Chapter 25

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

                  

The breakthrough happened suddenly.

Sarah and Michael had spent countless days trying to find any evidence of Laura's crimes. They had painstakingly investigated and reinvestigated the bombings of the Aeon satellite and Nick Lal's parents' car. As with the Hurricane Reactor disaster, they could find circumstantial evidence that an Aeon like Laura was probably involved. Yet they could never find any hard proof.

Sarah knew in her gut that Laura had committed all three crimes in cold blood. The Hurricane Reactor blowout had killed scores of civilians and started a severe economic depression. Conveniently, Laura had founded Sparkwise just months before the Hurricane disaster, putting her in a position to capitalize on the ensuing energy shortages. She had repeated the trick by buying up pipelines weeks before the Five Mile Creek blowouts that destroyed most competing transport capacity.

The bombing of the Aeon satellite had cost Laura a fortune and incinerated a team of engineers that were working for her. These losses would seem to put her beyond suspicion. Yet Laura had smoothly used the event to convince the other Aeons they were under attack. Maybe Laura valued their obedience above all else.

Most cold blooded of all was the murder of Nick's parents. Laura had clearly devised the bombing to remove Dr. Aakar Lal, who was working to weaken Sparkwise's grip on the nation's energy resources, and was the last remaining counterbalance against the weight of Laura's influence over Nick. Nick's injury in the bombing had no doubt seemed like icing on the cake to Laura, who had taken the opportunity to "rescue" him from an intensive care unit.

Sarah's hatred of Laura grew stronger every time she thought of the pain that Laura had intentionally brought to Nick. The prospect of uncovering Laura's misdeeds to discredit her in Nick's eyes had become a new motivation for her.

But no matter how hard they worked, she and Michael never found any evidence solid enough to prove Laura's guilt. Nor could they find any clues as to where she might strike next. Sarah and Michael both believed the answers lay in the secure servers of Sparkwise, which had recently been relocated to Sanctuary. Michael had even found hints that the memory address of the most secret files began with the letter "D". But the holes that Michael had found in the Aeons' systems had long since been plugged, and they had never been able to find a way back to those servers.

Until this morning.

"The construction firms working on the Sanctuary facility just installed a landline phone system around the worksite. They think this is more secure than using wireless signals to coordinate their work. But there's a good chance the landline installation was sloppy, and the temporary phone lines intersect with the data wires serving the internal servers," explained Michael. "There's no way to be sure, and we'll have to manually search the phone system line by line, but it's our best bet."

"Let's go, Ghost 2," said Sarah. Since Willy had given their small unit the name Ghosts, they used the call signs Ghost 1 and Ghost 2 whenever they were in the ether spying on the Aeons.

In a moment, they were within the main phone switch of the Sanctuary development site.

She looked around her surroundings. She was standing in a giant, perfectly spherical room whose shimmering white walls were evenly lit with bright white light. The curving walls were honeycombed with dozens of narrow, dark pipes leading in all directions.

Michael followed her gaze around the spherical room. "My theory depends on how they've wired their systems together. If they're smart, they won't have allowed any intersections."

"Let's hope they're not smart."

Michael flashed an imitation of one of Willy's winks. "Let's do it, Ghost 1."

Sarah didn't return the wink. It was too flirtatious. She didn't want to toy with his emotions. Michael tried to play down his attraction to her, but even if the depth of his affections hadn't been obvious from how hurt he'd been about her relationship with Nick Lal, it was apparent in the way he looked at her a little too long when they were talking, in his tendency to angle his body towards her, in his slowness to get up when they fell to the ground together during combat training.

She wished she returned his feelings the way she once had. That would be much easier than longing for Nick Lal.

Until she sorted out her feelings, she wasn't going to give Michael any misleading signs. Especially not in the middle of a critical mission.

