Mind Trace

by McCaghren, Holly

  "Is everything okay, ma'am?" One of the guards asked her before the group rounded the corner to see where she was sitting. She should have known they would come running when they noticed her on the floor.

  "I'm fine, I just bumped my head," she responded, irritated.

  Then the first guard saw her and the blood on her hands and it seemed that everyone panicked all at once.

  "Radio for medical, we have a situation here, in the McArthur lab."

  "Notify Martin."

  "Where's the nearest med kit?"

  Does no one care that this isn't life-threatening?

  Alice rolled her eyes, and raised her voice to address the bustle of guards. "I'm fine, like I already told you! It's just a scratch. Please tell 'medical' or whomever it was you just called that they won't be needed. And Eric definitely does not need be informed."

  She might as well have spoken to the wall, for the good it did. Alice shook her head and reached for the nearest worktable to pull herself up.

  "Ma'am, please. Lie down and wait for the medic to arrive."

  A uniformed man was standing over her with a grim expression. He was attempting not to seem menacing, but he wasn't remotely successful.

  "This is ridiculous! I'm not dying! Everyone is overreacting!"

  Her head was still bleeding, but it had lessened now. She pretended to look defeated, as if she had accepted the guard's order, and surrendered to wait until the medic arrived. When he relaxed slightly, she leapt up with considerable speed and backed up, away from the guard.

  "Wait, what? I told you to stay there!" he growled. "Gonzales, Milligan! Over here, now!"

  He slowly approached her, as one would approach a rabid animal. The other two men came around the other side of the table, fencing her in. Alice couldn't believe everyone was making such a big deal out of a simple cut.

  What is wrong with these people?

  Even though she knew reasoning with them would do no good, she tried anyway.

  "Look, I really am fine. I just need a bandage or something and I can get back to work. Really. There's no need for any of this."

  "Just calm down. We'll determine that for ourselves, if you don't mind."

  The first guard spoke to her slowly and calmly, but it just sounded patronizing in her ears. She had just begun to plan some way to fend off the guards, when three more people entered the room. They were wearing dark blue scrubs and immediately began scanning the room. Their eyes all fell on her, taking in the situation.

  While she was distracted by the medical team, the guards took the opportunity to tackle her to the ground.

  "Watch her head!" she heard someone yell.

  Alice struggled madly, but there were too many people holding her down. Her thoughts swirled around in her head.

  Am I missing something? Was I mortally wounded by the table and just didn't notice?

  The medics came over, bringing a stretcher. Before she knew what happened, she was strapped into the stretcher, and unable to move. They put a mask over her face and she found that thinking was becoming difficult. She was still conscious, but she felt lethargic and her head felt thick.

  Her internal clock was conscious of the time passing, but her immediate consciousness was not. Alice was vaguely aware that people were looking at her head, treating it, and then it was scanned several times by different machines.

  After a couple hours, her awareness began to return to her. Alice looked around and found that she was now in her own room, lying on her bed. Eric sat in a chair next to her, staring at her intently. He had an almost worried expression on his face, which looked out of place on his normally stern features.

  Through her weak thoughts, it occurred to her that she should feel nervous about seeing him again after what happened during their last encounter. Alice was determined to show that she had every intention of being professional about the whole situation.

  As she regained the full use of her facilities, she prepared what she felt was an adequate explanation for her actions, and tried to sit up to begin her rationalization.

  Eric had other plans and suddenly, he was there.

  "Don't get up. You need to take it easy, Alice." He gently pressed her back into the pillow.

  Once he was reassured she would not try to sit up again, he sat down in the chair once more.

  "How are you feeling? Are you alright?"

  Alice stared at him, unsure of herself. She expected him to be angry with her, or at least wary, but it seemed he had overlooked the entire affair. His unexpected concern shattered all her planned responses and she was left dumbstruck.

  "You'll have to forgive my staff. They were only following orders. Any kind of injury, no matter how small, is to be taken seriously. I was informed that you were quite agitated by the attention."

  His blatant dismissal of the ridiculousness of the situation angered her and she responded, "It was completely unnecessary. I just bumped my head!"

  He gave a short laugh. "Well, you'll be surprised to know that you had three stitches today."

  "What?"

  Once again, she was derailed. She reached up immediately to feel the side of her forehead. Her fingers grazed the stitches and she shuddered, pulling her hand back.

  "You checked out fine. We ran a few tests to make sure nothing else was damaged, but it was only the abrasion. How did this happen, exactly?" He raised an eyebrow and looked at her quizzically.

  "I dropped my pen, so I crawled under the desk to get it and bumped my head on the way out. Nothing complicated there. Certainly, there was no need to make such a big deal out of it. Please explain that to your staff. I can handle myself just fine."

  "Oh, I'm fully aware of that. But, we have this policy for a reason. You are too valuable an asset for us to take chances needlessly."

  Alice gave an exasperated sigh and stared at the ceiling. She wondered if she would ever understand him. Eric seemed to be kind and understanding at times, but she knew his character was not so innocent. It was getting more and more difficult to decipher which side was dominant.

