Fatal Exception Read online

  Phin took a deep breath. After all this, he was going to be killed. He'd made it all the way down here, rescued the girl, killed the mad scientist, and now Elliot Storm was going to splatter his brains all over the stainless steel walls.

  “I'm not going to kill you,” Elliot said.

  Phin exhaled.

  “What do you want from me, then?” Phin asked. “And if you're not going to kill me, why do you have a gun in my face?”

  “Well, I haven't had a chance to explain myself yet. This is just to get your attention.”

  “Okay, you've got it.”

  Elliot started pacing around the corridor.

  “Follow me.”

  If there are any sure things in this world, one of them is that a request from a man with a gun is probably not just a suggestion. Phin did as he was told and followed Elliot through a large set of double-doors at the end of the hall.

  Once the doors closed behind them, they were in complete darkness. Phin could tell by the echoes of his footsteps that the chamber was enormous. Elliot hit a button on the wall and a set of lights clicked to life.

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  “WHAT DO WE DO NOW?” Tiffany asked Zook in a panic.

  “I don't know — let's see if we can wake her up. Pull the IV out of her arm.”

  Tiffany walked over to the table where Sandy was strapped down. She was completely naked, with gravity-defying perky breasts that impressed even Tiffany, and had heavy make-up (obviously done herself, not by Elliot). She carefully pulled the IV needle out of the sleeping girl's arm.

  “Okay, now what?”

  Zook shrugged his shoulders.

  “It took a few minutes for you to wake up. I guess we could put some clothes on her in the meantime.”

  Tiffany paused.

  “Wait, was I . . . ”

  “No, no, no, you were totally dressed,” Zook said. “I guess Elliot had special plans for this one.”

  The only clothes they could find in the room were a bikini top and a G-string.

  “Better than nothing I guess,” Tiffany muttered. They sat the girl up and tied the top around her.

  Zook picked up a pair of stiletto heels that obviously belonged to Sandy.

  “I think she'll have a little trouble walking in these when she wakes up.”

  Tiffany nodded. “Or any other time.” She took the heels from Zook and set them down next to the stirring stripper

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  THE CHAMBER WAS, AS PHIN HAD expected, colossal. It was filled with row after row of at least four dozen bodies, all penetrated by a wide array of tubes and wires. The wires snaked across the floor to a massive bank of computer servers. “Let me guess — Project HYDRA,” Phin said.

  “Someone's been doing his homework.”

  Phin saw some faces he recognized among the half-dead human processors, including Brian, the aspiring network admin. Holly was there too, although her head had been shaved to allow for the neural implants.

  “This is pretty fucked up,” Phin said.

  “Come now — is it really? So much potential out there, so much brain power wasted on mindless pursuits. We're limited by our bodies — take away the boundaries set by only having one mouth and one set of ears, and a person could take five, maybe ten phone calls at a time. I'm turning these people from just people into Gods.”

  “Did they have a say in the matter?”

  “If you want to be technical about it, they did. It was right there in the employment contract. Section four, subsection eight: Storm Computer Corporation reserves the right to take all necessary measures to improve performance of call center personnel.”

  Phin thought back. He couldn't remember a single thing about that contract he'd signed. He made a mental note to be more careful about such things in the future, assuming he had one.

  “You're kidding. This is a little more than improving performance.”

  “You're god damn right!” Elliot grew excited. “It's multiplying the efficiency of the call center tenfold.”

  On the one hand, it was completely repulsive, but to Phin it did have a kind of awe-inspiring elegance. He had managed to turn a collection of humans into a distributed computing platform. It was sick, but brilliant.

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “Dr. Reinhart is good, but you are better. You managed to find out everything we were doing here — you even managed to break into the hidden portion of the network. I could use someone like you at the top.”

  “What exactly are you offering?” Phin was stalling.

  “Your signing bonus will be five million dollars. You become vice president of technical operations; you start immediately finishing the code for Project HYDRA.”

  “And if I decline?”

  “Then you still have a bright future in HYDRA, so to speak.”

  “And you let Tiffany go?”

  “Of course I will.”

  Phin took another look around the room. It was a remarkable achievement. For a moment he actually found himself considering Elliot's offer.

  Then he remembered that Dr. Reinhart had just been burnt alive in the incinerator — the project itself could never happen now, but Elliot didn't know that. He decided to play along.