Right now, she needed to focus on that mission. Laura was a murderer and she was set to kill again. And despite Sarah's efforts to stop loving Nick, she was still fixated on stopping Laura's damaging influence over him. Finally, after her many missteps, after doing little more than look over Michael's shoulder when infiltrating the Aeon networks, she needed to prove that she was good enough to serve in the Ghost squad with Michael. Prove it to Colonel Jaeger. To Willy. And to herself.

"Let's go!" She instantaneously flew across the spherical room to the extension opening that was labelled 01. But she stopped just outside of it, momentarily perplexed: It was much too narrow for her avatar to fit into.

While Sarah stared at the small hole, Michael took the initiative. He shrunk the size of his avatar by half, but this did not make him small enough to fit into the tunnel. No matter how he tried to contort his body, he could not fit into the tiny opening. He couldn't even fit his head through it, much less his shoulders.

"The phone system can't support enough data for a full avatar. We need to go forward in a diminished state," Sarah muttered. "Time to strip down completely."

Sarah arched her back and slowly pulled down the zipper at her throat that held together her single-piece body suit. She rolled her eyes as she saw Michael staring at her intently.

As the zipper opened, not just her clothes, but her body itself split apart and fell away, allowing a narrow, wormlike being to emerge from within. Her head, with its eyes, ears, and mouth, was discarded. So were her arms and legs. All that was left was the very innermost part of her being, a dim version of her consciousness.

For a moment, she had no vision, no hearing, and no touch. And she could not speak. She felt a terrifying sense of vertigo well up, followed by fear.

Most of the fear was primeval terror at the loss of control she was experiencing. There was also an element of fear of failing to complete the mission.

She steeled herself. The vertigo was a physical sensation, and could be mastered. Fear of failure could be recast as motivation to succeed. She inched forward into the mouth of the pipe.

After several moments, her ability to perceive her surrounding improved as her TacWave adapted to the stripped-down capabilities of the phone system. Some vision returned, but she could see no colors, just vague shadows in dim shades of grey. She could speak and hear, but only in a single tinny tone. Her movements were agonizingly slow and ungainly. 

Nevertheless, now that she had some sense of sight and physical dimensions, she could at least be sure she was going in the right direction.

"Ghost 1!" exclaimed Michael from behind. "How can I do that? I don't have a zipper on my clothes!"

"Just get in here, will you, Ghost 2?" Sarah called back in her shrill voice.

In a minute, Michael crawled into the line behind her. "Ghost 1," he said, "Working through the phone system is forcing us to redline our TacWaves. We'll overheat if we're not careful."

Sarah tried to respond in a gruff tone, yet all that came out was the same high pitched voice. "Then we'd better hurry." She crawled through the new tunnel towards her goal as fast as she could. And yet the tunnel was narrow and winding, impeding her progress to a frustrating crawl. "Who knows how long it will take the Aeons to find this vulnerability and seal it. We might not get a second chance."

Finally, Sarah rounded the last bend of the pipe.

Nothing. She had wasted minutes pushing her way through the narrow pipe only to end up in a dead end. There were no connections to computers here.

In the cramped darkness, Sarah turned around and began the long crawl back out of the pipe.

Once back in the exchange, Sarah counted the number of extensions. There were 63 more. Considering how long it had taken her to search the research and development line, it would take her and Michael hours to search through all of them.

"Let's split up, it'll be faster," suggested Michael. "I'll do the even numbers, you do the odds."

Sarah headed into extension number 03. She squeezed forward in the dark, tight space as fast as she could, twisting through the tunnel until it, too ended in a dead end. This is taking too long! She thought in frustration. But there was nothing to do except keep searching. She turned around and headed back out of the pipe, intent on searching extension number 05 next.

***

Reverend Tracy Cruz sat in her old office at the National Unity Church's Kerrville headquarters. Today was the last time she would be using it, for soon she would be moving to new headquarters in San Antonio capable of housing her rapidly expanding staff.

