have a basic conversation with the brain inside. The mind inside. The entire experience was completely unlike what she had ever fantasized about it.

She typed 'I've always liked my name. I like yours too.'

An idea occurred to her, and she leaned to one side so she could see the black box a little better. The lid was secured to the rest of the box with hinges on the long side and a trio of latches on the other. However, there were also screws pinning the lid closed all around its perimeter, securing it shut.

What would happen if I opened the box?

She knew she had roundly rejected doing so earlier, but now that she was certain of what was inside, somehow it didn't seem half as crazy. Except she had no idea of Sonya's condition, how she was hooked up to the computer, what sort of physical state she was in. Anna sat undecided for what felt like an eternity, her fear and her curiosity battling for dominance. On top of everything else, whoever was watching her via the security cameras would certainly see her open the box. Who knew if she would be stopped for doing it?

She glanced at the monitor and saw another message from Sonya. 'My head hurts Anna make it stop.'

That settled things in Anna's mind. Without another contrary thought she hopped off the chair and pulled the rolling toolbox over to the computer. Selecting the appropriate torque driver, she gingerly pushed aside the masses of cabling and tubing that snaked to and from the black box and began working on the first screw. They were tightly secured and Anna had some trouble, but ten minutes and two sore hands later she had removed every last one. She snapped the wing latches open first, then reached for the main one, but again stopped in fear.

Why was she doing this? Suddenly every instinct in her body insisted that she stop, that she walk away. That she tell Adam what was going on, perhaps, so he could fix it all. Or perhaps that she should just finish the transfer protocol project and forget that this entire thing happened. Forget that she knew about Sonya, let the whole thing drop from her mind.

And it was then, while she crouched next to the black box absorbed in these thoughts, that she heard a sound that she would never forget. It was a sound that completely banished all thoughts of abandonment and betrayal from her head, quelling any desire in her to run from something that she knew she could never un-know.

From deep inside the box's dim interior came a sigh; the sorrowful, fitful sigh of a child who has cried for hours and hours and has no tears left to cry.

Steeling herself for the worst, Anna flipped the final latch and let it fall open, then took the lid in both hands and slowly lifted it up. It creaked a loud creak, the noise of rarely used and never oiled hinges. Anna's spirit sank as it occurred to her that this box probably was not meant to be opened for a long, long time. She pushed the top all the way open and looked inside. Initially she saw nothing but a strange paper-like substance, very much like opening a gift wrapped in tissue paper. She guessed it was some sort of insulating substance meant to protect the subject inside and she reached in and spread the paper apart. Even with all of the time her mind had had to accommodate itself to such a disturbing idea, Anna found herself unprepared for what she saw next.

Lying on her back in the bed of insulating paper was the limp body of a little girl, her pale slender arms straight against her sides and her spindly legs lying straight with ankles together. She was dressed in a flimsy piece of clothing that resembled a hospital gown in that it only covered the front, and it was shifted around almost as if the girl had moved quite a bit since being put into the box. But it was her face and head that caused Anna to feel horribly queasy yet again. The girl had no hair to speak of on the top of her head; rather, in an obscene parody of long hair, from her scalp there sprouted innumerable slender probes that connected to wiring which flowed out of one end of the box and into the computer. The skin of her scalp had actually been peeled away in some spots where larger probes had been inserted.

The girl's face looked similar to her picture in her file, except this face was even more sunken and tortured. She wore a sort of blindfold or eye protection of some sort, and thrust into her nose was a long thin oxygen tube. Embedded into her abdomen were two other tubes, one for food and one for waste presumably, and in her arm was stuck an IV. All of the girl's skin shone a pasty white, and tattooed into her upper arm was the number SVC1001-1FX.

Anna gaped at the miserable form in the box for several long minutes, her soul devoid of any feeling other than absolute revulsion and fierce sadness. However, instead of willing herself to go numb, to feel nothing this time, she dared to fully savor the depth of her grief as she looked at Sonya. There was a grave injustice at work here and Anna could not help but feel herself moved to sorrow.

Then she heard the sound again, and clearly saw Sonya's chest rise briefly and fall in a long unconscious and broken sigh. A single tear trickled out from underneath the blindfold and disappeared into the paper below the little girl as she grimaced faintly. Anna saw the tear, the sigh, the pitiful condition of the helpless subject in front of her and in that moment something snapped. Whether it was the repellant combination of human and machine or the sudden thought that the girl had a strange terrible beauty about her, she was never sure. Whatever it was, tears surged into Anna's eyes; she leaned on the side of the box and wept, and as she did so she put out a hand and touched the girl's face softly, feeling the surprising cold of Sonya's skin. The unconscious form of the little girl did not noticeably respond to her touch though, and Anna wept more.

