Crow - The Awakening (23 page)

Laurence grinned. "Well, okay. Let's discuss this, then." He took another sniff of the bag of tea. "Oh, that smells funky." He looked at the doctor. "An odd concoction to be prescribing, don't you think?" He put his finger in the bag and poked at the contents. They were all finely ground, however, so there was no way visually identify the ingredients. But he could identify some of the components by smell and smiled.

"It's just a relaxing herbal tea," Dr. Dougherty stammered.

"With..." Laurence took another sniff and peered into the bag, "...shrooms?" He looked sternly at James. "Are you a hippie, doctor?" He grinned, not expecting a response. "Now what use would this kid have with a hallucinogenic tea?" He shook his head. "You don't strike me as a drug dealer, James. Have you been naughty?" It was a rhetorical question of course. It distracted Laurence to pester his victim while his mind digested the information. A kid with the skill to break into such a sophisticated network would hardly be a druggie. Which meant there were issues with his physiology that responded differently to the tea than the rest of humanity.

Laurence leaned over and pulled a folder from the desk. He had cracked into the locked cabinet and found it. As he flipped through the pages he glanced at James. "You know, I find it very odd that this file is not in your computer. Is your secretary getting sloppy? Maybe you should fire her." He scanned through the pages again, especially through the extensive notes the doctor had kept on his sessions with Steven. "Wow, this kid has a vivid imagination."

He held a page for James to see. "Maladaptive daydreaming disorder? I wasn't aware that was something that required medication to treat. Or hallucinogens." He flipped through more of the pages. "Oh, but this is some good reading. Would make a good book, I think. Don't you?" He still didn't expect an answer.

"He's just a normal kid that needed some help. That's all." James was scared but feared for Steven too.

"Normal? Does a normal kid waltz into the Department of Defense computers as if he was going to a picnic? Does a normal kid draw aliens in great detail and obsess about them to his therapist?" Laurence looked up at him, noting his perplexed look, then continued reading through the file. "No. I think Steven is special." He reached the end of the file and looked at James. "And I'm beginning to see that you have no idea just how special he is." He fiddled with the safety cap on his palm-needle, smiling. "But let's try not to have a heart attack over it."

Up in the tree house Steven was busy trying to get his things together. Part of him wondered what the hurry was. No one knew where this place was. He could hole up there for days. But he was eager to close this chapter of his life and move on. And keeping busy trying to gather supplies together distracted him from the terrible day he was having. It broke his heart to make Sally cry and to disappoint Jonah. He was sorely torn between his love for them and his determination to see the search through to the very end. But he was sure of one thing, by leaving he was keeping them safe. That gave him little comfort, but little was better than none.

He looked around, suddenly feeling very tired. Perhaps he should sleep tonight and strike out at dawn. But there was little room to lay down in the tree house. It was taken up mostly by his counters that were cluttered with all sorts of equipment, including his cheesy little tunneling electron microscopes. He went to one, amazed at how simple it was, especially compared to the one he was leaving behind in Dmitri's computer shop. Steven wondered if he'd ever see that one again. It cost him a lot of money to build, though it was money well spent given the results he had obtained. The extra credit from the fair wasn't critical but he did want to show off his handiwork to his peers.

He remembered the finals he had to take. His degree appeared to be in jeopardy too. But he figured he could take the finals from anywhere now that he had unlimited access to the servers. Steven realized he was wandering aimlessly. He was trying to figure out a place to sleep. He looked out at the meadow. He did have a favorite spot under the snag where he used to lay down to study and talk to Asherah. He decided he would sleep there tonight. The memory of Asherah hit him again and he swallowed the pain. He shook his head as he tried to distract himself again, thinking instead about his plan of attack once he reached Seattle.

Remembering Bret, Steven found his business card and put that in his wallet. Bret would surely give him a good reference and help him get a job at the tech company he worked for. It wasn't too late for summer internships too. That would help him cover his costs while he rebuilt his lab equipment and set up to continue the search. Being physically in Seattle would give him opportunity to actually visit some of the places he has been searching. The company his parents had worked for was in the outskirts of Seattle. That meant that whoever found them was also in Seattle. He decided to start at their last known location, therefore, and begin tracing their lives physically.

Steven began gathering computer gear that he could carry. His latest homemade laptop was a much less patched together affair than his first one, far smaller and much more powerful. He had built a carbon fiber exterior for it and water and shock proofed it to make it more durable out there in the woods. That would definitely be a must have. A little more cash would be helpful too. His honey was popular and brought in top dollar from chefs on the West Coast, which he saved in tins up there in the tree house. He emptied one of the tins into a bag and clipped it to his backpack.

He turned on his laptop and tried to bring up a map of Seattle. The wireless failed to connect, however, and Steven sat back frustrated, remembering that Dmitri said he was turning off the wireless to the library. That whole business left a bad taste in his mouth. He thought a moment then tried another idea - the driver he wrote for the substrate processors in the chips of his laptop. He recalled that he had accessed the subnetwork, opening the world up to him. He found another bridge to reenter the internet infrastructure and sat back satisfied. He now had networking regardless of what wireless was available. He would have to reprogram his flashdrives to reflect that development. After a thought, he went ahead and plugged a flashdrive into his laptop and copied over the driver and scripts. Better safe than sorry. He would have to transfer them to the other flashdrive computers later.

