"You've got the keys?" Ryan asked as he trudged through the snow. The cold seeped into his socks.
"FedEx came yesterday," Sam said, "right on schedule. Dani almost opened it, and that would have been bad."
"Have you ever had to explain the money?"
Sam shook his head as they rounded the corner and peered into the darkness. A few meters away, they could barely see the sleek outline of a car. Sam punched the button on the key fob in his pocket. Red lights flashed, and the car beeped as the doors unlocked and the alarm was disengaged.
"After you," Sam said, and Ryan crossed to the driver's side. As he walked, he ran his hand over the smooth cold surface of the car, his hand getting wet from the fallen snow. The car was black, and was indeed a sedan, although like always, any indication as to the make and model had been removed from the car's body.
The car was anonymous.
He opened the door and smelled new leather. It reminded him of the first car he'd received from his father, on his sixteenth birthday. That car had been a Mercedes S600 Sedan, with a 5.5L twin-turbo V-12 engine and 510 horsepower. The leather in that car had smelled like power, much like the leather in this car. Of course, he was too young and naive for a car like that, but his father had been completely oblivious to that fact and had beamed on their first, and only, ride together.
Ryan slid into the seat and adjusted his coat and neck tie in the mirror. He flexed his hands on the steering wheel and pressed the ignition button. The car roared to life, a guttural rumble that echoed off the walls of the alley and shook the windows in the nearby buildings. Sam sat in the seat next to him and smiled.
"Nice ride, this one," Sam ran his fingers over the woodgrain in the dashboard. "I hope it comes with a good seat warmer, cause my butt is freezing."
"Ready?" Ryan asked, setting his phone into a cradle atop the dashboard. The blue line extended out from the flashing red bulb, cutting straight through the alley.
"System connected, standby," A sweet, melodic voice said through the car's speakers. Ryan always liked the sound of her voice and hoped that one day, he'd be able to meet woman behind the voice. Although that too was against the rules.
Ryan gripped the steering wheel and pumped the accelerator ever so slightly. The engine revved with an explosion of power and raw energy.
"Welcome to Lit Dragons," the woman said. "Emergency personnel are standing by."
"Well, that's good." Sam said. Ryan could tell that he was nervous, but the nervousness was mixed with an adrenaline rush that was difficult to explain. It felt like surfing, at the exact moment before the wave caught you. That moment when the sheer force of nature pummeled against your body, threatening to either send you below the surface in a shattering current or thrust you and your board across the water.
Sam pulled a picture from the pocket of his tuxedo jacket and stared at it. Ryan saw that it was his wife, a pretty girl that he'd met only once. She had dark brown hair that was long and smooth. In the picture, she was still pregnant, and she glowed. Beside her, Sam also glowed, that stupid grin on his face, his arm wrapped around his wife's shoulders.
"You know the—" Ryan started, but Sam interrupted.
"The rules, I know," Sam said. He lowered the window a crack and shoved the picture out into the snowy storm.
"On my mark," the woman's voice said.
Ryan revved the engine harder this time. He flipped on the car's headlights, and the alley was lit in a yellow glow. Sam gripped the arm rest, his knuckles turning white.
"Lit Dragons initiated," the woman said. Ryan dropped the car into first gear and jammed the accelerator down. The engine boomed as the car shot forward through the alley, the rear wheels skidding to the left in the snow. He corrected the wheel carefully, finessing the brakes ever so slightly. Once righted, he stepped hard on the accelerator, and they were off.
Chapter Nine
A blue dot appeared on the map on her computer screen, indicating that the team had found the car and was online. She pulled her chair close to the computer, typed several commands that accessed the car's operating system. Her heart beat faster in her chest as she activated the microphone on her computer and leaned close.
"Welcome to Lit Dragons," the woman known in the digital world as ANONX^17. "Emergency personnel are standing by."
