Immune Read online

  She pushed the two headsets back into her pack and slid into the chair, leaning forward as she logged in. Having been seriously disappointed in the Windows hard drive encryption software, she had written her own, and it was this algorithm that made it impossible that anyone else could log in and access the system. Even if the hard drive were stolen, there was only one other person on the planet who could decrypt it: Heather.

  Jennifer pushed the thought of her friend from her mind. That was a weakness she could not afford to succumb to, at least not right now. She glanced up at the mirror, the sight of her new self startling her momentarily. Her long brown hair was gone, cut boyishly short, dyed black, and spiked up in a mildly Goth look. A lacy black dress, lace-up, knee-high, black boots. Even without any piercings, something she had no intention of inflicting on her body, she couldn’t recognize herself.

  Still, it wouldn’t fool the dedicated professionals who might be looking for her, especially if they were studying video. Since her parents had no doubt now made her a milk carton girl, that was a concern. And although Las Vegas, with its millions of visitors, was a great place to lose yourself, closed circuit video was everywhere.

  A high-speed wireless Internet connection was available from the hotel, but Jennifer didn’t connect to it, at least not directly. Instead, she brought the subspace transmitter chip online, scanning for computer networks close to her location. It took her three hops to find what she was looking for: a network with links to the hotel security system.

  Security system network administrators were notoriously paranoid, and from what Jennifer observed as she hacked her way through the layers, the Bellagio staff took that paranoia to a new level. Every time she thought she had cracked the final level of security, she found another router, firewall, subnet mask, or encryption scheme.

  When she finally managed to gain access to the cameras and video playback systems, she pumped her fist in the air. “Gotcha!”

  Filling her screen with small windows for video display, Jennifer located the sequence of monitors that covered her path through the hotel, from entrance to lobby desk, all the way up to her room. Scanning back in time until she found her own image, she set to work editing the saved video data, carefully replacing all Jennifer pixels with background data from other frames.

  As fast as she was, the task took almost an hour. Not good. She was going to have to write some custom video editing routines if she didn’t want to spend a quarter of every day doing this sort of thing.

  Jennifer pressed the combination of keys that locked out her computer screen and stood up, stretching her arms and rolling her neck until she felt a series of small pops. Then, making her way across to the king-sized bed, she plopped down in the middle of it to take in the full reality of the room.

  Jennifer let her eyes roam freely. The place practically dripped elegance, from the bathroom tile to the plush carpeting in the bedroom. A penthouse suite all to herself. If only Heather and Mark could see her now.

  As she sat upright in the exact center of the bed, Jennifer felt a small drop of water splash on her arm. Glancing down she saw it repeated, then yet again. Realizing that tears had begun rolling down her cheeks, Jennifer wiped her face with the back of each hand.

  This was stupid. She wasn’t Tom Hanks, curled up on a flophouse cot in the movie Big. Nobody was yelling and shooting in the next room. This was a friggin’ penthouse in the Bellagio for Christ’s sake. And she was damn sure the one in charge of what was happening.

  Feeling a tremor work its way into her breathing, Jennifer grabbed one of the soft pillows and hugged it to her chest. The first sob killed what remained of her resistance, leaving her curled into a fetal ball, her face buried in the dampness of the pillowcase. As wave after wave of weakness shook her, Jennifer surrendered to it, and as she did, the darkness in her soul grew until it matched the gothic facade with which she had cloaked herself.

  94

  “What you got, Fielding?” Annoyance painted McKinney’s voice almost as red as his hair.

  Bobby McKinney had been running cyber-security operations for the MGM Mirage and its owned hotels for so long he could sniff potential trouble, just from the reactions of the system administrators. He was known as a man who was completely incapable of sitting still, constantly making the rounds of every one of the Las Vegas hotels that operated under the MGM umbrella, poking his nose into every aspect of the most sophisticated security system outside of the NSA. Today it was Bellagio’s turn to endure his presence, the tired, nervous movements of the systems administrator showing the stress his twenty-hour workday and probing intellect produced.

  The young computer technician glanced up from his workstation and shrugged. “Don’t know yet. Could be nothing.”

  “What could be nothing?”

  The technician ran a hand through his long blond hair, sweeping it back from his face in a movement that reminded McKinney of a schoolgirl. But, while Larry Fielding might straddle several sexually ambiguous boundaries, he was one of the best young computer geniuses in the entire company.

  “Let me show you.” Fielding turned back to the keyboards stacked in front of him, an arrangement reminiscent of something you would see at the pipe organ inside the Mormon Tabernacle. His long, slender fingers touched the keys so rapidly and softly that he seemed to be stroking them.

  The flat-panel monitors surrounding him changed to show the blackjack tables. As he stepped the video forward frame by frame, he oriented the view on a single table, and at the young Asian man sliding into a just-vacated seat. The dealer had just finished filling the shoe with the cards she had extracted from the Shuffle Master. With a small smile, the man pushed a stack of black chips onto the betting mark. Fielding froze the display.