A small helicopter would be arriving soon to take her to San Antonio. Then it would return and carry her husband Ricardo and an aide named John on a second trip. The use of the helicopter seemed like an extravagance, but her newly appointed head of security, Rosa Verde, had pointed out that the roads between Kerrville and San Antonio were plagued by desperate bands of economic refugees, and that Cruz would be a ripe target for kidnapping.

Cruz had been growing a team of highly capable advisors for months. Many of them had defected from positions within the United States government and military precisely because they hoped she would establish a new government free from the corrupting influence of the Aeons.

One of the most hawkish was a Brigadier General named James Widelane. Flattered that a flag officer had defected to her side, she had quickly appointed him to be her military chief. Now she regretted that move. Widelane constantly pushed her to prepare for and even instigate war with the Federal government.

Soon she would be able to heed his advice if she wanted: vast numbers of soldiers were defecting from the US military to serve her. And governors of a dozen states in the South and Southwest had indicated that they would follow her lead.

Cruz was deeply troubled by this enthusiasm for secession. Yet she often felt intimidated by the strongly felt beliefs of these devoted men and women, many of whom had experience and expertise far beyond hers.

Now she looked intently at Ricardo. "I can't believe you're siding with General Widelane. How can you be sure that secession is the right path?"

"Half the nation is on the brink of starvation. And you told me it's not just here in America. It's the same all around the world. It's all caused by Laura Mayer and her Aeons; they're bleeding the world dry. When they see the poor and the dispossessed, they don't feel sympathy. They use these peoples' desperation to mislead them into joining their cult."

"I know Laura Mayer is evil. I see that the Aeons have brought only misery to the world. I have denounced them. I have called the people back to the true faith."

"And the people have heard your call, and been inspired by your faith, and now you have tens of millions of faithful congregants, a government in waiting, and growing military might. All waiting for you to show them the path to salvation."

He pushed a sheet of paper into her hands. This was the document they all wanted her to sign. Across its top, in huge, boldfaced letters, was the title: Declaration of Independence. The body of the document was short.

We, representatives of the American nation, in order to protect the lives, liberty, and happiness of our people, hereby declare:

1.      Our formation of a new continental government, free of outside corruption, and devoted to the protection of all the American people.

2.      Our establishment of a military to protect our people from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

3.      Our intent and desire to peacefully coexist with all who would do no harm to our people.

The declaration was already signed by many of her advisors. Yet they had left a large blank space at the top of the other signatures. This was where Cruz was supposed to sign the document. So far, she had refused.

Cruz put the papers down, rose from the couch and looked out of the window at the children playing in the churchyard. "If you expect me to lead you to salvation by force of arms, I am a disappointing leader. I prefer to work with the Federal government, rather than depose it."

Ricardo shook his head. "The government is a creature of the Aeons. The government asks the people to suffer silently as the Aeons commit their evil."

"You've been spending too much time talking to Reverend Bacon," Cruz said in exasperation. "Congress is holding hearings into Aeon activities even as we speak."

Ricardo frowned. "I don't get along with Bacon. But on this point, he's right and I was wrong. Do congressional hearings provide food for the hungry? Do they provide jobs for the unemployed? No! The hearings have been going on since last year without one bit of progress. It's all a sham meant to lull us into silence, while the Aeons continue business as usual. The Federal government is just a puppet in the hands of Laura Mayer. We must replace our failed system with a new republic, founded on justice and faith."

Cruz watched two youths helping a younger child onto a tricycle in the playground outside her office. Evening was approaching, and the children were no doubt heading home. "I'm afraid to take such a drastic decision. What if it just ushers in more evil? What will the future hold?"

"The future will be dark if the Aeons still rule. We must make war and destroy these false idols."

Cruz felt as if she were the only bulwark protecting humanity from self-destruction. Now even her beloved Ricky had sided against her. She turned away from him and looked at the painting of Moses that Reverend Bacon had given her. It depicted the exhausted prophet seated on a rock, his loyal followers Aaron and Hur holding his arms up as a battle raged around them. Was Moses exhausted because, like her, he didn't know what God wanted of him?

