She typed the number she’d seen in her office, the first client avatar ever recorded: 000000000.
Almost immediately, there was a glow within the Tank. A lone avatar appeared, tiny and fragile in the dark vastness: a pale, pearlescent apparition of shifting color and shape. Sometimes it drifted almost listlessly, other times it darted at great speed.
Tara looked back at the screen. Opening a separate window, she posted a query to the client archives for the identity codes of the six supercouple females. The results came back immediately:
Returning to the main screen, Tara entered Lindsay Thorpe’s number. Immediately, another avatar glowed into existence. She paused, glancing over her shoulder. With only two avatars in the Tank, the matching process—for better or worse—should take only moments.
As she watched, the two avatars drifted: now pulsing with new color, now almost fading from view. Gradually their range attenuated as the attraction algorithms drew them closer together. There was a brief moment when they circled gracefully, like dancers performing a pas de deux. Suddenly, they darted at each other. There was a flare of brilliant white, then a storm of data appeared on nearby monitors as a million variables—the individual nuances of taste, preference, emotion, and memory that make up a personality—were instantaneously parsed and compared by the supercomputer, Liza. A new window appeared on the screen:
PROVING CHAMBER DATA OVERVIEW
$START PROCESS
BASELINE COMPARISON 9602194
A-SHIFT NEG
CHECKSUM IDENT 000000000: 4A32F
CHECKSUM IDENT 000462196: 94DA7
PENETRATION DATA: 14A NOMINAL
COLLISION TOPOLOGY: 99 NOMINAL
DIGITAL ARTIFACTING: 0
ANOMALOUS PROCESSES: 0
DATAFIELD DEPTH, POST-PENETRATION: 1948549.23 Mbit/sec
CLUSTER SIZE: 4096
START TIME: 18:25:31:014 EST
END TIME: 18:25:31:982 EST
BASAL COMPATIBILITY (HEURISTIC MODEL): 97.8304912 %
M.O.E: + / -.00094 %
$END PROCESS
Tara stared at the monitor in surprise. Lindsay Thorpe’s avatar and the unknown avatar, 000000000, had just been successfully matched. It wasn’t a perfect match, like Lindsay’s match to Lewis Thorpe, but at 97.8 percent it was within acceptable range.
She removed Lindsay’s avatar and then—more quickly—began to introduce the avatars of the other women, one by one, into the tank. And one by one, they also matched successfully with the mystery avatar. Karen Wilner, 97.1 percent. Lynn Connelly, 98.9 percent.
In growing disbelief, Tara entered the three final codes. Again, successful matches.
All six women—from all six of Eden’s supercouples to date—matched with the mystery avatar.
What was going on?
Could avatar 000000000 be some kind of control mechanism that matched with all avatars in the tank? It was possible: although she was familiar with the process, she didn’t know all its technical subtleties.
Turning back to the computer, she called up a non-supercouple client at random, inserted her avatar into the Tank with the mystery avatar. The compatibility came back at 38 percent: no match.
Now, Tara wrote a short routine that extracted a random sampling of a thousand female clients, past and current, and inserted their avatars into the Tank, a hundred at a time. Briefly, the Tank flared into a semblance of normality as the ghostly apparitions appeared within. This process took a little longer, but within five minutes it, too, was complete.
None of these thousand avatars successfully matched with avatar 000000000.
Abruptly, the watchful silence was broken by the beep of her cell phone.
Tara jerked in surprise, then fumbled for her phone, heart racing. The call had a Connecticut area code, and she didn’t recognize the number. She flipped the phone open. “Hello?”
“Tara?” the voice was faint, thinned by a wash of static, but nevertheless she recognized it instantly.
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“The Tank.”
“Thank God. And what did—?”
“Later. Where are you?”
“In a data conduit not far from you, I think. I—”
“Wait.” And Tara lowered the phone.
