System Seven (9 page)

He’d asked Fuku Wilson
for help. The ego burn was nothing compared to the fire of desperation. Agent
Payant said he’d try to help. Beyond that, everything seemed stacked against
him. Like a game of Jenga, the blocks had begun to fall and there was no way to
stop them.

Lunch time brought
another wave of pain. Painkillers helped. He ate half a sandwich, his appetite
poor. Calls were being blocked. The nurse said over a dozen had come in,
friends and co-workers eager to know what had happened. If Payant or Fuku were
going to help it would be in the form of an attorney showing up at the door.

By dinner time, one
hadn’t arrived.

Review of the last two
days didn’t leave much room for hope. Digital evidence could be fabricated in
such a way as to leave a jury no choice but to convict. Even without the
explosion and related charges, the hacking could be leveraged to put him away
for years. Freedom would be lost. The future destroyed.

Before bed he
complained of pain and got another dose. Anything to numb the pain of knowing
how totally fucked he was.

A pat on the face.

Another one, less
gentle. Urgent.

“Wake up, Austin.”

Dreams fled and the
dim night light revealed a nurse at his side. A glance at the officer saw him
dozing, head to one side.

“Let’s go.” She pulled
back the sheets and guided his legs from the bed. “Not a word, please. Put
these on.”

Groggy from the pain
meds, he thought of Mac Payant and wondered if he’d arranged an escape. Things
were bad, so it made sense. She helped him into nursing scrub and clipped a
badge onto his shirt pocket. The shoes were big but everything else fit okay.

“Count to thirty. Turn
left out the door and you’ll see me. Follow at a distance. You are Timothy
Schrader. Tim Schrader. You work here but are going off-shift. We’ll head
downstairs and you’ll leave by the side exit. Once outside, head to the left,
towards the parking lot. Do you understand?”

He did but only just.
Questions died on his lips when she abruptly left the room. Thirty seconds. He
took a few steps towards the door. Confusion circled. The only certainty was
that he wanted out of custody. If this was the way...

The officer snored
lightly.

His heart pounded.
Time felt fuzzy.
Thirty seconds?

He opened the door and
stepped into the hallway, as much an employee as he could imagine. The nurse’s
station was empty. To the left and down a ways the nurse stood with a
clipboard. She looked at him once and walked down a connecting hallway. He
followed her through corridors and down a set of stairs to emerge in a staff
hallway. To the left and down a hundred feet or so, a man stood leaning against
a wall.

‘Hesitation draws
attention’, his dad once said, so he strode to the right and saw the nurse
standing at a computer terminal. She rose an arm as if to scratch her elbow and
pointed to a hallway behind her.

He turned into the short
hall and bumped the door open to a quad between the hospital and the parking
garage. Instantly grateful for the evening’s heat, he turned left as instructed
and came to the sidewalk in front of the hospital. A shuttle bus slowed and
stopped with its door open. The driver called out, “Going to the Med Center?
Staff ride free.”

Still afraid but
grateful for the conspiracy, he strode up the steps. “Thanks.”

Two other riders
looked up at him, a man and a woman, both hospital workers. He slouched down
into a seat as the shuttle started off. By the time they pulled onto the
avenue, he knew they were safe and away. He moved to the seat closest to the
driver.

“So who do I thank?”

The driver shook his
head. “What do you mean?”

He looked back at the
passengers. They were oblivious. His heart thundered. Was he supposed to get on
the shuttle? Or had he screwed up?

“Uh, never mind. How
far to the medical center?”

The driver gave him an
appraising look. “This time of morning, ‘bout twenty minutes.”

He must’ve screwed up,
gotten on the shuttle instead of waiting to be picked up. Did they know? He
thought of Kaiya. Finding a phone to call her was no good now. Getting her
involved would prove her mother completely right.
What a cluster fuck
. So unreal, so vividly
messed up
. He took a deep breath. Everything revolved around the
hacker’s file – it had started this and now was his only asset, if he could
just reach it. In that moment it became his first and only priority.

“Hey, could you let me
off up here at this gas station? I forgot some really important paperwork. I
can hike back, no problem.”

The driver didn’t
respond.

“Uh, I need to get off
the bus. Right here, please?” The gas
station came and went.

Austin looked back.
The male nurse stared out the window and the woman used her phone, both still
oblivious. He suddenly felt black and white, invisible like in a scene from the
Twilight Zone.

Screw this.

He stood and stepped
towards the driver. “Look, buddy,” he leaned forward, “I need to get off this
bus, so you need to pull over right now. Right now.”

The driver ignored
him. Anger mixed with panic. He balled a fist.

“Are you–”

– an audible click and
a sting – and the world went berserk. Pain exploded from his lower back,
radiating outward with savage intensity.

“Aaah maaah! –
aahhhhh!” He fell and writhed in the aisle. The male nurse, an Asian man, held
a taser gun. Its electrode wires streamed into him. The woman took the gun.

“Move and I’ll zap you
again.”

The male handcuffed
his hands behind his back and sat him upright in the aisle, against a seat. The
taser’s electrodes were neatly hooked to the cuffs.

He tried recovering
but was tapped out. He’d always wondered what a taser blast felt like. To know
sucked. He asked, “Who the hell are you?”

They remained silent
and kept their eyes on him.

He spat blood from a
gnashed tongue. “I never finished downloading it. Do you hear me? I didn’t
download it. I don’t know
anything
.”

They continued to
ignore him. Panic spiked, rivaling the intensity of the pain of a moment ago.

