Pop Travel (39 page)

“I just have to check one more thing before I use the propofol and transmit her.”

“Move it along, Hasan,” Blake demanded.
What a bully!

“I’m moving. I’m moving.” He changed the code and brought Geri the second shot to put her in the temporary coma.
So cool!
After sealing the dock, Hasan returned to the transmitting station.

Pop!

Hasan opened the dock to show Blake she was gone. Then he went over to the receiving station. Blake stood next to the platform where Geri would arrive.

Hasan pushed the receive button and the dock door unlocked.

Blake swooshed the door open and flung his knife inside. It struck the chair, embedding itself into the padding as it vibrated back and forth and made a few sparks.

“What’d ya do that for? You damaged my ten-million-dollar machine! Are you insane?” Hasan yelled.

“Where is she?” Blake yelled back and retrieved his weapon.

Hasan shrugged.

“Beats me. I guess I put in the wrong code.”

Walnut Grove, GA
7:45 a.m., Saturday, July 27

“Sorry to show up so early, Mrs. Nertz, but it’s kind of an emergency.” Miki stood in the doorway speaking to Jared’s mother, a middle-aged woman in a faded housecoat and worn, pink, fuzzy slippers.

“Oh, I’ve been up taking care of my cat, Mr. Whiskers here. He’s had a very bad hairball problem. Haven’t you, Mr. Whiskers?” She cooed as she petted the big orange powder puff in her arms.

The cat hacked in response.

“I see. Well, do you think I could go down?” Miki asked.

“Sure. He should get up and do some chores around here, anyway.” Mrs. Nertz took a step back and opened the door wider for Miki. “Jared! Wake up! Miki’s here!” she hollered into the house.

“Thank you.”

Jared lived in his mother’s basement. After failing at several random jobs, he decided to be a professional gamer and hacker, his true callings. Not much money in that. Legally. And Miki gave her best effort to keep him legal, mostly by limiting his time with his friends. She allowed him to do minor hacking, for games and fun stuff, but told him if he got caught she’d dump him.

Miki hated going down to the basement. It looked like a discarded disaster relief effort. And every time she came over, the filth had expanded. The piles of clothes, wrappers, and pizza boxes had multiplied. She couldn’t imagine what kind of sludge monster was incubating underneath it all.
One of these days, we are bringing shovels down here and… Eeww! What is that smell!
She held her nose as she tiptoed down the stairs.

“Hey, baby,” Jared mumbled from a lump in the middle of the room, possibly the couch.

When she reached the floor, she flipped on the lights and flinched.

“This is the last time I’m coming down here,” she said. Again.

“Aww. Come on. It ain’t that bad, is it?” As he sat up, a soda can and a game controller slid off him, landing on a potato chip bag with a crunch.

Miki shut her eyes and shuddered.

“Come over here. I need your help,” she said from the base of the stairs, not daring to step any farther, squelching the urge to run back up. At least the area by his compucenter was fairly decent. Through the filth, she could make out a path leading to his chair.

“Oh. You
need
me?” Jared scratched his head as he stood and sloshed through the muck to get to her. She held the chair out for him and he sat down. Grimacing, she didn’t know which smelled worse, the garbage or her boyfriend.

“Here,” she said and presented the drive she’d found on Cooper.

“What’s that?” he asked. He woke up his CC and took the drive. After looking it over as if he could read it telepathically, he inserted it with a shrug. “Where’d you get it?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” she answered.

As the video played, their eyes locked onto the imager. Miki’s mouth hung open.

“Whoa,” Jared breathed.

“No wonder Cooper is in trouble.”

“Big trouble.” Jared shook his head. “You got this from Cooper? He knows the Creator? Holy…”

Miki explained what happened earlier that morning.

“And the Feds have him. At least I can help him now.” The guilt sat on her shoulders and she couldn’t shrug it off. She had to do something.

“How can we help? No one will listen to us. Anyone could make a video like this. They might think the Creator is an actor. It’s not even very good quality.”

“I don’t know.” Then she remembered something. “Find your QV.”

“Uhh.”

“Think hard.”

“Can’t you call it to make it ring?”

“No! It has the tracer, remember?”

“Ohh.” He got up to search for it. “Hey, why don’t we call Dawson?”

“What? No way!” Miki detested politicians, especially Cooper’s brother. Such a two-faced goodie two-shoes. He made her skin crawl.

“He’s connected. He could help. People would listen to him.” Jared adored the guy.

“Ugh! I don’t want to drag him into this. Besides, he’s all the way up in Michigan. Not to mention, I have to go to the wedding. Maybe we can just give it to the police.” But she knew that wouldn’t be a good idea. They’d scramble around and probably end up passing it back off to the Feds anyway.

