“Frankly speaking, I’m not sure,” I replied as I started to walk around. “It just occurred to me that, if he wanted to take over the world – or just destroy the League – Mouse would probably have something ten times better than anything a supervillain could come up with.”
Following me, Electra said, “And you think he’d keep it in his lab?”
I shrugged as I continued scanning the room. “I’m not sure about that, but he did everything from his lab. That being the case, there might be something here he’d want or need.”
“So what’s your theory – that he’d come back here?”
“That was my initial thought, but it didn’t pan out before.” I then explained to her how a group of us had come to the lab the previous day. “If he does need something from here, it’s possible he’s simply accessing it in some way.”
“You mean like logging in remotely to a computer or something?”
“Yeah,” I agreed with a nod. “But from what I can see, nothing is on in here except the lights. None of the gadgets or devices on his worktables, none of the PCs. In fact, I can’t even see how to power these computers up.”
It was a true statement. There were a number of computers around the lab, but I hadn’t seen a power button on any of them as I walked around.
Electra appeared to mull this over for a moment, then asked, “But would he need specific computers on if he just wanted to access the network?”
“Good point,” I admitted. “But it assumes that any info Mouse would want would actually be on the League network.”
Electra frowned. “So what are you saying – that Mouse had his own private network?”
“I’d be shocked if he didn’t,” I stated. “But look, here’s the main thing: I’m in this lab with Mouse almost on a daily basis. Every idea he has, every notion, every inspiration, it goes from cradle to grave inside these walls. So whatever he’s doing right now, whatever he’s thinking, wherever he’s holed up – there’s some clue to it in here. I’m just not seeing it.”
“That makes sense,” Electra agreed, “but maybe you’re too close to the problem. It might help if you step back for a moment and take a mental break. After all, we’ve been at this all day.”
“Yeah, but it’s Mouse,” I said. “He wouldn’t be taking a break if the situation was reversed.”
“Maybe not, but even he’d agree that it’s still important to eat, sleep, and so on,” she argued, mimicking words I’d heard earlier. “So how about this: why don’t we go grab some dinner, try to talk about something else, and then give it another whack?”
I looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Why Electra, are you asking me on a date?”
She laughed. “No, it is most definitely not a date. But if you play your cards right…”
She gave me a coy look as she trailed off, and I sensed an unexpected amalgam of emotions from her – flirtatiousness mixed with excitement and affection. However, before I could offer any type of comment, my attention was drawn by an odd beeping sound.
“What was that?” Electra inquired as the noise sounded again.
“I’m not sure,” I responded, shaking my head, “but it sounds like…”
I trailed off and the beeping sounded once more, coming from the far side of the room. I began walking in that direction, accompanied by Electra. By the time the beep sounded a fourth time, I had figured out the source of the noise: a computer monitor on one of the worktables. Looking at it, I was surprised to see a cursor blinking in the upper left corner of the screen.
“It’s on,” whispered Electra, almost in awe.
“Yeah,” I muttered, nodding.
“But how?”
“I’m assuming, like the lights, it was somehow triggered by us being in the room. Maybe it just took it a minute to power up.”
Electra opened her mouth to say something, but became silent as the cursor suddenly moved, spelling out a query:
Name?
“It’s asking for a name,” Electra noted, pointing to a keyboard that was connected to the monitor.
“Really?” I uttered sarcastically. “I had no idea.”
I received a playful punch on the arm in response to my commentary. Ignoring Electra’s antics, I continued staring at the screen, thinking.
“What are you waiting for?” Electra finally asked.
“I’m trying to figure out how to respond,” I answered.
“Just type Mouse’s name,” she stated in an impatient tone.
“There’s no way it’s that easy. Mouse doesn’t operate like that, and no computer in here is going to offer unfettered access to its systems solely because you typed in his name.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed, rubbing my chin. “But there’s an old saying about honesty being the best policy, so…”
Pulling the keyboard in front of me, I hastily typed out my name:
Jim Carrow
I hit the Enter button and waited. The cursor blinked for a few times and then vanished. A moment later, the screen went blank.
“Idiot,” Electra muttered, only slightly tongue-in-cheek. “I told you to enter Mouse’s name.”
I was about to make a smart-aleck response when the screen came back to life, saying:
Please answer the security question.
A confused look came across Electra’s face. “What security question?”
“Give it a minute,” I advised.
As if in response to my comment, additional verbiage suddenly appeared on the screen:
If you have me, you want to share me. But if you share me, you won’t have me.
Electra frowned. “What kind of security question is that?”
“The Mouse kind,” I replied. “It’s a riddle.”
She gave me an incredulous look. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Does it look like I’m kidding?” I asked, gesturing towards the screen.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Answer it, of course.”
“So wait – you know the answer?”
“Naturally,” I stated in a playfully smug tone.
“So what is it?”
“It’s a ‘secret.’”