She sat at her computer and studied a map that depicted the streets of Chicago and the surrounding area. She ran a diagnostics on the car and communications system, and they came back clear. She glanced at another monitor that showed the city’s grid of traffic lights. Along the bottom of the screen were the controls she used to control the traffic lights.
"On my mark," ANONX^17 said. She opened a window on her screen which showed the location of police cruisers around the city. The are was clean, at least for the moment. If the started now, their paths would intersect with a cop, who was driving slowly a few streets away.
That could be fun, she smiled. She took a deep breath. The blue dot stayed still, and would until she gave the go ahead. She leaned forward so that her lips nearly touched the microphone.
"Lit Dragons initiated," the woman said. The blue dot shot forward through the alley as the players began the game. ANONX^17 watched, holding her breath.
Of course, her real name wasn't ANONX^17. That combination of letters, numbers and symbols was the mask she wore every day. Some people chose to be imaginary people on the internet, but she thought the character combination packed more of a punch. A faceless entity to be reckoned with. Her real name was Heather Gardner, and the people who knew her as Heather had no idea of her life indoors. To them, she was a pretty girl with unrealized beauty, who was fun to be around when she wasn't keeping to herself. Heather had dark, shoulder-length hair which she always wore in a loose ponytail. She hardly ever wore makeup, and she carried some extra weight, but didn't mind. The extra weight made for a fuller figure and sleek curves that her friends were envious of. Not to mention, she jogged three times a week and hit the gym enough to feel like her body was in good shape.
Heather didn't date much, and on the rare occasion that she did, the guys she went out with were ones that she met on campus where she taught advanced computer programming twice a week. That's not to say that she wasn't asked out regularly; she simply didn't have an interest in long term relationships, at least in the physical sense of a relationship. Mostly, her relationships were online with people she'd never seen. She liked it that way. Safer.
To most people who knew her, she was a well-mannered, brainy woman who was focused primarily on her career. But inside her apartment and online she was an elite hacker to be reckoned with. There was virtually no system she couldn't enter, no firewall she couldn't bypass. To Heather, the digital world was like a wilderness to be explored, a wealth of untapped information and data that flowed beneath the external world like a great unknown river.
When she started out as a neophyte, or a newbie hacker, it was mostly for fun. The language of code came easily to her, and before long, she was entering secure networks to see if she could. In college, she hooked up with some programmers who introduced her to the world of Blue Hat hacking, where outside consultants would exploit a system for weaknesses prior to launch. When Heather felt she was good enough to run with the wolves, she broke into the network of a security firm that touted itself as the best in the business. She introduced herself by sending an email to the CEO from the CEO's email account, listing the details of his personal bank account and a detailed summary of the places he'd visited in the previous 48 hours. Of course, his phone had been secured and the connection encrypted, but once she lifted the number from his personal computer, she traced the connection through the phone company and bypassed all the encryptions. Once she had access to his phone, it was cake to track his whereabouts—mostly to places of no import, restaurants and coffee shops. There was only one location he visited that would raise any eyebrows, and although she didn't know for sure, Heather figured his wife of 13 years hadn't accompa
nied him.
He'd given her a job as a security consultant immediately, and she began to pick up projects when she had the time. Of course, the firm only knew her as ANONX^17, and paid her with untraceable deposits to an account in Zurich. It paid very well, was challenging, and most importantly, it was relaxing. She would crank the stereo (anarcho-punk rock, always) and treat her work like a puzzle to be solved.
And on the other hand, she had the games. For brief moments of time, her life became vivid and real as the lives of her players hung in a balance.
The microwave beeped and Heather pulled a steaming cup of water from within. She dropped two tea bags into the water and held it close to her nose, inhaling the subtle aroma of kava and anise. She closed her eyes and tried to slow her racing heart. In a few moments, when the tea bags had sufficiently seeped, the kava would do wonders to calm her nerves, but for now, she had to rely on just the steam.