As she sobbed a notion crossed her mind and grew stronger the longer she looked at the black box and its occupant. A crazy notion to be sure, but a strange and powerful urge that would not subside. Without knowing how it might be accomplished or what her life would hold in the future if she tried, she suddenly felt that she absolutely must get this girl out. Out of this laboratory, out of Central Admin, out of D.C.

But where to start? Perhaps with Adam? But her face darkened as she realized that the Secretary might be as deep in this as Dr. Jarrod, in which case he would be absolutely no help. Maybe Daniel would know how to break her out, Anna thought, then cursed herself for even considering wanting to work with him. But the curse felt halfhearted in the face of what she had seen already today. Besides, the realization struck her that she was Daniel's break-out plan, or very probably, and it would make perfect sense if this was his daughter. Anna found herself staring into the child's face and tried to recall Daniel's face for comparison, but the trauma of the girl's ordeal made it difficult to tell if there was a resemblance.

The question still remained as to what both mother and daughter were doing in the SubVersion Complex in the first place, but that was for a later time. She turned to take one last look at the computer monitor and her pulse quickened at what she saw.

In the Output window new words had appeared: 'I heard you crying did you touch my face please make it stop hurting Anna please don't leave.'

The words ripped Anna's heart out. There was no way to just take the girl out; it was not something Anna could do on her own anyways. Any attempt to move Sonya in the condition she was in would probably kill her. Neither was there an easy way to convince Dr. Jarrod to stop his experiment. He would never stop, she was convinced. Nor could she simply let the whole matter drop, she just couldn't. For lack of anything better to do she closed the box again and screwed it shut.

A knock on the door nearly sent Anna's pulse through the roof. She turned away from the black box and answered, “Yes?”

The door clicked open and an aide stepped in. “Miss McLean?”

“That's me.” Anna felt one hundred percent sure someone had been watching her over the cameras, had seen her open the box. Why else would they be here?

“The Party Secretary would like to see you in his office. Now.”

Anna stood resolutely and took one last look around. I'm sure he does. I'd like to speak with him too. She glanced over at her tablet case and hesitated, remembering that the code slicer sat nestled inside. She wondered if it would be safer to leave the case behind or to bring it with her. She decided with trepidation that it would be better if the tablet and slicer stayed in the lab for now, since the security was tighter in front of the Secretary's office and she had no idea what they might want to confiscate besides her gun before she walked in. She leaned over to turn the workbench light off and in the same motion, out of sight of the aide and the cameras, she pulled the tablet case off the table and slid it onto a cabinet sitting underneath the workbench. That would have to do for now. Her purse would have to come with her, however, since it held her ID badge.

She straightened her dress and headed towards the door. “Lead the way,” she said to the aide with more confidence than she really felt.

 

 

 

The SubVersion Complex, Chapter Fourteen (Revised)

This is the first significantly rewritten chapter of the chapters that needed a rewrite, but I think it has vastly improved from its original version. A big thank you goes to my cousin and father-in-law for pointing me in the right direction when it came to government security systems, and for giving me the idea to really show off Anna's expertise in breaking into computers. This was a lot of fun to (re)write!
 
Here is the new Chapter 14 of The SubVersion Complex. This book is intended for a more mature audience, so be advised.

╗ FOURTEEN ╚

SHADOW DATA

With a gasp and a start Anna surged awake from a powerful nightmare and came bolt upright. Her eyes burned, her back ached, and her brain throbbed. She blinked groggily in what felt like the most intense light she had ever seen. As the murk in her head began to disperse she noticed that it was morning, birds were chirping and sunlight was streaming through the windows.

Her thoughts began to race as she carefully put both feet on the floor. Daniel, the gun, the blackmail attempt; had it all actually happened or had her half-drunk neurons invented a memorable fiction? She then found herself looking at the living room windows, and after glancing down, she confirmed that she had indeed slept on the sofa all night in her work clothes. The whole episode from last night heaved back into her memory and she put her head in her hands. As she did so she found that her right elbow and wrist hurt like mad, the same arm Daniel had wrenched behind her back.

It had been real, and she was still trapped.

If she had been less tired she might have begun to cry again but she found her eyes were bone dry. Nothing would have come out of them even if she had wanted to. She willed herself to stand and stumbled to the bathroom. She flicked on the lamps above the mirror and was shocked to see just how badly she looked. Her makeup and mascara had smeared everywhere, her hair had all been pushed to one side, and there was a crease across her cheek from the sofa pillow. She sighed in numb resignation and looked at her watch.

