The man stood in the apartment doorway with a pleading look on his face, his arms outstretched. "Please, ma'am. The folks at the other place said you'd been informed. I really don't have anywhere else to go."
Kathy covered her face in frustration. Another rogue Technocrat on the run. "Okay. You can come in; but you can't stay long."
The man breathed a sigh of relief and quickly slipped inside.
"Thank you. Where should I put my pack?" he asked politely as he divested himself of a large backpack on a frame; the kind hikers use.
"On the couch..." she pointed. "Now let me see if I can find another place for you to stay." She sat at her computer and warmed up the interface.
"Um," He shuffled his feet. "Do you think it would be possible for me to get a shower? I haven't really had many chances since..."
She pointed to a doorway, "In there."
"Thanks." Her guest opened his backpack and pulled out some clothes and a small kit before ducking into the bathroom.
The Virtual Adept ground her teeth as she logged on. "This place has seen too much activity..."
In the darkness of her office Amanda scanned her newsfeeds to check on The War. It had erupted so quickly no one had developed a name for it yet. But from the conflicting sources she had it looked like the reform movement in the Technocracy (there was an oxymoron if she'd ever heard one) had just been stepped on and stepped on hard. But, instead of suppressing the dissidents, the heavy-handed action had apparently sparked a civil war. It looked like some Progenitors, a bunch of Iterators, and practically all the Void Engineers were either fleeing or fighting. Accusations and counter-accusations, manifestos and flame wars, skirmishes and actual battles had erupted seemingly out of nowhere. She shook her head. She had no love of the Technocracy, but the body count must be staggering.
A face suddenly appeared on her screen. Amanda instinctively pulled back and placed a hand on the Kill Switch. Say what you will about working in a shop with the Sons of Ether, they could concoct some... interesting... failsafe switches.
The face mouthed silent words and text scrolled across the screen. "Tiger smells orchid. Tendril embraces soil. Two moon sky."
Amanda sat frozen for several seconds. She didn't know the face, which was surely a front anyway, but she recognized the phrases. It was a code system she shared with only one other person, another Virtual Adept who lived about an hour away. Three short phrases told her that Kathy was running a safe house for fleeing Technocrats, she had one there, and she needed to get him out fast.
Amanda bit her tongue. She hadn't known Kathy was so deeply involved. And now she herself was asked to help. She was no hero, just a web designer! It could even be a trap. If the Black Hats had cracked the code... It might be safer just to hit the kill switch and hope it was a fake.
Yet... on the other hand, if it was real, could she really let down her friend? Her hand dropped away from the Kill Switch.
Her ears perked up at as the sound of Kenny's car being warmed up drifted in from the parking lot. His steam-driven car always required a few minutes to reach boiling point. If she was going to go ahead with it, she'd need some help. Her fingers danced a reply and she shut down the connection.
She stood up and ran out the door. "Kenny!" she called out.
A slight figure wearing a red fedora rolled down the window of his Datsun and looked at her. "What's up?"
"The War," she said breathlessly as she leaned over his car. "It's coming our way. I need your help."
He looked at her inquisitively. "Could I have some parameters on that?"
"There's a Technocrat on the run and needing a place to stay. Will you help me?"
Kenny blinked, making his resemblance to Elijah Wood as 'Frodo' even stronger. "Why are you trusting me with this?" he asked quietly. "This is quite a radical undertaking."
Amanda sighed. "Because of all the people I know you have the best heart. Kenny, I need a Ringbearer."
The man touched his shirt and gingerly fingered the friendship ring she'd bought him several months ago. Like the movie character, he wore it on a chain around his neck. He smiled broadly. "And I have a better car than you. Will it be dangerous?"
"Most likely."
"Then we should be prepared." He put on the parking brake.
"Climb in," he said, opening the car door. "I've got to get something from my office."
He trotted back toward the building they both worked in.
"Where are you going?" Amanda yelled after him.
"Going to borrow something I've been working on with Professor Maxwell," he called over his shoulder. "It might prove useful."