“A secret?” Electra repeated. “So what does that mean – you can’t tell anyone?”
“It’s ‘secret,’” I stated again.
“I heard you the first time. What I haven’t heard yet is the answer.”
Frustrated, I wiped my face with my hand. “The answer is ‘secret.’”
Electra crossed her arms in anger. “So you really aren’t going to tell me?”
Shaking my head in exasperation, I turned back to the monitor and began typing the answer:
Secret
“Ooooh,” Electra droned as I finished and hit the Enter button. “Now I get it. If you have a secret, you want to share it. But if you share it, it’s not a secret anymore.”
Ignoring her, I kept my eyes on the screen. It went blank for a moment, then briefly flashed the phrase, Access Granted. A second later, the word Files appeared in the top left corner of the screen. Below that heading, a long list of what I presumed to be file names began to appear.
“Nice!” Electra exclaimed. “You got access to Mouse’s system.”
“Yeah,” I remarked with a smile. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Cool? It’s freakin’ awesome!” she announced with a grin that I eagerly returned.
Our euphoria, however, was short-lived. Looking at the screen, I began to notice a phrase appearing in parenthesis behind a number of file names:
(File corrupted. Unable to retrieve.)
“That’s not good,” Electra noted.
“You think?” I muttered caustically as the corrupted tag began attaching to more and more of the file names. Within seconds, almost all of the files had received that label.
“So everything on here is corrupt?” Electra uttered in surprise. “How weird is that?”
“You think he did this – corrupted all the data.”
“It would definitely make it harder to find him or figure out what he’s up to,” I declared. “But, if it was him, it looks like he didn’t manage to corrupt every file.”
I pointed at the screen as I spoke, singling out what appeared to be the lone uncorrupted item on the screen.
“What is that?” Electra asked.
“Based on the file extension, it looks like some kind of video,” I noted as I double-clicked on the file name.
Almost immediately, a window opened on the screen. Right away, I recognized what I was seeing as the same footage I’d viewed the day before of the scene in Mouse’s lab. I let it play for a few seconds and then paused it.
Electra looked at me curiously. “Why’d you do that?”
“Because I’ve seen it before,” I answered, then explained how I’d already watched the video. “I should have realized that’s what it was, since it was the only thing they recovered from the cameras in here. But long story short, there’s nothing new here.”
“So what now?”
I shrugged. “I guess now I accept your invitation to go on a date.”
“Again,” she reminded me laughingly, “not a date.”
I waved a hand at her dismissively. “So you say.”
Still smiling, she said, “Actually, I–”
The sound of my phone ringing cut her off. I pulled it out and saw that it was Alpha Prime calling.
Taking a few steps away, I answered with a quick, “Hello.”
“Hey,” my father said. “I think we’re standing down for the night.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I acknowledged. “It’s not like we have a bunch of clues to follow up on.”
“True,” Alpha Prime agreed. “Anyway, I was wondering if we were still on for dinner.”
“Oh,” I muttered softly, caught flatfooted. I had completely forgotten about our dinner plans. I looked at Electra, who was busy staring at something on the computer monitor. “Well, uh, actually, Electra just asked me out.”
“Did not,” she shouted over her shoulder.
“But hey,” I continued, “you have any objection to joining us?”
“That’s okay, son,” he insisted. “I know you two have things to discuss. We’ll do it another time.”
“No, no, no,” I blurted out. “I don’t want to keep putting this off. Plus, Electra and I need a chaperone anyway – to make sure she keeps her hands to herself.”
Electra gave me an evil look for a second, then turned back to the monitor.
Laughing, my father said, “Well, it has been a while since I spent a decent amount of time with either of you. I tell you what: I’ll grab some pizzas and meet you guys at your place. We’ll hang out for a bit and just chat.”
“Sounds great,” I said. “See you soon.”
Alpha Prime then muttered a quick goodbye, and I hung up the phone. Turning my attention back to Electra, I saw her still watching the computer monitor. Walking towards her, I soon realized – as I suspected – that she was watching the footage of the previous day’s altercation in the lab.
She shot me a glance and then paused the video before turning towards me.
“How do you feel about pizza for dinner?” I asked. “At my place.”
“Fine by me,” she replied.
“Also, Alpha Prime’s joining us – if that’s okay.”
“Again, I’m fine with it,” she declared. “Are we leaving now?”
“Unless you can think of a reason to stay,” I remarked, then glanced at the monitor. A moment later, Electra followed my gaze.
“I never got a chance to see it,” she explained. “So I was curious.”
“Did you want to finish it?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, that’s okay. Like you said, there’s nothing there. I mean, the part I saw was interesting, but I didn’t get the impression anything on there would help us find Mouse.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to see it all?”
“Yeah,” she assured me. “But if I change my mind, we can always come back.”
“Hmmm,” I droned, thinking. “Hang on for a sec.”
I then did a quick survey of the area around us, but only had to go as far as the next worktable to find what I was looking for: a memory stick.
