Chapter 9
The lab was burned up pretty good. Someone had poured gasoline on the server racks and put a match to them. The Halon system had put the fire out fast, but there was a whole lot of melted plastic and the acrid smell of fried circuits in the air.
I looked over the scene with as critical eye as I could manage. I didn’t know a damn thing about arson investigations. But this one seemed pretty clear-cut. The gas can was still laying where it’d been discarded in the corner of the room. Case closed.
I found O’Day outside, sitting on the tailgate of the EMT’s truck, breathing through an oxygen mask. He was black with soot, and his clothes looked singed. Damn fool must have tried to run into the fire to save his servers.
“You okay, Day?” I asked as I approached. The campus quad was awash with the dancing lights of fire trucks. “What the hell happened?”
We lifted the mask from his face and wheezed in a breath. “Fucking Genies,” he gasped. “A whole mob of them.”
“Genies did this?” I looked back at the server room. The firefighters were rolling up their hoses. It wasn’t like Genies to do anything wantonly destructive. Most were far too whacked out to every consider orchestrating any sort of attack.
“Yes, I’m telling you,” O’Day said, returning the mask to his face. “Fucking Genies!” he screamed through the breather. “Crazy as shit! Just burst into the place and started smashing shit! I got out through the back door, but when they set my racks on fire...”
“Bad?” I asked, nodding in sympathy.
O’Day lowered the mask. “Bad? There’s three million bucks of equipment in there, Sasha, that they tried to torch!”
“They take anything? Give you any idea what you did to piss them off?”
“Yes,” O’Day said, calming himself. He took a few breaths off the mask then continued. “They came in, screaming that they wanted the book, calling me a foul blasphemer, that sort of thing. When they found that e-reader of yours, that’s when they started trashing the place. Thanks again, Sasha.”
“Shit, Day, I’m sorry.”
“You know who those assholes were, don’t you?” O’Day said, giving himself a coughing fit.
“That’s not possible,” I shook my head.
“Where did you get that e-reader, Sasha?” he asked, recovering from his hacking. “Nobody’s seen or heard from the Rosicrucians for over twenty years, and then ten minutes after helping you out, they show up on my door and try to burn down my lab! Shit, Sasha, what was really on that e-reader?”
“You tell me?” I said, defensively. “You said it was just a copy of Q.”
“It was,” O’Day agreed, putting his mask back over his face. “It was...” he mumbled, then removed his mask. “Now, they’re trying to destroy every digital copy of Dark’s Last Novel? They’re going to be pretty busy.”
“No,” I scratch at my stubbly chin. “I found it at a murder scene. The Rosicrucians were covering their tracks. There must have been a way to track the e-reader back to them. Or, at least, they thought there was. Can you do that?”
“You can now,” O’Day said. “Before they stole it, I factory reset the device. Logged it in to my account. The lowjack will lead you right to them.”
I laughed. “Good job, O’Day. You’ll make a good cop, yet.”
“Thanks,” O’Day said with no mirth. “But I’ve had enough excitement for the time being.” He shook his head. “Why did they have to burn my lab?”
“Must have thought you were trying to decode Q. They couldn’t stand for that.”
“God, I hope the disk arrays survived the Halon...”
“Thanks for everything,” I said, squeezing O’Day’s shoulder. “Sorry for the mess. Let me know when you have their location on the lowjack, okay?”
“Will do,” O’Day said, grumpily. “And Sasha?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time you need something decoded,” O’Day gave me a weak smile. “Call the NSA.”
That Nietzsche Thing Page 11