It read twenty 'till nine. Anna froze, looked at it again. Then she swore, grabbed her commex from her purse, and raced upstairs while furiously tapping out a message to Terry saying that she would be very late for work. In a flash she had showered, changed, perfumed and was about to race out the door when she spotted two items on the coffee table in the living room.

One was the code slicer. The other was a scrap of crumpled paper. She picked up the paper and again saw the numbers that Daniel had scrawled there in pen. He was clever, putting the number on paper and not somewhere digital. A piece of paper could make it through Central Admin's security without a problem, provided it was stuffed into a good hiding place. Seeing the numbers again caused some of the panic to return though, and it was only with a good deal of effort that she kept her breathing normal and her hands from shaking. She pushed the paper into the front of her blouse, then picked up the code slicer and pondered it.

Would Central Admin's security personnel find it and ask about it? She honestly couldn't be sure. However, she remembered her tablet commex in its bag in her car and figured if she dropped it in there then it would simply be viewed as some sort of peripheral device. Computers pretty much defined her job description, anyways. Also, ever since Terry's little directive to the security personnel on Anna's first day, they had been reluctant to perform the full frisking procedure. She figured she had the Secretary to thank for that little tidbit. She bit her lip, decided she would have to give it a try, and raced out the door.

She rode in an enervated daze on autodrive all the way to the Central Admin complex, mulling over what Daniel had tasked her to do. She was not sure exactly how she was going to do what he wanted; she wasn't even sure that what he was looking for was real, let alone able to be discovered. She cursed and stared blankly out the window as the car slipped quietly into D.C. and found its own way into the underground parking garage. At least her hunch was correct: as she entered the main building she was only given a perfunctory scan and waved on her way. The guard didn't even give her tablet bag a second glance.

Even as she rode the elevator to her floor she had not decided what to do with the numbers. Daniel had suggested using the lonely IT department head as an opening but she was not quite as sanguine as he that it would be that simple. She briefly considered turning the numbers in to the Secretary, throwing herself on his understanding and hoping for the best, but the specter of being firebombed by Verité's hackers reared its head and she put it out of mind. Central Admin was paranoid, probably too paranoid for mercy or understanding.

It was two numbers, simple enough. Daniel only said he wanted to know the status of the two females and that was it. Nothing more. She suddenly had a thought: once the threat of blackmail had been lifted, she could tell Adam then and explain what happened. The only problem with that, though, was that Anna had gotten the suspicion from Daniel's attitude last night that he had a mole in Central Admin. How else could he have known about her conversations with Dr. Jarrod, about her code slicer, and all the other various tidbits he knew about her?

Deep in the midst of these musings she was startled when she collided headlong into someone and almost toppled over. She shook off her distraction and saw the rumpled shape of Dr. Jarrod, his glasses askew on his nose and his coat twisted. She was also surprised to find herself in the hallway near Terry Garnham's office.

“I am so sorry, Doctor!” she stammered. “I didn't see you coming.”

“Perfectly all right, Miss McLean, perfectly all right!” he replied, beaming despite the collision. He straightened his coat and glasses and beckoned to her. “I was about to ask Officer Garnham myself if you were coming in today, but here you are! Come, you really must follow me to my lab. You were summoned to the Secretary's office last night so I worked mostly by myself, and I had a bit of a breakthrough!”

“That's good,” Anna replied absently. She remembered why she had wandered to this part of the building in the first place, to give Terry the best possible excuse she could think of for being late. She began to edge past the doctor but he blocked her with his stocky frame and smiled.

“You are not ecstatic at this news?” he asked with a chuckle. “You, Annalise McLean, the one who has salivated for this chance for years, and you are not even interested in hearing more about it?”

Anna tried to smile back. “I'm so sorry, Doctor, I had a bad night and I'm late and I need to report in with Officer Garnham before I really do anything today. Please let me go by?”

Dr. Jarrod reluctantly stood to the side and waved her on. “By all means, go, yes, but hurry to my lab as soon as you can allow. I used the algorithm you suggested earlier this week and I am already getting results. You should be excited!”

“I am, and I'll be there soon, just give me a bit.”

The short man shrugged. “Very well. You know where to find me.” He turned and disappeared around the corner.

Anna steeled herself and approached Terry's office. It hadn't even been a full work week yet and she was late. She saw Terry sitting at her desk and with a rap on the glass door, let herself in.

Terry immediately stood as Anna entered. “I got your message. There is no need for an explanation. The Secretary himself told me you had a bit of heavy news last night and might need the next day or so to sort it out.”

