MC: Moniz: Book 9 (3 page)

I just look at him, he’s fuckin’ nuts. “My clothes are here?”

“Not the question I expected, but yeah. Need to get home now. Call me if you need help tomorrow moving the rest of your shit in.” He walks out hitting the alarm as he goes. I hear the garage close and his bike drive away.

I’d pinch myself but this is real. They built a house resembling my rooms and put my shit in it with furniture that resembles mine. I walk to the fully stocked fridge and get a beer because all this is normal in some realm of the universe. Fuckin’ Brothers.

It dawns on me as I’m looking at my bedroom and bathroom that Little Ben had to know they were planning this. They knew I’d be done at the Club before I did. Fuckin’ kids.

I take my beer upstairs and look at the office. It’s a circular desk with three keyboards in front of different monitors. Switching everything on at the first keyboard, I’m impressed with the setup and smile when the feeds show on the different boards. Digs must have helped here; every board is placed just where I’d have put them. There are direct feeds to each board and I’m smiling. It’s just like I would have set it up. Surveillance plays on three high boards. The right and left are sliding feeds and the bigger center board is what they are looking at right now. KC pops on a set of boards and I see Billy and Jacob working. Tracking is to the right and HS and Security IT rooms show to the left. Fuckin’ sweet!

I pull my laptop from the drawer and see the fridge under the desktop. I open it and laugh. Water and beer are in it and a note telling me the side drawer has snacks. I open the drawer and it’s cold like the fridge with fruit. The next drawer has chips and nuts. The Prospects must have told them what I eat. They thought of every fuckin’ thing I could want and set it up for me. I love the fuckin’ Brotherhood. I roll my chair to the side and flip on the other feeds with the second keyboard. The City shows with feeds we already have up. Rolling to the next keyboard, I get the two towns we have running feeds for. Nice!

Getting back to the main computer I log in and three screens pop. I put admin security on one and open my line to the feeds. Running the system checks it tells me my feeds are logged on. I am the first to log on and smile liking that they left that for me.

The doorbell rings, surprising the shit out of me. I run down, thinking its Danny or Prospects, hit the alarm and open the door to Jeremy. Since we moved to another realm in the universe I smile. “You wouldn’t be here at close to eleven unless I need you here.” He nods and takes my hand stopping at the alarm. I hit the buttons and follow him upstairs and right into the office. He goes to the closet and pulls a chair out pushing it to the side of mine. I sit and wait for him to show me what I need to see. Since I’ve worked with the kids for years this does not strike me as odd. On some level I know that’s fucked up, but I’m okay with it. Jeremy laughs and pulls the keyboard to him. His hands skate across the keys and I’m watching code scroll on the screen in front of him.

He’s in the security program. When he stops my blood boils. “Fuckin’ hell!” His hands move again and he pulls up the stations. Jacob has code blocked and stopped the hacker. “Thank Christ!”

“Yeah,” Jeremy says.

Jacob pops up on the OC. I open the video chat and see him on the board above me. “Jeremy said she’s hurt. People are hurting her and we have to help.”

I’m stunned. “A fuckin’ woman is hacking our system and you want me to help her?”

Jeremy touches my arm and I look down at him. “Like Diego.”

“Fuck! How long do we have?” I ask Jeremy, but it’s Jacob that answers.

“He thinks about a month. She’s going to keep trying so they don’t hurt her, but she’s broken. He won’t let me see any more Geek,” he sounds embarrassed.

I look at him on the screen. “I’ll talk to VP. If you’re not getting it, it’s bad. You all don’t need to see all that shit. He gives you what you need to help.”

Jacob nods. Jeremy lets my arm go and closes out of the mainframe, but leaves Jacob’s station up. I lift him up and carry him downstairs then back to his house. On the way I talk about the crazy shit that happened tonight and he laughs.

Cloud is waiting at the door. “I need to get him a fuckin’ dog.” Jeremy laughs as Cloud takes him from me. “Jacob still in KC?”

“Yeah,” he says putting his head on Cloud’s shoulder.

I need to talk to Cloud, but I can wait. “You MC tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there at eight have the coffee made,” he says smiling.

I laugh walking away.

The doorbell pulls me out of the code. I run downstairs and hit the alarm then open the door to Cloud and VP. “Come on in. I need to find cups; I set the coffee to go off at five of.” They follow me to the kitchen.

“Nice,” VP says.

Cloud goes right to the cabinet with the cups. “How’d you know where they were?” I ask him.

He smiles. “Danny set it up–cups here, plates, glasses, bowls and food over there,” he says pointing. I open them and he’s right. “He puts the stuff where it’s logical and easy. Coffee maker here, cups go above it.”

“My house too,” VP says.

I put the coffee shit out and they make their cups. We sit at the island counter. It’s L shaped so it works. I like the house. So far everything works for me. VP nods.

