Mykl looked up. Light pollution limited his viewing to only the brightest celestial bodies, and Jupiter dominated the sky this evening. He had often seen pictures of it in tattered books and on the Internet, but nothing compared to seeing it with his own eyes. He had been cooped up in care centers and the Box for too long, and it had kindled in him a desire for adventure. Gazing at stars and planets granted him a momentary escape from his dreary prison.
Someday I will be free, he thought. He only hoped there would be a world worth exploring when the time came. The way things on Earth were heading, they all might be living in caves soon.
An aching cold sent a shiver from his toes to the base of his skull. Time to go back inside. The stars held enough patience to wait another night. He stopped to give Teeka a pat on the head, then returned to the stale but warm air of the Box.
After gathering up the evidence of his escape and returning the ruler to its drawer, Mykl turned his attention to the computer. The cheap refurbished monitor gave off an eerie glow as the screen saver cycled through random colored patterns. Nicotine stained the keyboard and mouse; Mykl’s fingers always smelled like an ashtray when he finished his computer adventures. He feathered the handle to raise the pneumatic chair to its full height, then sat down and tapped the spacebar. The computer prompted him for a password. He typed it in:
[nomorekids]
The computer responded: Invalid password.
Damn. She changed it. Mykl looked under the keyboard. A fresh piece of tape with the words “Good Riddance!” had been placed over the old password. Ha! She had a sense of humor after all—she’d obviously written that for him.
Still, he had to try it to be sure.
[goodriddance!]
Invalid password.
Yeah, he didn’t think she was that stupid. Now, what would she have changed it to?
[bitchqueen]
Invalid password.
[devildemon]
Invalid password.
[skinnyslut]
Invalid password.
This was getting him nowhere. C’mon, Mykl, think. How are you going to gain access to this computer?
An idea popped into his head, brilliant in its simplicity. Two people knew the password. One made a living as a cold-hearted bitch—but the other went through life like a free-roaming vapor, conforming to the path of least resistance, malleable as monkey poo and as predictable as gravity.
“Hey, Linda?” he called to the sleeping figure on the couch.
“What?” she asked, obviously annoyed at having been woken up.
“What’s the new password to the computer?”
“Linda’s sleeping.”
The vengeful demon spares no one.
[lindassleeping]
Invalid password.
Sarcasm strikes again. “That didn’t work.”
“No more cats. Now quit bugging me and lemme sleep.”
“Thank you, Linda.”
She waved dismissively and rolled over.
[nomorecats] granted Mykl the mind-escape of online access again. “Sick bitch,” he muttered under his breath. Why couldn’t there be more Lindas in the world? No. There were already too many Lindas. The Loris just made them seem more desirable than they actually were.
“Where do I go today?” he mused. He’d already mined all the information on the computer’s hard drive. It stored a database of vital statistics on every child in the Box. Once a year, the state required that a proficiency test be given to every child in a foundling asylum; the results were used to assist prospective parents in choosing a child. Specifically, they were included in what was essentially a sales catalogue of unwanted children, a document that detailed everything from physical characteristics and handicaps to intelligence and proficiencies.
Mykl found it strange that the kids who were adopted most often were not the smartest or the ones who showed the greatest potential. People didn’t want a child smarter than them. They also didn’t want an especially dumb kid or problem child. No, they wanted an average kid—someone they could bully, dominate, bend to their will. The meanest of the kids who teased Mykl, Donzer, had been adopted—and returned—three times already. His wicked streak increased with every newly earned scar.
Box-lore said the truly intelligent kids, the ones who excelled on the tests, were taken away by the government. Rumor had it that these children were put to work in dark places as menial laborers, never to see the light of day or a starry sky again. Of course, these rumors came from the same kids who believed in the Tooth Fairy. But the truth mattered not to Mykl; he just knew that he had to keep his intelligence a secret, his proficiency scores on the lower end. According to the Box’s records, he had no more intelligence than a potty trained turtle.
Of course, that wasn't a guarantee against adoption, which he definitely did not want. The realities of life beyond the Box frightened him. He had seen too many fresh bruises on kids who were brought back like defective merchandise. But so far he had been fortunate.
He turned his attention back to the computer. A firewall prevented him from accessing sites deemed inappropriate or nonproductive—but fortunately for Mykl, it failed to block sites providing information on how to defeat firewalls, and he’d gotten around it long ago.
He considered once more what to do with his stolen computer time. Perhaps that puzzle website? It had been a few months since he’d visited it, and his mind longed for some decent exercise. Even at the hardest level, the puzzles on the site had barely challenged him, yet they were still entertaining. He’d have finished them all already, but the server providing web access had crashed before he could finish.
He activated an anonymity program of his own design and logged on. The site had a completely redesigned welcome page. This was promising. Perhaps they had improved the puzzles as well?
He soon found that they had. In fact, to his delight, each puzzle interlaced with previous ones. He had to keep track of everything he’d done in order to keep up. Every detail held meaning to be used in some future puzzle. Altogether, it was like a complex symphony of logic the likes of which Mykl had never been exposed to before. His mind reveled in heavenly rapture. It seemed as if an intelligence behind the screen was creating puzzles specifically for him.
