Cyber Dawn (A Ben Raine Novel) (17 page)

“What?” I asked.

“You’re staring again,” she replied.

“What? No. I was looking at your screen. Following along.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah, right. I’m not watching football, Ben.”

I laughed. “I wasn’t staring. Promise.”

Her eyes narrowed ever further. “Convenient excuse.”

“I’m serious.”

She turned back to her screen. I slowly shook my head.

“Wait,” she said, flipping back around. “That thing doesn’t have a camera, does it?”

“Uh, not that I know of.”

“Good. But if I find a bunch of candid photos of me on your Facebook page, you’re dead.”

Again, I laughed. “Come on, give me some credit. I would never put those photos
online
.”

Sarah’s jaw dropped open and her left hand flew at my leg again. I shifted out of the way.

“Ah, you’re learning.”

I grinned.

“Now, quit flirting with me,” she said. “I have stuff to do.”

I was about to protest and remind Sarah she started it. But instead, I asked, “Stuff? Like what?”

“Carter.”

“What do you mean, Carter?”

“Well, we know he works, or worked anyway, for CyberLife. Let’s see what we can dig up on him.”

“Sarah, you don’t need to. Really.”

She scowled. “I guess now that you’re some sort of super-hacker, you don’t need me? I’ll just head home and get some sleep then. Sound good?” She bent down and picked her bag up off the floor.

I sat stunned. Like in the library the day before, her mood had shifted quickly. I had been serious about her not doing anything else for me. But only because I didn’t want her to get in trouble. I didn’t actually want her to leave.

“Sarah, wait,” I said.

After a few moments, she laughed. “I’m kidding, Ben. Even if you wanted me to go, I wouldn’t. This is
way
too much fun.”

“Why are you still helping me anyway?” I asked. “I’ve got the medical records. You did what I paid you to do. Or will you pay you. I guess I still owe you the money.”

“Don’t be a jerk, Ben. You know why.”

I stared at her blankly.

I have no idea why.

“Seriously?” She said, shaking her head. “You’re such a boy.”

Leaving me to wonder what she meant, Sarah turned back to her laptop and opened a search window. She typed
allen
and
carter
. The screen filled with results.

“Look at this,” she said. “The most recent hits are from the time you were there. Looks like he hasn’t been at CyberLife in at least five years.”

“What’s that one?” I asked, pointing to a search hit that looked like an email.

“Email message,” Sarah confirmed. “From six years ago.”

“That would have been right at the beginning,” I said. “About the time those pictures we looked at earlier were taken.”

Sarah opened the email.

Dr. Carter, per your request, attached are the new candidates for the Alpha project. I think you will find all seven are suitable. Please let me know if you’d like to proceed. We can meet at the usual place to sort out the details. —LK

“LK,” I said. “Leonard Kaiser maybe?”

She scrolled to the bottom of the email. “The attachments are still here,” she said. “Looks like more medical records.” She downloaded the files to her laptop.

After glancing through the first two, I said, “They look a lot like mine. The only difference is the hospital. These other kids were from all over. Seattle, Detroit, Phoenix.”

“Check this out,” Sarah said after skimming mine again. “This copy of your record looks similar to the one we found on the CPH website. Only it stops at the date of the email and has some hand-written notes added.”

I stared at the words scribbled across the top of my record. They read:

Titan—Alpha 7, AK

“Any of that mean anything to you?” Sarah asked.

I shook my head, then stopped. “Not the first two. But AK is commonly known as
above knee
.”

Sarah turned to me and raised an eyebrow.

“Above knee amputation,” I finished. “Could be just a coincidence though.”

She returned to the email and we both read it again. This time, something strange—and terrifying caught my eye. My hands shook as I pointed at the screen.

“Sarah?”

She turned to me, then frowned. “Ben, what’s wrong?”

“L–l–look at the date of the email,” I muttered.