I look at Cloud. “Jeremy has learned coding and keyboard shortcuts, he’s running at warp speed. He’s always been good, but something is different with how he worked the keyboard last night.”

“He was with the Baxter boys last week. He probably got it from them,” Cloud says not looking happy.

“Goes to Baxters more and more. Mitch wants time with him,” VP tells us watching Cloud.

“Fuck. It was inevitable. What kind of time are we talking?” He wipes his hand down his face.

“Two, three months. He helps Little Brothers set the Chapter in Rhode Island. Gets them the land and buildings fast.”

“Fuckin’ great!” Cloud stands and starts pacing. He puts the tie in his hair paces then pulls it out. VP just watches him. I drink my coffee knowing they need to figure this out. “I’ll talk to Jamie about getting a chip in him. What do I need to know?” He sits and looks at VP.

“Get him that dog. He’ll be dressed before the others, so he needs to be armed with small gear to fit him. Get him tracked and ask him what else he needs.”

Clouds shoulders sag. “He’s too fuckin’ young for this. Nunánuk says the spirits bless him with a long story. Do I need to find out how to get him there or just let it play out?”

VP takes a minute. “Both. He is small, still makes mistakes. With Mitch he learns more, too much sometimes, he needs to shut down to get it all. You watch that ‘cause he doesn’t get it. Mitch just focuses somewhere else. He doesn’t know how. Like healin’, he’d go till he drops. Doesn’t shut down like Mitch, but can’t move to the next by himself.”

Holy shit, my little Ninja. “Can’t you just ask Mitch to teach him how to move the focus from one thing to the next? If she knows what to expect she can help him.”

They both look at me. VP smiles looking at Cloud. “What he said.”

Cloud starts pacing again. “She’d do that. She wants him so she can see how his mind works. I bet if I explained why I keep him away from her she’d help teach him. She’s fuckin’ brilliant. She’ll find a way to make it safe for him to get whatever he’s going to pull from her head.”

“Set up a meet with her,” VP tells him. He pulls his phone and walks out. “Not all you got from him.”

He’s red. “No, hacker got in last night. Jacob stopped her. Jeremy came to me to show me, but he said she’s hurt, like Diego, and we need to help her.” He’s watching and I know he’s getting it from my head. “Jacob said he won’t give him any more. I thought you could get that from him so we can get the hacker before she gets into the actual files.”

“Still encrypted?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

Cloud comes in. “Can you go now?” he asks looking at VP.

“You have the video of Jeremy tellin’ us how he learns?”

“Yeah.” I run up the stairs and download it on a flash. They’re waiting by the door. I put my hand out to give it to Cloud.

“You’re comin’,” he says scanning my face.

I hit the alarm buttons and walk out with them. When VP says you’re going–you go.

We meet in the big Batcave. Jamie and Kevin are here but Ben isn’t. I wonder about that but keep my mouth shut. They watched the video of Jeremy talking through the other kids. When Mitch sees Cloud put him on his shoulder she has tears in her eyes. “It hurts him to do what he does,” she says.

“No, drains him.” VP tells her.

She looks at him for a minute. “You kept him away so I didn’t hurt him, or drain him?”

Cloud answers, “No, he takes what other people have learned and learns from that. It’s like he experiences it himself. With you he would be overloaded. He doesn’t know how to shut down or focus on something else. He keeps going back to get all he can. He does it with the healing. We have to pull him away so he doesn’t drain himself. When he has visions or whatever they are, we have to take it from him; it’s like energy he has to get rid of. If we shut him down before it’s all out, he’s burning up with the heat of that energy.”

Jamie stops pacing. “That’s why you take him into the wind with your spirit guide? It’s to cool him off and release the energy?”

“Yeah. Most of the time he can jump himself and only needs a little push from me or someone that he trusts. Sometimes it’s too much and he needs more help,” Cloud tells them. “Steve sees him shutting down here. He’s moving toward being up here, but without understanding how to focus on something else he could hurt himself. Mitch gets how to change her focus; she never shuts down, and can change to something else before it’s too much for her. He doesn’t have that.”

“If she could find a way to teach him that control, you think he’d be safe to come here? That’s why you’re telling us today? To find a way to get him that control before he comes up on his own.” Kevin says.

VP answers, “Yeah. He’s comin’ here, but it isn’t good. Smart, but still makes mistakes. Doesn’t know when it’s too much. He doesn’t see it.”

“Can I copy this? I think there’s a way to teach him without actually meeting him face to face. I need to think about this,” Mitch asks. VP tells her she can keep it. She goes to her computer and her fingers fly over the keyboard. How the fuck her robotic works that fast is beyond me. I just smile. She’s no longer with us.