“Miki, get serious. Ah, here it is.” Jared held up his QV. “Give me his number. I’ll call.”

“Give me that QV!” she shouted. He tilted his head at her like a puppy, then shrugged and tossed it to her. Miki ripped off the back cover and pulled out the bug. Jared shuffled over through the mess and she handed him the pieces. He stared at the components with his eyes bugged, then gave her a goofy grin.

“Awesome!”

“Destroy it.”

“Call him.”

“Fine.” She found Dawson’s number.

“Wait! Hang up!”

“Why?”

“What if they are watching him, too? We need a safe line. Here I’ll find one.” He jumped over a few things to get back to his seat. When he found one, he presented it to her. He could be so smart when he wanted to be.

“There. A clean, untraceable line.”

“Wow. Good thinking, sweetie. But you’re right. If they’re watching him, how do we ask him to help us?”

They thought a minute.

Jared snapped his fingers.

“I know. My mom can do it!”

Miki and Jared went upstairs and explained the plan to his mother. She agreed to do it. Miki wrote a short script with a code for her to read. After she practiced a few times, they called Dawson. Miki and Jared hid behind the imager, out of sight of the webcam.

“I have to leave a message,” Mrs. Nertz said.

FBI – Atlanta Division
8:15 a.m., Saturday, July 27

s we speak, Hasan, Geri, and Blake are at the plantation initiating the implementation of the new safety procedures. We expect a smooth transition without any disruption of service to the public,” Ed said, concluding his report to Vivienne.

“Wonderful, Ed. I knew everything would work out.” Vivienne put on a pleased smile. “The evidence has been destroyed? And the nuisance detective?”

“Yes,” he lied. Blake should have the evidence and have taken care of poor Geri by now. After reviewing her footage, Ed had been very disappointed in her lapse in judgment, jeopardizing their whole project.

“Excellent.” Vivienne sat back in her cushy leather chair strumming her fingers together. “I must say, Ed, this has turned out much better than expected. That detective brought a surprisingly positive outcome.”

“Yes. It will be a relief not to worry about any more ‘disappearances’,” Ed said. But the cost crept dangerously close to him. He hated losing an agent with such potential.

“Of course. Some of those families were hard to convince.” Vivienne looked off to the side, remembering. She snapped back to Ed. “But that’s all behind us now. There’s still a long road of renovation ahead. I won’t keep you any longer. You may go and carry out the rest of the details. Keep up the good work and inform me of your progress.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ed answered and gave her a nod. They disconnected. He had recorded their entire conversation. With the looming possibility things could get ugly, he wasn’t about to go down alone.

His QV vibrated again. Nate had called several times during his meeting with Vivienne.

“What is it, Nate?”

“Sir! You have to go to Mr. Taylor’s office immediately!”

“What? Why?” Being in charge of the Qnet, Ed knew all there was to know about everything. He had done nothing to draw the attention of the head of the Atlanta FBI office, Axel Taylor, the only other person who had the potential to ruin Ed’s life if he found out about the cover-up. No one higher in Georgia. Ed dreaded a summons to “the Penthouse.”

“It’s Geri! She popped in here a few minutes ago and went straight up to see him!” Nate’s face was flushed and sweaty.

“Oh, shit!” Ed rushed out of his office to catch the elevator.

Cooper fluttered his eyes and oriented himself, shaking his head. Cuffed and cramped in the little Econ Car, he assumed the two men on either side of him were FBI agents. The last thing he remembered was…
Miki!
He tried to reach up and rub his head where the pot had crashed on it but the cuffs and close proximity kept him from getting very far. He slumped back down.

“Good morning, sunshine,” the older agent said with a cruel chuckle. “Look who’s awake.”

“Let me guess. I won a free trip to Hawaii,” Cooper said.

“You won a trip somewhere all right. Let’s go,” said the younger one as the car pulled into a spot.

The agents escorted Cooper through the security station scanners and onto the elevator. The older agent got a message in his earpiece and pushed the button for the twenty-fifth floor.

“All the way to the top, eh? I must be important,” Cooper said.

They ignored him.
Stiffs.

When they stepped out into the small, dull lobby, they saw another man waiting. In a chair against the wall, he sat hunched over, with his elbows on his knees and his hands interlocked on the back of his head, mumbling to himself. When the guy heard the group come off the elevator, he looked up and gave Cooper a double take, then shook his head and lowered it again.

The live receptionist told Cooper and his agent friends to go in. She seemed alive, anyway. The guy who had been waiting gave her a pained expression, like he was being forced to sit on a tack. She just smiled at him.