Although it was probably just her imagination—and she fully accepted that—the steam from the kava tea did calm and slow her racing heart. She breathed deeply, allowing the stress and anxiety of the evening to dissipate with each breath.
Heather had been running the games for more than a year now, but each time it was played, the anxiety was overwhelming. It wasn't just the risk of hacking into the networks for the departments of transportation, police departments, and phone services, although there was a certain risk there. It was the risk that the game would result in death.
As much as her work was relaxing to her, the games made her anxious. She figured that what she did online was virtually harmless, mostly because she wasn't a malicious hacker, but in the games, real people died and the most she could do was watch. Heather hated it when people were killed in the games. She hated to think about the friends and family left behind by the adrenaline junkie who took the game a little too far. But she had to remind herself that the people playing the games had chosen to play. She chose to play herself, although in a different capacity, because the thrills were real.
Of course the families of the departed were compensated and taken care of (from an anonymous and untraceable deposit into their bank accounts), but it was more than that. She couldn't help but think about the player's life and the little details and quirks that made up each day, the people and relationships, the habits and feelings of happiness and sadness and love. It all disappeared when the player died. Maybe there was something after this life, she didn't know, but she did know that one minute, the player was alive and breathing and laughing or crying and loving and enjoying the sunlight or the newly fallen snow, and the next minute the player was gone. Dead. Leaving behind a fading memory.
She sipped the tea, still weak, and tried not to think about death and dying and memories. It was time to play.
Chapter Ten
The black sedan shot from the alley, tearing down the street with a frightening jolt of speed. Ryan felt a similar jolt of excitement that punched through his gut. He was breathless and excited, the sound and feel of the powerful engine, rumbling through his body and mind.
In his mirrors, he saw the snow shoot out from the rear tires in great weaving fans of powder and ice, and he had to concentrate to maintain control of the car.
"Ever done a snow drive before this one?" Sam asked.
"Never snow, so this will be fun." Ryan took a turn in the road sharper than needed, and the car slid sideways into the turn, like graceful dancing. He punched the accelerator, correcting the slide into the straight road ahead. The lights at each intersection were blinking yellow now and the roads were empty.
Perfect. Ryan dropped the car into the third gear and sped forward, the revolutions per minute climbing above five thousand, six thousand, seven thousand, and still the car wasn't close to redlining. They sped along the street, yellow street lamps whisking in flashes, the snowflakes in their headlights reminding Ryan of how the stars looked when the Millennium Falcon was traveling at light speed. He shifted to fourth, and they were gliding over the streets as the car's suspension absorbed the bumps in the road.
Ryan was driving at close to 110 miles per hour and approaching an intersection when they saw headlights approaching the intersection perpendicularly.
"Whoa, boy!" Sam shouted.
"I see it," Ryan said and pressed harder on the accelerator, his left foot hovering above the clutch. "We can make it."
Two seconds before crossing the intersection, Ryan dropped gears and stomped the accelerator in almost the same instant. The engine boomed as the revolutions per minute redlined, and the car increased its speed with incredible power.
"You feel that?" Ryan screamed and laughed as they hit a dip in the road at the beginning of the intersection, and the car was airborne. They rocketed past the oncoming headlights. Red and blue flashing lights suddenly lit up their rear window.
"Oh, guess we've got some company," Sam said.
"Out on the evening patrol!" Ryan slowed the car, allowing the police officer to get within a reasonable distance. The officer would have been close enough to read the license plate, but it didn't much matter, as the license plates were fake.
"Reports of police activity," the woman said through the speakers, as emotionless as ever. "Please adjust accordingly."
"And adjust we will!" Ryan said and saluted the dashboard. Up ahead, he saw an alley street that cut between two large brick buildings. They jumped the curb at the last moment, the wheels spinning and sliding, their speed not allowing traction, and they were sliding along the sidewalk, smashing into a street sign before their wheels finally caught and they raced down the street. The police car tried to follow, but his tires didn't catch traction in time. The side of the car smashed into the corner of the brick building in a burst of sparks, folding inward at the corner, then bouncing off like a pinball and smashing into the building on the opposite side of the alley.
