She smiled. “I’m afraid I can’t afford to abduct Chimera’s prize paranormal consultant.”
Ryder glanced behind him. “A gentleman walks a lady to her car. I’m a stickler for decorum.”
“I wouldn’t have thought of you as a romantic, Mr. Ryder.”
He shrugged. “Nobody’s perfect.”
As they approached her SUV, his voice lowered. “I don’t know what you’re looking for, or who you really are. An FBI analysis expert and a top-rated lawyer? I ran a check on you, Agent Plumm. Your file says you were a child prodigy, but it still takes time to accomplish everything you’ve done.”
Dylan smiled. “I’m flattered by the interest. Let’s just say that time is a luxury for me, Mr. Ryder. Unlike most people, I have all the time I need to accomplish whatever it is I need to do.”
His voice was still carefully low-pitched when he opened her door for her. “We seem to be looking for the same thing, Ms. Plumm. Just going about it different ways. Piece of advice: be very careful. You don’t know how dangerous these people are.”
“The Blurred Man organization?”
“No.” His hand flicked forward, expelling an SD card that landed neatly in her cup holder. “I’m talking about Chimera. Take care, Ms. Plumm.” He closed the door. Dylan watched from the rearview mirror as he turned and strode back to the compound entrance without a backward glance.
It took only seconds for Dylan to discover Ryder was right. Chimera had remotely installed spyware on her tablet. Dylan didn’t know if it was a standard tactic or if she was targeted specifically, but either way it enforced the corporation’s ruthless reputation. She tapped her ruby-studded earring, automatically enabling a call from the hidden Bluetooth to her new safe house.
“Chip, I need a clean sweep of my tablet.”
“Infiltrated already? Not even dinner first?”
She ignored Chip’s banter while it remotely downloaded the appropriate spyware eliminator. Afterward, she installed the SD card. Among the data files was a video clip labeled Play Now. She clicked on it. Nathan Ryder’s image popped up on the vehicle’s digital heads-up display as Dylan cruised into the busy San Francisco streets.
“If you’re seeing this, I must be close.” Ryder’s recorded image appeared far less guarded in the video, his face displaying genuine anxiety. His expression was haggard, as though suffering from a lack of sleep.
“I also must be in grave danger,” he continued. “Since I might not make it out of Chimera alive, this is the compilation of what I’ve discovered so far.”
His message listed a number of illegal activities Chimera Global was involved in, such as illegal arms trafficking and mercenary aid to nations in dispute with the US. On the political front Ryder provided hacked emails that revealed Chimera’s tampering of US congressional and presidential elections that included threats, blackmail and murder. The corporation also bankrolled votes on both sides of the political floor in order to press legislature that benefitted the company’s interests. Pushing their agenda abroad, they armed militants and revolutionists in the Middle East and Africa, bolstering their financial gain in the process of manipulating chaos.
“But make no mistake: empowering itself monetarily is only the secondary agenda of Chimera,” Ryder said. “They possess ambitions that go far beyond fiscal domination. Their outright confiscation of Michael McDaniel from under the FBI’s very nose is proof of both their reach and their future plans. Hiring me as a consultant was no mistake either. Although ostracized by the blogging community as just another fringe conspiracy theorist, I was one of the few compiling real data on the event Michael referred to as the ‘Aberration.’ My data indicated a powerful energy surge of extraordinary magnitude that didn’t register on normal instruments, therefore going unnoticed by investigative agencies. If what Michael has stated is true, this energy not only has tremendous destructive potential, it can also open a threshold to another dimension.”
“I hate to interrupt,” Chip’s voice buzzed in her ear. “But I’ve been tracking you via a friendly satellite tag. Have you noticed you’ve been followed since you left the Chimera compound?”
“Of course.” Dylan paused the recording and glanced in the rearview mirror. A black BMW followed exactly two cars behind, tailing her every lane change, yet staying behind a safe distance. The windows were fully tinted, allowing no glimpse of who or how many were inside.
“Hopefully nothing to be concerned about,” she said. “This will be an easy day if all I have to do is lose a tail.” She resumed the recording.
“This power is what Chimera Global is after,” Ryder’s message continued. “The dark energy registering from the Aberration has endless potential for uses both benevolent and malevolent, untapped possibilities ripe for experimentation and exploitation. Chimera is willing to overlook the other side of the equation: the likelihood of a dimensional break, where the energies of two separate worlds collide. This is where the Blurred Man factors in. I believe he is a guardian from that neighboring dimension, a gatekeeper to prevent the catastrophic event of a dimensional break into our world. He cannot appear in photographs because he is not of this world.”
Ryder’s face drew closer to the camera. His expression was agonized; the desperation clearly audible in the tone of his voice. “I know this sounds bizarre, but all the data I’ve compiled supports my theory. The Blurred Man is not of our world, an alien surely as if arrived from another planet. Yet he may well be all that stands between us and imminent destruction. Chimera has neither the willingness nor perhaps even the ability to see beyond their greed as they strive to harness what may destroy us.” He hesitated, taking a wary glance around. “I’m out of time. If you have this transmission, you may be the only one aware of what is happening. You may be the only one who can stop this. I’ve compiled as much information as I could on this memory card. Use it to stop Chimera if you can. If not…we may all be doomed.”
The video ended. Dylan kept an eye on the car tailing her as she considered Ryder’s discovery and warning.
“That was…ominous,” Chip said in her ear.
“It’s nearly unbelievable,” Dylan said. “If Ryder’s warning is true, the entire world is in jeopardy. And the idea of an intruding dimension…” Her voice trailed off at the concept. The notion was staggering, containing so many variables that even her computer-guided mind had difficulty mapping out the nearly endless range of possibilities.
“Interdimensional beings and multiverses have been purely theoretical by human research up until now,” Chip said. “Yet even in theory the effects of dimensions interacting are nearly always catastrophic. Warped reality, collisions of natural forces — the possibilities are endless for cataclysmic aftereffects. That’s if Mr. Ryder isn’t as insane as Michael McDaniel reportedly is, of course.”
“I doubt either of them are mentally deficient.” Dylan flicked a few of the files from the tablet to the heads-up display. “The data Ryder compiled appears surprisingly sound. The energy surges he discovered was picked up on sensors constructed by paranormal fanatics to detect ghostly disturbances. It makes sense that their ghosts were really intrusions from a neighboring dimension.”
Chip’s humming buzzed in her ear. “I’m backing up your files here at the safe house. The rest of the card contains data compilations and hacked files on an island lab constructed by Chimera Global somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. Supposedly it’s one of the few locations on earth where a dimensional break can be artificially created.”
“Chip, do you know what this means?”
“That the end of this world might arrive a bit prematurely?”