Virtual Vandals

Chapter 14

Matt stared in shock. “Could it have been an accident?”

The moment the words were out of his lips, he knew the answer, and said as much. “No, this was no coincidence.”

“Not unless poor Gerry was the king of bad luck and poor timing,” Caitlin agreed. “And he wasn’t. This had to be some kind of hit.”

“It’s just that I would have expected some kind of virtual revenge,” Matt said. “Running somebody down with a car — that’s pretty cold.” He glanced at Caitlin. “And pretty final.”

“I know.” Caitlin shuddered. “I thought maybe he’d get a warning, or some kind of punishment.”

“I guess this guy never trained dogs,” Matt muttered.

Caitlin turned to him. “What?”

“It’s a line my uncle used to use. If you’re training a puppy and he piddles on the carpet, you don’t shoot him — that just wastes all the training that’s gone before.”

“But there are other puppies,” Caitlin said harshly. “Four of us, including you. Maybe Gerald made himself expendable right when a possible replacement came along. Or,” she choked out, “maybe we’ve all become expendable.”

Matt didn’t like the sound of that. “Whatever’s going on, it’s certainly gotten my attention,” he said. “But I need to know what’s happened before I can start to figure out what’s happening. Who’s pulling the strings on all this?”

Caitlin let out a long sigh. “All right, I’ll tell you. It’s a guy who used to go to school with us. Maybe you remember him — Rob Falk.”

Matt frowned. He had a fuzzy image of a tall, gangly kid, a sort of super-Dexter. High-water pants, shirt pocket bulging with pens, pencils, and computer stylos, wild hair always standing up in a cowlick, always working with the computers. Falk hadn’t been around in a while. Did he drop out or leave? There was something…Matt tried to reach for an elusive memory as Caitlin went on.

“Rob was — well, a nerd. He used to call himself a nerd to the nth power. But he got me through bonehead computing, so he was useful. At the time, I thought he might have had a crush on me.”

Caitlin laughed without any trace of humor. “To make a long story short, he did some work inside my system. What I didn’t know at the time was that he’d left a trapdoor. Then, sometime after he left Bradford, I found some program icons in my veeyar. There were some proxies, and a program that let me into all sorts of places through trapdoors. One day, after I’d scared the fertilizer out of one of my snooty classmates by turning her romance sim into a horror story, I came back to my system to find Rob waiting for me.

“He knew I’d been using his programs, and he had more to offer.” Caitlin shook her head. “It sounded so cool — getting together some kids who could be trusted, dropping trapdoors by day, coming back in disguise by night…I even helped recruit the guys. Gerry I just asked. With Luc and Serge, I planted trapdoors in their computers. They thought it was funny. So did I, at first.”

“Then it began to change?”

She nodded. “Rob had all these virtual tools, stuff you couldn’t buy. Incredible proxies. Sneaky ways into all kinds of systems. That program to make people feel a virtual punch. But he had chores for us, too. Places we had to go and drop trapdoors. At first it was easy — we could take care of our assignments at virtual parties. But he kept getting more and more demanding. He’d been on our case about McArdle for a couple of weeks.”

“What about the baseball game?”

“That was Gerry’s idea. He was getting a little antsy about being ordered around by a guy he considered a pipsqueak.”

Looks like the pipsqueak finally took him out, Matt thought. But he didn’t say anything as Caitlin went on.

“The Savage always hated baseball. He thought it would be a hoot to disrupt a major-league game. Rob went along to keep Gerry cooperative, even though it took a lot of special programming.” She looked even sadder. “Sometimes I think it was the Savage’s way of yelling for help — a very public commotion to get people’s attention. After that, though, things really began coming apart. Shooting those people — it upset me. But it just made the guys worse. And…well, you know the rest.”

Yeah, Matt thought, this is where I came in.

“I said I’d try to help you,” he said slowly. “But it’s not like I have a program all set for activation. We’re going to have to see how this plays out. You’d better be careful.”

Caitlin looked a little disappointed that he didn’t have a quick fix, but finally she nodded. “I’m just glad that there’s somebody I can talk to about all this.” Her voice grew sharp. “And you’d better be careful, too. I haven’t heard from Rob since he sent me into your system. I’ve got no idea what he intends to do about you.”

“That’s a nice thought,” Matt muttered. Then he said, “Go on home. If I come up with anything, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Smiling gratefully, Cat Corrigan headed back to her car.

Matt waved, but he wasn’t smiling as he watched the classic sports car recede into the distance. If Cat had talked about Rob Falk earlier, maybe Gerald Savage would be alive now.

Somberly, Matt walked back to his house. His mother smiled when he came in. “Is that the reason you decided not to go to your meeting? She seems like a nice girl. I don’t think I’ve met her before.”

Matt could feel his face turning red. He wanted to say, “She’s a Senator’s daughter in a lot of trouble and she’s only using me because she thinks I might be able to help her.”

Instead he shrugged and said, “She’s just a girl from school.”

His mom nodded. “Yeah. And I can remember when your father was just a boy from school.”

Matt had nothing to say to that, so he just retreated to his room. He sat in his computer-link chair, but he still didn’t want to enter his veeyar.