She shook her head and got in the car.
He returned shortly with a small pack. Lifting the hood of his car he attached something - what it was Amanda couldn't see - inside the engine compartment. He returned to the car with a heavy-looking calculator and stuck it on the dashboard in what appeared to be a cellphone cradle. He plugged the gizmo into his cigarette lighter socket and started tapping buttons on it.
"How much do you weigh?" he asked as the device lit up and beeped happily at him.
"I beg your pardon..."
He looked at her with exasperation. "How much do you weigh?"
"Er... 135 pounds?"
"About 70 kilos..." he murmured as he tapped on the keyboard.
She did the math and puffed up with bruised pride. "That's not..."
"Better to round up then to round down in some cases," he murmured as he put the car in gear.
Amanda felt the hair on her neck stand up, but she nodded.
Back at her computer Kathy received a cryptic reply. "Two moons circle. Baby on board."
She groaned at the message. "She's bringing an Etherite?"
"Come on, we're wasting time!" Amanda yelled out the car window.
"Being prepared is never a waste of time," Kenny replied as he returned from his house carrying a large satchel. He bent down in front of the car. "Hang on..."
He ran around to the back of the car and fiddled briefly.
"Done," he said, and gently placed the satchel in the back seat.
"Was stopping here really necessary?" she complained.
He reached into the back seat, unzipped the satchel and displayed a revolver. "Know how to use one of these?"
"No." She drew back from the weapon.
"This is how you aim it. This is the safety. Pull this to fire. Any questions?"
"You have a license for this?" she asked as she gingerly accepted the pistol.
"Yes. But not for this," he produced a silencer. "It just slips on the front. Keep it under your seat until we get there."
He pulled out a small shotgun and mounted some kind of odd-looking sight on it. He loaded it and placed it on the back seat.
"Best to be prepared," Kenny said darkly as he put the car in gear and backed out of his driveway.
Kathy heard the man step out of the bathroom. She swore under her breath at this most recent invasion of her space. When she'd agreed to be a safehouse she'd figured it would be just one or two people who'd stay a night and then disappear. But with five people having come through in the past two weeks she was starting to feel like the Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad. The man emerged wearing a fresh pair of pants and a clean shirt. At least this one had brought a change of clothes.
"Um, could I possibly use your washing machine?" he asked hesitantly.
She sighed. She'd known that was coming. "No. Your ride should be here in half an hour."
"Oh."
The silence between them hung heavy for several long seconds.
"Thank you," the Technocrat said at last, awkwardly. "I know this must be dangerous for you."
She shrugged. "Don't worry about it. I'm more worried about what my neighbors will think than anything else," she said with a bit of forced bravado. "All these strange people showing up at strange times..."
He chuckled and she smiled briefly. "Care for a sandwich?" she asked.
"Yes, please. I'm running low on supplies. I was out camping..."
"Shush!" she commanded. "I don't want to know. The less I know the better."
"Of course. If that's how you want it." He looked over at her computer setup. "Handy, having a microwave within arm's reach."
She smiled just a little more. "When you just gotta have nachos..."
He laughed pleasantly. "I'll remember that."
"Can't you make this bucket go any faster?" Amanda muttered.
Kenny flicked on his lights. "Of course I could. The original Stanley Steamers were clocked at over 100 kilometers per hour when internal combustion engines could barely reach 35. But we don't want to get stopped for speeding, do we?"
"Hmmph. Why couldn't you have made this car invisible instead of steam-driven?" She crossed her arms.
"I'm a Scientist, not a magician," he quipped. "Though I'm sure some Scientist somewhere is working on it."
He glanced at the calculator. "We should be fully charged by the time we get there, anyway. Hope we don't have to use it."
"Now that's a first," Amanda murmured, "An Etherite *not* wanting to test his latest device."
He furrowed his brow. "It's been tested under strict lab conditions. It's ready for field testing... but this isn't the type of field test I'd want to try it under."