The shuttle turned
onto side streets before entering the parking lot of an office building. The
driver pulled under the canopy of an oak tree next to a black van with darkened
windows. They transferred vehicles. Before the van’s door closed, Austin saw
the driver set off a smoke bomb in the shuttle bus.

“Fogging for roaches?”
he asked, trying for a response. They ignored him. Anxiety pressed in as firmly
as the handcuffs.

The driver climbed in
and pulled a divider shut. Puck lights in the ceiling lit up the interior. The
van’s windows were actually opaque, not just dark. For more than an hour they
drove in silence, getting on and off the freeway. The smell of wood smoke grew
stronger and his ears compressed and eventually popped. They were at least in
the foothills.

When the van finally
parked, the Asian produced a thick black band bracelet and clamped it around Austin’s
right ankle. He removed the handcuffs.

“Don’t get stupid. The
taser is nothing compared to this.”

The side door slid
open to reveal a garage interior and a luxury sedan.

Asian Man pulled him
forward.

Down a utility
corridor and into a large foyer, they ascended a sweeping set of stairs and
emerged in the large entertaining area of an executive-style log home. Vaulted
ceilings rested on rock walls. He’d been right about the location in the
foothills. Leather chairs and couches faced a bay of picture windows showing
the lights of the Sacramento Valley beyond.

The woman disappeared
down a hall. A stately older man attended an oak and glass-featured bar while
the driver took a stool. Asian Man remained positioned between Austin and the
others at all times.

The older man
addressed him with an English accent.

“Greetings, Mr. Bakken.
I’m Edward. There is much to discuss. Sit down, be at ease. Can I make you a
drink?”

Far from relaxed, fear
rode the edge of every thought. This was danger, a dunk into madness.

“No thanks.”

He sat. Adrenaline
must have burned the pain meds away because his shoulder ached. Legs crossed,
he checked the ankle bracelet. Big enough for a beefy battery inside, enough to
deliver a major shock. No doubt a GPS component, too. His only bargaining chip
was the laptop unless they used torture. The bracelet might be for that, too.
He tapped it with a fingernail.

Edward finished making
a drink at the bar and moved around to a chair near the windows. Asian Man sat,
situated to intercept, more weapon than human.

“Your shoulder is
causing you discomfort. Would you like something for it?”

Anger and fear fumbled
ahead of tact. “You know I didn’t download the file. Why blow up my house? Why
all this shit?”

Edward returned his
gaze, measuring. The woman hadn’t returned and the driver might as well have
been wallpaper, at the bar studying his phone.

Awkward silence drew
long. The ice in his glass shifted.

Edward said, “
We
didn’t blow up your house.”

“You’re not with
Morris.”

“We’re not with
Morris.”

“Then who are you?”

“Someone who wants to
prevent the release of the file.”

“Okay, that’s easy. I
don’t have it, never did. I don’t have the downloader app, either. It’s gone.
Deleted. Bit bucket.”

Edward paused, staring
at him with the effect of an x-ray.

“You still have the
downloader. I ask that you refrain from further deception.”

Fear struck, bringing
two sudden realizations. One, he didn’t want telepathy to be real and two,
Edward’s hospitality could turn to hostility at any moment.

“Technically, no, I
don’t have it. I tossed the laptop. And I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t
finish the download. Could you just cut to the chase and tell me what this is
about?”

Edward turned to look
out at the city lights in silence.

For long moments Austin
studied his face. Wistful. A bit of hope.
Regret?
The range of feelings surged, too many to keep track of. Edward seemed to exude
emotion like rolling ocean waves. He glanced at the ankle bracelet and thought
maybe they had delivered a drug through it.

Edward took another
sip and turned back.

“Cutting to the chase,
you’ve stepped into some serious shit. The kind you won’t be able to wipe off
by yourself.”

“Yeah, I kinda
noticed. But why am I here? Who are you?”

“You are here because
you know there is more to life than what the surface presents. You understand
that reality extends beyond what science yet explains. You may even have
stumbled upon things that burden you with their... undefinability. Unconventional
perceptions that you dismiss despite your fascination. You keep your
speculations to yourself and largely out of mind because they are a distraction
and worse, a liability. But in truth you want to know more. You have a real,
almost timeless longing.”

He looked away. Fear
flowed like hot butter into every nook of his being. All that was in the past. Yet,
there was one damned, fucked up, insane part of him that knew there
was
a mystery to existence that
‘everyday life’ didn’t address. There
were
truths just out of reach. Part of him wanted to know what was in the file,
yet... the violence, the criminal charges. And his dad, Kaiya, his future at
InterGen, his home... it was time to put things back together, not dick with
the unknown.

Silence ensued, drawn
into moment after uncomfortable moment. Asian Man was stoic, observing
peripherally. Edward’s x-ray mode remained. He tried to read him in return but
it was like poking concrete with a pencil. The effort did seem to prompt him to
speak, though.

“In the hospital, you
went for a little walk?”

“Thanks to your
people.”

“No. I mean prior to
that.”

Time ground to a stop.
The astral walk. There was
no fucking way
he could know about that. Fear struck savagely.

“What are you talking
about?”

Edward arched his
brow. “I asked that you cease deception.”

Nothing,
nothing
had prepared him for this.
Beyond all else, this was
not
okay.
Hackers with stolen government secrets, fine. His house blown up, okay. Another
out of body experience, cool. Rogue government agents, alright. Kidnapping,
great. All of that was intense, but viable, plausible. There were frameworks of
reference for all of it. Shit happens, don’tchya just know it. But this, this
was from his
own head
. Only
he
had experienced that.
Only
him.