  "We did get your materials list and you will have the items tomorrow morning. It is too late tonight for you to do any more work anyway. Plus, you need to rest."

  She turned her head to look at him again. Alice was tired, frustrated and depressed. It felt mercilessly cruel to be so helpless. Not only was she a prisoner, but she was not even allowed to determine her own well-being. Some of this must have shown on her face. Although she said nothing, Eric responded as if she had voiced everything on her mind.

  "You shouldn't feel such despair. You may not want to be here, but you will be taken care of. We will do our best to ensure you aren't harmed."

  He was silent for a moment before adding, "It wouldn't hurt you to consider trusting me. You might find that you are surprised by the results."

  He stood up and left the room, leaving Alice to wonder what he meant. She knew he still had ulterior motives, but she couldn't stop herself from having fleeting feelings of guilt, despite his intentional activation of her bracelet the night before.

  Eric had a strong and compelling presence; she knew that. It was part of how he had become so successful and powerful. She just had to keep reminding herself of that fact…it was only that presence she was experiencing, nothing more.

  Alice permitted herself to sit up after she was alone. Her head mildly throbbed, but it was nothing serious. She would need to be extra careful not to injure herself again, lest she experience another day like this.

  It was a little past seven thirty in the evening. It might be too late to work, but she did have some time to experiment more with the strange sensation she had experienced when she was near the cables. In the few times that it had happened to her, she noticed that it was a much stronger sensation when she was not trying to intentionally sense it.

  Earlier, when she traced the cables along the wall in her room, the feeling was much more muted. That was probably one of the reasons it caught her so off-
guard in the lab. In addition to the fact that there were many more cables present beneath the desk than there were inside her walls.

  She stood up and approached the wall again, placing her hand over one of the areas where a cable was. There again, she felt the strange feeling resonating inside her head. She held her hand steady, trying to understand what exactly she felt.

  It was almost as if she could sense the energy pulsing through the wires, like a living thing moving and bending under the strain of information passing through it. Alice tried her best to relax and let the feeling flow freely in her mind. The peculiar feeling grew stronger as she let it take over.

  She didn't know how long she stood there, lost in the strangeness she was experiencing. The intensity kept building and building, until it seemed like it would completely take over. Then, all at once, it changed.

  It went from the mere buzzing, to a dynamic bit stream in her mind. Zeroes and ones floated through her consciousness as they flowed through the wire beneath her hand.

  Alice had no idea what was happening anymore, but she was fascinated by it. The numbers danced in her head, and her mind began to sort through them, separating the data into packets and filing them accordingly. She hadn't realized how intense the feeling was, until she became aware that she was sweating. She ignored her physical discomforts, not wanting to break the link she had thought only existed in her imagination.

  She felt a strange "snapping" then, almost as if she could physically sense the last piece of some puzzle clicking into place. The bit stream became images, text and data. It was all flashing so quickly through her mind. Her mind was filtering through all of it now, updating the database in her head and downloading new information.

  Somehow, she was connected to the EngineerCorp database again, siphoning off information through the electromagnetic field surrounding the data cable. Sweat was pouring down her face and she was conscious of the burn on her hand searing with heat and pain.

  Her mind shut down as the download completed. Alice swayed unsteadily back, her hand falling like a dead weight from the wall in front of her. She was barely aware of the floor beneath her before she blacked out.

  Chapter 19

  Alice looked around, confused. Carpet had made tiny impressions all along her body. She gazed across the room and saw that the tiny red letters on the clock read 2:33am.

  She rolled over, rubbing her eyes. How many times would she wake up and find that she had yet again passed out?

  She sat up slowly and her memories returned to her as she steadied herself. Alice knew she should be past the point of disbelief in her circumstances, but she couldn't help it. Had any of that really happened? She turned her hand over and gazed at her palm. The burn still looked like a burn, although it was more of a scar now. It was no different from the day before.

  Alice looked up at the wall in front of her. She thought she could almost make out the ghostly outline of a palm print on the wall, but she couldn't be sure. She felt far too shaky to attempt anything like that again soon.

  Half-crawling, she made it back to her bed and climbed in. Prisoner or not, her bed felt amazing. Coming from her stiff respite on the floor, the feeling was intensified. She felt the tension in her muscles slowly unwind as she lay there.

  She reached up to remove her glasses, and as she did so, she was surprised to feel the tiniest of vibrations in her mind.

  What was that?

  It piqued her interest and she temporarily gave up on her desire to go to sleep. Curiosity won over fatigue.

  If her newfound abilities really existed, was there any better way to figure out what her glasses were transmitting? Her heart was racing with anticipation. She hesitantly held her hand over the frame. She felt a faint, almost stuttering sensation in her mind. Alice focused harder, but the feelings grew fainter until she could almost no longer sense it at all.

  She sighed and let her hand fall as she tried to calm herself. She had to find that same quiet intensity from before. If she tried to force it, she would get nothing.

