Fatal Exception Read online

  “Well, here goes nothing,” Phin muttered to himself. He hurled the stone at the window. It bounced off the window and narrowly sailed past his head, whizzing past his left ear.

  No dent, no crack, nothing. Either he wasn't strong enough, or the window was reinforced. Whatever the reason, the window was completely intact, the alarm didn't go off, and Phin was still stuck outside the building.

  Time for Plan B.

  He rushed back to the entry door and slapped the card against the card reader. It beeped, and the magnetic door lock disengaged with a click. Phin took a deep breath, pulled the door open, and just ran past the camera.

  He hit the wall on the other side of the camera's vision and stuck like glue. He held his breath and just listened. No alarm. No rushing of footsteps, no yelling of security guards with guns. He'd made it inside.

  There weren't any more cameras inside the campus, just the roaming eye of the SpidR, if it was out tonight. Phin listened for the clicking of the robotic feet on the tile but detected nothing. He was in the clear. He opened the door to the call center and went inside — before he went any further, he had to know what was on the disk Cecil had given him after the fire.

  Like the outside, the call center was empty and as quiet as a tomb. He found a computer that was already on, logged in, and slapped the disk into the drive.

  After a few seconds, the contents of the disk popped up on the screen. Not only did he now have complete blueprints for all of the Storm campus, but there were extensive records of all of Storm's secret projects.

  As he opened each file, Phin's eyes grew wider and wider.

  Project HYDRA:

  Complete call center replacement

  Designed to take every call.

  Full speech recognition, interpretation, and response.

  “Holy shit,” Phin said. “He's building a computer network out of brains.”

  It didn't seem possible. It was bad science fiction at best. Maybe it was all a mistake, maybe these were the notes for a movie being funded by Elliot Storm. But no, it all fit — the disappearing temps and techs — Tiffany — it all fit.

  Phin copied the contents of the disk into an e-mail and sent it off to the feds. Now he just hoped Wagner was the type who checked his e-mail on a regular basis.

  He ejected the disk and shoved it back into his pocket along with the card key. If there was some sort of human server farm in the basement of the building, Phin knew he had to get in and find Tiffany before she became part of it.

  For a moment, Phin considered just calling the cops — but what would he say?

  Yeah, my boss has been kidnapping his employees, taking them down to the basement, and using their brains to build a supercomputer to take phone calls. Oh, and my would-be girlfriend is down there too. He burned down somebody's house and killed him, and they have a giant robotic spider with a computer monitor for a face. Could you please send the SWAT team?

  No, he'd have to go alone, and worry about the police later. Phin went back into the blueprints for the building and started to plan his incursion and subsequent escape.

  Chapter 27

  Into the Lion's Den

  WITH THE MEDDLING NETWORK SECURITY admin out of the way, Dr. Reinhart was free to go back to working on Project HYDRA. Elliot's little perverse side-project would have to wait until tomorrow.

  From the control room, Dr. Reinhart checked the campus security logs, purely out of habit. With the network admin now out of the picture, there shouldn't be anyone else to stand in the way of their plans.

  Immediately, Dr. Reinhart spotted some anomalies in the network reports. There was no indication of where the intrusion originated, but someone had gotten into the basement subnet sometime after Cecil's demise. Reinhart picked up the phone and dialed to the room where Elliot was acquainting himself with his new project.

  “Yes?” Elliot grunted into the handset.

  “Herr Sturm, zhere is someone snooping around the netvork.”

  “Who?”

  “I'm not sure, but it is definitely not Cecil Peabody.”

  “Was it here in the building?”

  Dr. Reinhart pulled up the building security logs. Sure enough, one of the cameras had recorded about a half-second of someone opening the side access door and running past.

  “Zhere is someone in ze building.”

  “I'll handle it.”

  Elliot pressed his finger over the phone button just long enough to hang up. He turned on his cameras and started checking each part of the building.

  After checking all the hallways and restrooms, Elliot finally saw Phinnaeus hunched over a computer in the back corner of the call center.

  “There you are, Mr. Webb.”

  * * *

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  * * *

  AS HE FURIOUSLY TYPED ON the keyboard, electronically exploring every inch of the Storm campus, Phinnaeus stumbled across a set of hidden security measures. They appear to all be controlled only through Elliot Storm's office — and one of them had just been activated.

  Phin verified the signal and checked its destination — it was sent to seal off all doors to the call center.

  “He knows I'm here,” Phin muttered. As Phin watched over the network, the doors and windows to the room he was occupying silently sealed themselves to form an airtight barrier. The next signal came from Storm's office, directed toward some sort of gas canister system.

  He heard a faint hissing from one of the nearby air ducts. Elliot was flooding the room with some kind of gas. Phin had to act fast. He took a deep breath and started typing as fast as his fingers would move in an attempt to override the orders and stop the flow of gas into the room.

  Phin's lungs started to ache. It had been nearly two minutes, and the gas was still flowing into the room. Faster and faster he typed, but his chest was on fire. Survival instinct started to kick in, clashing with what Phin knew was the logical choice, but more and more that instinct chipped away at Phin's willpower.

