The Crystal Bridge (The Lost Shards Book 1) (15 page)

Chapter 16: Dragon Intervention

J
ames sat in the little café and frowned down at his coffee. He stirred it slowly without thought. It had long ago gone cold.

The café felt like something found on the main street of some tiny town, complete with the greasy food and sticky vinyl booths, but James wasn’t fooled. He’d always been a special person and had a hard time forgetting that he sat several floors beneath the desert, even if the windows gave a convincing view of a small sleepy town in Anywhere, USA.

He couldn’t forget that labs and white corridors surrounded him. He knew a five minute walk to the north would take him to the park, but the fluffy clouds and blue sky above it were illusions too. He also knew guards with guns blocked a dozen different doorways. These weren’t things he could forget anywhere or anytime, except in the BOCS.

James smiled. Despite the crazy world he now lived in, he felt happier than he’d ever been.
My projects are going well. My supervisor is beautiful, just about perfect, and showing plenty of interest in me. My best friend’s down here with me. And I can lose myself for hours in my work and then see real results.
Something in the back of his head kept whispering warnings. He tried his best to ignore that voice.

The bell above the door dinged. It wasn’t the most popular restaurant in the complex, but there were a few regulars. James looked up and smiled at Angie. He waved her over.

“I don’t know why you like this place so much, James.” She slid gracefully into the seat next to him and picked up a fry from his half eaten plate. “There’s this Italian place just around the corner with better atmosphere and better food…hmm…though these fries aren’t bad.”

James cocked an eyebrow at her, happy to have her next to him in the now much warmer booth, but also surprised that she’d not sat across from him as usual. She reached over and smoothed out his crooked eyebrow with the softest touch.

“Mike’s meeting us. Would you rather I sat by him?”

Her touch sent shivers down his spine, but he tried hard not to show that her briefest touch could have so much effect on him.

He smiled down at her warm, green eyes. “I think Mike would like that, actually.” His smile turned to a grin.

She gave him a mischievous grin back. “Maybe I should move then, if my presence is so uncomfortable.” She punched him lightly in the arm but made no motion to change seats. Instead she picked up another fry.

James breathed in, absorbing the after-rain scent of her skin along with lilac touches from some lotion, perfume, or shampoo.
Better than anything, that smell.

“Okay, fine. I guess I’ll put up with you…” James sighed heavily, “…this time.”

She turned her head sideways at him, raised a hand, and pointed a fry at his nose, menacingly. “Listen here, bud—” She had deadly looks when she wanted to, but James could see a twinkle of humor in her eyes.

The door dinged again and Mike stepped inside, shaking water from a light jacket in his arm. He carried with him an odd burnt smell, like fried electrical circuitry.

“Seriously! It rains every time I walk through that blasted park. We’re inside a building. Why can’t they just water it like normal people?” He ran a hand through his wet hair as he slid into the booth across from them. “Do we have to imitate the weather just because we can?”

James chimed in. “Yes, of course we do.” He used his best commercial voice. “Here at Omegaphil Laboratories we strive to do the impossible, the weird, and the annoying—because we can!”

All three laughed at his joke. James eyed the rapidly growing puddle where Mike leaned a moist elbow on the table. “Really, Mike, the rain isn’t too bad, if you don’t break the heart of one of the local weather girls.”

Angie’s head snapped up and she turned a shaking fry on Mike. “No. You didn’t?”

Mike snarled as he spoke. “This place is worse than a small town sometimes. Everyone in everyone else’s business.” He shook a soggy finger at James, flicking water everywhere. “Cindy was fun, but it was time to move on.”

Angie gasped. “You’ve only been dating for two weeks. I thought you were both having a lot of fun. You’re lucky she didn’t chase you through the park with lightning bolts. I would have.”

“Yes, but you’re more bitter than she is. And she did. One hit inches from me. I think I’m deaf in my left ear.” He stuck his finger in it and twisted then looked down when he saw Angie’s face. “Sorry Angie. I didn’t really mean you were more bitter.”

“It’s fine, Mike. We aren’t here to discuss our problems though, are we?”

James had given up on his cold coffee and now struggled with his thick shake. “Why is the straw so small? It’s like they want you to fail.” He looked up and froze with another question on his lips about why Angie might be bitter as he took in the intent looks on his friends’ faces.

“What? Why are you two staring at me? You told me—wait, what is this?” James didn’t like being out of the loop.

Angie looked at Mike and then back at James. “This is an intervention. We’re worried about you. You spend too much time working and you seem a little obsessed lately.”

