Devious Origins

by Thad Phetteplace

CHAPTER 33

  I stumbled through my afternoon classes in a fog. How could I have missed this? OK, sure, there was that whole criminal conspiracy thing, and being kidnapped, and trying to figure out my relationship with Dee. I think it's fair to say I've had a few distractions to deal with. But for a guy with the supposed superpower of empathy, this was a pretty big thing to miss.

  Maybe I should have kissed her. There was that moment when we were saying goodbye... a pause when I totally could have kissed her, but I was so shocked by what I had just realized, it slipped past, and she walked away.

  Or maybe kissing her would have been unfair. Is that really the sort of relationship I want with Tilly? Would I just be leading her on? I'm still trying to figure out what sort of relationship I'm building with Dee. I care about Dee, that is certain, but so far its not really romantic, so it's not like I would be cheating on her. So why am I even hesitating with Tilly? I mean, she is amazing, and I really like her. But I'm not sure how I actually feel about her.

  It's like I can feel the emotions of everyone else around me without any problems, but I can't figure out what I feel. How screwed up is that?

  My fellow students began packing up. The class was over. I looked down at the empty page of my notebook and realized I hadn't taken any notes all afternoon. I also couldn't remember much about any of the lectures. There was nothing to be done about it now, so I tucked my notebook away and joined the crowd now shuffling its way outside. I needed to get to the Intergalactic for a mission planning session with the rest of the team.

  My thoughts remained turbulent on the bus ride there. I arrived to find Dee and DualCore already in the bean bag room. Kate and Sebastian joined us with a tray of coffees and teas shortly after. Originally Dee was going to keep her two skateboarding friends out of the mission, but we quickly realized our plan needed more legwork that we had legs for, so she recruited them.

  Dee greeted me even before I was fully settled into a bean bag chair. “Hey Barry, how'd things go with Tilly?”

  “Um... good. It was good. She's good. She says hi, by the way.”

  Dee gave me a curious look. “OK... that's good. But did she remember anything about that night at the bar?”

  “Oh... oh yeah. That. Yes. She didn't remember a lot, but there was some creepy guy that might be important. He tried to buy her a drink. It's probably worth following up on.” I had almost forgotten the entire purpose of my meeting with Tilly. Now that I had been reminded, the puzzle pieces in my head were moving again.

  “That's great,” Brian said. “Do you think she would be willing to look at a photo line-up? We can compile a list from the local Omicron Upsilon Iota membership, the employees of the Freedom Birthright Foundation... maybe we'll get lucky.” He was already tapping at his tablet.

  I shook my head. “I'm not so sure that will get us anything. Tilly seemed to think Mr. Creepy wasn't from around here. He talked like he was just visiting.”

  “That doesn't fit our profile,” Liz countered.

  “Maybe our profile is wrong.” I felt like we were close to something. Like another puzzle piece was about to click into place. “We've been assuming this was all run locally, but what if it's not. We know people disperse all over the country after they graduate. Maybe the people running the conspiracy have also.”

  Suddenly Liz started tapping frantically at her tablet. She sent some data to her brother with a swiping motion, and he was soon tapping and swiping just as energetically.

  “You have something?” Dee asked.

  “Just a sec,” Liz mumbled, “almost done.”

  Kate leaned over to Sebastian and said, “They always sort of freaks me out when they do that geek mind meld thing.” Sebastian nodded. DualCore ignored them and just continued working.

  “OK, I think that's it,” Liz finally said. She turned to her brother. “Do you want to explain.”

  “No, you pieced it together, the glory should be yours.”

  Liz grinned and held up her tablet like it was trophy. “Travel reimbursement,” she declared.

  “That's, like, the lamest band name ever,” Sebastian quipped.

  “Maybe so,” Liz continued, “but it's also our smoking gun. This shows a link between the Freedom Birthright Foundation and sexual assaults on the Penbrooke campus, at least the assaults that match our profile. We missed it in our early analysis because all we had was scans of the paper reimbursement forms. The actual financial data is on the firewalled system we've never been able to access. But we do have the archived scans of the original documents. We've been using optical character recognition and old fashion data entry to add the scanned documents into our data mining, but its been slow going. I only just got to the travel reimbursements.

  “There is an almost 65 percent correlation between travel expenses submitted for trips to and from this city by someone on our profile list during the times an assault happened. I pulled in a separate data source with the travel itinerary of Alexander Siegleshust and found he was almost always in town during matching assaults. That's not as significant as it sounds, one of his homes is here after all. But here is the thing... when I cross reference the two data sets, looked at times when Siegleshust is in town and someone from our list has traveled here, it matches up with an assault nearly 100 percent of the time.”