  “I spotted this guy when I was reviewing the table data. He played at five different tables, always making his big bet just after he sat down, winning all five of those first bets. After that, he reduced his bet and continued to play at that table for twenty or so minutes.”

  McKinney’s eyes watched as the video jumped from table to table as the man played his first hand.

  “Here, take a look at his expression as he places that first bet,” Fielding continued.

  McKinney leaned in closer. “Intense isn’t he? I’d bet his heart is doing one twenty or better.”

  “Now, watch his face as he continues to play. You’d swear it was two different people. There!” Fielding slowed the video to a crawl.

  McKinney nodded. “Bored stiff. Looks like a guy that can’t wait to walk away from the game.”

  “Exactly what I thought.”

  “What I want to know is why my computer security team spotted that instead of the pit bosses?”

  Fielding smiled. “You’ll have to ask them.”

  “I intend to.” McKinney looked down at the computer technician. “But someone who figured out how to tamper with the shuffle machines isn’t what’s bothering you, is it?”

  The technician pointed at one of the frozen video frames on the display. “It was so subtle I almost missed it. You see anything funny in the background?”

  McKinney grabbed a chair and slid up beside Fielding, his blue eyes scanning the video frame. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  Fielding left the display as it was, pulling up footage from additional cameras on the other monitors. These new views were not of the blackjack table, but of the hotel staff checking in guests. Each image showed the same exact time as the frozen frame at the blackjack table.

  At first, McKinney failed to notice the connection. These new angles showed the check-in counter, which could be seen from a distance in the blackjack table shot. As he glanced back and forth between them, it hit him.

  Seeing the light dawn in his eyes, Fielding pointed at a spot just over the Asian man’s shoulder. Just visible through the crowded background, a darkly dressed girl leaned across the check-in counter in discussion with a clerk. It was the only shot that showed her.

  “I
’ve played all the video forward and backward. There’s not another shot of this girl from any camera in the building.”

  “None?”

  “I’ve checked backward and forward from the time of this shot. Nothing.”

  McKinney rubbed his chin, then raised his voice loud enough for everyone in the data center to hear him. “Okay, everyone listen up. We have a situation. I want a priority search of all our systems focused on the girl in this shot. I want to know everything about this young lady, especially her parents and how they managed to hack into our systems. Fielding will brief you. Take your direction from him.”

  “What about the Asian?” Fielding asked.

  “I’ll take care of that situation with the bosses. You stay focused on the data intrusion. Check all the camera data files to see when they were last modified.” McKinney pointed at the clerk across the desk from the girl. “And get me the name of that hotel clerk. I want to have a chat with her.”

  McKinney paused at the door and looked around at the technical team staring at him, raising his voice once again. “One more thing. You will not discuss this with anyone except me. Is that clear?”

  The response from everyone present almost brought a smile to McKinney’s lips. It sounded like a basic training unit’s response to their drill sergeant. That was good. Even the new people had been taught who to fear.

  95

  Union Station sat at the nexus of D.C., the restored Beaux-Arts architectural majesty of the metro and rail transportation hub giving bold testament to the thesis that not all government money is wasted. Since the completion of the remodeling in 1988, it stood as Washington’s most visited symbol of rebirth, a Phoenix risen from the ashes of decay. Even the busy shops and restaurants fitted flawlessly into the elegant architecture. It reminded Kromly of a beating heart, pumping humanity through the veins and arteries of the nation’s capital.

  Garfield chewed slowly as he leaned against the wall, letting the freshly baked, buttery warmth of the soft pretzel dissolve on his tongue. The line at Auntie Anne’s Pretzels was even longer than usual, especially for midafternoon Friday, people trying to get an early start to their weekends.

  A woman in a navy-blue pantsuit stumbled as she stepped away from the counter, spilling her soda and dropping her handbag on the ground.

  Garfield stepped forward, bending down to help her gather her things.

  “That was so clumsy of me,” she mumbled as he handed her purse back to her. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Then she was gone, disappearing into the throng of humanity headed toward the train platforms.

  Garfield finished the pretzel, licking the salt from his fingers as he paused to throw the wrapper into the waste receptacle. Then he turned and headed toward the multilevel parking garage, the computer disk he had retrieved from the open handbag tucked safely in the inside pocket of his sports jacket.

  96

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!” Heather’s anger leaped from her lips.

  “I’m sorry. I…” Mark paused, his tongue searching for the words. “I was just so excited to know something you and Jennifer didn’t. It was stupid.”

  “Damn right.” Heather knew she was hurting him, but she couldn’t stop herself. “As hard as I’ve been working to figure things out, I can’t believe that all this time you knew how speed reading could help, and you kept it from me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You know what? I can’t talk to you right now. Just give me some space.”

  Mark stepped back, her words slapping him in the face as effectively as if she had used her open hand. For a second he stood there, his deep brown eyes shining with moisture. Then he turned and strode from her room, leaving Heather alone.