She thought about everything Mauchly said when he’d told her Lash was the killer. She thought about the diner, what Lash had begun to say. She thought about the look on his face when he’d appeared in her office, begged her to do just one more thing. Most of all, she thought about the six supercouples, and the mysterious avatar whose identity code was zero.
Tara was not by nature an impulsive person. She always examined the evidence, weighed the pros and cons, before making a decision. Right now, the cons were deadly serious. If Lash was the killer, she was in grave danger.
And the pros? Helping an innocent man. Solving the riddle of the two dead couples. Maybe sparing the lives of future victims.
Tara put her free hand into her pocket, withdrew two long, narrow strips of lead foil. She turned the strips over, looking at them. Maybe she wasn’t impulsive. But she realized that, this time, she’d made up her mind what to do long before setting foot in this room.
She lifted the phone. “Meet me outside the Tank. Quick as you can.”
“But—”
“Just do it.” And then she closed the phone, killed the running processes, logged off the control terminal, and turned her back on the dark and empty Tank.
FIFTY
W hen Lash rounded the corner, Tara was waiting. He approached quickly.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thanks for taking a chance.”
“You look even more beat up than before,” she replied. Something flashed silver in her hands, and for a ridiculous moment Lash feared it was a pair of handcuffs. Then he realized it was a strip of lead foil. He watched as she took his bleeding hand and wrapped the foil carefully around his identity bracelet.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Neutralizing the scanners.”
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Nobody’s supposed to. I got these from slitting open a lead apron in a radiology lab down the hall from my office. They’ll buy a little time.” She raised her own arm: an identical strip of foil had been wrapped around her own bracelet.
“Then you trust me,” he said, immensely relieved.
“I didn’t say that. But without the foil I’ll never get the chance to know whether you’re lying or not. Tell me one thing. You were kidding about them shooting at you, right?”
Lash shook his head.
“Jesus. Come on, we can’t stay here.” And she led him down the corridor.
They reached an intersection, turned the corner. “What did you find out?” he asked.
“I found out avatar 000000000 was a match for all six women.”
“God damn. I knew it!”
At that moment, Tara pushed him through a doorway.
Lash glanced around. “Is this a ladies’ room?”
“With my bracelet covered, I can’t unlock any doors. Here at least we can talk undisturbed. So talk.”
“All right.” Lash hesitated a second, wondering just what to say. It hadn’t been easy, even in the coffee shop; here, with his limbs trembling from the long climb and his heart hammering in his chest, it would be even harder.
“You realize I can’t prove anything,” he said. “The most important piece is still missing. But the rest of the pieces fit perfectly.”
She nodded.
“You remember what I started to tell you? How only somebody in Eden’s top echelons could have done this? Known every aspect of Lindsay Thorpe’s background, tampered with her medical orders, modified her prescription, faked the paper trail. Just as only somebody with all Eden at their fingertips could have doctored my records, morphed me into a psychopathic desperado. Somebody who’d been with the company back when it was a PharmGen subsidiary. Somebody highly pl
aced enough to know about the early tests on scolipane. Somebody who’d been a part of Eden Incorporated since the very first client walked through the doors.”
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“You know what I’m saying. The person who did all this—the person who’s targeting the supercouples—is avatar zero.”
“But who . . .” The question died in her throat.
Lash nodded grimly. “That’s right. Richard Silver is avatar zero.”
“Impossible.”
But Lash watched Tara’s eyes as she said this; watched her travel the same path of discovery he’d already taken. Who else but Silver would have such a number? Who else could have been in the system all this time? Perhaps on some level, she had already guessed. Perhaps that’s why she’d come prepared with the lead foil; why she’d come at all.
Tara just shook her head. “Why?”
“I don’t know why. Yet. We’re taught if you can determine motive, you can determine everything else: personality, behavior, opportunity. I don’t fully understand the motive. Fact is, only Silver can tell us for sure.”