Anna blinked in surprise, then felt her stomach convulse at the irony of the situation. Heavy news indeed. Just not the kind that Adam or Terry think. She smiled weakly at Terry and turned to leave, but she heard her orientation officer ask with some concern, “Are you all right, Anna?”

“Yes,” Anna replied in her most convincing tone, turning back. “Why wouldn't I be?”

Terry bit the inside of her cheek and Anna could tell she was holding something back. Then the blonde woman shrugged and sat back down. “You just looked like you hadn't gotten any sleep, that's all.”

“Oh.” Anna could think of nothing more to say so she exited Terry's office and rushed down the hall to the office that had been set aside for her. It was more of an afterthought, since she would be spending so much time in the lab with Dr. Jarrod, but it was a serviceable office space. After checking to see which security cameras watched her office, she sat down at the desk, woke the computer up, then sat with hands folded thinking.

Suddenly a plan began to formulate in her head and she pulled her tablet out of its case and turned it on. Coding and hacking were what she was specialized in, and despite the fact that she was being blackmailed into doing this the thrill of making it work took over and she found herself feverishly typing on the tablet.

If the IT department head was indeed lonely, then a bit of social engineering would work perfectly on him. He had secure access to all the servers in the building she could ever want to hack into. He would just need the proper motivation to open an infected file sent by her. Which meant she needed an excuse to visit him in person, a chance to charm him a bit and maybe over-promise and under-deliver on a fake personal connection. She almost smiled as she finished typing and slid the tablet onto her desk. This was almost certain to work, as long as he rose to the bait. She left her office and strolled down a couple halls on her same floor, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible until she reached a room marked Information Technology. She knocked twice and heard a voice from inside shouting to her to enter. She pushed the door open.

Inside were rows and rows of monitors and humming machines, fiber optic bundles disappearing into the ceiling, cooling fans running. In front of the main desk sat two men, one turned away from the door working on something, and the other with his feet up on the desk with a paper container of Chinese food in his hand and chopsticks clutched awakwardly in his other. He was a balding, plump thirty-odd man with a bad comb-over and a greasy clean-shaven face, and had the chopsticks up to his mouth in mid-slurp as she entered the room. Grease from the noodles had dropped onto his shirt front and stained it. No wonder he's lonely, Anna thought unkindly.

At the sight of her the man immediately pulled his feet down from the desk and, instead of letting the noodles go the rest of the way into his mouth like a decent person, instead let them drop back into the container with a disgusting plop. He rubbed his hands together and smiled at her. “Uh, hi!”

Anna marshaled a smile and hoped it stuck. “Uh hi yourself,” she replied, doing her best to beam at him. She felt like her effort was unnecessary in the end, though, since he seemed to be ogling her regardless. This whole exercise would be both easier and possibly more annoying than she had anticipated. “I, uh, I just had a question for you. I'm the new recruit, I work in the lab?”

The man nodded enthusiastically. “It was Annalise McLean, yes? Your name? Somebody mentioned it to me earlier. Good to finally meet you! So what did you need to know?”

Anna felt on firm ground now. “Well, I don't know if you knew, but I used to work IT over at HomoGen and-”

“At HomoGen?” the man exclaimed. “That is exciting! I've tried applying for that position before, got turned down, not sure why. I'm one of the best, you know.”

“I didn't know,” Ann replied, trying to hide her amusement. Lonely was the wrong word. Desperate more firmly captured this man's demeanor. “But I'll keep it in mind.” She wasn't sure why she threw in that last bit. Flattery, maybe? She was fairly sure he would take it as flirting.

The man kept rising to her bait. “Oh good! Maybe even a good word would help. But, sorry for interrupting, what was your question?”

Anna forced another smile. “When I used to work for HomoGen, the biotech people would utilize the network to run certain calculations and procedures, and whenever they did it they had to check first so that their simulations didn't interfere with our virus checks. The whole network would slow down if they did.” She put on her sweetest, most innocent attitude and leaned on the door frame. “I'll be working with Dr. Jarrod today possibly running our own network simulations and I wouldn't want to interfere with your virus checks.”

The man grinned and waved a hand. “Oh, that's perfectly all right! The core network is running on all quantum and optical fiber so it shouldn't be affected at all. The server access might be a bit slower since it runs the traditional digital computers but that doesn't seem to be your concern. And we run a virus and worm check every fifteen minutes. We've got the fastest network around, at least that I know of, and it'll run whatever sim you want at pretty much whatever speed you want.”