  Finally, after nearly four minutes, Phin managed to kill the gas canister and turn on the air circulation again. Exhausted, he exhaled the hot, stale air from his lungs and took in fresh air.

  This threat was over, but Phin knew Elliot wasn't going to stop there. From what he could find on the network, there were plenty of other surprises throughout the building, all controlled from Elliot's office.

  A light bulb ignited in Phin's head.

  If Elliot had just activated the gas, that means he has to be in his office.

  “Gotcha,” Phin said as he dove back into the network.

  * * *

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  * * *

  SITTING AT HIS DESK, ELLIOT studied the monitor closely. He'd set up a camera on an encrypted direct feed in Room 6, where Sandy was strapped down to a table. She was still unconscious, now being pumped full of intravenous sedatives. Elliot hoped the stun gun hadn't left an unsightly burn on her smooth, tight abdominal muscles. Just in case, he would just have to wait a few days for the marks to heal before he started the next part of the procedure.

  “You are so beautiful. I knew you would be mine.” Elliot whispered to her through the ether as he traced his hand along her digitized face on the monitor.

  Without warning, the image on the monitor went dead, along with all the lights in the office. Elliot sprung to his feet and picked up the phone. The line was dead.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  He headed to the door. He needed to get Crockett and Tubbs to come down here and fire up the emergency generator. If the power was out for the entire campus for too long, the batteries for the basement would go dead, and that would destroy months' worth of research.

  As Elliot walked toward the door, he saw light streaming in through the crack beside the door. The electricity worked outside his office. Could it just be inside his office that it had gone out?

  Then it hit him.

  “Phinnaeus.”

  Elliot reached out fo
r the doorknob just as the deadbolts slammed into place, essentially turning the office into a vault.

  That son of a bitch, Elliot fumed. First he touched my girl, then he broke into my building, and now he actually has the nerve to lock Elliot Storm in his own office.

  Elliot looked around the room for any other signs of danger. If Phinnaeus had figured out how to turn off the power and lock the door, he might also find the dart launcher or the gas canisters. Without delay, Elliot grabbed his office chair and wheeled it against the wall to block the hidden dart launchers. Then he just listened. No tell-tale hissing of gas.

  There was still the slight problem of being trapped inside. When the door had locked, a rubber gasket also slid into place around the door frame, making the room completely airtight. He had a few hours' worth of air at best — plenty of time to get out.

  Then he would have to figure out what to do about Phinnaeus Webb. He was proving to be quite resourceful. Maybe he could be of some use after all.

  * * *

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  * * *

  NOW THAT ELLIOT'S OFFICE WAS shut down, locked up, and offline, Phinnaeus had complete access to the entire building. Phin redirected all the functions normally controlled through Elliot's office to the computer he was using in the call center.

  The first order of business was to unlock the door. Phin recognized the control software instantly — it was a basic, off-the-shelf program for home automation. With just a few keystrokes, the deadbolts snapped open.

  “Now let's see who else is out there,” Phin said to himself as he opened the camera controls.

  Contrary to what he'd previously thought, there were apparently secret cameras all over the building. They appeared to be carefully concealed inside ceiling tiles and smoke detectors, making them much harder to spot than the black domes that shielded the commonly known security cameras. Storm had them everywhere — in each conference room, every hallway, even in the restrooms.

  That clearly wasn't legal, not to mention being well outside the bounds of good taste, but Elliot Storm didn't appear to take the law or propriety into account when putting the campus together.

  There didn't appear to be anyone else on the second or third floors. It looked like Phin was in the clear, at least to get down to the basement. According to the blueprints, there was a stairwell near the security desk that would take him down. He just had to go down there, find Tiffany, and then get the hell out.

  The basement appeared to have been left off of the plans Phin found, and it seemed there weren't any cameras down there. He would just have to go in blind and hope nobody else was in on this little nightmare.

  * * *

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  * * *

  DOWN IN THE BASEMENT, REINHART was suiting up to continue the preparation of the subjects for Project HYDRA. He put on his lab coat and transparent face mask (to deflect the inevitable chunks of flesh and bone and sprays of blood) and fitted his robotic arms to the wheelchair. While he had his robotic legs working, they were still unstable and needed far too much power, and didn't offer an advantage within the confines of the laboratory.

  Once he was ready, Dr. Reinhart wheeled himself over to the entry door for the holding room where the unconscious former Storm employees were being kept. The door detected his presence automatically and slid open.

  When he got inside, he found that things had changed since he left. Three of the temps were already wired into the computer system and ready for the next phase. One of the temps who was still in pre-surgery had apparently rejected the implants and died in the past few hours. That left only two more subjects: Zook and Tiffany.

  “Spider, come to room eleven,” Dr. Reinhart barked into a microphone that projected his voice throughout the entire basement laboratory.

  Tick tick tick tick tick.

  The door slid open and the SpidR entered.

  “Dispose,” the doctor said, pointing to the body of the recently deceased subject.

