Read Part 4…

Rick hadn’t said a word when Jane came in carrying his barely-conscious nephew. He didn’t ask where they had come from, and seemed not to notice the drops of blood on their clothes. Instead, he had immediately tucked Leon into bed. After some time the boy’s murmuring and twitching calmed down, but it was clear he was incapable of falling asleep. Rick kept the bedroom dark and led Jane into the kitchen, lit by the morning sun. He began brewing coffee.

“Let me know if you want a cup, doll. Or, maybe you would like to get some rest on the couch? I’m guessing you must be tired after the night you had.”

“Ricky, if I had told you the truth you would have tried to stop me. I understand why, but I couldn’t stay out of it any longer. And I did find him, within days, when the he police have spent weeks on this case.” Jane gazed out the kitchen window thoughtfully. “Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

“Nah, sugar, you seem strange to me. Strange in the head. The son of the District Attorney goes missing and you’re worried the authorities aren’t taking it seriously. You apply your ambiguously-legal skills to the situation, right under my sister’s nose. What am I going to say when I call her? ‘Hey, Leon just showed up here. No, you can’t ask how.’”

“We can’t call Deborah, not yet.”

“Oh, of course!”

“Not until we can get his head sorted out.” Jane turned and looked forlornly into the dim bedroom. “I had to unplug him before anyone came to stop me. I know the limits of those implants, and I’m certain breaking the connection didn’t cause any physical damage. But the software still holds his attention,” she looked at Rick, “and we need to take it back.”

Rick finished pouring a cup and handed it to her. “Well, we better figure out how to do that, then.” He grabbed his own coffee and headed to his workstation.

Jane shook her head, following him. She took a sip of coffee as he began a massive search on his terminal. She walked him through what she had seen in the basement of the abandoned house, but didn’t mention the events on the front porch. Rick put her description of the game into a neural-net web-crawler.

“Look, I haven’t dealt with brain-interface software before, but I did some research when Leon first got involved with the Virtual Reality League. He won his first major championship at eight years old, and I wanted to know what usually happens to kids who compete at that level. Turns out he was playing the safe, government-certified games.”

But these developers, Pliant Technologies…” He highlighted one of the pages he had open. “Their game, Nervewatch, has been classified as a drug. Tournaments are all eighteen-and-up, but the youth division is where all the money is.”

Jane looked at the summary he had pulled up. “Yeah, I thought that game looked familiar. I once made a bet on one of the tournaments while I was keeping tabs on a gang-leader’s husband.”
Rick stopped typing and gave her a look.

“Hey, I had to blend in.”

“I’m sure. Well, it sounds like whatever Leon was hooked up to was modified for higher performance, lower-latency, and full attention-span hijacking. To do that, the Bolt Boys would need to hack the source code. Or, more likely,” Rick opened an article about Pliant’s company headquarters, “someone inside the company is developing this for them.”

Jane looked looked at a picture of the front of the headquarters, which looked more like a warehouse than a modern office building. “Hold a jolt, Ricky, I think I…”

She quickly popped the micro-disc out of her arm and slotted it into his universal data reader. Jane took the keyboard from him and opened the 3D schematics, rotating the image to the front of the building. Then she overlaid the picture of the headquarters with the 3D mesh.

“… recognize that place. That’s the same building, isn’t it?”

Rick grabbed his controls back and highlighted some text. “Well, yeah, it’s the same address, Janey.” He grinned at her.

Jane turned away from the computer and stared out the window again. So Fred-E knew more about this than I thought. Did he know the kid might need this? No, he was just trying to get some leverage against the gang. Her head ached from the long night, fueled by frantic energy. Well, looks like I’m doing that job after all.

As she pondered, Rick came came and embraced her from behind. “I know, I know, and I won’t stop you. For Leon’s sake. Not that I could if I wanted to.” He rested his chin on her shoulder. “But you’re not robbing that place in broad daylight.”

Jane broke free of his arms, mocking an aghast expression. “Robbery? How dare you suggest a little lady like me would do such a thing.”

Rick laughed, rolling his eyes. “And besides,” he walked towards the door, grabbing their coats on the way. “You still owe me breakfast.”

 

To be continued…