"Whoa!" Sam said, turned in his seat. "You think the cop's okay?"
"I'm sure," Ryan said. The alley was mostly free of snow, which allowed for better traction and maneuverability, which was helpful to Ryan as he dodged metal dumpsters and piles of wooden pallets.
"There'll be more cops coming—"
"And we'll be gone," Ryan said.
Chapter Eleven
"You going to get off?" the bus driver asked from his seat at the front of the bus. Paul looked up from his notes and caught the driver's gaze in the big rectangular mirror.
"Don't think so," Paul said. "One more time around, I guess."
The driver hesitated and then said, "I've got to have you pay the fare again, Mister, and I'm truly sorry to have you do that, but I have rules to follow, you know."
"Completely understand," Paul said. He rose and walked to the front of the bus, where he deposited $1.25 in the payment collector. The bus was empty now. Everyone who'd been on the bus when Paul had gotten on were all long gone, and another round of people had come and gone as well.
The winter storm increased in its intensity, and Paul wondered how many times around the driver would go on his route, before calling it quits for the night. They hadn't picked up another passenger for more than 20 minutes, and from the looks of it, they wouldn't be picking up any more for the rest of the night. The town outside the bus was empty, not a person in sight.
"You waitin' for someone?" the driver asked, looking over at Paul with a cautious smile. It was a smile that conveyed experience in the city, which was big and harsh enough to chew people up and spit them out.
"Yeah, but doesn't look like she's going to show." Paul said, a little bitterly.
"Date?"
Paul laughed at this and shook his head. "No, Mr.—"
"Ambrose, Nick Ambrose."
"Mr. Ambrose, I haven't been on a date for years. Not since the wife took everything, including the desire to ever love again."
Ambrose laughed, a big bellowing sound with nothing held back. The laugh was contagious, and Paul found himself chuckling, despite his contact's no show.
"
Well, I've got two more rounds on this route, and then I'm hanging up the driving cap," Nick said when his laughter died down.
"I think one more round should do it for me then," Paul said, returning to his seat. It pained him to say this, but he knew that any more time on the bus would be foolish. The woman wasn't going to show, maybe was never going to show, and it made him angry to think that he'd been played a fool.
But she had called him, and there wasn't a reason for this woman to set up this meeting if they weren't going to go through with it.
For the thousandth time, he looked over his notes from their last phone call, but like every other time he'd studied through the pages of college ruled paper filled with his scraggily handwriting, there were no other clues. He was in the right spot at the right time, and she hadn't shown up. It was as simple as that. Paul sighed and then leaned his forehead against the cold window, watching the fat snowflakes flutter past.
Paul breathed slowly through his nose, despite the feeling that he wasn’t getting enough air. It was a trick his therapist had taught him to help with his nervous hyperventilating—which was an unwelcome side effect of his divorce a few years before. Of course, when he’d developed the quick breathing and rapid heartbeat, it usually accompanied the anger that was so prevalent throughout that time in his life. Most of the anger came from his growing obsession with the attack in Miami and his frustration that no one seemed to see the holes in the official account of what had happened. His obsession led him to retreat into himself, to mull over the facts again and again, to withdraw from his wife and children. He could see it happening to him, as if he were a third party observer, and even though he knew the consequences of his obsession and anger, he couldn't stop himself. His wife and kids had never left him, but he'd abandoned them. He went days without seeing them during those first few months after Miami, and when he did see them, his temper was hot and his patience nil. It hadn't taken his wife long to pack up the kids and move back home to her parent's house in southern Illinois. Paul had barely noticed their departure. Weeks became months, and then months became years, and his kids were nearly grown, his wife a stranger. The anger boiled at the lost time with his children, his lost family, and the nagging obsession that would never leave. He'd lost so much, for nothing. Until the mystery woman had called out of the blue.
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