"Too dangerous?" she asked, now regretting asking for his help.
"Too many variables," he replied. "And I don't have any recording equipment set up."
He licked his lips as he drove under a darkening sky.
"And it isn't mine."
Kathy allowed herself to relax for a moment. Her houseguest, whose name she hadn't asked, had proposed to do the sinkload of dishes and she wasn't about to disappoint him. Her eyes drifted over to her computer but she regretfully decided that at the moment, watching television would be safer. Anyway, his ride should be arriving soon.
The lights flickered and a crash in the kitchen jolted her to alertness. Jumping from the couch she found the Technocrat on the floor, clutching his head and moaning.
"What is it?" she asked as she knelt by him.
"My... implant... EMP attack..."
"Damn!" That meant someone had traced him here. "Come on! We gotta get out of here!"
He dragged himself to his feet with her help and they staggered to the living room. She propped him against a wall while she grabbed her escape knapsack. The protections on her computer kept it operating even though the pulse should have shut it off.
"You're not getting this data," she muttered. She gave her computer four last keystokes. As it sizzled and fried she took her small rack of backup CDs and loaded them into the microwave. Smoke curled out of the oven as she turned and found the man struggling with his own backpack.
"Re-routing..." he said through his teeth and sighed with relief. "Better. Where...?"
Heavy footsteps came from the front hall.
"Back door," she grunted and grabbed his arm.
Down the stairs they went as quickly and silently as they could.
"To the street," she whispered as she eased open the door. "Maybe we can flag down our pick-up..." They started running down the alleyway.
But a man in mirrorshades stepped out in front of them and raised a pistol.
"Stay where you are," he commanded.
The couple skidded to a halt.
Agent Fairwell took stock of the situation. The plan had gone perfectly. From the psych profile he knew that this rogue would rather flee than fight. A directed EMP pulse wouldn't put him down, but would give him a good scare. His partner had moved loudly up the front and flushed the rogue and his protector out of their hiding place. They had successfully neutralized another safe house... taking in the runner was just icing.
"Mr. Jay Harriman... and Miss Kathy Stikowski..." His partner relayed her name to his earset, "Please don't do anything foolish," he said smoothly. "We don't want any violence. Come along quietly and no one will get..."
The screech of car brakes behind him interrupted his prepared speech. A woman's voice yelled out, "PUT THE GUN DOWN, NOW!"
Fairwell activated the rear-looking mode on his glasses (they don't call them mirrorshades for nothing) and analyzed the scene behind him.
Car: foreign, two occupants.
First: female, youngish, nervous and brandishing a revolver with an illegal silencer. Threat assessment: low- to-medium. The way she held the weapon indicated she was unfamiliar with it and most likely untrained. She probably couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, but her nervousness might cause her to shoot at random.
Second: male, youngish, calmer than the female but still nervous. He had a shotgun and was resting it on the roof of the car. There was some kind of laser sight attached to it and it was aimed at his head. Threat assessment: high. The standard NWO trenchcoat could stop birdshot or slow down a slug, but his head was unprotected. This joker knew how to shoot - and where to aim.
His partner's voice whispered in his earset. "I'm back in the van and have you online. Stall them and I'll come around with the van. We'll take out the guy with the shotgun."
Agent Fairwell slowly raised his hands. "Okay folks, we don't want any violence."
He heard an odd whirring from behind him as the laser flickered away from his head. Idiot, he thought. Then he screamed in pain as a burning lash passed over his hand. His weapon fell to the ground.
"Get in the car!" the man with the shotgun shouted as Fairwell fell to his knees, holding his blistered hand. The woman scooped up his pistol as she passed him and the car roared off, leaving him in its dust.
"GODDAMN DEVIANTS!" he shouted.
"I say," the driver said calmly, "did you know you have a black van on your street?"
"I do now," Kathy growled.
"You okay?" Amanda asked.
"Yeah... fine, even got a souvenir." She held up the agent's pistol.