As soon as he entered a solution, another problem would appear on the screen. The speed at which they came increased subtly, undetected by Mykl, due to his unwavering focus. Strategy problems, number regressions, pattern recognitions, and word associations flashed before him. Mykl’s eyes narrowed in concentration, his fingers pitter-pattering across the keyboard. His mind had never been pressed this hard. The world inside the Box ceased to exist; time compressed, he had to pee, didn’t care, he knew the answer, his fingers blurred over the keys,
The puzzle disappeared before he could hit enter. Mykl raised his fists, ready to bring them down in anger.
The screen blinked, and a new image appeared. A cipher. Something familiar about it. Clever, but not clever enough. James wrote in a similar way. The author had omitted all the vowels and purposely misspelled words phonetically before encrypting them… and peculiar words at that… Done! What does it say…?
The reality of the Box came crushing in on him. A rising sense of panic grew in his belly and moved up to threaten his pounding heart. He realized now that he had been duped. He wasn’t entertaining himself with puzzles—he was taking a test! The last cipher had seemed familiar, and it didn’t seem to fit in with the pattern of the previous puzzles—and now Mykl understood why.
He had been tricked into solving an unpublished cipher of the Asylum Angel.
Driven by fear, he erased his solution and shut off the computer. His mind still racing, he ran back to his dorm, trying to comprehend what had happened and who was behind it. How could he have been so stupid? Someone out there now knew the secret he had kept for so long. Would his anonymity program protect him?
Doubtful.
He buried his face in his pillow and wished he could disappear from the planet. Cipher symbols burned white hot in his mind. He knew where the first victim of the Asylum Angel would be found—and the grisly details of how they would be killed.
CHAPTER 12
“Hello?”
“We’ve found him, sir.”
“Found who?”
“The user who almost aced the Level II puzzle page a few months ago.”
“Yes. I remember. The trace failed to pin down a location due to a server problem and a rather ingenious anti-tracking program.”
“We reset his logon to take him to the Level I trials if he ever came back. He did. He didn’t submit the solution to the last puzzle, though.”
“The Level I trials were designed so they couldn’t be finished. They’re only a measurement tool.”
“I don’t think you understand, sir. He did answer the last question, but it appears a computer issue prevented him from entering it.”
“That more than justifies acquiring him.”
“We believe something he saw on the computer frightened him. We have the recording from the user’s office security camera.”
“Age?”
“Five. Las Vegas Foundling Asylum.”
“Bring him in. He’ll be the last. We don’t have time for more.”
“There’s more, sir.”
“What?”
“An incident at the asylum.”
***
Awakened by an anguished scream rising from the quad, James bolted from his bunk and was gone before Mykl could sit up. Mykl had been in bed for about an hour and had never quite fallen asleep.
The scream died, then was resurrected in hysterical wails. It sounded like Dawn, but he couldn’t be sure. With foreboding thoughts, he peeled himself from under his covers to follow James.
James had Dawn secured in an embrace. Her thin body shuddered with wracking sobs. James kept whispering, “No cry, no cry,” but she was inconsolable. A crowd of children had gathered around them. Most looked horrified, a few wore malicious smirks.
Behind Dawn, a pool of dark blood glistened beside a small pair of holey socks. A limp white tail drooped off the back of Dawn’s chair.
Mykl’s heart sank.
“Ha ha! The Ass Angel killed your cat!” yelled Donzer. His flippant tone and lack of surprise made it obvious he was the one who had killed Teeka. The vicious bastards—Donzer’s grinning minions no doubt participated—even placed the body on Dawn’s chair to be sure she would be the one to find it.
Guilt threatened to turn Mykl inside out. He didn’t like to cry, but leaning against the wall with his cheek pressed to the coarse stucco, he found himself incapable of holding back tears. His stupid socks had encouraged Teeka to stay put, making it easier for them to find her.
The crowd parted a bit, and Mykl saw more than he would have liked. Apparently they had pulled up a piece of the broken blacktop and used it to crush Teeka’s skull.
His face became hot with anger. He had never experienced such hate before. He wanted to drag those who committed this heinous crime to the center of the quad and bash their skulls in with the same piece of bloody rock. Knowing that his size prevented any such fury-driven revenge only tormented him further.
He recognized his own rage reflected in James’s face as he held Dawn. James’s eyes were fixed on the same chunk of blacktop. James could very well kill with his bare hands, and he looked determined enough to do it.
The thought sobered Mykl, and he composed himself to join in the embrace. He reached up and grabbed James’s arm to get his attention. “No,” he whispered, shaking his head slowly. James merely nodded once, closed his eyes, and allowed his tears to fall into Dawn’s obsidian black hair.
In a whirling blur, Dawn let out a guttural growl and ripped herself from James’s grasp. Donzer, caught flat-footed, barely drew a breath to scream before Dawn had a fistful of his hair and was winding up for a roundhouse punch to his face. At the cost of a few dozen follicles, he managed to dodge the telegraphed blow. But his attempt to laugh stalled against gritted teeth as Dawn stepped in close for leverage and flung him to the ground in a breath-stealing slam. She straddled him and proceeded to rain down a hellacious fury of righteous white knuckles. Donzer cowered pitifully behind crossed arms, which only managed to block about half the raging storm of fist-sized hail.