She faced Ricardo. "I have no doubt that the destruction of the Aeons must be our end. But what are the proper means? The whole nation faces a common enemy. I am not convinced that the Federal government is merely a puppet. They are a potential ally, if we just give them enough time to sort things out. If we try to overthrow them, they'll definitely become our enemy. I don't want to doom us to a bloody civil war just when we need to unite. Regular humans cannot stand against Laura Mayer if we are divided against ourselves."

"Maybe signing the declaration will force the Federals to side with us once and for all," insisted Ricardo.

Before Cruz could respond, she was startled by a distant tremor that threatened to shake several items off the top of her desk.

"The chopper's here," said Ricardo softly, holding up his hands as if calling a truce. "It's time to go."

***

After exploring several extension lines, Sarah finally found a hole in the end of extension 15. She crawled through the hole and found herself in a large room. She intuitively knew she'd found a way into Sanctuary's servers and called for Michael to follow her.

Michael slithered into the larger space with her. "Why haven't you changed back to normal, Ghost 1?" he asked, even as he stuck one of his small grey appendages into an outlet in the wall, causing him to grow back into the regular Michael.

"We can do that here?"

"Now that we're inside the firewall, it's easy enough to find a safe connection via wideband data cables."

Sarah crawled to the same outlet and stuck a formless appendage into it. She found that Michael was right - now that she was inside the firewall, it was easy to disguise her full bandwidth connection as an innocuous signal. She sighed with relief as she reformed her body and her vision cleared.

She had her body back, yet she was starting to feel a headache. Her TacWave must be getting close to overheating from the exertion she was putting it through. 

Michael was looking around the room carefully. "Of course, their guardian procedures will eventually find us, though I've developed a trick to confuse them if they attack."

"Let's just get out with the data before they find us," said Sarah, trying to ignore the pain in her head.

"Roger that, Ghost 1. The data servers are this way." Michael took a few steps towards a doorway across the room.

As Sarah was about to follow him, she saw a shadow and instinctively stepped back into the corner. "Ghost 2-" she whispered a warning.

It was too late. A giant cat-like creature burst into the room and pounced on Michael before he had a chance to react. The cat must have weighed five hundred pounds and it was moving at a full sprint. The impact alone was probably enough to snap Michael's neck.

If Michael wasn't already dead from the force of the cat's pounce, he was definitely dead once the cat dug its long fangs into his body.

Sarah looked away from the bloody scene in shock. Then she pushed away her fear.

It was impossible to be harmed in the ether. Michael was fine. He was back in the ranch, sitting in his cooling chair, cursing himself for messing up whatever plan he'd developed to confuse the guardian cats. Only his avatar here in Sanctuary had been destroyed.

Now was her best chance to complete her mission. The cat had dragged Michael's corpse to the other side of the room. She just needed to sneak behind it and run into the data server room.

Careful not to make any noise, she worked her way around the edge of the room towards the doorway. Thankfully, the cat was facing away from her, nudging and pulling at Michael's body, undoubtedly in an effort to trace his IP packets back to their source.

Finally, she reached the doorway and slipped through it.

Sarah saw the familiar four by four array of steel safes floating in the air.

Even as she walked into the room, Sarah nearly fell to her knees as a wave of pain and nausea hit her. Her TacWave was overheating and she would have to shut down soon or risk permanent injury.

But she was so close! She just needed to think clearly for a few moments to get the information she needed. She blinked to clear her head and summed up her situation.

She was in pain, alone, in an unfamiliar location full of enemies.

She finally understood the purpose behind the sadistic training sessions Colonel Jaeger had made her undergo. Jaeger had been teaching her how to think clearly and act precisely despite overwhelming pain and fear. He'd been teaching her how to cope with a situation precisely like the one she faced now.

It was time to prove she had learned the lesson. There were sixteen safes, and Michael believed the address began with the letter D. No doubt the address was in hexadecimal notation, in which the letter D

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net