"Shit, woman! You took his gun?" Amanda sputtered, "It'll have a tracer in it!"
The car halted suddenly next to a stopped mass transit bus. The driver opened the glove compartment, turned to Kathy and held out a roll of duct tape. "Tape that thing to the bus... it might throw them off our track."
She stared at him for a moment. "Oh my God, you're 'Frodo!'"
"JUST DO IT!" he barked.
Kathy bolted out of the car and taped the pistol on the bus. She got back in just as the bus chugged away. They roared off in another direction.
"How much do you weigh?" Frodo called out as they shot through an intersection just barely making the green light.
"What the hell kind of question..."
"HOW MUCH?"
"About 115 pounds if it's any of your business, Frodo."
"It's Kenny, actually," the driver corrected. He clicked on a largish calculator placed where most people would have a cellphone. "Make that 70 kilos with baggage... and you, sir?"
"Around eighty-five kilos last I checked, add another 15 or so for my backpack," the rogue Technocrat estimated.
"Ah! Someone who knows metric!" the driver said happily and did another calculation. "We'll need a few more minutes..."
Amanda turned to look at Kathy. "How are you doing?"
Kathy grimaced. "Been better. Slagged my computer rather than let the Black Hats have it."
"Sorry to hear that," Amanda whispered, her face reflecting her friend's pain. She looked over the other woman's shoulder. "I think we're being followed."
"What was that you used on him back there?" the Technocrat - Jay Harriman, the Black Hat had called him - asked.
"MILA. Multiple Inexpensive Laser Array," Kenny replied. "Just enough wattage to burn flesh at short ranges. Originally designed for cutting steel, I've still got some work to do with it."
"Oh." He glanced at Kathy who just shook her head.
"Who in back knows how to use a shotgun?" Kenny called out.
Kathy and her erstwhile guest looked at each other hopefully. The silence stretched between them. Finally the Technocrat spoke tentatively. "I can shoot a little. Never used a shotgun, though."
"Okay... Amanda, hand them the shotgun. I've removed the MILA for safety reasons. The lever on the side is the safety. Click it. Point the barrel. Pull the trigger to shoot. Pull back on the pump until it clicks then push forward to reload. Questions?"
Jay took up the weapon and gave Kathy a grim look. "I can do this."
"We're definitely being followed," Amanda said.
Kathy looked backwards and saw a large van coming quickly towards them. The light which had just turned red quickly turned green. The van was almost rammed by another car as it went through the intersection, slowing it slightly.
"We need to get out of town..." Kenny said as he floored it. The acceleration threw the passengers deep into their seats as the car screamed through two more intersections, just beating the changing lights.
"Hang on," he called out as he spun the wheel and turned onto a country road.
"They're still behind us!" Kathy shouted.
Kenny tapped on a keypad on what wasn't a cellphone. "Too much weight... need to charge more..."
The headlights of the black van shone brighter in the rear window and Jay hefted the shotgun. "I'm not going back."
"They're gaining!" Kathy screamed.
"Hang on!" The car tilted as they took a sharp corner. The dark trees appeared like a tunnel before them. Ahead rose a complex of old industrial buildings, surrounded by wilderness.
"Charging..." Kenny chanted, "Charging..."
He jammed on the brakes. The tires screeched as he twisted the car between the darkened buildings and down a narrow alley. The gadget began beeping.
"NOW!" Kenny shouted and hit a button.
The buildings vanished.
"What the hell?" Jay whispered.
Kenny stomped on the brakes, bringing them to a halt in a cloud of dust. Smoke seeped out of the calculator on the dashboard. Trees rustled nearby.
Amanda looked around. "Where the fuck are we? And how the fuck did we get here?"
"Deserted road outside town. And you've just seen a semi-successful test run of the new FMTP technology." He proudly turned to the people in back. "It's quite simple really..."
She held up a hand and shook her head. "Sorry I asked. How far away from home are we?"
"About an hour," he waved the smoke away, "at highway speed. A bit more on these roads."