Anna grinned wryly at him. It was like watching a male peacock spread its feathers and parade for the female. Very satisfying. She felt like she had made her opening, and was about to exploit it when he beat her to it. “My name is Jim Jarvis, head of the IT department,” he said a bit too eagerly, holding out a hand to her. She tentatively shook it, trying not to recoil at his cold and clammy palms. “Hey, you're a computer tech, I'm a computer tech. We should talk computers sometime over coffee sometime!”

Gotcha. “That might be nice, talking to someone who actually knows his way around a quantum computer,” she pretended to gush. “I'll think about it.”

“Or better yet, we could do Chinese!” Jim replied, holding up the damp paper container. “It's even good for breakfast. You might not think it would be, but it is.”

I might not think that, and I probably never will. Anna suppressed a grimace and wordlessly closed the office door, distrustful that her faux interest could sustain for much longer. She had everything she needed anyways, and strode purposefully back to her office and sat down at the desk. Picking her tablet up again, she typed in the rest of the code she was working on, compiled it with a tap of her finger, and transferred it to her desk computer.

“Now, Mr. Lonely Jim Jarvis,” she said to herself, “just for insinuating that I might like Chinese food for breakfast, here is a virused present for your computer to play with.” She pulled up his profile on the network and found his address, then typed out a vaguely encouraging message and attached her infected file. With a click the message shot off into cyberspace and she sat back and waited.

If her hunch was correct, he would open her file eagerly enough. It was an invite for him to view her deeper profile on the network, and it would populate his digital calendar with her personal contact information. It would also, unbeknownst to him, load a useful little script onto his computer in the background, something his machine would never notice since it would be using his system-level permissions. Once the script loaded, she was in. She sat back and waited.

It was not five minutes before she received an enthusiastic response to her message. She checked her computer and saw that he had indeed opened her file, since his info now populated her work calendar. She smiled with satisfaction and excitement. Eager fool. Now it's time to play. Her script had opened up a port on Jim's computer and all she had to do was plug into it from her own. She pulled the code slicer from her bag and inserted it into the universal data socket on her desktop machine. The device lit up with a flash of white status LEDs and began to warm up.

Now came the fun part. A window appeared on the screen, and a bar across the top read “Incognito Mode.” Whatever she did over the network now via her port connection with Jim's computer would remain invisible to everyone on the network. Only one of the reasons she loved the slicer. She quickly began to type and soon had loaded a key logger program onto Jim's computer, in order to detect his keystrokes. She still needed the password for the secure servers in order to get the files Daniel wanted, and only Jim knew the password. Even the slicer would take a while to break the password on such a heavily monitored system, and she didn't have the time or the patience to do that.

Several more minutes passed before the key logger began sending back information about Jim's typing habits. The first thing he typed turned out to be the address to a porn site, and Anna rolled her eyes with annoyance. Another five minutes elapsed, and still nothing. Anna checked her watch and frowned. The system scanned for viruses every fifteen minutes, and he certainly logged in at least every once in a while to check up on its progress?

Then it began to appear, a row of ten letters and numbers that couldn't have been anything else but a secure password. He was logging into the server access portal. Anna's heart leaped and she copied the text, pulled up the server access portal window herself and pasted the password into the login bar. It had all been too easy. She tapped ENTER and the server portal opened

Anna's heart began to thud. She could pull anything she wanted to at this point. What was to stop her? Nobody would ever know. She shook her head and closed her eyes briefly. I am only going after the files for Daniel, and then I am done with all of this. She pulled the paper from her blouse. The numbers stared back at her, suddenly ominous. She was unsure of what they really meant, or what females they could refer to, but she was determined to find the relevant files and be done with it.

Which database though? From the portal home page she could see six separate options. One of them was the personnel records database, and she discounted that one right away. The next three were pretty standard government fare: Confidential, Secret, and Top-Secret. The files could be in Top-Secret . . .

She frowned and tapped her fingers on the desk. While she was thinking she pulled up her work calendar window adjacent to the Incognito window, to at least appear to any computer monitoring program on the network that she was doing something perfectly normal. After a wry glance at the calendar with its new picture of Jim Jarvis smiling at her, she returned to the portal window and continued to think.

There were only two databases left. One of them Anna could not decipher at all. It was labeled UCS/MIL, with a small flag next to it describing it as in the beta stage. She shook her head and moved on to the next one. The last one bore the simple title SVC/LEVEL3. She read it twice to be sure and suddenly knew this was the right one. The serial numbers Daniel had given her had both begun with “SVC.” She opened the database and began scrolling through the files.

From the looks of it, every single file on the list was encrypted. That's okay, Anna thought. The code slicer can take care of that later. All she needed to do was find the files and copy them; then the code slicer could work past the encryption at her leisure. She scrolled rapidly through the list and found both files without a problem, then copied them to the code slicer's internal memory. Then she backed out of both the server portal and Jim's computer, after blowing it a derisive kiss. She closed out the entire Incognito session and unplugged the code slicer, leaned back and breathed.

