Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) (25 page)

Sam stepped up. “I’ll get it. Why don’t you guys stand over there?” He pointed at the entrance of the alcove. “I have to be in his line of sight when he comes to.”

Mara and Cam complied while Sam slid the mop handle from the man’s hands and laid it on the ground near the wall. He then positioned himself in front of the man, with his knees bent slightly so his gaze met the man’s. Once there, Sam said, “Okay, sis. Let him go.”

Mara did. The man swung his empty hands forward and toppled onto Sam. They both fell into the right-hand wall of the alcove and crumpled to the floor.

“Oh, jeez, man, you are heavier than you look. Get off me,” Sam said.

The man rolled to his side and scrambled to his feet before Sam could get his bearings. Swiveling his head, the man spotted the mop on the floor and bent to get it.

Mara said, “No, no. No more mop.” She held out her hand, and the mop disappeared in a flash of light. A second flash delivered the mop to her.

The man watched the mop reappear in her hand and stared at her, bug-eyed. He staggered backward into the corner from which he had first pounced and began to jibber incoherently.

Just getting to his feet, Sam glanced at his sister and said, “Why did you have to do that? You are freaking him out.”

Mara nodded toward the man and whispered through gritted teeth, “Get on with it. There might be hundreds of people coming through that door any minute.”

Sam gave her a quick look of exasperation and turned to the man in the corner. Once Sam caught his gaze, he prompted, “Everything will be okay. We are your friends, and you are not afraid of us. Understand?”

The man stopped babbling under his breath and looked at Sam. The tension drained from his face and turned to a slight smile. “Yes,” he said. “I understand.”

“What’s your name?” Sam asked.

“Ernie. Ernie Duncan.”

“Do you work here at this transceiver node?”

“Yes. I’m the systems calibration engineer.”

“I see. So were you here when the mob stormed the building?”

“Yes. I was upstairs in auxiliary diagnostics when they broke in and took over.”

Cam leaned in and said, “By
took over
, you mean they occupied the building or what?”

Ernie shook his head. “They’ve not only occupied the building, but they have taken over the systems as well. They used those lights they carry around on the staff, and now they have control of the entire transceiver system.”

“You’re saying that the staff who works here is now helping them?” Mara asked.

Ernie nodded. “After they were exposed to the lights, they began taking orders from some girl in the mob.”

Mara grabbed his sleeve. “Girl? What girl?”

He recoiled but answered, “The blonde one, the one who’s leading them.”

“She’s here?”

He nodded.

“Where?”

“She’s in the control room with the facility director and some of the people who came with her.”

A loud rap came from the other side of the door leading into the atrium, and everyone in the alcove jumped, then stood still, waiting for someone to push through. After several moments when no one did, Cam whispered, “We need to find someplace where we can talk that’s a little less exposed.”

Sam asked Ernie, “Is there a place where we can go and talk?”

“I really wanted to get to the back door and escape. Why don’t you come with me?” he said. “I don’t think it is safe for us to stay here.”

“Well, here’s the thing, Ernie. There really isn’t a back door anymore, and we need your help,” Sam said.

Ernie led them to a large storage closet containing three sets of freestanding shelves filled with various pieces and parts of machinery. Some of them perhaps circuit boards from a computer, while others seemed to have something more in common with plumbing. The four of them stood in the aisle farthest from the door. When they had entered, the engineer kept a wary eye on Mara and made a point of standing so that Cam and Sam were positioned between them.

Cam noticed and said, “You don’t have to worry about Mara. She won’t do anything to harm you.”

Ernie’s lip trembled. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. The whole world has gone crazy. But I do know one thing.” He nodded hesitantly at Mara. “She can do stuff like that blonde girl—and the blonde girl is up to no good. That’s for sure.”

“Do stuff?” Cam asked.

“Like what she did with the mop, making it disappear,” he said.

Mara took a step forward, but Ernie tensed up, so she backed off and leaned against one of the shelves. As casual as possible, she said, “I promise you that I won’t hurt you. As a matter of fact, if you help us, I’ll get you out of here. Deal?”