Lori’s shrill voice scattered the crowd. “Everyone back inside!”
James, who had been standing in awe through the whole melee, his arms extended as if trying to determine the best way to pick up a ferocious animal, found an opening and plucked the still-swinging Dawn off Donzer. Her knuckles dribbled blood from wild misses hitting asphalt. She buried her flushed face into James’s chest.
Donzer yelled, “The Ass Angel did it!”
“Donzer!” Lori pointed at him. “If you think the Angel is bad, don’t you dare cross me! Use that word again and you’ll be cleaning urinals with a Q-tip!”
Donzer wiped his bloody nose, and he and his cronies skulked away. Any punishment involving bathroom duty was no laughing matter.
Lori pulled Mykl toward her by the fine hairs on the back of his neck and roughly spun him as she bent to snarl, “See what happens when you feed the damned things? This is your mess. You clean it up!”
She ushered everyone back inside. James cradled Dawn in his arms and carried her. Lori went in last and slammed the door shut behind her, leaving Mykl shivering barefoot in the cold in his pajamas
Mykl’s fists and jaw clenched white with anger. Deliberately not looking at the chair, he scanned the quad. He saw nowhere to bury Teeka, and he couldn’t bring himself to just toss the body over the fence or throw it in the trash. The neglected planter was the best he could do.
Ignoring the cold, with his bare hands, he dug a deep hole in the dry dirt next to the plant’s shriveled roots. Fresh tears sprang up when he lifted the lifeless kitten and carried her to the tiny grave. With great reverence, he placed his socks on top of her and refilled the hole.
Unknown to Mykl, Tina watched him through the grimy window above the planter. Tears streamed from her blue-green eyes and fell to her hands, which held the few scraps of food she had saved from last night.
***
James had been allowed to carry Dawn to her room but was forbidden from going inside or staying to give comfort. No boys were allowed in the girl’s dorm; that was the rule. So now he sat at his desk, his face flushed with anger, furiously stabbing dots on a sheet of paper.
Mykl grabbed a towel from the hook on the back of their door. Blood stained his hands, his pajamas were filthy, and he hoped a shower would wash away any memory of last night and this morning.
The boys’ sanitary room was anything but, which was why cleaning it was one of the most feared punishments in the Box. Mykl crossed the threshold and retched as an ammoniated reek of sour urine struck his nostrils. He tried to take shallow breaths through his mouth until he could acclimate; but it only provoked the need to take a much deeper breath when he reached the point of no return. Speed and economy of motion would be his best defense.
Eight shower nozzles leaked cold drops at random intervals in a four-by-ten-foot space with no partitions. The leaks left an orange-colored, hard water stain streaking to the green-tinged drain. Mykl hung his towel and stripped off his pajamas. Bloodstains on the front gave him a moment’s pause before he threw them in the shower violently, hoping the waste water would rinse them away. Using both hands, he muscled the hot water handle and leaned to the side to wait for the weak spray to heat up, with complete disregard for Lori’s rule about wasting water.
The warm stream felt good running over his scalp and neck as he lathered up. But though his body began to feel cleaner, his soul remained stained with a guilt that would never wash off. He should have known better than to encourage Teeka’s trust of children when the likes of Donzer existed in the Box. He could have shooed her off back to the al
ley to wait until Dawn called for her. Anything would have been better than what he had done.
Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve; it wasn’t within his ability to change things that had already happened. He hoped Dawn could forgive him.
He rinsed, wrung the water out of his pajamas, and dried himself off. With the towel around his waist dragging the ground, he took a deep breath and dashed through the stench back to his dorm.
James was gone when he returned, so he draped his wet pajamas on the back of the chair. Fresh pages of dots littered the desk. That wasn’t like James; he was usually very meticulous about putting them away. But considering the morning’s emotional roller coaster, Mykl could understand how he might be put off his normal routine.
Mykl gathered the pages and put them away in James’s “dot drawer.” The dots never made any sense to him. They rambled along haphazardly with no rhyme or reason. At first Mykl had thought they might be some kind of writing, but James didn’t put them on the paper the way one would normally write. He would work on as many as five pages at once, front and back, right to left, down to up, and round in circular loops. There was no way anyone could make anything of it but what it was—pages of random dots contrived and valued by a brilliant simpleton.
But looking at the dots reminded him of the Angel cipher. He couldn’t tell James or Dawn about what it said. They were already upset, and it wasn’t as if they could do anything about it anyway. Telling Lori was out of the question. For one thing, he didn’t think she would care, and for another, she would punish him for having used the computer. No, his best bet was to wait until after his interview, then he would access the computer again, make a throwaway email address, and use it to anonymously notify the police about the Angel’s intent. Then, as much as he hated the idea, he would have to stay away from the computer until the ramifications of his latest adventure played out. It wasn’t the greatest plan, but it was the best he could come up with after having been awake all night.
The Prometheus Effect Page 7
