Gaspar’s eyes swept the cameras again, watching the people in the banquet room talking. He could remember when a million dollars would have been a big deal to him, too. But since Heavener had taken over his life, he couldn’t remember how many millions and billions of dollars he’d helped the corporation steal from others.
Sweat trickled across his face back in the physical world, and his heart rate was slightly elevated with all the stress.
A small, rectangular window suddenly exploded into view above the sixteen monitors. It showed his heart rate, dangerously near the automatic log-off point. But he knew that would never happen. Before she’d left, Heavener had ordered a doctor to insert a hypodermic shunt into the back of Gaspar’s right hand. Attached to that was an IV bag containing tranquilizers that would suppress his body’s reactions as needed.
They also made it harder for Gaspar to think. He concentrated on his physical self for a moment, blurring the veeyar around the edges, and slowed his breathing, taking deep lungfuls of air.
C’mon. Drop. Just as he was about to give up, knowing his own tension over the medication waiting to be released into his system and maybe take away his last chance at freedom, the indicator level dropped, finally coming to a rest barely within the intermediate safety zone.
He returned his full attention to the veeyar, then swept his gaze over the banquet room again. He spotted Madeline Green talking to a young man in the middle of the crowd.
“Identify,” Gaspar ordered, locking a capture window over the young man.
“Derek Sommers,” the computer answered. “IPG games. Continue?”
“No.” Gaspar couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognized Derek. It only showed how rattled he was. He stood up suddenly and launched himself through the ceiling, passing through it easily and following one of the buttoncams’ telecommunications signal to the hotel through the Net zones. All the security programs and the firewalls had been punched clear by his viruses earlier.
In seconds he was in the banquet room in holoform. Other game design publishers were there in holo as well, not truly trusting circumstances after the kidnapping. And some of them never appeared in public anyway for their own reasons.
The holoprojectors gave Gaspar virtual substance, but even as he started to appear, he triggered a program he had prepared. Instead of looking like himself or his usual proxy, he grafted on the appearance of Matt Hunter. He knew the real Matt was working online, in one of the other girls’ rooms. Heavener hadn’t bugged the Explorers’ rooms, but she had ordered buttoncams placed in the hallways beside their rooms.
Shaking on the inside, hoping the proxy would hold under the scrutiny of the men Heavener had at the banquet, Gaspar approached Madeline Green. “Hey, Madeline.” He tried to sound casual, even forced a smile. “Got a minute?”
She turned to Derek and excused herself, then walked toward a small empty area beside one of the walls surrounding the table areas.
Gaspar hadn’t realized how pretty she looked in the cocktail dress until that moment. Watching through the monitors back in his veeyar just hadn’t been the same.
She turned on him, arms folding across her breasts and her brown eyes stern. “Maybe we need to start with you telling me who you are, because you’re sure not anyone I know.”
17
Gaspar froze, staring back at Madeline Green, not knowing how he’d lost control of the situation so quickly. “What?”
“All my friends call me Maj,” she said. “Ergo, you’re not one of them. No matter how much you look like Matt Hunter.”
Glancing at the crowd around them, wondering if anyone was paying too much attention, Gaspar pleaded, “Wait! I can explain!”
“Ten seconds,” Maj said, “and I’m starting counting now.”
Looking at her, Gaspar thought back to what he knew of her. “Peter Griffen’s in real trouble. I don’t think he knows how deep he’s into it.”
“Has he been kidnapped?”
“Yes.”
“Please lower your voice,” Gaspar said. “This room is being monitored by the people I work for.”
“Who are they?”
“I can’t tell you. Not now.”
“I can scream,” Maj pointed out. “When security shuts the area down, you might escape, but there’s a good chance you’d get tagged with a trace virus.”
Gaspar shook his head. “No. They’ve invaded the system. I can get out as easily as I got in.”
“So you say.”
“It’s true.” Angry and frustrated, Gaspar hardened his voice. “Do you want to help Peter Griffen or not? Because if you don’t, they’re going to kill him.”
“How am I supposed to help him?”
“I don’t know that yet,” Gaspar answered. “I haven’t gotten that worked out.”
“Do you know where he is?”
Gaspar considered lying for only a moment, thinking he could improve his own worth, then didn’t because he was sure she would know that he was lying. “No. I’ll try to find out.”
“Who are you?”
“Someone who needs your help,” Gaspar replied. “I met your friend Mark earlier. I arranged for you to get the invitations tonight so I could meet you.”
“You’re in charge of surveillance over the banquet?”
“Yes.”
“Then shut it down and let’s talk.”
Gaspar glanced across the room, picking out the two men he knew Heavener had assigned to cover the banquet inside the room. Neither of them paid any attention to him. “I can’t. There’s someone in charge of me.”
“It’s going to be hard to help you if I don’t know who you are or what’s going on.”
“I can only hope that it’s enough that you know I exist, and that you’re right in thinking that Peter Griffen didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping. They set him up, used him, and it’s only going to get worse.”
Anxious frustration showed on Maj’s face. “Where do I start looking?”
Gaspar shook his head. “I don’t know. This whole thing is so tangled and I’m so close to the middle of it that anything I say could get Peter and me both killed. We are acceptable losses. There’s too much at risk.”
“What?”
“I don’t know for sure. But I do know these people don’t do anything without millions or billions of dollars on the line.”
“So it is about money,” Maj said.
Gaspar shrugged and felt bad because she sounded so disappointed, which was strange because he was the one who was risking his neck. “Most things are. But this is about a lot of money. I just don’t know how. Yet.” He wanted to say more, but he was afraid to. Anything he said that could lead them back to him was the wrong thing. They need to be led through their own resources to Peter Griffen.
Maj looked at him, studying him. “Where do we—”
Before she could finish her question, Gaspar spotted Heavener approaching the banquet room. The woman wore a deep jade cocktail dress but walked purposefully. Even though the dress clung to the curves, Gaspar knew she could have a dozen deadly weapons concealed on her body.
“What’s wrong?” Maj asked.
Heavener checked in through the banquet security easily, using the ID that Gaspar had generated for her. She paused in the doorway and glanced over the crowd. Her lips barely moved as she spoke. Only someone watching her closely would have noticed.
“Latke.” Her voice came through the aud-connect Gaspar had set up in his veeyar.
“Yes,” he answered, turning to Maj and closing down the aud-send loop so Heavener wouldn’t hear him. “I’ve got to go.”
“Is it because of that woman?” Maj clutched at the sleeve of the tuxedo jacket he wore.
Gaspar hesitated, not wanting to leave the safety Maj Green represented but knowing he should log off now.