Blind Instinct: A Tess Barrett Thriller

by Michael W. Sherer

  He felt his way to the center of the tunnel and slowly worked his way through a series of martial arts forms. They couldn’t be called poom-sae, taolu or kata because they didn’t adhere to one style or another. The army had taught him that all was fair in war, which meant the close-quarters fighting style they taught was about how to kill, maim or disable an enemy combatant as quickly as possible. Barring that, they’d taught him how to survive.

  He moved slowly, concentrating on breathing and balance, treating the forms almost like the balletic motion of tai chi. As he moved, he thought of the last time he’d been this cold. To the best of his recollection, it had been his second winter in Afghanistan. Sill new to the ways of the tribal people in the mountain villages northeast of Kabul, Travis had spent two months trying to befriend a man that the Strategic Intelligence Collection & Containment (SICC) unit believed was second-in-command to a local warlord. The man was chief of his khel, or family group, and distrustful of strangers, al Qaeda and the Taliban, in that order. Travis had been a stranger, but he spoke Pashto, so he’d spent weeks just asking questions and listening.

  When the malik, the tribal elder, had grown comfortable with Travis’s presence, Travis had asked him what he wanted most for his village. The man had said simply, “Water for our crops.” The answer had surprised Travis. The winter had been cold—in the teens at night and the 20s during the day—with a lot of snowpack. All Travis had had to keep him warm was the traditional dress of woolen salwar qmis over layers of cotton robes. He would have given a couple months’ pay for thick socks, insulated combat boots, a decent coat and a good pair of gloves. The village had plenty of water, just no way to store and distribute it. In the spring when the ground had thawed, Travis had helped the villagers construct an irrigation system that collected snowmelt and channeled it into ditches to be used when crops were planted.

  The memory made him smile as he moved through his forms. Despite the fact that the primary purpose of the SICC unit was to identify and assassinate enemy targets, he and his teammates had done a lot of good works in Afghanistan. Within minutes, his core had warmed considerably, and within twenty minutes, he’d started to break a sweat. He stopped. The chill would affect him more quickly if his clothes were damp.

  To keep busy, he explored his “cell” once again, methodically starting at the hole atop the rockslide. With an unerring sense of time, a colony of bats had funneled through the opening the previous evening at dusk, at least by Travis’s watch. The cloud had navigated neatly through the barred gate at the other end and disappeared into the blackness beyond. During the night, Travis had heard their chirrups as they’d returned, singly or in groups, having eaten their fill of insects. He’d been able to widen the opening somewhat, but there was no sense in breaking his back trying to move the really large stones since that direction led deeper into the mine.

  Carefully picking his way down the slide in the dark, his feet found level ground again. He knelt until his groping hands found one of the steel rails in the dark. His empathy for Tess and her situation grew steadily. Finding his way in the pitch dark was frustrating, maddening. To be sightless all the time…? Travis had difficulty imagining it. His hands moved along each side of the rail stopping when they reached a tie to grip the heads of the spikes and test them for looseness. After ten minutes, he found one. Splintered by rot, the tie had relaxed its hold on a spike, allowing Travis to wiggle it a fraction of an inch. He pried and pulled at it with his fingers, almost numb now from the cold. The spike barely budged, but it did wobble a teeny bit.

  Travis cupped his hands and blew on his fingers to warm them. He stood up again to loosen knee and hip joints creaky from stooping so long. For an instant, the walls appeared to move. Freezing in place, his eyes roamed right and left. Suddenly, the walls flickered again. He whirled around and faced the steel gate across the tunnel. Far down the dark tube, the rock walls glimmered dimly. Someone coming. Travis squatted with his back to the wall and waited.

  The light grew brighter, illuminating the walls of the tunnel closer and closer until its source rounded the curved tunnel walls, a flat, white disc shining so brightly its intensity blinded him. He shielded his eyes from the direct glare of the spotlight beam and tried to make out the figure behind it. Someone tall, judging from the height of the spotlight above the floor. Whoever carried the light kept it aimed at Travis’s face, intentionally blinding him. Travis swung his gaze away and looked the other direction to let his eyes adjust. At this distance, the light now revealed details about his prison he could not have seen by the glow of his watch face. Blue seams ran in jagged lines up the rock walls like veins standing out on his arms after lifting weights. A sure sign of copper.