“Help you? How?” Ernie asked. His eyes quickly shifted from Mara to Cam and then to Sam.

“We just need you to answer a few questions about what you saw, about what is going on,” Sam said. “First off, why don’t you just relax and take a deep breath. As long as you are with us, you are safe.”

Ernie’s shoulders visibly sagged, and he sighed.

“Good. Now tell us about what happened earlier this evening, when the people broke into the building,” Sam said.

The engineer blinked several times and then said, “Like I said, I was up on the third floor in the auxiliary diagnostics office, monitoring the new subroutines that had been implemented in the system, when suddenly they crashed. I tried to communicate with the control room to find out what happened, but the Sig-net went down. I checked the status on the terminal and confirmed that the node was taken off-line. Power was cut as well. Everything went haywire.”

“Did you attempt to repair the system?” Cam asked.

Ernie shook his head and said, “No, my job is simply to monitor and report any issues I find to the control room. The engineers there would devise and implement any solutions to reported problems.”

“These subroutines you were monitoring, what were they?”

“They were designed to enhance the addiction prevention code for people exposed to the diodes that have been spreading all over town. The tiny lights those people carry can rewrite our physiological systems to induce addiction. That’s what’s making everyone act so crazy,” Ernie said. He paused for a second, and then his eyes widened. “People outside were setting each other on fire. I saw them from the windows upstairs.”

Mara glanced at Cam. “So Abby and her crew broke in here to stop the transceiver node staff from implementing a fix to all the havoc they’ve been causing. That’s why they took down the node.”

Ernie interjected, “Technically the entire node was down for only a few minutes. Power distribution was restarted, but the Sig-net was kept down. That stopped the fix from getting out to people.”

“Why not just take the whole thing down?” Sam asked.

“Even the people who have been compromised by the diodes need energy to do whatever it is they seek to accomplish,” Cam said.

Mara said, “You mentioned a blonde girl. Where did you see her?”

“On the security video feed. I could access it from the terminal upstairs. I saw her and about ten others approach the front doors, which were locked. But that didn’t stop her. She …” Ernie’s voice drifted off, and he looked away.

“She what?” Mara asked.

“She blew up the front doors with lightning bolts coming from her hands. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t believe it. Two security guards tried to stop them, and she blew them up as well. Then the mob just poured into the building. They were running all over the place. I was sure they would burn down the place with me up on the third floor.”

“How did you get here?” Cam asked.

“After they seized the control room, the blonde ordered everyone to go to the atrium. There are so many of them now that the crowd is flowing out the front door.”

“What are they doing in there?” Mara asked.

“I don’t know. It looks like they are waiting for something,” he said.

“But the blonde is still in the control room?” she asked.

Ernie nodded.

Mara looked at Cam and said, “So she’s stopped the countermeasure to the diodes going out over the Sig-net. I get that, but she must know that, as soon as she leaves, the system can be repaired and then the subroutine will be distributed. They can’t hold the control room forever. Right?”

“Who will take it from them?” Sam asked. “The police are just as susceptible to the diodes as everyone else.”

Cam nodded but turned to Ernie and asked, “How long ago did they break in? Three hours or so?”

He nodded.

“They took the Sig-net down within minutes of entering the control room, and the power was restored just a few minutes later, according to Ernie here. If that was their only objective, they would have left the building by now. And you are right. Whatever they did could be undone after they left,” Cam said.

“So what are they doing in there?” Mara asked.

“They are uploading new subroutines to access the array,” Ernie said. “It also seemed they were tapping into the PRI data storage facility. I could tell from my terminal upstairs.”

Mara raised a hand. “Hold on. What’s the array?”

Cam said, “He’s talking about the transceiver array, the network of regional transceiver nodes. This place is a node in the broader transceiver array. Signals and energy are passed via the array through regional transceiver nodes like this one. It allows the sharing of data and power between the nodes.”

“What kind of geographical area does this array cover?” she asked.

“The array connects all the nodes on Earth,” Ernie said. “All of them.”