  The void that settled into the room with his departure put a lump in her throat. Heather was angry with Mark, but now that she thought about it, the speed-reading revelation had only been one more brick on the pile of frustration that weighed her down. Since she had come to terms with her latest savant gift, she had been working her ass off trying to master it, but that goal drifted beyond her reach, as elusive as the end of the rainbow. Not that she hadn’t made huge strides in understanding how it worked.

  Chess. Heather could play entire games in her mind. She could beat any computer chess opponent with ease, and she suspected the legendary Deep Blue computer opponent would present no more of a challenge than any of the others. How could it when her mind could run through an endless number of game variations with a thought? But compared to the complexity the real world presented, chess might as well have been tic-tac-toe.

  Her brain gathered every bit of data available to it, including some subtle details well below the level of her conscious thought, constructing most-likely scenarios and doling them out as visions so vivid that she often found it difficult to remember that she needed to come back to reality. Thank God Mark had taught her the meditation trick that kept her in the present until she made a conscious choice to let the hallucinations take her.

  Heather had made a number of important discoveries. First, she could control the subject of the visions, at least partially, by concentrating on a particular thing as she let herself go. And the answers she got from her waking dreams were incredibly accurate in the short term.

  But the longer-term probabilities got weaker and weaker, their likelihood depending on the quality and quantity of her present information. Just as in chess, the possible outcomes shifted based on what the other players might do, their possible actions opening up whole new universes of nonlinear fractal mathematics. But in chess, humans and computers played the game completely differently. A human master could sense the correct move without consciously having to play out all possibilities the way a computer would. Heather had acquired an enhanced combination of both abilities, her mind picking only the most worthy choices to be played out in each step.

  Every attempt to go further into the future left Heather so exhausted she could barely summon the energy to bring herself back. Despite the terror of the thought that she might lose herself in a land of permanent hallucination, Heather drove herself deeper. And with each attempt, each venture further out onto that ledge, she could feel herself grow stronger.

  Heather glanced down at the digital photograph Mark had taken of her during one of her visions. There she stood in her own kitchen, silhouetted against the stainless steel backdrop of the GE refrigerator. Something about her expression made it appear that she was staring straight ahead, despite her wide-open eyes having rolled so far up in her head that only the whites were visible. Not a particularly good look on her. No wonder she’d scared her mom and dad to death. Christ. Staring into those white eyes was enough to make you want to crawl under the bed.

  But that fear was nothing compared to the force that drove her to the limits of her enhanced endurance. No matter how many scenarios she examined, the waking dreams had left her convinced of one thing. If they didn’t find Jennifer, horrors beyond anything she had ever imagined would sweep them all away.

  Heather had seen her mom and dad die horribly so many times that she couldn’t bear to think about it. Mark died. Jennifer died. But each time Heather was left behind, wanting to die but unable to do so. Depending on what she and Mark did in her visions, the hallucinations changed, but in every one where they failed to go after Jennifer she lived out the stuff of nightmare. Although Heather couldn’t see the face of her enemy, she knew with a cold certainty that something was coming for them, and if she and Mark didn’t leave soon, it would kill everyone she loved, before turning its attention toward her.

  Heather glanced down at the speed-reading course materials Mark had left on her bed. As angry as she had been at him for keeping the information from her, she could have kissed him for finally bringing it to her. There was so much she needed to know, but this had to come first.

  Piling pillows high against her headboard and sliding back against them, Heather grabbed the books
and began scanning them into her memory. Whatever it took, she wasn’t going to leave this room until she had mastered the contents. As she leafed through the materials, a chill of anticipation worked its magic on her attitude. No matter how badly life seemed to have stacked the odds against her, she was not without talents, and this new skill would only make her stronger.

  And with Mark, she was not alone. For the first time, she felt that new strength bubbling up within her, pushing back the darkness that lurked at the edges of her soul.

  “Hang in there, Jen. We love you. Wherever you are, we’re coming.”

  97

  Mark swallowed hard, steadying his hand under the microscope for the last circuit board connection. This one had to be perfect. The last time he had done this there had been no pressure, just the joy of being able to impress Heather and Jennifer with his complete mastery of every nerve ending and muscle in his body. And they had been duly impressed with the results of his modifications to the miniaturized subspace transmitter.

  But that had been before Jennifer had taken that laptop and run away. This time, he and Heather had been forced to apply the same modifications to the other laptop, the one that had been connected to the larger power supply, the one reserved for Jack and Janet’s access. Even though it meant taking that system off-line, there was no help for it. He and Heather needed it worse than Jack and Janet did, at least Heather was convinced of it.

  Mark completed the connection and glanced up, his eyes locking with Heather’s. God he hoped she was right. What the hell? Heather was always right. So why was the doubt shining so brightly in her beautiful eyes?

  “Ready,” Mark said as he tightened the screws that secured the board to the laptop casing, a few quick motions restoring the outer cover to its normal state.

  “Power it up.” Heather took a deep breath. “The program worked for the other laptop so, if the circuit holds up, this should work too.”