  “Who are you?” Travis said as he faced the tunnel mouth again, careful to keep his gaze down. “What do you want?”

  His questions were met with silence. The only sounds were the rustle of paper and muted clanks of something bumping the bars of the mine gate. The light retreated. In a few moments, whoever held it turned and walked away, disappearing around the bend in the tunnel.

  While the flickering illumination still allowed him some vision, Travis quickly approached the mine gate and investigated the paper sack left there. Inside he found a liter of bottled water and two sandwiches. He bit into one hungrily, not caring what lay between the two slices of bread. After wolfing down two large bites, he chewed more slowly and took time to appreciate the food. A far sight better than the gruel he’d expected, the sandwich consisted of thick slices of hearty multi-grain bread, stacks of paper-thin shavings of rare roast beef, crisp lettuce, mayonnaise and a dash of horseradish. With no idea how long he’d wait before they fed him again, he vowed to hang onto the second sandwich until dinnertime. It wouldn’t spoil in the cool tunnel.

  After he’d polished off half the first sandwich and washed it down with water, he made his way back to the spot where he’d found the loose spike. He hunkered down, bit into the other half of the sandwich, gripped the spike with his fingers and worried it like a loose tooth.

  Chapter 14

  Over millions of years, glaciers repeatedly scoured the Pacific Northwest leaving Seattle with its ridges and valleys, lakes and creeks. Those monstrous frozen rivers flowed down from Canada and once covered what is now the city under two-thirds of a mile of ice. The last of these, the Vashon Glacier, retreated about 13,000 years ago, leaving in its wake the basic contours of Seattle and the Puget Sound region. I knew this not because I had a great love of geology, but because my memory linked the information with a joke a history professor told, a bad one that had made me laugh anyway. That’s sort of how my memory works; I remember things that originate with an emotional experience or that elicit an emotional response. Basically, if something makes me laugh, cry or leaves any impression at all, really I’ll remember every detail of the context—conversations, clothing, scents, ambient sounds, and more. Memory has its benefits, but the inability to forget can be a curse.

  We drove across Lake Washington—one of the valleys scoured out by glaciers and filled with melting, retreating ice—on the floating bridge and up into the U. District—one of the ridges left behind, too. Like a lot of institutions of “higher learning,” the University of Washington was located at the top of one of the city’s high spots, but the campus had grown so large that it descended the hillside south to the shore of Lake Washington. The U. District ran up the ridge north of campus a bit and down the hill to the east where it ran into the ritzy Laurelhurst neighborhood.

  Derek had asked us to meet him in the U. Village shopping center, quite a distance away from the MondoHard building. A large open-air mall, U. Village offered the benefit of easy parking and large crowds of people in which to lose ourselves. The latter point worried me, not that I was afraid of getting lost, but that Derek thought the situation required some cloak-and-dagger theatrics. His caution suggested that Matt’s theory was plausible, or that something even bigger was at work. Then again, after all that had h
appened in the few weeks since I’d met Tess, I couldn’t blame Derek for exercising discretion around the two of us. A small war had erupted around Tess and, as her employee, me as well.

  After five minutes of asking me what Derek said on the phone, Tess gave up and rode the rest of the way in silence. When we arrived, I circled around the mall and looked for a space in the lot close to a frozen yogurt stand in the middle. The sky dripped liquid pewter as I guided Tess into the little shop. A heater mounted up high tried to blow the chill coming off me back out the door. A couple of university students stood at the counter ahead of us peering through the glass sneeze guard at the candy, cookies, fruit and other ingredients, trying to decide what to pile on top of their yogurt. A uniformed employee stood idly behind the counter while the pair considered their choices. The students appeared Inuit to me, proving, I suppose, that even a pimply teenager can sell ice to an Eskimo under the right circumstances.