It was done.

With any luck, no one would ever know she had just broken half of the data confidentiality laws in the book. She realized her heart pounded hard in her chest and her hands shook. Usually hacking gave her a heady rush of adrenaline and excitement. But she had never hacked under duress before and the difference was substantial. She slipped the slicer and her tablet into their bag and, after taking one last look over her workstation to be sure she had left nothing amiss, she stuffed the paper back into her blouse and exited her office with what she hoped was an air of nonchalance.

She quickly made her way down to Lab A1A, and as she pushed the door open she saw Dr. Jarrod bent excitedly over his reactive computer, occasionally straightening up to pace about but always coming back to the same pose. When he heard Anna's footsteps he turned and smiled his big toothy smile at her.

“Ah, you are here at last!” he exclaimed. “At least you haven't missed all of the excitement.”

“That's good,” Anna replied, managing a small grin before sitting down at a workbench and looking to make sure she was out of sight of the security cameras. Most of the cameras centered on the reactive computer anyways. She pulled her tablet partway out of its case and powered it on, then plugged the code slicer into the side of it and began the brute force decryption routine. Hopefully sometime today the slicer would break the encryption and she would be able to read the files.

She let the tablet with the slicer attached drop back into its case where it would not be visible, then returned to Dr. Jarrod's side and bent over the computer with him. New code flashed by on the myriad displays and Dr. Jarrod happily tapped away on the keyboard, even whistling while he did so. When he was satisfied he stepped back and looked at Anna.

“I can't believe I hadn't seen it before, Anna. For the longest time I had thought one couldn't employ a Bates-Bigley equation set on a human brain wave but it turns out your suggestion to use it was the correct one. With a little bit of adaptation I managed to change the algorithm for this particular brain wave pattern. It compensates perfectly for the brain's protective mechanisms and pins the proverbial fly to the table, so to speak. I can't thank you enough.”

Anna smiled a real smile this time and felt glad that she was one of the few people that could understand even half of what he had just said. “So do we have a time frame of when we'll be able to see this transfer protocol in action?”

Dr. Jarrod shrugged. “It could be as early as this afternoon, or as late as next week, who knows? But I am confident that it will be sooner rather than later.” He handed Anna a tablet. “Help me write the rest of this code? The computer needs to run the full scan of the brain wave pattern before we can even begin to input data into the brain itself.”

“How long will that take?” Anna asked.

“Probably a couple hours.”

The SubVersion Complex, Chapter Thirteen (Revised)

Again, as with the new Chapter 12, this is the revised version of Chapter 13. Small but significant changes, which will lead into a much-changed Chapter 14.

Here is the new Chapter 13 of The SubVersion Complex. This book is intended for a more mature audience, so be advised.

╗ THIRTEEN ╚

DANIEL MARCUS

There had been no time to cry out in pain, no time to do anything other than simply collapse to her knees as her attacker held her securely from behind. The intruder's grunted warning into Anna's ear was entirely unnecessary; her brain was shocked and frozen in time and she felt she would have done anything he wanted had he merely expressed the desire.

The man behind her wasted no time. “Good. Get up.” He hauled her firmly to her feet, still pinning her twisted arm behind her back. She complied without a thought or a sound, and watched through a dazed semi-consciousness as he snatched her gun from the floor with his free hand. They both made their awkward way to her living room and the man pushed her to a sitting position on the sofa.

“You will sit quietly and listen, and I will talk,” he said as he began to strip her gun down to its component parts. She watched as frame, slide, barrel, magazine, and spring came apart, and he pitched each piece unceremoniously to various corners of the room. The speed and efficiency of the act startled her, and she became even more alarmed when he did not pitch the barrel but instead kept it in his hand.

She had recovered enough to look at his face and was shocked to realize that it was the same man that had picked her up off the ground at the doctor's office. He stood even taller than she remembered, dressed entirely in black combat gear with his own firearm strapped firmly to his waist and various gear clipped to his belt. She had not seen his eyes at their first encounter due to his sunglasses, but now they were plainly visible: gray, piercing eyes glowing with a hunted fierceness, frightening in their intensity and danger.

Pain suddenly began to rage through her arm and her knees, and she moaned as her various limbs began to stab and ache. “You hurt me,” she mumbled almost incoherently.

The man didn't even glance up. “You'll live,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “We have more important things to talk about. You are going to do something for me.” He pulled open a pocket on his harness and began to fish inside it for something. “You have top security clearance at Central Admin and a wicked way with computers, and you are going to use both.”