  “Sure, why not. I've always been unappreciated.”

  Elliot grinned from ear to ear.

  “That's great!”

  “Now, you'll let my friends go?”

  “Let's go let them out now, partner.”

  That too was easy, Phin thought.

  Elliot led Phin back through the giant double-doors into the corridor and to the room where Tiffany, Zook, and Sandy were being held.

  He punched in the code for the door and it slid open.

  After the overwhelmingly positive conversation with Phin, Elliot's guard was down. He had the handgun pointed at the ground, not in front of him. When the door slid open, a banshee wail erupted from the room.

  Phin jumped backward instinctively. Elliot tried to raise his gun, but he was too slow. Sandy came leaping out in a ferocious eruption of stripper rage and knocked Elliot to the floor. The gun went sliding away.

  “Hey there, Sunshine,” Sandy hissed at Elliot. She held up one of her clear plastic stiletto heels and swung it into Elliot's face, rupturing his left eye and releasing a gush of blood. She had her revenge.

  Phin picked up the handgun off the floor. He'd never used a gun before, but he'd seen enough movies to know that you never leave a weapon lying around even when you think the bad guy is dead.

  Elliot Storm, however, was not dead. Quite the contrary, he was writhing around and screaming in pain. He pulled the heel out of his eye and threw it blindly down the hall, and just kept wailing and babbling.

  Just as he'd considered taking Elliot's deal for a brief moment, Phin pondered shooting Elliot and putting an end to it this awful mess. Then he thought better of it. Even with the orgy of evidence present here, there's no way anyone would believe what had happened here without at least one of the perpetrators intact. Since Dr. Reinhart was now reduced to a pile of carbon, Elliot was the only one left.

  As Elliot staggered away, Zook grabbed Sandy and managed to hold her back from another attack.

  “It's okay, it's all over now. It's okay, it's okay,” he just kept whispering into her ear. Eventually she gave in and collapsed into Zook's arms. Tiffany raced around, opening all the remaining doors and checking for anybody else who may have been left.

  “No more, Phin.”

  Phin kept the gun trained on Elliot.

  “To the elevator — all of us.”

  Phin and Tiffany loaded Elliot roughly onto a stretcher, strapped him down, and wheeled him into the elevator. Phin punched the button to take them back to the surface, where it was nearly dawn.

  When they reached the surface, sunlight was just barely starting to peek through the gian
t glass windows of the lobby. Soon the early bird workers for the company would show up to find a stripper and three tech support workers carrying out the president of the company on a stretcher, missing an eye and with blood all over him. This would be awkward.

  But as they started toward the door, the approach of sirens from the distance told Phin one thing:

  Agent Wagner had checked his e-mail.

  Chapter 30

  Send in the Cavalry

  PHINNAEUS AND THE OTHERS EMERGED from the front doors of the main building on the Storm campus just in time to greet the first police officers on the scene.

  “Hands where we can see them!” an officer yelled with his gun drawn. Obviously he was not a morning person.

  Regardless, they all did as they were told. Phin tossed away the handgun he'd picked up in the basement and held his hands high.

  As more cops arrived, things got quickly out of control. One of the cops took it upon himself to wheel away Elliot's stretcher and call EMS, and refused to listen to Tiffany when she yelled that he was the one responsible for everything.

  Since Zook just looked like trouble, he was immediately handcuffed and tossed into the back of a squad car. Sandy was wrapped in a scratchy wool blanket since her bikini top did little to fend off the cold, and she was given the front seat in a different squad car to warm up.

  Phin and Tiffany kept screaming for Zook to be let go and for Elliot to be arrested, so much so that the cops considered using pepper spray to get them under control. Fortunately for the two of them, Agents Wagner and Frost from the FBI showed up just before the chemical deterrents were to be deployed.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Wagner addressed the nearest set of uniformed cops when he got out of his car. “We need to seal off this entire campus. Set a black and white at each entrance. Nobody gets in or out.”

  Agent Wagner walked over to Phin. “Hello Phinnaeus. I see you made it out in one piece.”

  “And I see that you got my e-mail,” Phin replied.”

  “Yes — quite an incredible story those files told. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was all a big hoax.”

  “Of course it's not a hoax,” Tiffany said. “Just go down to the basement and you'll see.”

