Mind Trace (35 page)

He pulled out his computer and connected it to Tobias'
machine.  Taking advantage of the connection, he opened a terminal and found
his way into the security directory. Entering the information he was able to
get from the Memory Keeper, he searched as quickly as he could to find the
location of the terminal in Alice's cell.

Garrett wiped the perspiration from his forehead. Minutes
ticked by and his apprehension grew. Finally, through a stroke of dumb luck, he
connected to Alice's terminal. He uploaded the pre-recorded message he made,
including a short delay, into the intercom system and then sent the command to
open her cell door.

Gazing at his watch, he saw that he had five minutes left. 
He quickly closed the connection to the terminal and started uploading the
super-virus.  Because the automated backup was already running from Tobias'
computer, the upload of his virus was taking longer than expected.

I have to stop that backup or I'm going to run out of
time.

Garrett agonized over what course of action to take. He had
to do something, and fast.

He scanned Tobias' computer trying to find the program that
was running the backup. When the window finally came up, a password prompt came
up on the center of the screen.

"You have to be kidding!" Garrett hissed under
his breath.

There was no way he would have time to hack into the file
to stop Tobias' backup before he would be done with his shower.  Garrett stared
at the screen, heart pounding.  He quickly improvised and decided to change the
priority of the data traffic. He set the backup to the lowest priority and his
transfer to the highest. Both programs would still run, but his upload would
have more bandwidth than the backup.

The progress bar edged across the screen.

Three more minutes.

Just when he thought he could not wait another moment, the
virus completed its upload. Garrett typed faster than he even knew he could. He
opened a terminal into the mainframe and ran the downloaded virus on the
EngineerCorp network. There was no going back now.

There was one minute left. He ripped his cables out and
shoved his equipment back into his bag as he heard the faint squeak of the
water shutting off. Garrett fled the room.

He reached the back door just as he heard footsteps coming
from the hall. Garrett froze. He didn't want to open the door because Tobias
would surely hear it at this distance. He didn't want to be caught standing in
his kitchen, either.  Seconds ticked by like hours.

Then, he breathed a sigh of relief as the footsteps went
off in the direction of the office. A few moments later he heard a loud oath.

"What the…?"  There was a short pause and then a
horrible scream that he heard over the crescendo of opera music. "The
mainframe! It's eating the mainframe!!"

Garrett didn't stop to see what happened next. He quietly
crept out the back door and ran faster than he ever had in his entire life.

Chapter 21

Alice wasn't sure exactly what she was waiting for anymore.
Part of her irrationally hoped that the right situation would present itself to
her, when she would know beyond a doubt that it time to stage her escape.

One of the main reasons she hesitated was because of the
size of EngineerCorp's security force. Even if she shut down their system, she
couldn't get rid of all the guards and Special Forces that Eric had at his
disposal.

As much as I'd like to believe it, I'm not invincible.

Until everything was set for her escape, Alice decided to
have a little fun with her powers. It was mid-afternoon, and she was busy
working in her lab. She had grown proficient enough to control almost any
electronic device at will.

Perhaps I can have a little fun. I need to have some
real practice anyway…

Let's see if I can destroy the transmitter in my
glasses. If I do this right, they'll never know it was me.

Alice knew enough about the electronics inside of her
frames to know that sending a certain, impossible command would cause the
transmitter to overheat, burning it up in the process. She smiled mischievously
and began to carry out her plan.

She raised her hand to the frames, appearing to be merely
rubbing her forehead. She closed her eyes and opened her mind to connect to the
device. Once she established the connection, she sent out the command and
waited.

After a few moments, on the right side of her glasses grew
warm and she felt the connection abruptly sever.  She could no longer sense any
activity coming from the frames.

Let's see how they like that!

Alice couldn't help but be impressed.

The way she had chosen to carry it out, they would be
unable to tell what happened to the transmitter. It would appear that it had
some sort of power surge and failed. It only occurred to her after the fact
that they might sedate her again in order to repair them, but it was too late
to go back now.

She waited for half an hour, pretending to be testing some
equipment. If she had been expecting someone to bust down the door, she was sorely
disappointed. The rest of the afternoon came and went in silence. Soon, the
door to the lab opened and her escort was there, ready to take her back to her
cell. She slowly followed them, not overly eager to return to her meager living
quarters.

Her dinner arrived on schedule. She was about to sit down
to eat it, when she dropped her fork.

What if this is drugged? It has to be.

It wouldn't kill her to miss one meal, even if she
was
hungry. She broke her dinner up into tiny pieces and flushed them down the
toilet, then poured the drink down the sink.  It wasn't the most fulfilling
meal she'd ever had, but she was more interested in proving her theory.

So, how does this work? If I was drugged, I should be sleeping
right now. I guess I should maintain the illusion, just in case.

Alice laid down on her bed, closing her eyes even though
she didn't feel the least bit tired.

Her mind occupied itself by solving complex equations,
tossing around calculations, and dreaming of theories. She had just begun to
fade into a real sleep, when she heard the door to her room open. She resisted
the urge to throw open her eyelids and investigate, but instead tried her best
to breath slowly and evenly, like someone who was sleeping.

She heard some men talking in the doorway.

"So, we're supposed to take her glasses to the lab
again?"

"Yeah, apparently they had some sort of malfunction
today."

"She won't wake up?"

"Nah, they gave her enough drugs to be out till noon
tomorrow.  I'd like to see her try something now!"

"You say that now…you heard what they did to the guy
that let her escape last time?"