There was a distant flurry of conversation, the opening and closing of doors. They waited, barely breathing. More chatter, closer this time; a distorted voice on a radio. Then more talk, farther away. And then, silence.
Lash exhaled slowly. “The idea came to me in your office this morning, when avatar zero kept coming to the top of the search list. The only avatar without a name. But it wasn’t until I met with an old classmate in Cold Spring—when I saw the connections to PharmGen and scolipane, and its awful reaction with Substance P—that it came together. And Silver, watching everything from his ivory tower, must have realized how close I was. Thus the twenty-first-century smear job.”
“What about Karen Wilner?”
“I’ve barely had time to trace what happened to Lindsay Thorpe. I’m certain Substance P is at the heart of it. As for the delivery system, I can’t yet say.”
Tara looked at him. “Even with everything you’ve told me, it’s hard to believe. Silver might be a recluse, but he’s the last guy to strike me as a killer.”
“Reclusiveness is a red flag. Still, he doesn’t fit the obvious profile. But like I said, the profile’s contradictory to begin with. The murders are too similar, somehow. Artless, in a way. As if a child was committing them.” He paused. “Do I strike you as a killer?”
“No.”
“But you turned me in anyway.”
“And I might again. No one else believes you.”
“No one else has heard my story. Just you.”
“The jury’s still out until I hear what Silver has to say.”
Lash nodded slowly. “In that case, we’ve got only one option left.”
“What do you mean?” But from Tara’s eyes, Lash could see that she already knew.
FIFTY-ONE
E dwin Mauchly stood in the hush of Tara Stapleton’s empty office, scanning the room slowly. To an observer, the scan might have appeared desultory. Yet he missed nothing: the posters, potted plants, spotless desk with three monitors arrayed behind it, battered surfboard leaning against the wall.
Though he had personally championed her rise through the ranks—though he had implicit trust in her talents—Tara remained a cipher to him. She always dressed professionally, rarely joked, even more rarely smiled. She was not given to small talk or gossip. All business, all the time.
His eye returned to the surfboard. Though he’d arranged for its presence here, it had always puzzled him. It didn’t jibe with her almost fanatic desire for privacy, with the wall she’d erected around her private life. Clearly, she wasn’t just showing off: if she wanted to do that, she would have brought in the championship trophies he knew from background checks that she’d won. No—the surfboard was there, one way or another, for her own benefit.
His eye fell to the carpeting, to the droplets of blood that were visible near the doorway. Elsewhere, Lash had left little or no trail. Not here. Why? Had he been gesturing? Threatening?
That led back to the main question. Why had Lash come here at all? Why had he taken the risk?
There were too many questions. Mauchly plucked the radio from his pocket, pressed the transmit button.
“Reading you, sir,” came the voice from the command center.
“Who is this? Gilmore?”
“Yes, Mr. Mauchly.”
“Go over with me again Ms. Stapleton’s movements after Lash left her office.”
“One moment, sir.” The clack of keystrokes sounded over the radio. “The advance team came through at 18:06. At 18:12 she left her office and was tracked to the radiology lab, down the hall. She was there for three minutes. At 18:15 she left the lab and proceeded to the elevator bank. She took elevator 104 up four stories, to the thirty-ninth floor. Sensors tracked her to the Proving Chamber.”
“The Tank.”
“Yes, sir. She opened the doors with her identity bracelet at 18:21.”
“Go on.”
“Passive sensors in the Tank confirm her presence there for the next nine minutes. After that, nothing.”
“Nothing? What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”
“Just that, sir. It’s like she vanished.”
“And the team we dispatched to the Tank?”
“Arrived there just now. The place is deserted.”
“Can you check the terminal logs, see if she accessed any systems?”
“We’re checking that now.”
“What about Lash? Any updates?”
“There was a sensor hit on the thirty-seventh floor ten minutes ago. Then several on the thirty-ninth floor a few minutes later.”