“If she could get a subroutine distributed throughout the array, she could alter the code of every person on the planet,” Cam said.

“Jeez,” Sam said. “Is that really possible?”

“It’s very possible, if someone is providing her with the necessary technical expertise. That is how upgrades and improvements are made to our underlying physiological programming,” Cam said.

Mara rubbed her face and thought for a moment. “What’s a PRI?”

“The Physiological Research Institute—the organization that develops enhancements to our bodies. That would include the programming and software as well,” Cam said. “If she’s looking for technical expertise on synthetic human physiology, their data storage facilities would be where you would find it.”

“Surely this stuff is kept in a secure location. Not just anyone could tap into it?” Mara asked.

With a mild look of exasperation, Cam said, “Under normal circumstances, in this realm, no one would have reason to access that sort of information for nefarious reasons. We all rely on these systems to survive. It would be like putting a lock on sunshine or air in your realm. There was no reason for securing the data. Unlike where you come from, we don’t have hackers in this realm.”

Mara exhaled loudly, showing her own exasperation. “Okay. So she’s not just handing out little diodes to get people hooked anymore. She’s doing something much bigger. How do we find out what?”

Cam asked Ernie, “Can we track what they are doing from the terminal on the third floor?”

He nodded and then stammered, “But I, I don’t want to go back up there. I can give you the passcode, and you can access the system.”

Cam’s gaze shifted to Mara. She raised an eyebrow and asked, “Do we need him? Is this something you can do?”

“I’m fairly certain I can find my way around the system, but I’ll need Ernie’s passcode,” Cam said.

“Fine. Have him write it on a piece of paper for you.”

“The passcode is an algorithm that would take a dozen pages to write down,” Cam said. “We need you to generate a signal so Ernie can give me the code.”

Ernie looked at them suspiciously.

Mara rolled her eyes. “Your computer passcodes are twelve pages long, but anyone can log on and take the technical specs of your bodies on a whim?”

“Manual terminals are unusual in that—”

Mara stopped him with a raised hand. “I’m just giving you a hard time.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, visualizing the signal bouncing between Cam and Ernie. Ernie jumped and staggered into the shelves behind him, sending a couple metal tubes rolling to the floor with a loud
clang
. Everyone froze and looked to the door leading to the hall.

After a moment, Cam said to Ernie, “Don’t be afraid. Just send me the passcode like you normally would.”

“I don’t know if I should. With everything else going on, I don’t want to make things worse,” Ernie said.

Cam was about to argue, but Sam stepped between them and said, “Send him the code, Ernie.”

Ernie nodded, and Cam said, “Got it.”

Sam pointed to Ernie and asked, “If he’s not coming with us, what should we do with him?”

Ernie tensed up and said, “Just let me go. All I want to do is leave here.”

Mara asked, “If we get you to the rear loading dock, can you find your way home?”

He nodded and said, “Of course.”

Then he disappeared in a flash of light.

Sam looked at his sister and said, “You probably should have given him a warning about what was about to happen.”

“It would have just freaked him out even more,” she said.

“Suddenly appearing on the loading dock in front of all those dead bodies won’t freak him out?”

“Yeah, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.” After a pause to consider what to do next, she said, “At this point he’d probably prefer if we just left him alone. Let’s go.”

Sam thought he had slammed into a dark blue wall after he walked around the sharp corner at the end of the hall. Bouncing off the broad chest of the burly policeman, he stumbled backward into Mara and Cam, sending all three of them tumbling to the floor. Once they disentangled themselves and gathered their wits, they looked up to find the cop staring at them, the gun in his hand pointed at them. A second man in blue stood next to him, both next to the door that was their destination—the stairwell leading upstairs.

As Mara stood slowly, she eyed the gun and noticed that it looked plastic and sort of squared off and blocky, not smooth and rounded like a typical gun barrel.
Must be something like a Taser
, though she wasn’t familiar enough with them to be sure. The cop waggled the device, indicating he wanted them to move toward the wall. They complied.