Anna's brain began roiling with obvious questions. “How did you get into my house?” she stammered, disregarding his request. “I set my alarm, I locked the door . . . “

The man did not respond until he had found what was in his pocket, a small scrap of paper with writing scrawled on one side. “I used an access card, same as you would have when you get home at night.”

“But- but I didn't give you my access card!” she blurted out stupidly. “And you didn't steal it, I still have it.”

“I stole it after a fashion,” the man replied. “One doesn't have to take an access card to make it work. I copied it.”

“When?” Anna asked, bewildered.

“At the doctor's office. I was close to you long enough to copy it wirelessly. You really ought to secure your house better against intrusion if you don't want things like your code slicer stolen.”

Panic quickly rose into Anna's throat and threatened to suffocate her. How in the world did her know about her code slicer? How in the world was he standing right here right now? How in the world . . . Then an insane thought took shape in her muddled head. “Who are you?” she whispered, although she was almost certain she already knew the answer. Her suspicions were confirmed when he looked her dead in the eyes and spoke again.

“I am Daniel Marcus, and I know you already know that name. I'm not sure what you've been told about me and who I am, but I am really not in the mood for correcting back story that they may have gotten wrong.” He grasped one of her wrists and planted the crumpled paper he held into her own palm. “I need you to research these for me.”

Anna blinked incredulously at him for several moments before her eyes fell to the paper in her hand. She unfolded it and stared, then held it closer and stared longer with growing confusion. Its only contents were two sets of letters and numbers: SVC1001-1FX and SVC5403-1F. She looked back up at Daniel. “I have no idea what these are.”

“Each one is a serial number in your database,” Daniel replied.

Anna shook her head. “That doesn't help me at all,” she faltered. “I don't even know which database to begin looking in. How am I supposed to look them up when I don't know that? I don't even have clearance to all of the databases in the building anyways.”

Daniel smiled at her, a cold and precarious expression. “Do you think I'm that stupid? I know you know of other ways of getting into secure databases than simply waltzing in through the front-end access point.” He cocked his head at her. “It's called 'breaking in.'”

Anna gritted her teeth, her consternation rapidly growing. “Which is a crime, in case you didn't know.“

“Do I look like I care?”

In desperation Anna tried again. “What are these numbers even for? What do they mean?”

Daniel leaned against the nearest wall whilst keeping his eyes firmly affixed to his victim. Anna could hear his breathing become more labored, with sadness or anger she couldn't tell but she guessed some great emotional storm raged inside the man. Finally he crossed his arms and drew breath.

“The SVC stands for 'SubVersion Complex,' the middle numerals are the lot number, and the F stands for Female.” Daniel struggled with the words. “The 1 before it signifies that the female in question has no twin.”

Anna could hardly believe what she was hearing. In fact, it sounded so silly, especially coming out of such a serious man's mouth that despite her discomfiture she could barely contain a hysterical laugh. “Subversion Complex? As in, the Subversion Complex of urban legend? You cannot be serious! You are either a conspiracy theorist of the highest order or you are insane!”

Daniel lunged away from the wall and dropped to his knees in front of her so quickly that she nearly shrieked. She pulled her feet up onto the sofa and shielded her face from his eyes, which now burned only inches from her own. He had his hands on both sides of her, balled into fists and grinding into the cushions while his face floated so close to her own that she could feel the heat of his quiet fury. “I am neither, Anna” he growled, his voice shaking. “Some have speculated about the SubVersion Complex, others have fought to find out if it exists. It does indeed exist, and I know because I have seen a part of it. So do not ever give me grief over conspiracy theories and urban legends ever again. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

Anna's hands and breathing shook as she nodded desperately. The immediacy of his tone had somehow managed to obliterate her doubt, at least for the moment. Daniel remained uncomfortably close to her, though, and appeared to have little intention of moving any time soon.

“You are looking for two females, and I need to know the status and location of both of them as soon as is practicable for you to get the info to me.”

“You keep saying females,” Anna asked, still cringing away from him. “Female what?”

“Female humans, Anna. Try to keep up.”

“Female humans? But what- what is the Subversion Complex?” Anna persisted. Her confusion grew ever stronger, and even her memories of the urban legends failed her in the details. The Subversion Complex had always appeared in the conspiracy theories as some horrific underground prison, or something of that sort, a subterranean labyrinth that housed some awful secret. However, there had never been any proof of it, and most of the public, including her, disbelieved and even laughed at the notion.

And now Daniel Marcus claimed he had been there.