“Thirty-ninth,” Mauchly repeated. “In the vicinity of the Tank?”
“The last one was, sir.”
“And when was that?”
“Eighteen thirty-one.”
Mauchly lowered the radio. One minute after they lost contact with Tara. And on the same floor, the same spot.
Mauchly glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes without a sensor hit on either Lash or Tara. That made no sense—no sense at all.
He considered the situation. Except for the checkpoints and the elevators, there were no video cameras installed in the inner tower. There had seemed no need: under Eden’s draconian security policy, the inner tower was riddled with so many movement sensors that any person wearing an identity bracelet could be traced to a twenty-foot area. And the limited number of entrances, the rigidly patrolled checkpoints, ensured only authorized personnel went inside the Wall. The infrastructure was designed to guard against corporate espionage: there were no contingency plans for chasing an escaped murderer.
Still, the security protocols should have worked. There was only one way to defeat the identity bracelets, and that was a highly sensitive secret Lash could not be aware of . . .
Could he?
He raised the radio again. “Gilmore, I want you to divert the roving patrols. Send them all to thirty-eight and above. I want spotters in the stairwells and major intersections. If anything moves that isn’t a security guard, I want to know about it.”
“Very well, sir.”
Mauchly returned the radio to his pocket. Then he exited the office and walked thoughtfully down the hall.
The radiology lab was almost sepulchral in its emptiness. He gazed around at the idle equipment, the gleaming stainless-steel instruments.
Why had Tara come here?
Christopher Lash, psychopathic murderer, had just burst into her office. Had she then been seized by a sudden craving for extracurricular research? Again, it all made no sense.
Was it possible she was aiding Lash? Hardly likely. She’d seen the evidence; she knew how dangerous he was, not only to the supercouples, but to Eden itself. She’d alerted Mauchly to the meeting in the coffee shop. She’d turned Lash in.
Could he be threatening her in some other way? That seemed equally unlikely. Tara was eminently capable of defending herself
. And Lash was unarmed: Mauchly had made sure of that himself.
He tried to put himself in her shoes, tried to follow her train of thought. But one could only make assumptions about a person one understood. And Mauchly was not convinced he really understood Tara. He’d been surprised, almost shocked, when she’d barged into his office two months before, asked him to use his clout to get her in the pilot program for employee matching. And he’d been just as surprised when she reappeared in his office after her match was found, asking to be removed from the program. It was Monday, he recalled; the day Christopher Lash first came inside the Wall.
Lash. This was all his doing. He was insane, a mad dog. He’d done great harm to the corporation. It was imperative he be stopped before he did any more harm—something truly irreversible.
Mauchly reached into his pocket, drew out a Glock 9mm. The weapon glinted faintly in the dim, off-hours light of the lab. He turned it in his hands, made sure there was a round in the chamber, returned it to his pocket.
This was one mad dog that had no place to run. And Mauchly would treat Lash just as one should a mad dog. Corner it, then kill it.
His radio squawked.
“Mauchly here.”
“Mr. Mauchly, it’s Gilmore. You asked me to report in if we spotted any movement in the tower.”
“Very true, Mr. Gilmore. Go ahead.”
“Sir, the penthouse elevator’s been activated. It’s moving as we speak.”
“What?” Mauchly felt mild annoyance. “I’ll have to speak to Richard Silver. He can’t leave the penthouse now, not while Lash is on the loose. It isn’t safe.”
“You don’t understand, sir. The elevator isn’t descending. It’s rising.”
FIFTY-TWO
A s they emerged from the stairwell, Lash recognized the sky lobby of the thirtieth floor. He’d been here once. Like the rest of the inner tower, this space was dark, deserted. In one corner sat a lone mop, leaning against the marble wall, abandoned in the general evacuation. Banks of elevators stood on both sides. Halfway down the right wall, one spilled yellow light into the lobby. The sign above it read EXPRESS TO CHECKPOINT II.