  “So basically what you are saying,” Dee interjected, “is if the boss is in town, and one of the minions is traveling here, we can be sure something bad is going down.”

  “Yes, that's what it looks like. I'll double check just to be sure. But here is the really interesting bit. Siegleshust is in town right now. He flew in just last week.”

  Dee leaned forward. “And the minions?”

  “None just yet, but I've already set up a bot to monitor for it. If it happens, the bot will ping us. We'll know what flight they're arriving on, what hotel they're staying at. Everything.”

  “Perfect,” Dee replied, “then we just tail them and close the trap.”

  “Queue the Mission Impossible theme music,” joked Sebastian.

  “Speaking of the trap,” said Brian, “I think you'll find this useful.” He handed Dee a white plastic oval about the size of guitar pick, only thicker. “It's a GPS locator, not quite military grade, but better than the typical civilian model. It can locate you to within a couple of feet.”

  That piqued my interest. “Slick. How did you manage that?”

  “Oh its really simple, actually,” Liz answered. “We use two off the shelf GPS units, one in a fixed location, one mobile. We use the fixed one to measure the errors in the signal, compute a differential, then subtract that from the mobile unit's data. As long as they are within twenty miles of each other, it works really well. This unit here is actually designed to attach to a dog collar, so it's perfect. It's small, lightweight, with a really good battery, and sends out its location as a standard SMS text message. It should be easy to conceal.”

  “That reminds me,” I said, “I also brought presents to the party.” I reached into my backpack and brought out the project I'd been working on for the last few days. I tossed it to Dee.

  She caught it and dangled it in front of her. “They look like my skateboarding gloves.” She slid the right one on and flexed her fingers, then made a fist. “Those metal studs are wicked looking.”

  “You don't know the half of it.” I brought the battery packs out of my backpack and motioned for her to extend her arm. I then attached one of the thin batteries to her right arm using a Velcro strap, then I connected the charge wire to a snap on the wrist area of the glove. “OK, make a fist, but keep your thumb out to the side.” She did it, and I reached over and hit the safety switch on the battery pack. “Now touch your thumb against that spot there on your pointer finger.”

  She closed her thumb against her fist, and suddenly lightning was jumping across the metal studs on the knuckles of the gloves.

  “Whoa, I fel
t that,” Dee exclaimed. Her hand was open again.

  “Yeah, I put as much insulation as I could in that part of the glove, but I still had to drop the voltage a bit compared to my first design, otherwise you would really be feeling it.”

  “It barely tingled. More of a vibration, really.” She made a fist again, and the sparks danced.

  “Ooh let me try!” Kate pleaded, and Dee handed her the left glove. I handed over the matching battery pack, and Kate wasted no time slipping everything in place. She raised her fist over her head and declared, “I am Katella, goddess of lightning!” as the sparks chased across her knuckles.

  “Just be careful,” I cautioned, “They're not quite as powerful as a commercial a stun gun, but they still have a kick. They can even be deadly in certain situations.”

  “Well, so can I,” replied Dee, “so these are a perfect fit.”

  “I got the idea after we tangled with those drug dealers. I figured this way, you wouldn't have to dig around in a pocket for Mr. Zappy. We can conceal the batteries almost anywhere in your jacket, and I can tie them both into a single safety switch.”

  “They're great, Barry. I'm not sure they go with the outfit I'll be wearing while demon hunting, but I'll definitely wear them when I'm on patrol. This was a really clever idea.”

  “I can't take all the credit. The basic design is from a project I found on the Internet. I think I improved on it a fair bit though.”

  Kate returned the left glove, and Dee slipped it on. Dee then stood, assumed a boxer stance, and threw a few punches at the air. As each fist reached the end of its swing, she activated that glove, causing sparks to snap briefly in a steady rhythm. The sound synchronized with the punches made it seem like she was impacting an invisible foe. She stopped punching, and then just held her fists in front of her face with the sparks chasing over her knuckles.

  “How long will the batteries last,” she asked.

  “I'm not sure exactly,” I answered. “They're lithium ion, so probably longer than Mr. Zappy. Five minutes of continuous use at least.”

  Dee held her hands a bit closer to her face and stared at the sparks. A bit of ozone smell began to permeate the air, and her hair actually began to stand on end. It was at that moment that another coffee house patron walked into the bean bag room looking for a place to sit. He froze in the doorway. A bit of coffee sloshed from his cup as he stared at Dee. She stared back at him, sparks still playing across her hands, hair standing on end, and said, “I should have had decaf.”

  The guy left in a hurry.