They all stepped out of the car to escape the growing fumes.
"Don't worry, it's just a minor electrical problem with the prototype," Kenny said confidently. "Shouldn't affect the car any."
"So we'll be away from here by dawn?" Jay asked hopefully.
"Certainly," Kenny coughed.
Amanda gently pulled on Kenny's sleeve. "You were quite cool back there," she said softly.
His smile faded. "I.. I panicked. When the Black Hat failed to drop his weapon I panicked and shot him. I didn't shoot him in the head - it would have killed him - but I'm afraid your Ringbearer isn't so brave after all."
Amanda placed a hand on his chest. "You did fine. I think I forgot to take the safety off the pistol."
She glanced back at the car. "What are you doing with Rhode Island license plates on?"
"Fake plates," he said as he bent over and pulled one off. "Held on by magnets. Nice, huh?"
She gave him a studied look. "You were prepared for something like this, weren't you?"
He blushed and spread his arms. "Only a fool won't make preparations. And since you've been dropping hints of trouble... I thought I'd best be ready."
He turned back to the car. "The smoke's clearing. The Professor's going to have my ass for toasting his prototype. Damn. Nothing to do about it. Let's get these people... ah..." He looked over the two refugees. "Can you take Kathy to your house? And I'll take our homeless Technocrat."
"Deal."
Agent Fairwell listened to their driver as his partner bandaged his hand.
"Kathy Sticowski: Virtual Adept. Age..."
He waved that information away, "Store it. We'll use it later. What about the car?"
"Database shows no car registered to that license plate number." He tilted his head as he accessed more information. "I don't have enough data from your description for an exact make and model search. Probability of success is only 16%."
"What about the other woman in the car? And that bastard with the laser?"
The driver waited for the download into his neural circuitry. "Your video feed did not enhance well. I would suggest an upgrade. Image comparison to automobile license photographs would yield a high percentage of false hits."
"Damnit, I want those deviants!"
"Upload fingerprints and descriptions of Kathy Sticowski and Jay Harriman to CIA information database under the catagory 'Terrorist Suspects'," Fairwell's partner ordered.
"Good," Fairwell approved, "We'll let the Sleepers look for them. Media?"
"There's been no mention of our activities in any mass media outlet."
Fairwell turned to his partner. "What about the neighbors?"
His partner smiled. "They bought the suspected terrorists bit hook, line and sinker. Along with the necessity for silence due to national security issues. We're covered."
"Well, at least we achieved our major objective by shutting down that damn safehouse. Nice job people."
The driver smiled. "It's always a nice job somewhere," he murmured as he made discreet changes in the database. It would be a while before the data actually made it though the system. Enough time for the rogue to get away. Then a perfectly mundane-looking computer crash would wipe the information. Yes. What the Black Hats don't know won't hurt them...
Kenny pulled his Datsun into his garage. The headlights were blinking erratically as it sputtered to a halt.
"I think I fried the electical system," Kenny mourned as he got out, hefting the satchel.
"I could help with that," his guest offered, "Do you have a wiring diagram? I'd hate to mess this beastie up on you, especially with your... device. Sorry it failed the stress test."
"Oh, that's all right. It was just a prototype. I'm sure the Professor will understand... eventually. The car wiring's pretty standard," Kenny murmured as he patted the car. "but I think I may have broken something..."
The front end of the car sagged.
"Like the shock absorbers. Fortunately I have some spare parts..."
"Would you like a hand? I'm, uh, pretty good with my hands. Fixing things and such."
"Shush. You're my guest. Oh, and since there's no need for the cloak and dagger anymore, I'm Kenny Davidson. Of the Sons of Ether."
"Jay Harriman, Iteration X."
They shook hands.
"Sleep?"
"Good idea."
They both stood staring at the car.
"Well, really, how long would it take the two of us to change the shocks, anyway?" Jay mused.
"About half an hour."
"Hmmm."
After a moment of silence the two men glanced at each other.
"Shall we get to work?"
The Beginning...