  The SpidR scooped up the body with two of its powerful legs and stalked off down the corridor. When it reached the end of the hall, a door slid open, leading to the large incinerator chamber. The incinerator had been recently installed, and helped alleviate the inevitable problems with body disposal in an operation such as this.

  The SpidR dropped the body onto the conveyor belt, which automatically activated and rolled the body into the chamber. When it reached the center, the small door slid shut, and the tiny pilot lights exploded into a controlled inferno. After a few minutes, all that remained of the body was a pile of ash and a few bones, which were sucked into a compactor and vacuum-sealed in a plastic bag.

  Once the body was dispensed with, the SpidR returned to its charging base in the corridor to await further orders, just as programmed.

  Back in the room, Dr. Reinhart was using a ceiling-mounted hydraulic lift to move Zook onto an operating table. He was next, and since Zook had worked in the call center for a while, his brain input was going to be vital to the operation of Project HYDRA.

  The way it was designed, the computer used the hard-wired knowledge and skills from a few brains, and fed that information into the other brains — the equivalent of dumb terminals — that processed the input from the customer and fed them back into the computer for voice output. Zook and Tiffany had been chosen for the project purely based on their experience.

  After Zook was transferred to the operating table, Reinhart laid out his various scalpels, a cauterizing laser, and a bone saw and then closed his eyes. Often when he worked, he went into a kind of a trance. He was still fully conscious, but became hyper-focused on what he was doing.

  As he concentrated, something popped into the doctor's mind.

  The intruder. He had never heard back from Elliot that the problem had been handled. Dr. Reinhart wasn't going to start this delicate operation, one that was essential to the project, if he was going to be interrupted.

  He rolled over to the phone, picked it up, and dialed the number to Elliot's upstairs office. It gave the slow, obnoxious tones of a busy signal.

  “Zat is odd,” he said to himself. The phone system within the building wasn't set up to allow busy signals. Even if the phone was in use, it should have simply gone to a second or third line and still rang.

  Something was wrong, and Reinhart knew it. He went out to the corridor.

  “Spider, come here,” he called out. The SpidR rose from its charging station and crept over to Dr. Reinhart to await orders.

  “Patrol mode, floors one, two, and three. Unauthorized personnel should be disposed. Understood?”

  The SpidR stood for a second and then responded. “Yes sir. Patrol mode on floors one, two, and three. Dispose of any unauthorized personnel. Will that be all?”

  “Yes. Go now.”

  Tick tick tick tick tick.

  The SpidR went off down the hall toward the staircase, and Dr. Reinhart went into the main control room to try calling Elliot's office again.

  Chapter 28

  Spiders and Flies

  ZOOK WOKE UP TO DISCOVER that he was lying on a cold metal operating table. A bright halogen lamp was shining down in his face, causing him to squint immediately after opening his eyes.

  “What the fuck?” he wondered aloud.

  He looked around and saw three of the temps from the night shift stripped naked and strapped down to similar tables. Each of them had various wires and tubes running into their heads and throughout their bodies. Tiffany Marks was in a similar situation — tubes going into her mouth, etc. — but she was still clothed and was strapped to a stretcher leaning against a wall.

  He felt of his head and his face, but he didn't appear to have any of the tubes or wires. His throat was sore, however, so he surmised that he may have been intubated at some time in the recent past.

  Oh God, he wondered, how long was I out? He felt his face. Judging from the stubble around the perimeter of his beard, he'd been there for at least a
day.

  There was a bank of computers lining the wall. Each had wires running to the heads of the temps, and each one bore Storm Computer Corporation's logo.

  “That bastard. I knew it, I fucking knew it.”

  But Zook knew he didn't have time to gloat. He rushed over to Tiffany and pulled out the IV needle. He didn't want to risk pulling the tube from her windpipe just yet — once she woke up and had the sensory feedback of pain, she could pull the tube out herself without doing too much damage to her throat.

  As he stood and waited for the sedatives to wear off, it suddenly occurred to Zook that he was stark naked. He decided to check around the room to see if his clothes were still around somewhere — even in a situation like this, a man has to maintain his dignity, and he didn't want Tiffany to wake up staring at his hairy ass.

  * * *

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  SATISFIED THAT ELLIOT WAS OUT of the picture, at least for a little while, Phinnaeus started making his way toward the stairway down to the basement. As he crept down the hall, he heard a faint noise.

  Tick tick tick tick tick.

  It was still far off, but it was getting closer. If that thing spotted him, it would alert whoever was downstairs. He'd have to take the long way around.

  Phin ran almost all of the way back to the call center and opened the heavy steel door to the emergency stairwell. He'd already deactivated all the fire alarms when he was in the network, so the buzzer didn't sound when he opened the door.

  Once he reached the third floor, Phin knew he just had to run to the other end of the building, then use the other emergency stairwell to get back down to the first floor. Lucky for him, the third floor was all carpeted — the executives didn't get the tile floors of the first two levels — so the sound of his footsteps wouldn't travel.