[Brackets] (24 page)

With one more drink he summoned enough will, albeit slightly inebriated will, to return to the office. He
would
purge the treasonous elements from among his personnel; he would regain control of his company for good. But when he approached his office, he found his secretary standing anxiously by his door.

“I’m sorry,” she said, somewhat frazzled, “you have a lot of messages. The Corazon Resort just called two minutes ago.”

Neeson stepped into his office, closed the door, and returned the call. The person he spoke to was Lance Reynolds’ assistant. She regretted to call him that night
, but she had to inform him that “w
e have decided not to pursue the purchase of WindSkin.”

Neeson reeled back into his chair, rolling it
a full
two feet
from the desk
. “But I was told I would have a week to demonstrate WindSkin to your specifications. My people are preparing the demo as we speak.”

The woman was very sorry, but it was Lance’s final decision. She wished him a good evening and hung up. He looked at the phone in disbelief, his thoughts spinning. The next number he dialed was for Haj Hittock.

“Haj, this is Neeson Faulkner. I’m sorry to disturb you this evening, but this is urgent.”

Haj was silent for a mom
ent, then responded regretfully.
“They told you that they decided against the sale. I’m very sorry about that. I would have warned you, but I found out just this afternoon.”

“What happened? Can I still get them back?” Neeson heard himself sounding desperate but couldn’t stop. “I’m running the simulation tomorrow. I could have a full video prepared by noon. Whatever it takes.”

“Neeson, it’s more than just the test. They were OK with waiting, but they began to hear rumors. I didn’t hear them myself. They said there was doubt that you even had functioning panels, that your panels worked up to 100 miles per hour and then crashed, that your software wasn’t working with the overall design. Apparently they heard this from several different sources. Lance began to consider WindSkin a gamble, and he doesn’t like to gamble, so they shut it down. Do you know where these rumors could be coming from? Are they true?”

“No, they aren’t t
rue,” Neeson snapped back.
B
ut
I
know where they are coming from
.

His mouth and throat dry, Neeson said
more contritely
, “Thank you for everything, Haj. I won’t forget your support.” He hung up and logged int
o his neglected email. Of the fifty-three
unread messages, seventeen were from potential clients, all sending their regrets. The rumors had spread far and fast, like an air-borne plague. No one gave reasons, but the wording between them was remarkably similar.

The saboteur had crippled WindSkin.
His
company.

Neeson laid his head back in his chair, restraining the impulse to smash everything in his office. Someone had done these things to him.

He sprang into an investigation with zeal, starting with
the access log in his computer.
There it was, starting in January: evidence of unauthorized access. He
traced the breach back through the corporate network
until he found the source. It was not a surprise.

Then, in an inspired stroke, he called the KM Center
.
He claimed
to be an IT security worker who had stopped a hacker named Typhoon150 and had later connected the handle to a KM account of the same name.
He wanted to confirm the connection and get the contact info for a pending lawsuit.
The inexperienced
desk clerk
readily gave him the name.

Neeson hung up the phone slowly and
sat in silence at his desk
, his heart pounding, his lips grimacing until they trembled. He looked up on his wall
and studied the pair of mounted antlers that hung over his bookshelf.

And he broke.

[
South Division
: Elite Eight]

[Saturday, March 28]

Early on Saturday morning, a phone call.

“Jason, this is Neeson.”

“Mornin’, Neeson.”

“I hate to bother you, but I need you to come in for a half-hour and help me run a test at the wind tunnel. Could you come in at 11:00?”

“This can’t wait until Monday?”

“I’m afraid not, no. It’s important.”

Jason gave a low hum while he thought. “OK, but I have to leave at lunch.”

“Thank you.”

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

Neeson sat alone in the control room of the wind tunnel. The computers were on, the simple red logo of OPUS blinking at him from the corner of the software’s home screen. Neeson’s face was rigid, as if he had died in his sleep. But his mind was active, his thoughts not so much burning as they were churning. His intentions were singular and simple, a state ideal for an engineer.

At the distinctive clomp of Jason’s boots, Neeson swiveled around in his chair, unsmiling.

“OK, I’m here. What’s so important?” Jason asked.

“Our clients,” Neeson enunciated, “have given us an ultimatum. They need footage of a successful test this weekend. It’s very important that we deliver. I thought we could manage it together if you helped me out at the beginning.”

“Uh-huh,” Jason grunted, looking around. “You didn’t tell me that the repairs were all done. This looks like it took a lot of work to set up. You did all this yourself?”

“That’s right. But I know you’re a busy man, I won’t keep you too long. There is one thing I want to do first.” Neeson turned around to face the wind tunnel window. “There’s an indicator here that some of the panels on the lower left wall aren’t secured. Can you run in and do a manual check while I see if the indicator light
goes off?”

Jason shrugged and stepped down
through
the doorway
and
into the
wind
tunnel. The clomp of his boots echoed clamorously off the solid cement walls, filling the chamber with sound until he stopped at the tower platform. As he bent down to look at the panels, he heard a heavy metallic click
and
a loud buzz overhead
. R
ed lights
began
blinking on all four walls. The room was sealed. Jason whirled around and saw Neeson looking at him, statuesque, still unsmiling, from behind the Plexiglas window.