“Once he gets with Mitch he’s going to have everything she does plus what he picked up from everyone he’s already been in contact with. What do you need to keep him safe?” Jamie asks.

Cloud nods. “A chip in him and monitoring from here and at the MC. He’ll carry an even bigger target on him once he meets with Mitch.”

Jamie nods. “Mitch came up with a thinner chip, it’s really like a piece of foil, I’ll get the doctor to your Clinic to put that in him. Can you clear a room for him later today?” Cloud nods.

“What changed? Why now?” Kevin asks.

Cloud and VP look at me. “He met up with your boys last week. We’ve always had him somewhere else when they’ve been in the KC. Last week he met them, and last night he ran code using keyboard shortcuts he’s never used before. He ran faster than I’ve ever seen any kid run, and we have fuckin’ kids like your boys. Jeremy wasn’t one of them. He helped, but last night he ran the code on the security mainframe like he’d been doing it every day, that didn’t come from us.”

Kevin watches me. “You run code. Why wouldn’t he pick it up from you?”

“He gets something from everyone. He pulls something else from him,” Mitch says. “He takes what is most prevalent from each person he meets. Geek is loyalty, defense, and honor. They are his strongest traits. The Brotherhood means something to him and he defends it regularly. He is more than coding. Jeremy picks that up. He will learn loyalty, protection, and honor in the Brotherhood from him. The kids are not grown and don’t have the experiences of the adults. He learns from them easier without all the adult experiences to wade through first.” We all just look at her. “What? That’s what the video said. He named what he got from each person. It is the strongest of their traits that he named. He didn’t learn how to fly from Cloud, but strength, honor and discipline. Steve showed him how to defend. I bet I could go down a list of names and tell you what he gets from each person based on their character traits.”

Kevin cracks up. “Bet you could baby. We need a way for him to learn from you without blowing his circuits.”

“Email,” she says with a smile.

Cloud laughs. “You need to say more than one word for those of us that are mere humans.”

She smiles and we all smile with her. She’s cute. “If I email him and explain why I need to do that before I can meet with him, then we can bring his inability to control his focus out in the open. He learned to control what he hears from Tess’s experiences. If he knows it’s a problem that is stopping him from learning more, he’ll do everything he can to fix that.”

“How do you know that?” I ask.

She bounces with the biggest smile. “He wanted to learn more and he got that by using the other kids to talk for him. He wants to come here to learn. He’ll find a way to get that no matter what we do. If we throw a roadblock up he’ll find a way to get over it. I’ll email him with the roadblock. He thinks just like I do. He’ll find a way over. I can guide him through the email with exercises I used with Jess to keep her from getting too far into something. It will work.” She bounces and claps her hands together. I just laugh.

Cloud watches her. “You think this will work. I’m still going to want to be here when he comes to you. I trust you, but he’s just a boy. I almost lost him once because he didn’t know how to let go.” Fuck I’ve never seen him nervous.

Mitch sits. “I wouldn’t put him in danger, but I think we need you to be here. I can push things away and taught Jess how to do that, but Jeremy would be getting stuff for the first time. When I get onto something it’s hard for me to let it go. I think until we know for sure how it will work for him, we need a safety net. You are that for him.”

“Angel, would it be better for him to meet you at his house? He has the support to help him there,” Jamie asks.

“I was thinking that would work best but didn’t want to throw you into a Security frenzy right now. I want to go see Kate at the Women’s Center tomorrow.” VP, Cloud and Kevin laugh.

Jamie smiles at her. “I can do both Angel.” She gets the biggest smile.

Cloud stands, so we all do. “Thanks for seeing us right away.” He goes to Mitch and kisses her cheek thanking her for helping his son.

“You’ve been part of my family forever; of course we’d do anything for you and the kids. Now that we know why you’ve been keeping them away maybe you’ll bring them around more,” she says quietly.

VP is talking to Jamie and Kevin. I just wait for everyone to be done. I envy Jeremy. I want to spend a day with Mitch to see how her brain works. VP pulls my cut toward the door. “Pretty sure Two wouldn’t get you want to see how the brain works. He’d kill you first.”

Jamie laughs as he’s pulling me out. Cloud follows asking what the fuck that was. “Wants to spend a day with Mitch to see how she thinks. Told ‘em Two would kill him.”

Cloud laughs. “Jamie focuses on Mitch’s Security and Kevin on keeping her happy. I’m pretty sure he would kill you if you tried to spend a day with her.”

“Fuck, I just thought Jeremy was lucky. I’d love to see how her brain works. I wasn’t going to ask to spend a day with her.” Fuckin’ Brothers.

“Still might kill you for the lost puppy look you gave her. Need to up Security on you.” VP smiles. Cloud laughs all the way out of the parking lot.

I follow them to Security and see my new office isn’t up and running yet so I head home to work from there. Since it’s cool as shit–I’m happy about this.