“Some critical servers, such as public online banking systems, are staying off-line for fear that they might be infected. This means that the internet has been effectively disrupted world-wide. Slowing down the recovery effort, investigators say, are those servers that are still up and running without countermeasures. Those servers are providing a refuge for the virus, as they continually spread the virus to any fixed system as soon as it comes back online. It has proven very difficult to alert each of the internet’s two billion users.”
The image flashed to a clip of a governmental briefing room. An NSA representative addressed a crowd of reporters. “An emergency communication path for a disaster of this kind simply doesn’t exist across international borders,” she explained. She was a blocky woman with glasses and a haircut that suggested that whenever a lock grew long enough bother her, she lopped it off with the kitchen scissors. “This virus seems to only be slowed down a few minutes by a firewall, and is definitely one of the most sophisticated we’ve ever seen. It makes many copies of itself all over every system it infects and the filenames, sizes and behaviors all seem to change frequently. It’s hard to put into words, but it almost seems to react somehow to our efforts at stopping it.”
He leaned forward, his mind churning. “That’s what I saw. It seemed very smart. A new kind of beast entirely.”
He glanced at his wife, who was looking at him from two sunken eyes of worry. “Sarah,” he said. “I had nothing to do with releasing it, if that’s what you’re wondering. Unless, of course, I unwittingly taught its creator.”
“I know you didn’t do it, Babe,” she said, taking his hand. “I just hope that they don’t try to pin it on you because it’s an easy out for them.”
“Well, right now it might be helping us. It gave us a chance to put Justin’s face and name on every TV very quickly.”
She nodded and they turned back to the broadcast. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that she frequently glanced out the front window and at the phone. Every time it rang it was a reporter, but he could see her tense-up each time anyway. Would it be the police? Would they tell her they had found Justin? Would he be dead when they found him?
The camera was on the pretty anchorwoman again. “Internet-related stocks are expected to take a beating tomorrow morning when the exchange opens. Investors and economists both believe that this slump could possibly signal the beginning of a new recession, given the shaky reports from the high-tech industry in general that has been a leading profit area for investors in recent years. Claiming that many of these stocks have long been overrated against their real records of performance, economists predict a drop in stock prices across all the hi-tech industries.”
“And some bastard did this for fun,” he snorted. “Unbelievable.”
The story finally got around to their family. There he was, shouting his technical explanations to the crowd, except his words were unintelligible under the narration. He was described as a suspect and then Sarah was shown, sobbing with Justin’s picture held aloft. The anchor reported that whether or not there was any connection between the virus and the boy’s disappearance was unknown.
“We look like a couple of freaks caught up in some tabloid tragedy,” said Sarah. “Who would kidnap Justin because you released a virus?”
He shot her a glance and pondered her words. He had been so deep in shock today that he hadn’t considered the possibility of a connection between his two fantastic strokes of misfortune. He recalled that Arthur Conan Doyle had once written about fantastic coincidences in the guise of Sherlock Holmes. The gist had been that uncommon events occurred fairly often, but rarely did chance play two unusual cards at the same time-unless the dealer was a card shark.
He turned that over in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that there had to be a connection of some kind. He stood accused of a crime he did not commit, and his son had been kidnapped. All of this had happened in a single day. Assuming that the same party was responsible, who could it be? He simply couldn’t come up with anyone who wanted to destroy him. He had a few people that were enemies, he supposed, such as Abrams. But the furthest he could imagine Abrams going would be to attempt to block his tenure approval. Criminal frame-ups and felony kidnapping seemed far beyond his scope. Still, there had to be something. He felt sure of it.
He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. His fingers slowly gripped his hair and pulled. The sensation on his scalp felt good somehow. He needed to figure this out. He had to get Justin back, and he had to do it fast. But how?
She put a reassuring hand on the back of his neck. He didn’t move. He decided a good first move would be to replay the events of the day carefully through his mind.
Before he could begin, however, there came a knock at the door. This knock was different somehow from the knock of the countless reporters. It was louder, more authoritative. It was a heavy knock that demanded to be answered immediately.
Ray and Sarah glanced at each other. Her eyes were haunted, and he felt something snap inside him. He felt anger and decisiveness overtake him. He had sat around long enough while someone else’s virus was assigned to him and some half-interested stranger searched for his missing son. They didn’t have a peephole, so he rose and moved quickly to the kitchen window. The kitchen nook thrust outward from the house in the front and offered a better view of the porch. Besides, it was nice and dark in the kitchen. It was dark on the porch too, but he instantly recognized the silhouette of agent Vasquez and the bulkier outline of agent Johansen. Agent Vasquez had a sheath of papers in her hands. Out on the street, he saw a squad car pull up and two sheriff’s deputies climbed out. He knew in his heart that they weren’t coming just to question him this time.
Quietly, he slipped back out of the kitchen and into the living room. Sarah met him in the front hall, her face apprehensive. He raised a finger to his lips and kissed her on the forehead. She looked at him for a second and then flung herself on him.
“You’re leaving,” she whispered hoarsely in his ear.
He nodded, for a moment beyond speech. He held her shoulders and when he found his voice he spoke into her ear. “I have to try to help Justin. If I’m sitting in jail, I can’t do anything.”
She hugged him harder and made an odd sound of anguish. She didn’t argue aloud, they both knew there was nothing to say. The doorbell rang loudly then, and both of them jumped. He glanced at the door and gently pried her from his chest.
“I’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll use Mrs. Trumble to communicate when I can. Also, try accessing my school account if they get the system up again. I’ll send e-mail. Delay them all you can, say I walked to the store an hour ago, say anything.”
Then he kissed her again and headed down the hall. His heart thumped so loudly in his chest that he wondered if the agents would hear it. His mind raced. He didn’t own a gun, and it probably would have been a bad idea to take one anyway. He had around a hundred bucks on him, and there was no time to pack anything. He snatched up his notebook computer from his desk. Fortunately, it was still packed up in its carrying case, the way he had brought it home from the lab last night. He hadn’t bothered to take it to work today as he was tired and had planned to come home as early as possible.
The hammering at the door grew more pressing. “Dr. Vance,” he heard Vasquez call out from the porch. “Open the door.”
He slung the black leather strap over his neck, feeling like a high tech thief on the run. The entire idea was insane. Then reality set back in and his smirk vanished. He went to the sliding glass door that led from the master bedroom into the backyard. His car was out front and hopelessly beyond reach. Stepping out into the night air, he was suddenly aware of every sound he made. Although it was nearly silent, the swish of the slider behind him seemed to roar out his presence to the world at large. He paused, breathing through his open mouth so that his whistling nostrils didn’t give him away. He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. He couldn’t do Justin any good if he panicked and froze like a deer caught in a pickup truck’s headlights.