She squinted at the screen, then sat back in her chair, face white. “You said you were diagnosed in March.”

I slowly nodded.

“This email was sent in October,” she said. “The year before.”

I grabbed her laptop, flipped back to the email, and tripled checked the date. There was no doubt when it was sent:

Six months before I was diagnosed with cancer.

For several minutes, as Sarah re-opened and re-scanned each of the other records, I simply stared at the wall above her laptop. I ran the dates of my diagnosis and surgery over and over in my head. Age eleven had not been a pleasant one for me. There were many details—especially related to my chemo treatments—that I subconsciously blocked from my mind. But not the date. I marked it on my calendar every year.

After five minutes, Sarah sat back in the chair and exhaled. “Seven sets of medical records, all signed by Dr. Kaiser,” she said. “All dated within six months of each other. All kids roughly the same age.”

“Five boys and two girls,” I added.

“Each is labeled
Alpha 1
through
Alpha 7,
” she said. “Not sure what that means. I ran a quick search of the CyberLife server for anything related to an
Alpha
project. Zero hits.”

I recalled the book I found the day Sarah and I met.

2–3 in 100,000 cases annually
.

I tried to calculate the odds that seven kids, all roughly the same age, in the same year, by the same doctor, were diagnosed with the same rare form of cancer. I didn’t need to ace my math midterm to know the odds weren’t good. Or even possible.

“I didn’t have cancer,” I said flatly.

Sarah stopped flipping through the records and turned to face me. “We don’t know that, Ben.”

I looked back at her, eyes moist. My lips trembled. She put her arms around my neck and squeezed. I buried my face in her hair and breathed deeply. “Thanks,” I said.

Except for the faint whirring coming from a fan in Sarah’s laptop, the small alcove was completely silent. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a click. I pulled away from her and strained my ears.

“What?” she asked.

I held a finger to my lips. When the sound didn’t come again, I whispered, “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

I peered down the aisle behind us. “Thought I heard a click. Like a door lock or something.”

“You’re just hearing things,” she said. “Nobody comes in here at night.”

“Maybe,” I said.

She shrugged and turned back to her laptop.

“I’ll go take a look just in case.”

26

Raindrops.

The giant glass ceiling magnified the sound of every drop.

Another sprinkle hit. Then another. Soon, the sound of rain filled the entire atrium.

Committing felonies is making me jumpy,
I thought.

I approached the railing and looked down at the main floor of the library. Dark clouds blocked most of the moon’s light. The only thing I could see were the swirls and bubbles cycling endlessly on the computer screens below. Various blue, red, yellow and green shapes danced on the walls around the room.

It wasn’t until I turned to leave that something caught my attention. One of the computer screens briefly turned off then on again. I crouched down behind the railing and stared at the spot. I strained my eyes, looking for anything out of the ordinary amongst the deep shadows and glowing patterns from the screen savers. I decided that, along with the apparent high-tech capabilities of my system, a night vision mode would have been a great additional feature.

Suddenly, a large box appeared at the center of my vision. Inside the box, anything I looked at turned various shades of green. It reminded me of the night vision mode present in pretty much every first-person shooter video game I had ever played. To confirm my thoughts, a new entry flashed in my system log.

Night Vision Mode activated.

So frickin’ cool.
With a grin, and a thought of what else my system could do, I poked my head over the railing again and scanned the first floor.

It took all of two seconds to wish I hadn’t.

Crouched at the end of the long table full of computers was the unmistakable shape of a man. But it wasn’t his presence or even the fact that he was searching the first floor with his own set of night vision headgear, that caused my heart to race and mouth go dry.

It was the clearly defined shape held ready at his shoulder.

An assault rifle.

I ducked behind the railing and took several quick breaths. My body trembled. My heart pounded against the walls of my chest.

My first thought was that it had to be a cop. The problem with that theory?

The police don’t usually skulk around in the dark
. My next thought was even less likely.

District IT guys don’t carry assault rifles.