"Oh, him? I'd never let
that
happen."

"I guess we won't have to find out for now."

Then it was quiet again, and Alice heard them approach her.
One of them delicately removed her glasses from her bedside table while the
other man picked up her food tray.

"She looks so…young." The man closest to her
observed.

"She's in here for a reason.  Leave it at that."

She heard the receding footsteps, and the sound of the door
shutting. Alice listened tensely to ensure that she was alone again. Then she
opened her eyes and looked around at the blurry room.

Well, that was pointless.

Alice wasn't sure what would happen when she destroyed the
transmitter, but she had at least hoped they would find some reason to remove
her from her cell, increasing her chances of escaping. Now, she was left locked
in her room and unable to see more than two feet in front of her face.

She didn't want to attempt to escape while the men were in
her room, even though they never expected her to be conscious. There were
technicians waiting for them to bring the glasses. If she had done anything to
them, their absence would have been detected almost instantly. 

No, she would wait until she had a better opportunity. Alice
also couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that her next escape attempt would be
her last. The thought of being trapped in EngineerCorp's underground forever
was not a fate she could accept.

The men said she should be unconscious until noon the next
day. If that were the case, then perhaps she would have the opportunity when
they came to bring her glasses back, which they would assuredly do before noon.
She would definitely need them back before she could do anything useful.

There wasn't much point for her to sit there awake all
night. Alice sighed and decided to do her best to get some rest. She would need
it for what lay ahead.

***

Great. What now?

They notified Eric immediately when the transmitter stopped
working. He had gone down to the lab personally to speak with the head of the
team.

"You're telling me the transmitter just burned up? For
no apparent reason?" he asked the lead tech, annoyed.

"Sir, we will need to see the glasses to understand
exactly what happened. But for now, it seems like it experienced some kind of
power surge and overloaded the circuit."

The ruddy technician pushed his glasses up on the bridge of
his nose. Eric would probably fire him after this situation was cleared up,
even if he was the lead designer of the transmitter. It was unacceptable that
he hadn't taken power surges into account, but that was another matter.

"I will have the glasses brought into the lab tonight
and you can examine them then. This will not happen again. Understood?"

"Yes, sir. I will get the lab ready."

The tech scurried off before Eric could reply, anxious to
get away from his oppressive demeanor.

The transmitter just experienced a "power surge?" 
What could have caused that? Did Alice have something to do with it?

Perhaps the surveillance team will have more answers.

Eric briskly left the lab and walked down the hall to where
the other team was stationed.

He barged into the office, full of monitors all focused on
Alice and the area where she worked. The men nearest to the door jumped when
Eric entered, but the rest of the men tried more successfully not to look
startled.

He walked up to the center monitor, focused on Alice
absently flipping through files on the desk in front of her.

"Can we help you, sir?"

"Has she done anything strange today? Any kind of
suspicious activity at all?"

"No. Mostly she's just been sitting there, as you see
her right now.  Earlier, she seemed to be testing some equipment, but nothing
extensive."

Eric was staring at the computer, eyes boring into Alice's
image. He reached up to massage his temples, trying to think of an explanation
for what could have happened. A man approached him quietly from his left and
stood near him. He appeared to be about to speak, but hesitated. Eric turned
his gaze on him, irritated.

"What is it?" he snapped.
"It's just that…you looked a lot like her just now. She was sitting there,
staring at the computer earlier, rubbing her head just like that. I thought it
was…interesting. She doesn't normally do that…" His voice trailed off at
the end.

"What are you talking about?"

He responded, but hesitantly. "Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I
just sit here all day in front of these screens and sometimes it gets kind of…
tedious, so I start to notice random things to pass the time. It seemed pretty
interesting at the time."

The man attempted to laugh, but snorted instead.

Eric looked at him distastefully and responded, "Just
show me the footage."

"Right over here, sir."

He led Eric to one of the side computers and offered him
his chair while he scanned through the footage. When he found the segment he
was searching for, he turned the screen to Eric and played the footage.

She was sitting at a desk, staring ahead. Eric zoomed in on
her face and watched attentively.  At the first part of the video, she seemed
restless and bored. Then all at once, it seemed as if some inspiration passed
briefly through her mind, as her face lit up for the smallest of moments. It
was so fleeting that he would not have noticed if he hadn't been watching so
closely.

After that, she made a big show of being tired and tense,
moving her hand up to the side of her head as if to gently massage it all away.
Her hand was to the camera, and Eric noticed it was her right hand.

"I wonder…"

Her hand paused briefly over her head, and he saw the
corner of her mouth turn up ever so slightly. He stopped the footage, rewound
it, and watched again. Then he paused it on the moment when her hand froze. 

Gazing at the timestamp in the corner, he saw that it was
3:12 that afternoon.

"Send me a copy of all footage immediately."

"Yes, sir."

Eric abruptly stood up and left the room. He stopped back
by the lab in charge of monitoring the brain scan transmissions and asked them
to send him all of their data as well.

He had a theory, but he needed to analyze the information
before he would be sure. Eric went immediately to the elevator and back up to
his office.

Once he was seated behind his desk, he pulled up the data
from both teams. He compared the footage and verified what he already suspected.
The transmission from her glasses stopped the moment she froze her hand on the
video footage.

It's no coincidence. Of that, I am sure.

It seemed that Alice began acting more and more peculiar
since the incident where she cut her head on the desk. Eric knew she didn't
have a concussion; medical equipment had verified that much. He knew there was
no brain damage either. Still, she had been acting notably stranger since then.