  “What do you want?” I murmured in Tess’s ear.

  “I want to talk to Derek,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Well, he’s not here, so have some frozen yogurt.”

  “Fine. Do they have black cherry? Some of that and some cheesecake. And sprinkle some graham cereal on top. Please.”

  “Wait here. I’ll be back.”

  Grabbing an empty cup from a stack near the door, I scanned the signs by the soft-serve handles to find the flavors Tess wanted. The cup was more like an ice cream maker’s pint, designed to encourage over-consumption, and the soft-serve machines dispensed quickly. Though I did my best to regulate the flow and serve a decent size portion, the cup was two-thirds full by the time the last drip of yogurt plopped in. A scale by the register weighed the contents and the cashier rang it up. For what it cost, we could have bought two or three pints of ice cream at a grocery store.

  When I put the cup in her hands, Tess raised the cup to her chin and scooped a spoonful into her mouth. Grasping her elbow, I steered her to the door.

  “Wait, you’re not having any?” she said.

  “Too cold to eat anything frozen.”

  I led her out into the Chinese water torture that is Seattle weather six months of the year. April’s weather actually wasn’t too bad, with a mix of showers and sun-breaks, those fleeting patches of blue in a cotton quilt sky. Temperatures typically ranged from 40s up to high 50s or low 60s. Being spring, however, vestiges of wintry weather revealed themselves on occasion—blustery windstorms redirecting rain at a forty-five degree angle, dustings of snow every now and then, and skies as leaden as a radiology apron.

  “What now?” Tess said, scooping yogurt into her mouth.

  I pulled a napkin from my pocket and dabbed a drip off her chin. She swatted my hand away, her face turning red. I felt my own flush.

  “We wait,” I said. “He’ll be here.”

  No sooner had I spoken than Derek sauntered up in the drizzle, dressed in his usual uniform—black jeans, black boots and a black pea coat. The only thing that ever seemed to change was his black T-shirt. Today’s had “The Killers” emblazoned on the front.

  My first impression of Derek had been less than positive. About the same age as me, he favored piercings, tattoos and a generally scruffy look while I tended to be a bit more conservative, my dress and grooming showing my Midwestern roots. He’d quickly disabused me of my groundless prejudice, though. He was smart, and when push came to shove, he’d come down on Tess’s side.

  His head wagged from side to side as he approached, turning when an engine revved. He moved casually, but his nerves were contagious. I eyed passersby suspiciously, wondering why.

  “How you doing?” he said as he came up to us.

  I touched Tess lightly on the arm. “Tess, Derek. Derek, Tess.”

  Derek scuffed a toe on the walk. “Nice to meet you finally.”

  “Yeah, you, too,” Tess said.

  Derek raised his gaze to Tess’s face and his mouth dropped open. Tess had that effect on people; she appeared to look right at them, but because she couldn’t see, her eyes didn’t quite track people’s expressions, didn’t quite focus. Derek waved his hand in front of her face.

  “You really are blind,” he said.

  Impatience took a walk across Tess’s face and lingered. “He’s waving his hand at me, isn’t he? Yes, I’m blind. You really are a genius.”

  “Okay, I deserved that.” Derek looked sheepish.

  Rain droplets that had collected on the rings in his eyebrows glittered in the light from the yogurt shop. The misty drizzle had slicked his dark hair, plastering curls to his forehead. Tiny drops adorned the tips of Tess’s eyelashes, too, making her eyes sparkle. Like lifeless diamonds, though, they reflected the light instead of projecting the radiance from within.

  “What’s with the stealth mode?” I asked.

  Derek again glanced furtively over his shoulder. “You’re talking about Never Bitten, right? The game app you mentioned?”

  “That’s the one,” I said.

  “It’s mine,” he said quietly.

  “What do you mean it’s yours?” Tess said loudly. Derek shushed her. “You told Oliver that MondoHard released it,” she said in a softer tone.