“What are you doing?” Electra asked as I came back to the keyboard.
“Making a copy,” I responded. “You relying on my word that there’s nothing on the video bothers me – makes me feel like I’m being too cocky. Now I want to go back and look at it again to make sure.”
It took me a second to locate an appropriate port to insert the memory stick into (surprisingly, it was located on the side of the monitor), but after that, the system seemed to understand what I was trying to do. It asked a question about downloading the current file to the inserted medium, and a few moments later the video file – or rather, a copy of it – had found a new home on the memory stick.
“You know, you could have just watched it again right here,” Electra noted as I removed the memory stick and put it in my back pocket.
“Yeah, but I might want to look at it more than once,” I explained. “And I prefer being able to do it at my leisure. Also, once we leave, I’m pretty sure everything in here will power down again. Since I’m not sure how this machine even turned on, I’m not banking on that happening every time I come back here.”
“Okay,” she intoned after mulling over my comments for a second. “I can get on board with that. So, if you have everything, can we go now?”
Giving her a nod, I teleported us.
Chapter 35
We popped up in the living room of the embassy. Electra immediately flopped down on the couch.
“Ahh, it feels good to finally relax,” she announced, kicking off her shoes. “I feel like I’ve been on my feet all day.”
“I know what you mean,” I said as I sat down next to her.
“Puh-leeze,” she droned. “You can just turn off pain receptors and nerve endings if things start to hurt or get uncomfortable. The rest of us have to suffer through.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t sympathize.”
“Oh, you sympathize?” she mocked. “That’s so sweet.”
I came to my feet. “You know what? I’m just going to sit somewhere else.”
I moved to step away, but she grabbed my hand.
“Come on – you know I’m just teasing,” she insisted, at the same time tugging on my hand until I sat back down. “Now, how long before Alpha Prime shows up with the food?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. However long it takes him to grab some pizzas and drive over here.”
“So he’s driving?”
“I suppose. I mean, we left his SUV at the marina, so I assumed he’d go back and get it. And speaking of driving, in case you forgot, your car’s still parked out front.”
“I actually thought about that after you teleported me home this morning. And that reminds me: I should probably call my dad and let him know where I am.”
“And be sure to tell him I’ll have you home before curfew,” I demanded as Electra stood up and took her phone out of her pocket.
“We’ll see,” she remarked with a coy smile as she stepped away to make her call.
Left on my own for the first time all day, I spent a few moments reflecting on everything that had happened. Needless to say, I still had trouble with the notion of Mouse attacking his League teammates (not to mention possibly wanting to take over the world). It just didn’t make sense. And sadly, my second sojourn to the lab had been less than fruitful. (Well, there was the video, but the more I thought about it, the less I felt it would pay dividends in any significant way.)
I was still mentally reviewing the day’s events when Electra came back a few minutes later.
“Everything good?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Of course. I told him we were in the middle of an assignment, and he understood.”
“Wow,” I murmured. “He’s a lot more reasonable than I would have guessed.”
“Well, if you’d stop prejudging him, you’d see that my dad is pretty great,” Electra declared. “Anyway, my phone’s almost dead. Do you have a charger I can borrow?”
“Uhhh,” I droned. “Not really.”
She stared at me for a second. “Seriously? You’re not going to let me borrow a charger?”
“It’s not that,” I assured her. “I’m just not sure that I have one.”
“Don’t have one?” Electra echoed, giving me a strange look.
“Let me rephrase: I’m sure I have one. I just don’t know where it is.”
“Then how do you keep your phone charged?”
“I don’t. Or rather, I don’t have to charge it.”
Electra continued looking at me oddly. “You’re going to have to explain that.”
I sighed. “A while back, Mouse took my phone and made some upgrades to the architecture. One of the things he did was install an advanced battery that really doesn’t have to be recharged.”
I didn’t bother talking about any of the other improvements, like the enhanced casing that made the phone nigh unbreakable. The issue of the battery alone was apparently surprising enough.
“Well,” Electra droned, “that’s impressive. Mouse didn’t do that for me – or any of the other teens that I’m aware of. All we got installed was a tracker so the League can find us whenever they like.”
“Come on – he’s my mentor,” I stressed. “Of course there are going to be some perks that go along with that. But on the downside, I think Mouse said this battery thing isn’t perfected yet, so I’m really just a guinea pig. Once it becomes clear that it’s not going to explode in someone’s pocket, I’m sure everybody will get one.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she demurred. “But why don’t we put that conversation on pause and discuss something else until Alpha Prime gets here.”
“Works for me,” I said.
Chapter 36
Instead of chatting, we ended up watching television in the theater room – a soundproof chamber with a one-hundred-twenty-inch projector screen and rows of seating that consisted of powered recliners. It was a room that had seen limited use since my family’s departure, so I was happy to have a reason to put it in service.
Isolation Page 15