James smirked. “Seriously? My boss is getting after me for working too much? I’m fine, really. I feel great and you two worry too much.”

Mike chimed in. “Yeah, James, you look great, but you still spend too much time in the BOCS. I should know. I held the record before you showed up and you’ve blown that out of the water. You need to spend some time out here with us.”

“What am I doing right now?” A hint of anger bled into his voice.

Angie broke back in. “Yeah, but that took some convincing. We don’t want to upset you or anything, just want you to know that we’re worried and we’re here for you.”

James shook his head. This wasn’t what he’d expected when he’d agreed to come here today.

Angie set a comforting hand on his knee. “James, we’d like to see you more. I’d like to see you more. These seventy hour work weeks aren’t healthy, no matter how well you feel. You aren’t sleeping. You aren’t eating. I don’t like it, not as your boss and not as your…friend.”

James couldn’t stay angry, not with Angie’s hand on his leg and her eyes pleading with him. He also hadn’t failed to notice the use of “I”.
She wants to see me more
.

“Maybe you’re right. I just want to get some of these things done and I have more ideas every day.”

“That’s great, James, but they’ll still get done, just more slowly. You’re stuck in the complex for the first year, but you aren’t stuck in the BOCS that whole year. Join me, us, for dinner now and again. Take a walk in the park. Enjoy what we have down here every now and again.” She looked up at him through her eyelashes, her green eyes pleading.

“Okay, okay. You’re both overly dramatic. You know that? Didn’t need to ambush me. I’ll spend more time with you, but do we have to invite Mike?”

“Hey!” Mike chuckled. “You need me. Count me out on those walks in the park though. Not safe for anyone near me. Stupid rain.”

Dr. Stephens flipped through the graphs that flickered in the air in front of him. “This isn’t possible. This all happened last night?”

The tech pulled up a multicolored screen showing a jagged line moving from the bottom left hand corner and climbing with peaks and valleys to the top right corner. “Yes sir. See here, the first spike began at 3:27am and the bandwidth climbed from there.” The young man pulled up another screen with a similar descending line. “And here, the access dropped off at 5:11am.”

“Do we know who did this and how? I thought our system couldn’t be hacked.” Stephens shook his head. He knew he’d have to tell Vander about the breach.
And that will be unpleasant.

“We know who, but we’ve no idea how, sir.” He shuffled through more graphs and images, each one flashing across the holo screens, until he found what he looked for. “The hacker accessed the neural network and only tampered with one person’s projects. No one logged in. No one was even inside the BOCS. We—”

Dr. Stephens cut in. “I thought the neural interface didn’t work outside the BOCS?”

The tech looked Dr. Stephens in the eyes, visibly shaken. “It doesn’t. We have sensors that keep tabs on where every employee is in the building. The system doesn’t allow access to the BOCS outside those white walls, but somehow he convinced the system that he was in two places at once. It’s amazing sir.”

Dr. Stephens leaned forward and squinted at one of the graphs. He asked the question even though he thought he already knew the answer. “Who?”

“Dr. Iverson, sir. We’ve been watching his brainwaves closely since the surgery and—it’ll be easier if I just show you.” He pulled up the graph that showed the initial access again and then slid another next to it that looked very similar, but with several different colored jagged lines running across the holo-page. “This is Dr. Iverson’s brainwaves at the same time. They’re off the charts. We have no idea how he did it, but by this,” a circle appeared around a section of green jagged line, “we know he was asleep at the time and dreaming.”

“So you’re saying that one of our employees managed to hack into the most complex and sophisticated computer system in the world and he did so while sleeping?”

“Yes sir. It’s a little unbelievable, but we’re certain it was him. There are tiny moments when the system shows him in the BOCS, fractions of seconds, but enough to convince the computer that he was inside. We have no idea how.”

Dr. Stephens sighed.
It’s our own doing, messing with his mind like we are.
“Thank you. Send all of this,” he waved at the graphs in the air, “to my mobile inbox. I guess I’m off to see Vander again.”

The tech winced at the name and smiled a sad, sympathetic smile while gathering the graphs, reports, and images in the air and bundling them together with a wave. A gesture from the screen to Dr. Stephens sent the bundle spiraling through the air, shrinking down as it flew until it disappeared into Dr. Stephens’ right pocket.

Still like that little trick.
Dr. Stephens smiled to himself as he walked out. The pocket visual had been his idea. The mobile inbox existed inside a chip inserted in his hand, but seeing files, photos, emails, and reports disappear into your hand had been disturbing.