Nanowhere | Page 9

tell.
Two thousand four hundred and seventeen seconds since two hundred pounds of trooper landed on him, grinding his face into the dining room rug and shattering his favorite coffee mug.
Straff stopped when he recognized the man coming at him, but the trooper behind him shoved him a few steps further.
Dr. Richard Greenleigh met him outside Building Blue, a twelve-story block of pitted concrete with rows of identical window slits and blue front doors. There was an eight-meter deep crater where Building Orange once stood. That was Straff's doing as well.
Straff met Greenleigh's dark deep-set eyes and stayed there, glaring for a few seconds, until Greenleigh opened his mouth into a wide smile of perfect white teeth and aimed them at him like a weapons array.
Greenleigh was a pale rickety man in a faithful black suit, meticulously unwrinkled and clean, perfectly barbered and manicured. Like a leaky septic tank beneath soft green meadow folds, an unhealthy cleanliness seeped from his pores and gave off a weird sweet smell, a corrupt bundling of a pharmaceutical researcher and an undertaker.
"Caught up with you at last, Dr. Straff," said Greenleigh, pleasant, dignified and slow, a tone that made it clear that there was no reason to be angry. He waved off the jumptroopers.
"How?" Straff's voice was raspy and defensive.
"Fairly easily, I'm afraid. Some sort of watchdog process monitors sat image data for manipulation," said Greenleigh in an I-expected-a-little-bit-more-from-you tone. "It happens. High level covering up, that sort of thing. When the process flagged a half kilometer sized patch of forest in coastal New Hampshire, no one thought much of it. When it flagged it after a second pass, with the same manip signature, that's when they got excited. When this piece of forest identically matched a like sized piece 1.2 klicks away, it aroused my attention. The idiots in data security have spent the last seventy-two hours trying to figure out how someone manip'd the same data twice, right under their noses. While I understood the anomaly at once. The data hadn't changed. The forest had. And there's only one man on earth with the power to control nature on this scale and to that level of detail. I knew I had you."
Straff dropped his eyes to the sidewalk, his breathing quickening.
"Come on, Ernest. It'll be like old times. I have one of your old acquaintances over in Red. Time for a reunion, I think. I let her out of her cage, and had her fixed up for you."
Straff's head snapped up. "Who?"
"The moment I knew my team had you, I sent for June Trimony."
"Trimony?" Straff whispered, a little confused. He had to remind himself that he was no longer on Greenleigh's side. Trimony had always been an enemy, hacking into Rost systems, the leader of her own intel-gathering org, with her own agents in the field feeding her data. "I thought she died in the overthrow."
"You're not the only one with secrets, Ernest." Greenleigh smiled. "Let's go inside and talk." The chairman of Rost Institute indicated the building behind him with a precise sweep of his hand. "I used to call you Ernest. Do you mind?" He paused for an answer, and then shrugged. "Or would you prefer one of the names the public has pinned to you?"
Ernest Straff forgot to count. His lungs betrayed him. He coughed and tried to catch his breath, stuttering numbers in the thousands. Dr. Greenleigh's thin, gentle laugh hit him and followed him to his knees.


3
A Little Poetry

THREE JUNIOR-GRADE LYCEUM students stood at the edge of the North Hampton skate park, their eyes fixed on the unexpectedly delightful sight.
Alex looked up from the bottom of the bowl, frowning. He recognized them.
"Someone's let the children out at night," giggled Zane Jeffins creepily.
"No chaperons?" Drew Waldren's face lit up with all the glee of a bully about to tug the wings off insects. She swung her tiny purse around so that she could pull something metallic from it.
"And with the haunted forest so close," said the oldest of the three, Randal Revard, in distaste. "Really," he continued as if emerging from a long, speechless disbelief. "Your parents ought to be beaten senseless for negligence." He huffed. "Two innocent children left all alone after sunset, in a cruel world. Have they learned nothing from the Purists?"
"Shoaler doesn't got a father," put in the other one, Zane.
"Twice the punishment's in order then."
"Nighty night, Shoaler."
Alex wondered why they hadn't yet mentioned Kaffia. She was better known than he'd ever been. Probably the NDIS myth working on their fears. (Everyone said Kaffia was June Trimony reborn. So, killing her might not work. For all they knew she'd already hacked that whole transmigration of the soul thing, and could come back to get them).
They were all a year or two older, not much taller