  She took a deep breath and raised her hand up again, this time just "listening," instead of trying to compel the visions to come forth.

  It took some time, but it finally worked. She found herself starting to sweat with exertion by the time the visions began to flash through her head.

  They passed in their entirety before she stopped to decode them. Removing her glasses, she let her mind filter through the information it just received. At first, just the extraneous information passed through. She saw the information about the transmitter in her glasses and the destination, which turned out to be a computer in a private research lab on the sixth floor. She paused as the rest of the data was sorted.

  Her mind translated it into images, which didn't make sense at first. It was a never ending stream of images with multi-colored areas on some sort of diagram. Then her mind reoriented them, and she realized what she was looking at. Somehow, they had slipped a brain scanner, complete with transmitter, into the frame of her glasses!

  She could only guess how long the data had been transmitting, but they probably had enough data to do whatever they needed to do. The only question that remained in her mind was whether or not they knew what to do with it.

  Her mind could recall no data on this project from her most recent download, which meant it was isolated from the main servers and data lines. Given the secrecy and security, she understood the rationale, but it made her task much more difficult.

  Since Eric hadn't stormed down the door yet, she safely assumed that they hadn't discovered her secret. Alice thought about it rationally. At most, they could see that she had some unusual brain activity. By itself, that was not enough evidence to make any kind of conclusive decision on anything.

  I have to destroy that transmitter before they do find out the truth.

  Somewhere during her thoughts, she found herself nodding off. Alice was exhausted and could no longer stay awake, even to consider ways to destroy the scanner.

  ***

  A few days passed before Garrett heard from the detective. That evening in his lab, he listened to the update from Nick.

  "First off, I just want to say this guy is definitely a weird one, Garrett. He's obsessed with his routine and he never, under any circumstances, deviates from it."

  "Tell me what you know."

  "We'll start with background. His name is Tobias Kraus. His parents immigrated to the states when he was a child and he was raised in New York. He did pretty well in school, graduating from MIT with honors in Computer Science. Did a few stints here and there, but for the past fifteen years he has been working as a "Field Consultant" for a company called Serrochip. It took some digging, but I found that Serrochip is a subsidiary for a company called GK Holdings, which is owned by EngineerCorp. The house he lives in has no official owner, but the taxes are paid every year by Serrochip.

  As for his routine… he starts every day with a five-mile run. Then he comes back at 6:30am and turns on his computer. After it is up and running, he begins his daily computer backup while he takes a fifteen minute shower. He follows that up with his breakfast routine of coffee, and usually some kind of super healthy meal.

  He spends the rest of the morning either talking on the phone or working on his computers. Lunch is promptly at noon. The rest of the afternoon is spent doing more work on the computer. He finishes the day with dinner and another workout. Oh, and don't forget another shower at 7:15pm."

  Nick laughed at that and then continued.

  "He's definitely a clean freak. From what I could see through the windows, the house is meticulous. Also, it's locked tighter than Fort Knox! He has an alarm system that would make any criminal reconsider his career. He's definitely hiding something."

  You have no idea.

  "Is the alarm always set?"

  "As far as I can tell, yes. Along with all four locks bolted on his front door. The only place anyone could even imagine entering is the back door which only has
one lock. But, the house is no mansion. If he's at his computer, he is well within hearing range of either entry point. Oh, and I was able to catch him entering his lock code. It's 24452."

  "Wow. Do you know what he does?"

  "It seems to vary. I know he's running an extensive computer network. I mean, he has fiber optic cables for his internet lines. No one around here has that kind of bandwidth.

  "I'm not sure exactly where all the traffic is going, but I do know that his phone calls mainly consist of talking to different clients. His job sounds kind of shady, if you ask me. He is in the business of 'sensitive information sharing' or something like that. Occasionally, people stop by to deliver information in person, and it's usually in the form of some kind of data storage device. He takes that data and uploads it to a remote location, the same one he backs his computer up to each morning."

  This is not going to be easy.

  "Wow… Nick, your help has been invaluable. If you ever need anything from me, don't hesitate to ask."

  "Call it even. You've done enough for me in the past."

  Garrett could hear his hesitation over the phone.

  "Garrett, I will say this. This guy seems…dangerous. And smart. If you have anything further to do with him, just be careful, alright?"

  "You know I will."

  "Yeah…but as a friend, I felt like I needed to say it. Good luck in whatever you do from here. And, don't wait so long to call me again!"

  As Garrett hung up the phone, he was glad there were still some decent people left in the world. Thanks to Nick, he had the information he needed. He stood up and stretched, flexing his tense muscles.

  Let's do this.

  Garrett walked over to one of the shelves in his lab and selected a mysterious box, labeled "Archives – Extremely Volatile," and settled down at one of the worktables to find the perfect instrument to enact his plan.

  ***

  Alice was heavy with sleep and unwilling to wake up. She realized after a few moments that she was being gently shaken, and that someone was speaking to her.