Mind Trace (31 page)

"I dropped my pen, so I crawled under the desk to get
it and bumped my head on the way out. Nothing complicated there. Certainly,
there was no need to make such a big deal out of it. Please explain that to
your staff. I can handle myself just fine."

"Oh, I'm fully aware of that. But, we have this policy
for a reason. You are too valuable an asset for us to take chances needlessly."

Alice gave an exasperated sigh and stared at the ceiling.
She wondered if she would ever understand him. Eric seemed to be kind and understanding
at times, but she knew his character was not so innocent. It was getting more
and more difficult to decipher which side was dominant.

"We did get your materials list and you will have the
items tomorrow morning. It is too late tonight for you to do any more work
anyway. Plus, you need to rest."

She turned her head to look at him again. Alice was tired,
frustrated and depressed. It felt mercilessly cruel to be so helpless. Not only
was she a prisoner, but she was not even allowed to determine her own
well-being.  Some of this must have shown on her face. Although she said
nothing, Eric responded as if she had voiced everything on her mind.

"You shouldn't feel such despair. You may not want to
be here, but you will be taken care of. We will do our best to ensure you aren't
harmed."

He was silent for a moment before adding, "It wouldn't
hurt you to consider trusting me. You might find that you are surprised by the
results."

He stood up and left the room, leaving Alice to wonder what
he meant. She knew he still had ulterior motives, but she couldn't stop herself
from having fleeting feelings of guilt, despite his intentional activation of
her bracelet the night before.

Eric had a strong and compelling presence; she knew that.
It was part of how he had become so successful and powerful. She just had to
keep reminding herself of that fact…it was only that presence she was
experiencing, nothing more.

Alice permitted herself to sit up after she was alone. Her
head mildly throbbed, but it was nothing serious. She would need to be extra
careful not to injure herself again, lest she experience another day like this.

It was a little past seven thirty in the evening. It might
be too late to work, but she did have some time to experiment more with the
strange sensation she had experienced when she was near the cables. In the few
times that it had happened to her, she noticed that it was a much stronger
sensation when she was not trying to intentionally sense it.

Earlier, when she traced the cables along the wall in her
room, the feeling was much more muted. That was probably one of the reasons it
caught her so off-guard in the lab. In addition to the fact that there were
many more cables present beneath the desk than there were inside her walls.

She stood up and approached the wall again, placing her
hand over one of the areas where a cable was. There again, she felt the strange
feeling resonating inside her head. She held her hand steady, trying to
understand what exactly she felt.

It was almost as if she could sense the energy pulsing
through the wires, like a living thing moving and bending under the strain of
information passing through it. Alice tried her best to relax and let the
feeling flow freely in her mind. The peculiar feeling grew stronger as she let
it take over.

She didn't know how long she stood there, lost in the
strangeness she was experiencing. The intensity kept building and building,
until it seemed like it would completely take over. Then, all at once, it
changed.

It went from the mere buzzing, to a dynamic bit stream in
her mind.  Zeroes and ones floated through her consciousness as they flowed
through the wire beneath her hand.

Alice had no idea what was happening anymore, but she was
fascinated by it. The numbers danced in her head, and her mind began to sort
through them, separating the data into packets and filing them accordingly. She
hadn't realized how intense the feeling was, until she became aware that she
was sweating.  She ignored her physical discomforts, not wanting to break the
link she had thought only existed in her imagination.

She felt a strange "snapping" then, almost as if
she could physically sense the last piece of some puzzle clicking into place. 
The bit stream became images, text and data. It was all flashing so quickly
through her mind. Her mind was filtering through all of it now, updating the
database in her head and downloading new information.

Somehow, she was connected to the EngineerCorp database
again, siphoning off information through the electromagnetic field surrounding
the data cable. Sweat was pouring down her face and she was conscious of the burn
on her hand searing with heat and pain.

Her mind shut down as the download completed. Alice swayed
unsteadily back, her hand falling like a dead weight from the wall in front of
her. She was barely aware of the floor beneath her before she blacked out.

Chapter 19

Alice looked around, confused. Carpet had made tiny
impressions all along her body. She gazed across the room and saw that the tiny
red letters on the clock read 2:33am. 

She rolled over, rubbing her eyes. How many times would she
wake up and find that she had yet again passed out?

She sat up slowly and her memories returned to her as she
steadied herself. Alice knew she should be past the point of disbelief in her
circumstances, but she couldn't help it. Had any of that really happened?  She
turned her hand over and gazed at her palm. The burn still looked like a burn,
although it was more of a scar now. It was no different from the day before. 

Alice looked up at the wall in front of her. She thought
she could almost make out the ghostly outline of a palm print on the wall, but
she couldn't be sure.  She felt far too shaky to attempt anything like that
again soon.

Half-crawling, she made it back to her bed and climbed in.
Prisoner or not, her bed felt amazing. Coming from her stiff respite on the
floor, the feeling was intensified. She felt the tension in her muscles slowly
unwind as she lay there.

She reached up to remove her glasses, and as she did so,
she was surprised to feel the tiniest of vibrations in her mind.

What was that?

It piqued her interest and she temporarily gave up on her
desire to go to sleep. Curiosity won over fatigue.

If her newfound abilities really existed, was there any
better way to figure out what her glasses were transmitting?  Her heart was
racing with anticipation. She hesitantly held her hand over the frame. She felt
a faint, almost stuttering sensation in her mind. Alice focused harder, but the
feelings grew fainter until she could almost no longer sense it at all.

She sighed and let her hand fall as she tried to calm
herself. She had to find that same quiet intensity from before. If she tried to
force it, she would get nothing.

