The tall gangster’s laughter resounded across the nearly empty ball field. He aimed his virtual tommy gun into the sky, but the holographic bullets didn’t harm real live police equipment.
“All right, people,” the pin-striped gunman’s voice blared through the PA system. “Show’s over.”
His laughter, and the ratcheting roar of the machine guns, cut off as if a knife had sliced through the air.
Most of the people around Matt crouched or lay behind the flimsy safety of the bleachers. But Matt Hunter stood, glaring at the oddly dressed foursome who had caused so much devastation in a few short minutes.
Then the intruders were gone, without so much as a flash or shadow to mark their going.
Whoever they are, Matt thought, they have an excellent system behind them. Talk about your clean getaways….
Chapter 2
As a strong contingent of Baltimore police entered the stadium, Matt’s wallet-phone rang. Even though the connection was staticky, Matt recognized the voice on the other end. It was Captain James Winters, the Explorers’ liaison to Net Force. That wasn’t a public-relations job. Winters had been an active field officer when he came up with the idea of the Net Force Explorers — and in the captain’s mind, they were his troops, just as much as the Marines he’d commanded in the last Balkan blowup.
“The local police contacted us as soon as they realized the Net was involved,” he said. “And I hopped in a chopper as soon as I heard some of my people were involved.”
Matt grinned into the receiver. That was the captain all over — the Net Force Explorers were “his people.”
“I want you and the others to hold yourselves in readiness to cooperate with the Baltimore police,” Winters said. “They’ll be glad to have an account of this incident from some trained observers.”
That was the captain all over, too, Matt thought. He expected the best effort from his people.
“Yes, sir,” Matt said into the phone.
“I expect to be landing in a couple of minutes. We’ll rendezvous at whatever police precinct where you’ll be giving your statements.”
“I’ll pass the word, sir.”
“Good. Winters out.”
The connection cut off. Matt passed along what the captain had said. Even as he was explaining their orders, the phone rang again.
Lucky I didn’t switch configurations, he thought.
“Matthew Hunter?” an official-sounding voice crackled in his ear. “I’m Sergeant Den Burgess, Baltimore PD. We’ve been informed that you’re with a contingent of Net Force Explorers here in the stadium. Could you please indicate where you are?”
“We’re still in the bleachers.” Matt put a hand over his phone’s pickup and turned to his remaining buddies. “Let’s get up on our seats and wave our arms.”
He got back on the phone. “Sergeant? If you can spot a small group standing on their seats and waving, you’ll have found us.”
“Got you,” the voice in his ear said. “Expect me in a couple of minutes.” Again, the connection cut off. Matt replaced his wallet.
The police had mainly been working to clear away the crowd and trying to identify the injured holoforms still in the stadium. Now a small contingent of uniformed officers made their way through the bleachers to Matt and his friends. In the lead was a tall, black, competent-looking man with sergeant’s stripes on his short-sleeved shirt. “I’m Burgess,” he said. “Which of you is Hunter?”
“I am,” Matt said, stepping forward.
“Looks like your group came through all right.”
Matt shook his head. “Several of us were here in holoform. One got hit by a virtual bullet.”
Burgess looked around in concern. “Is he—?”
“I hope he’s all right,” Matt said with a stab of worry. “He’s in New York. I called Emergency Services there — it was the best I could do. Everybody else in our group cut out safely.” He glanced at the sergeant. “I’ve never seen anything like this happen before.”
Burgess simply shook his head. “Neither have I, son. Neither have I.”
The sergeant took Matt and his friends to the nearest police precinct, where they each gave a statement, describing what happened as best they could. Matt had actually missed a lot of the action while he’d been trying to take care of Leif. Sergeant Burgess nodded at the description of the shock symptoms. “That’s what happened to everyone in virtual who got hit,” he said.
“I’ve heard that implant shock could happen to people,” Matt said. “But I thought it only occurred in small-scale, intense sims, where you begin to lose track of what’s real and what’s virtual.”
“Belief plays a larger factor in virtual injuries than many people realize,” a familiar voice said.
Matt turned to see Captain Winters step up to the sergeant’s desk. He held out his Net Force ID to Burgess. “I’ve been upstairs in the operations center you folks have set up. We’ll be coptering in additional tech and medical people.”
Burgess looked relieved. “We can use all the help we can get.”
“Are you finished with my people here?”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied. “At least we have a pretty clear idea of what went down.” He shrugged. “Whether we can catch whoever was responsible….”
Winters nodded. “That’ll be a headache for all of us.” He beckoned Matt along. “They gave me an office upstairs.” A sour expression crossed his face. “Not that there’s much I’ll be able to do here.”
“I still don’t understand how it ever happened, Captain,” Matt said. “With large-scale sims, aren’t there supposed to be safety interlocks to turn off the system before people get injured?”
“There are supposed to be,” Winters admitted grimly. “But it seems some unsung genius has managed a programming miracle that hoodwinks the safety coding. The only bright side so far is that it’s not being used by terrorists or criminals.”
Matt halted, staring, as Winters climbed the stairs. “You don’t think what happened this afternoon was criminal?”
“Oh, no,” Winter said, still climbing. “This was big-time lawbreaking. It just wasn’t done by career criminals. It was done by kids.”
“Kids?” Matt echoed, starting to climb after Winters.
“Teenagers,” the captain went on. “Four of them. They’ve been trashing veeyars all around the Washington, D.C., area. Taking over systems remotely, wrecking whatever setups they’re running, business or entertainment, blowing the computers out — and injuring whoever happens to be hooked in at the time. The victims ended up in shock, like Leif Anderson.”
Winters paused. “By the way, I checked with Emergency Services in New York. Leif is in stable condition — thanks to your quick responses.”
Matt straightened as if a weight had come off his shoulders. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “But how does this gang get in and out?”
The captain shook his head. “We don’t really know. By the time they’re finished with a system, it’s pretty well blown out. We think that today’s little exhibition was a test to see if they could ramshackle a big system.” He stalked down a hallway. “If so, they were successful. Most of the memory of the Camden Yards system was slagged.”
“Even so, there were HoloNet crews there to broadcast the game,” Matt said. “They must have gotten images of those people.”
“Oh, they did,” Winters growled as he opened an office door. Holograms of four heads floated in the air over the systems desk.
Matt recognized them all. “That one — the round face with the big ears — that’s the guy who did all the talking — the tall one.”
“It took us a little time, but we finally got a criminal records match,” Winters said.