  “I mean I developed it,” Derek said. “I came up with the idea. I wrote a lot of the code. I directed the team that came up with the graphics and animation. The game’s in beta test. We put the word out anonymously on a couple of blogs and game forums with a link. We wanted to see what kind of buzz it generated before we released it. So, it’s still hush-hush as far as the company’s concerned.” He turned to me. “Why the sudden interest?”

  “It’s messing with people’s minds,” Tess blurted.

  “She thinks there’s something wrong with it,” I told him.

  “Impossible.” He frowned. “We went over it and over it to work out the bugs. Hundreds of man-hours. A lot of late nights, man.”

  Tess responded hesitantly. “You don’t think my uncle could have, well, you know, done something?”

  “Like what? Maybe you better tell me what’s going on.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I interjected, “but could we do it someplace warmer and drier?”

  I swiped at the water dripping off the end of my nose. Derek nodded and pointed to a coffeeshop across the lot. Less than five minutes later, we huddled around a table in a corner, wet coats hung on the backs of our chairs. I used a stack of paper napkins to blot some of the water out of my hair. I put a bunch in Tess’s hand, which she used to dry her face. She set the damp wad on the table and launched into the story of Matt’s peculiar behavior over the previous couple of weeks. When she finished, Derek silently stared at one of the baristas behind the counter.

  “People have been trying to pin youth violence on the video game industry for a long time,” he said finally.

  “This is real!” Tess said. “Matt wasn’t like that.”

  “I didn’t say it couldn’t happen,” Derek said sharply. He dropped his gaze to the table. When he looked at Tess again, his expression softened. “You’re sure about your friend.”

  Tess nodded. “He wasn’t one of those kids who keep things bottled up. And he had friends who cared about him. He would’ve talked to someone if something was bugging him.”

  Derek looked at me, face twisted into a question mark.

  “As far as I can tell, she’s right,” I said. “I’ve only known the kid for a few weeks, but he didn’t strike me as the type to go all Columbine.”

  Derek rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Look, Tess, your dad was the expert on all this stuff—game theory, PSYOP, subliminal messaging, all those mind games. So I suppose it’s possible, even likely, that some department in the company is fooling around with mind control. But I guarantee you we didn’t put any of that into Never Bitten.”

  “Is there some way to tell whether someone else did?”

  “You mean see if someone subverted my code? Added something?” He stretched out a hand. “Let me see your pho
ne. I assume you downloaded a copy.”

  I dig in my pocket and handed him mine.

  “Not yours,” Derek said. “It’s too old.”

  Chagrined, I put it back in my pocket and glanced at Tess. She bit her lip, her brow furrowed.

  “What’s the matter?” Derek said.

  Tess flushed. “I took it. I took Matt’s phone.” She brought a hand out from under the table and held it out palm up as if serving the phone up on a tray.

  “Even better,” Derek said, taking it from her.

  He swiped a finger across the screen. It flickered to life, lighting up his face. With deft strokes, he swiped and touched and typed, his fingers a blur.

  After a few moments, he frowned and murmured, “That’s not right. That’s weird, too.” He held the phone up. “Mind if I borrow this for a bit?”

  “No,” Tess said. “Actually, it would be a relief. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain it. Now, if anyone asks, I don’t have it.”

  “What are you going to do?” I said.

  “I need to see if I can track the source code for the game version that’s on this phone,” Derek said, “see how they changed it. And I’ll try to figure out where he downloaded it. I need to tell your uncle about this, Tess.”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Business trip?”

  “They took him.” Her voice quavered. “He left this morning and never made it to work. They found his car half a mile from the house.”

  “Isn’t that interesting,” Derek said. “They’ve been covering for him at the office. I heard he’s been in meetings all day.”

  Chapter 15

  Tess let herself into the kitchen from the garage while Oliver got her book bag out of the back seat and followed her. The warm air was thick with scents of vanilla, brown sugar, butter and chocolate. Cookies. She’d taken only two steps inside before a voice assaulted her.