She took a deep breath and raised her hand up again, this
time just "listening," instead of trying to compel the visions to
come forth.

It took some time, but it finally worked. She found herself
starting to sweat with exertion by the time the visions began to flash through
her head.

They passed in their entirety before she stopped to decode
them. Removing her glasses, she let her mind filter through the information it
just received.  At first, just the extraneous information passed through. She
saw the information about the transmitter in her glasses and the destination,
which turned out to be a computer in a private research lab on the sixth floor.
She paused as the rest of the data was sorted.

Her mind translated it into images, which didn't make sense
at first. It was a never ending stream of images with multi-colored areas on
some sort of diagram. Then her mind reoriented them, and she realized what she
was looking at. Somehow, they had slipped a brain scanner, complete with
transmitter, into the frame of her glasses!

She could only guess how long the data had been
transmitting, but they probably had enough data to do whatever they needed to
do. The only question that remained in her mind was whether or not they knew
what to do with it.

Her mind could recall no data on this project from her most
recent download, which meant it was isolated from the main servers and data
lines. Given the secrecy and security, she understood the rationale, but it
made her task much more difficult.

Since Eric hadn't stormed down the door yet, she safely
assumed that they hadn't discovered her secret. Alice thought about it rationally. 
At most, they could see that she had some unusual brain activity. By itself,
that was not enough evidence to make any kind of conclusive decision on
anything.

I have to destroy that transmitter before they do find
out the truth.

Somewhere during her thoughts, she found herself nodding
off. Alice was exhausted and could no longer stay awake, even to consider ways
to destroy the scanner.

***

A few days passed before Garrett heard from the detective.
That evening in his lab, he listened to the update from Nick.

"First off, I just want to say this guy is definitely
a weird one, Garrett. He's obsessed with his routine and he never, under any
circumstances, deviates from it."

"Tell me what you know."

"We'll start with background. His name is Tobias
Kraus. His parents immigrated to the states when he was a child and he was
raised in New York. He did pretty well in school, graduating from MIT with honors
in Computer Science. Did a few stints here and there, but for the past fifteen
years he has been working as a "Field Consultant" for a company
called Serrochip. It took some digging, but I found that Serrochip is a
subsidiary for a company called GK Holdings, which is owned by EngineerCorp.
The house he lives in has no official owner, but the taxes are paid every year
by Serrochip.

As for his routine… he starts every day with a five-mile
run. Then he comes back at 6:30am and turns on his computer. After it is up and
running, he begins his daily computer backup while he takes a fifteen minute
shower. He follows that up with his breakfast routine of coffee, and usually
some kind of super healthy meal. 

He spends the rest of the morning either talking on the
phone or working on his computers. Lunch is promptly at noon. The rest of the
afternoon is spent doing more work on the computer. He finishes the day with
dinner and another workout. Oh, and don't forget another shower at 7:15pm."

Nick laughed at that and then continued.

"He's definitely a clean freak. From what I could see
through the windows, the house is meticulous. Also, it's locked tighter than
Fort Knox! He has an alarm system that would make any criminal reconsider his
career. He's definitely hiding something."

You have no idea.

"Is the alarm always set?"

"As far as I can tell, yes. Along with all four locks
bolted on his front door. The only place anyone could even imagine entering is
the back door which only has one lock. But, the house is no mansion. If he's at
his computer, he is well within hearing range of either entry point. Oh, and I
was able to catch him entering his lock code. It's 24452."

"Wow. Do you know what he does?"

"It seems to vary. I know he's running an extensive computer
network. I mean, he has fiber optic cables for his internet lines. No one
around here has that kind of bandwidth.

"I'm not sure exactly where all the traffic is going,
but I do know that his phone calls mainly consist of talking to different
clients. His job sounds kind of shady, if you ask me. He is in the business of 'sensitive
information sharing' or something like that. Occasionally, people stop by to
deliver information in person, and it's usually in the form of some kind of
data storage device. He takes that data and uploads it to a remote location,
the same one he backs his computer up to each morning."

This is not going to be easy.

"Wow… Nick, your help has been invaluable. If you ever
need anything from me, don't hesitate to ask."

"Call it even. You've done enough for me in the past."

Garrett could hear his hesitation over the phone.

"Garrett, I will say this. This guy seems…dangerous.
And smart. If you have anything further to do with him, just be careful,
alright?"

"You know I will."

"Yeah…but as a friend, I felt like I needed to say it.
Good luck in whatever you do from here. And, don't wait so long to call me
again!"

As Garrett hung up the phone, he was glad there were still
some decent people left in the world. Thanks to Nick, he had the information he
needed. He stood up and stretched, flexing his tense muscles.

Let's do this.

Garrett walked over to one of the shelves in his lab and
selected a mysterious box, labeled "Archives – Extremely Volatile,"
and settled down at one of the worktables to find the perfect instrument to
enact his plan.

***

 Alice was heavy with sleep and unwilling to wake up.
She realized after a few moments that she was being gently shaken, and that
someone was speaking to her.  

"Alice? Alice, are you alright?"

She struggled out of her lethargic state and found she was
looking into Eric's clear, dark eyes. His brows were furrowed, and he gave her
the impression that he was vaguely concerned.

"It's well after 10:00am. Is something wrong?"

Is it ever…

He was seated on the edge of her bed, staring at her, face
full of worry. Alice was conscious that she must be quite a remarkable sight,
still wearing the clothes from yesterday, knowing that her hair must have been
sticking out in a thousand directions. She had only bothered to crawl into bed
the night before, pulling up the sheets and passing out.