Daniel tore himself away from the sofa and stood again, and Anna could immediately tell she was not going to get much more from him. His eyes still fixed on her face, he breathed unevenly and worked his jaw. “You will break into Central Admin's server system and find the files relevant to both serial numbers, and you will find out the status of these two females for me. It would be an understatement to say that they are dear to me; they are my life. You will do this for me, and you will report back with your findings.”

One of Anna's conversations with Dr. Jarrod flashed back into her mind and she remembered he had said Daniel had gotten tangled up with some woman at Central Admin. Perhaps this was her. She looked up at Daniel and all of a sudden she realized she despised this man, as fearsome as he was. Central Admin and the Secretary carried enough weight between them to squash one man like Daniel. She couldn't recall what had made him seem attractive to her before.

She stared at him with all the defiance she could muster and crossed her arms across her chest. “And what happens if I refuse to do all of this? I could report you, show the Party Secretary the numbers on your list, have you hunted down like the criminal you are. What is to stop me? Are you going to kill me?”

For the second time a smile split Daniel's face. “No, I am not going to kill you. But I'll gladly let you hang yourself if that's your fancy.”

Anna's blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”

“I have ways of ensuring that you will get this done for me. Like the highly incriminating data package that my compatriots have ready to drop on your comfortable little life if you choose to ignore me. It has just about every kind of damning evidence we could invent linking you with the Verité group, and believe you me, I am not afraid to use all of it against you if you betray me.”

Anna began to shake again. Along with the abject fear pulsing through her veins, her body had begun to crash after all that wine and she found it increasingly difficult to concentrate properly. “How am I supposed to break into a secure server and not get caught?”

Daniel shook his head. “For a confident career woman, you show a serious lack of confidence in yourself.” From the same pocket that the paper had emerged from now came another object, this one small and round and shiny. Daniel held it up so that she was sure to see. Anna realized with horror that it was her borrowed code slicer, the slicer that was supposed to be nestled comfortably inside her safe upstairs. Her stomach fell away completely.

“How did you get that?” she gasped.

Daniel looked askance at her. “You have a biometric lock on that safe, Anna, and your fingerprints are all over this house. Don't insult me.” He held it just out of her reach. “As I understand, this slicer needs to go back to HomoGen pretty soon. A couple weeks, perhaps? And then they will begin to demand it of you. I hope you are privy to the fact that this device is worth more than your entire property.” He held it out closer to her. “You will need this, and you will need to find my files with it before this goes back to its owners.”

Anna slowly took the device. “And how am I supposed to get in touch with you anyways when I'm done? I don't know, you're liable to disappear and never come back!”

Daniel pulled a small commex handset from his belt and tossed it onto the sofa next to her. “You will use this,” he said. “I know you are a computer tech and that your first thought will be to hack this device and discover my location, but rest assured we've already taken that into consideration. If you take it apart it will signal me and then destroy itself. If you attempt to bring it into Central Admin the guards will scan your vehicle and yourself and they will detect its broadcast chip even if it's turned off. If you tamper with the code inside at all it will alert me. So don't try anything, it would only be a waste of both of our time.”

He looked at her one last time. “I don't want to do this, I wish there was another way, but there is no other way I know of. Play along and everything will be fine. Don't play along, and I and my allies will rain hellfire down on you.”

“Your allies?”

“Yes, if again you had not already guessed. They are Verité, and so am I.” He turned to leave, then paused briefly by the entrance to the kitchen. He held up his hand, and Anna saw the barrel of her gun shining between his fingers. “You know, it would take a professional only a couple seconds to reassemble this weapon under ideal circumstances. Your weapon is a bit more . . . scattered. I'll tell you what, since you fancy yourself handy with a gun, I will give you this-” he indicated the barrel “-and we will see how quickly you can reassemble and get off a shot at me. Oh, and by the way, I've been told the head of IT over at Central Admin is lonely, and a man. That might be a good opening for a server break-in. Farewell.”

With that, he tossed her the barrel and disappeared into the kitchen. Anna sat for a moment, still stunned, then dove for the floor and scrabbled for the remaining pieces of her firearm, snapping and clicking it all back together as quickly as her training allowed. Her nerves were so jangled, however, that her fingers fumbled the job and it took her several minutes to accomplish. When it was finally assembled again she raced through the kitchen to the back door, but she knew it was a horribly lost cause. Daniel Marcus was long gone, and she was trapped.

She stumbled back into the living room overwhelmed with exhaustion and anger and fear. After stripping the magazine from her gun she threw both items onto the coffee table, then threw herself onto the sofa and began to cry. Her body trembled with wrenching violent sobs for a long time before she drifted fitfully off to sleep.