Which left, at least in my mind, one possibility.

CyberLife.

Somehow they detected our hack into their system, tracked it to the school, and were looking for whomever carried it out. It was the only plausible explanation I could think of. My mind flashed back to Monday when Megan and I joked about the black-clad commandos.

Not funny anymore,
I decided.

In the bottom left corner of my HUD, another new feature appeared. A large transparent sphere. On it were three white dots. My system log read:

GPS triangulation complete.

I stared at the dots for several seconds, wondering what GPS triangulation meant. As I rotated my head, the dots stayed in place on the sphere. One of them was roughly in the area I spotted the man before. Testing a theory, I peered over the railing and looked down. The dot was now directly in front of me, and slightly below the center of the sphere. Right where the man below remained crouched.

The other dot started moving. I rotated my head to the left and noticed a second hazy-green figure through my night vision. And another assault rifle.

I ducked back down, my heart racing, and stared at the sphere. That’s when I noticed a third dot. Another commando. And if I was reading the tracking sphere correctly, he was roughly where I left Sarah.

I shot up and ran back down the aisle to the small alcove. When I was less than five feet away, I slowed and glanced at the sphere. The white dot was larger now and I was fairly certain it represented someone in the alcove ahead. Someone with Sarah. I pictured another commando pointing a gun at her head. Or worse.

I coiled my body, ready to throw myself at whomever was with her. With one last glance at the sphere to make sure the other two dots were still far away, I peered around the corner.

Sarah was seated at the desk.

Alone.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and entered the alcove. When I reached Sarah, who was still engrossed in her laptop, I reached out with my hand and covered her mouth. She whirled around in surprise, eyes wide.

When she spotted me, she mumbled, “Ben, what the hell?”

I placed my index finger over my lips. Sarah furrowed her eyebrows and, after a long breath, slowly nodded.

I pulled my hand away from her mouth, and whispered, “We are not alone, get your stuff.”

“You sure?”

“Certain.”

I helped her collect her laptop and coat, then checked my HUD as we headed down the closest aisle. The other two dots were now on the same level, less than sixty feet away. Directly ahead.

I grabbed Sarah. “They are coming from that direction,” I whispered, pointing down the aisle. “Follow me and stay close.”

“They? Don’t you mean Oscar?”

I realized I hadn’t told her who was in the library. I didn’t see any reason to panic her, so I didn’t respond. She reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing so hard I thought it would break.

“I don’t know why he’s in here,” Sarah whispered. “He’s never come in before.”

“We’ll figure it out later,” I replied. “Let’s just get out of here.”

We headed down the closest aisle and then made a hard right to skirt around an open lounge area. “Are there any emergency exits close by?” I asked. “There has to be one on the second or third floor, right?”

Sarah closed her eyes, then nodded fast. “Both. But the second floor one is wide open. It’s on the other side of the atrium.”

“Where is the third floor exit?” I asked.

“I’m not exactly sure.”

I looked up and down the aisle, then checked my sphere. The two dots had split up. Based on my limited knowledge of the second floor of the library, I figured they were coming around each side of the atrium. The only good news was that they appeared to be moving slowly, as if they were searching for something. Which meant that they might not yet know who, or where exactly, we were.

We quickly backtracked to the wall, staying as low and quiet as possible. I kept one eye on the sphere and the other on the aisle ahead of me. When we were thirty feet from the third floor staircase, things changed. I noticed it on the sphere first.

The two dots moved faster. Converging on us.

“Over here,” a voice shouted.

We took off.

Twenty feet.

The white dots grew larger and larger in the sphere.

Fifteen feet.

We weren’t going to make it. I pulled Sarah back and behind me and lowered my head. A split-second later, my shoulder collided with one of the black-clad men. He was big and heavy and the impact bounced me off a nearby bookshelf. Thanks to a quick reaction from Sarah, I managed to stay on my feet.

He did not.