“Hey, what…?” A mechanical whining started up from either end of the room. The fans had begun to spin.

Jason ran over to the door and pulled on the handle. It wouldn’t open. The fans sped up, creating a breeze. He found the emergency shut-down button by the door and slammed it with his palm. But it didn’t work. It had been inactivated. The screws that held the button panel in place had been stripped so that it would be impossible to open. Jason pounded on the glass.

“Neeson, what are you doing? Open the dang door!”

Neeson put his mouth up to the thin microphone attached to the control desk. His voice came over the speakers in the tunnel, loud enough to be heard even over the wind that was making Jason’s shirt snap sharply around him.

“Typhoon150.”

Jason looked through the window into Neeson’s eyes, which were hard and nearly lifeless.

“I have to admit that I never saw you coming,” Neeson mused sadly as he sat
down
heavily in his chair. “I had always considered you the safest bet in the world: smart but unambitious, independent but loyal. If it hadn’t been for the Kaah Mukul thing, I never would have believed it was you, much less been able to prove it. But now I know.”

The wind blew harder. The indicator in the tunnel read 50. Jason pressed himself against the
door, trying to find shelter in
the shallow depression. Muffled, he yelled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Stop the fan and open this door
now
!”

“It worked, by the way. Your plan killed the company. I lied about the clients wanting video. We have no clients, thanks to you. Maybe you knew that already? You saw to it that tests failed when
we most needed them, that everyone who ever expressed any interest in WindSkin was lied to from multiple angles. We didn’t have a chance.”

Jason raised his arm to keep the wind from pelting his face. Panels on the tower were fully opened.

“I spent all night in here thinking about why you did it, but I figured that out, too. When did you figure out what I was doing with OPUS? Months ago? Was it after I started running the subroutines? You must have gotten curious, hacked into my system, saw my bracket program, saw how valuable OPUS could be. You wanted to kill the company so that you could take OPUS with you, all to yourself. I really never did see it coming. Do you already have your own clients, Jason?”

Jason was leaning into the wind now, barely keeping his balance. It was hard for him to keep his eyes open. The indicator read 100. Neeson sat back, observing remorselessly as the wind meter ticked up steadily. A panel that hadn’t been secured well broke off and flew just a few yards from Jason’s head. Jason did what he could to pound the window again and yell as the wind hit 110.

Suddenly, Jason fell backwards and disappeared under the window. Neeson stood up and walked over to the glass. As he approached and scanned the floor, he failed to notice that all the panels were suddenly, simultaneously, closing. A few seconds later, the power to the fans stopped and the brakes came on. Neeson whipped back to the control panel to see what was happening. The screen had a warning:
Failsafe: Direct Override
. It was Jason’s program, created for Haj’s benefit and never tested because the electrical systems had failed too soon. Neeson had forgotten. He typed swiftly, trying to override the override, but it was too late. The full power down was mandatory. Turning back to the window, he saw a haggard and angry Jason, hair askew, standing inches away from the glass, rubbing the back of his head.

“You are completely out of your mind!” Jason yelled.

“Calm down, Jason, you aren’t hurt.” Neeson considered holding this conversation through the thick safety glass, but wearily decided against it. There was no point. He pushed the button to unlock the door, and Jason barreled through, panting and livid.

“I should sue your hide. How high would you have let that
fan go if I hadn’t installed the failsafe, huh?”

“First tell me this,” Neeson demanded, wondering if Jason
would
punch
him and preparing to punch back
. “How, after everything we did to build this thing, after all the work that everyone did, how could you decide to work so hard to destroy this company?”

Jason was still breathless, but he had enough to sound threatening. “Neeson, you are the dumbest, blindest… Which one of us created that bracket program? Or the stock market program? Which of us decided to try using
my
system to make money on the side instead of fixing the real problems of WindSkin?”

“I was trying to make sure this company had a future! I was trying to make
our company’s
system reached its full potential! If you hadn’t ruined everything, if you had just fixed the problems instead of deciding to hit and run—”

“If I had fixed the problems? You were so busy
playing
with your side project
s
that you didn’t notice that WindSkin is a complete failure. The whole thing’s a flop, OPUS or not. You think we never got a sale because we couldn’t get the specs we wanted? We couldn’t get a sale because WindSkin is a bad product.
The panels are
too expensive, too bulky
in a group, too delicate individually
,
and
too unreliable
in a network
. Even if we had made a sale, there is no way that we could have installed it successfully. I kept trying to tell you early on, but you kept sayin’, ‘Oh, we’ll deal with it, it’s fine
,
’ until eventually I just gave up trying to tell you anything. I stayed on as long as I did because I thought you’d eventually leader up and do something to turn us around. Then I find out that the whole time you didn’t really care. This company was a dead horse limping along only because you needed it to live long enough so that you could sell us out. I did everyone in this company a favor by putting it out of its misery.”

Neeson folded his arms, relaxed somehow now that he had been proven right. “You have one hour to pack up and leave your office. I’ve already told the security guard that you would be returning to clear things out, and that you aren’t allowed to even touch your computer. Your passwords and clearances have all been removed.”

Jason didn’t move. “You think I’m just gonna forget what
you did to me just now?”