  “She's right,” Phin said. “There are dozens of them down there.”

  “Really?”

  Agent Frost stepped up. “Does it work?”

  “Don't ask me — ask him.” Phin pointed to Elliot Storm.

  “He's still alive?” Agent Wagner asked

  “In the flesh,” Tiffany said, “although he's a little worse for wear.”

  Elliot lay nearby on a stretcher. An EMT worked on the eye wound, mainly by covering it with gauze and wrapping a bandage around his head. There wasn't much else that the paramedics could do in the field.

  Agent Frost walked over to Elliot and shooed away the EMT.

  “I need you to come with me,” he said coldly. The agent grabbed the stretcher and wheeled it toward his car.

  “Agent Frost will handle him. So, tell me what happened,” Agent Wagner said.

  “Yeah, please,” Tiffany said.

  “I got an e-mail from you, Tiffany, when you were supposed to meet me at the movie theater.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Given the circumstances, apology accepted. I traced the e-mail back and found that it had come from somewhere on the Storm network, but not from you. I couldn't get any further, so I contacted Cecil.”

  Phin paused for a moment.

  “Cecil is dead, by the way.”

  Agent Wagner nodded. “I know. We just came from what's left of his house. There is a lot of damage, and not just from the fire.”

  “I suspect that was the work of the SpidR.”

  “Spider?”

  “I'll get to that in a minute. I went to Cecil's house and found it already on fire. I dragged him out, and he gave me a disk and a card key to get into the building.

  “So I came here, used a computer in the call center, penetrated the hidden network, went down to the basement, used the robotic spider to get Dr. Reinhart out of the way . . . ”

  “Wait — Dr. Klaus Reinhart?” Agent Wagner said. “The Nazi war criminal?”

  “That sounds like the guy. Anyway, he's kind of dead now.”

  Tiffany nodded. “Serves him right, too.”

  “Anyway,” Phin continued, “We all got out and came up here, then all the cops showed up, and you showed up, and here we are in the present.”

  “Alright, alright.” Agent Wagner stood up. “You can give me the longer version later. Right now, I need to get down to that basement.”

  Agent Frost came walking over holding the shoulder of the wounded Elliot Storm.

  “He's ready to take us down there,” Agent Frost said.

  Agent Wagner turned to Phin. “Good work today, son. Go get yourselves checked out by the EMTs and get out of here. Get some rest. We'll be in touch, I can assure you.”

  The two FBI agents led Elliot Storm back into the building.

  “So,” Tiffany said, “Did you think that e-mail was really from me?”

  “Would I have gone to such great lengths to prove it wasn't if I thought you'd really run off with Zook?”

  “Speaking of — check him out.”

  Zook had been released by the cops, and he appeared to be getting friendly with Sandy.

  “Good for him,” Phin said, “So, do you want to go back to my place?”

  “Yeah — I want a shower, and then I want to sleep for about a year.”

  “Deal.”

  The two started walking , arm in arm.

  “Hey Phin?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You kill Nazis good.”

  “Thanks.”

  Epilogue

  FROM KCUF NEWS 12 AUSTIN:

  An early morning fire at the now-closed headquarters for Storm Computer Corporation has destroyed the entire campus. The fire is being blamed on faulty wiring, and officials say they have no reason to suspect arson.

  The Storm facility was closed down two weeks ago following the gruesome discovery of some seventeen bodies in the basement of the building. While no suspects have been officially charged in the murders, several “persons of interest” have been named, including Storm founder Elliot Storm.

  Storm has been hospitalized due to an unrelated accident since the day the bodies were found. His lawyers have issued a statement saying that he “regrets the awful things that were done on his company's property, and he will cooperate in every way possible to bring the killer to justice.”

  None of the bodies have yet been identified, and with the facility now destroyed, officials say the case may never be solved.

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  “CAN I LOOK YET?” TIFFANY asked as she sat on Phinnaeus Webb's couch with her hands over her eyes.

  “Okay, you can look,” Phin said.

  “Holy shit,” Tiffany muttered.

  Sitting in the middle of the living room was Phin's payment for services rendered to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They were handling matters outside the courts, so Phin wouldn't have to testify, but he was allowed to keep one of the pieces of evidence they had collected.

  “SpidR, get me a beer.”

  “Executing orders, Phinnaeus.”

  “Please, call me Phin.”

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