After he finished setting up his flashdrive and customizing the scripts to manage his connection, he got back to work examining the map of Seattle. First order of business was getting there. He traced the highways that ran in their general vicinity and thought about hitchhiking. He'd seen the occasional hitchhiker on the road during his trips to class. The only problem is that if his godparents or their friends were looking for him to bring him back, they might consider the same thing and search the highways. The other option would be to drive but he had no vehicle and stealing one wasn't an option for him. He found it odd that he was willing to traipse through any number of highly secure networks, copying advanced technology designs, but still had no stomach to steal a car. And finally the last option was walking through the forest. He could hitch a ride on a stag. They had always been friendly to him, as was most of the life in the forests. He was hesitant to put them to such a menial task, though. He looked out the window at the dark forests beyond the meadow that seemed to glow in the light of the rising moon. His affinity for the forests made hiking through them a preferable option. No one would find him out there. He smiled wistfully, satisfied that he had a plan of action.

Steven reorganized his backpack, folding his clothing better so that more supplies could be stuffed in. He looked at all of his items that he had spread out and started packing them tightly. A wolf howled in the moonlight out there. He recognized the voice and knew he would miss his other friends too. They had spent way too little time together lately. After packing up the last of the items in his backpack and sending them to the forest floor on a little pulley he had set up, and pocketing what wouldn't fit, he shut his lamp down for what he expected would be for a very long time. The sudden darkness gradually gave way to the glow of the moon and he sat there for a few minutes, clearing his mind and trying to let the events of the day slip away, at least for a little while.

Suddenly there was an odd glow in the tree house. A blue glow. Steven stood up and looked out the portal. But it wasn't coming from out there. Turning around he suddenly found himself face to face with a little girl who was glowing brightly. Her skin shimmered and she was covered with freckles that looked like bright stars. Her clothing looked like sheer, flowing silk that allowed the light to pass through freely. The girl floated up so her face was even with his as he stepped back against the counter, and she looked into his eyes and smiled. Shocked, Steven blinked hard, his eyes watering from the growing brilliance as she moved closer. She caressed the side of his face with the back of her hand and he felt a series of static discharges from her touch. He remembered that he hadn't had any tea since the middle of yesterday and closed his eyes while he wondered if he wasn't having another episode. Opening his eyes, he saw that she was still there. Her smile widened and he noticed her teeth that looked very much like little shark teeth. She must have found the look on his face amusing, because she suddenly started laughing.

Laurence went back to the house and stood out in the yard for a while, surveying the forest beyond the pastures around the home. He had found Steven's window ajar, indicating that he exited the house from there, so he decided to begin his tracking there. The documentation of Steven's sessions with the therapist indicated that he had no real friends in town, so it was not likely he was hiding out there. From the extensive drawings and dialogue about the forest, it only made sense that the boy was in the woods.

Laurence had considered waiting for Steven's parents to return home and deal with them, then wait for Steven to eventually return. Many kids who ran away because they're upset usually calm down and return home. That would be working smarter and not harder. But Laurence's gut was telling him otherwise. This kid had a very strong obsessive streak. He wouldn't have run away unless he absolutely had to and if he did, he was not coming back.

He returned to his car and pulled out a device that looked like a very modern hand held vacuum with a long narrow tube. Laurence held the tube over some dirty laundry he had taken from Steven's room and activated the device. After a few moments an indicator lit up on the device and he changed the device's mode from sample to search. Placing the tube a few inches from the soil, he waved it back and forth around Steven's window, watching the indicator until he got a good idea of what direction he had gone in.

He noticed that the tracker aimed directly across the pasture along a well worn trail so he packed up the tracker in the car and drove it across the pasture until the trail seemed to disappear into the woods. After driving his car as close to the edge of the pasture as he dared, Laurence put it in park and got out, surveying the direction Steven appeared to have taken. Even though the undergrowth was dense, he could see the trail in the moonlight. He turned his sniffer back on, recharged the detector with the piece of dirty laundry from Steven's room and aimed it to the ground, taking comparative samples. He had definitely passed this way and often. He picked the strongest scent and followed it into the forest a few steps. From there it appeared to go up into the trees. Adjusting his scanner, he aimed it up in the trees and was still able to pull a sample and get a general idea of the direction Steven had taken.

Laurence went back to his car and opened several cases in his back seat and began assembling his gear. He put his assault rifle together and put a silencer and flash suppressor on the barrel. He also mounted a powerful night vision scope on it and tested it. Even though the moon was bright, the scope made it look like the difference between complete blackness and day. He also attached a small but high definition video camera to the scope to record evidence that he could review after the hunt. Another case contained a dozen flash-bang devices. They were small and light, so he went ahead and grabbed the entire bag and clipped it to his belt. He dressed in hunter's gear, shouldered the assault rifle and holstered various knives and weapons from the trunk. He checked the magazine of his pistol to make sure that he had tranquilizer darts loaded rather than regular bullets, then holstered that weapon and he was set to go. Satisfied he was equipped, Laurence donned a set of night vision goggles and took off into the woods.

Of course, all the weaponry would normally be considered overkill. He was hunting a boy, after all. However, experience had taught him to have more than he thinks he needs, because chances are he'll need more than he thought. The woods enveloped him utterly and in just a few steps Laurence was completely out of sight from his car. The sound changed, becoming muted as the surrounding woods muffled echoes. A slight mist was coming down that further muted the sound and lent to the mystical motif that was transforming the forest around him. In the quietness of the forest, each footstep seemed to cry out loudly as he walked, and cracking twigs sounded like guns discharging. He worked to control his footing and bring the noise down to a minimum as he found the trail and caught Steven's scent with the sniffer.

The trail often disappeared and Laurence had to frequently relocate it using his sniffer. In some parts, it appeared as if Steven was climbing through the tree tops rather than running on the ground. He arrived at a ravine and found a moss covered fallen tree that formed a bridge over it. From the path through the moss, the log was apparently used as a bridge. Looking down into the ravine and noting the moist but sharp rocks below he nervously climbed onto the slippery trunk and balanced his way across to the other side. He decided next time to climb into the ravine and cross it that way. After regaining his bearings, he took off again, following the scent trail left by Steven.