I’ve finally unmasked the Genius, he thought, but I’m afraid to go after him with my computer.

If Matt tried to go on-line and find out more about Rob Falk, it might warn the boy that he was on to him. But there was something he should be remembering….

Matt finally snapped his fingers. He had a bunch of stuff downloaded from school last year, just compressed and left in memory until he sorted through or erased it.

Maybe now it’s time to start sorting, Matt thought.

He ordered the computer to set up a holo-screen, and began bursting out documents. Here was the school’s virtual yearbook. Even though Rob Falk had left before the end of the year, his face was in the class pictures — they were shot early in the year. Matt silently shook his head as he zoomed in. Rob had obviously forgotten about picture day. He seemed to be a worse mess than Matt even remembered. His hair was all over the place, and there was a stain on the collar of his shirt.

Matt banished the image. It made Rob look like a clown, when he knew the guy was a cold-blooded murderer. He turned to another file. Here was the school newspaper. Sometimes Matt ran through it, but even if he didn’t, his school terminal was ordered to download, compress, and store the Bradford Bulletin.

Wait a minute! That was where Matt remembered Rob Falk’s name. Something in the paper….

Matt ordered his computer to burst out the newspaper files and scan them for Rob’s name. It took several long minutes, but the computer was still faster than Matt would have been.

An image formed on the holo-screen. It was a story about a memorial service for Marian Falk, Rob’s mother. She’d been crossing the street when she became the victim of a hit-and-run driver.

Matt had often read about people’s blood running cold. But this was the first time he’d actually felt the sensation. Police had caught up with the driver, who’d turned out to be a Middle-European diplomat, driving drunk. The man hadn’t been brought up on charges, however, because he’d claimed diplomatic immunity. He’d even run back to his home country, escaping scot-free.

That’s right, Matt remembered. Rob Falk’s father had been with the government, in the Customs Service. Ironically, his job had been to work with foreign diplomats about trade shipments entering and leaving the country.

There were no more references to Rob Falk in the newspaper, and Matt knew why. Mr. Falk had not done well in his job after the accident. Things must not have been too pleasant at home, either. Rob’s classwork had begun to suffer. David Gray had known the guy — he’d said that Rob had begun to lose himself in his computer. In the end, Mr. Falk had lost his job and Rob had lost his Bradford scholarship.

Matt turned off his computer. A kid who’d retreated into his computer, who had good reasons to hate diplomats. Now he’d come back out, recruited a bunch of diplo-brats to commit illegal acts…and maybe had run one of them down, just as his mother had been run down.

From the moment Matt had promised to help Cat Corrigan, he’d known there was only one way out. Oh, sure, turning Cat and her diplo-brat friends over to the proper authorities might officially rate as “help.” But that wasn’t what she’d asked for. No, Matt couldn’t bring himself to rat her out to Captain Winters. But he could catch her alone tomorrow and convince her to go to Net Force with the whole story. She and her friends would probably get off lightly, and Rob Falk might get some help.

The next day at school, Matt caught up with David Gray before they went in for Prep period. “You in touch with Rob Falk anymore?” he asked.

David looked at him, his eyebrows rising. “There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. No, I haven’t heard from him since he crashed and burned.”

Matt winced, and David looked embarrassed. “Guess that’s not the best way to put it, considering what happened to his mom and all,” David said.

“Do you think any of your friends might still be in touch with him?” Matt asked.

David shrugged. “Let’s go and find out.”

Matt knew a bit about computers, but David was really serious about them. And some of his pals could only be described as ultra-nerds. He led the way to a knot of sloppily dressed guys who seemed to be arguing in another language. It was something about computer logic, but Matt was lucky if he understood one word in five.

“Anybody been hearing from Rob Falk?” David asked.

The nerds stared at him as if he’d just beamed in from another planet.

“Falk,” David went on. “Used to go here last year. I think he was in the programming club.”

“Right, right,” one of the future scientists said. His hair was a wild mass of carrot-colored curls. “Couldn’t keep up anymore. Had to leave.”

“Family emergency,” a plump guy said.

Carrot Top gave him a lofty “as if that would mean anything” look. Then he pulled himself back to the real — boring — world. “I haven’t heard from him, neither voice nor e-mail.”

David looked around at the others, who shrugged.

“I’m afraid he wasn’t really…tight…with anyone,” the plump boy said.

“He liked to work off on his own,” Carrot Top said.

Matt didn’t dare look at David. Hearing that line from a group that looked like charter members of Dangerous Loners in Training, he was afraid he’d start to laugh.

The rest of the day wasn’t funny, though. Once again, Matt had no chance of getting next to Cat Corrigan. In fact, he saw her only once in the halls, and that was at a distance.

As Matt headed for the lunchroom, he saw Sandy Braxton hurrying up and waving.

What is it with this guy? Matt wondered irritably. Is he that afraid of failing history?

“Hey, Matt! See you right after lunch, right?”

Matt looked at him in bafflement.

“The Pickett’s Charge reenactment, remember?” the other boy said. “I cleared it with Dr. Fairlie yesterday. My dad’s friend says it actually shows Armistead getting hit and what happens afterwards. Great, huh?”

“Yeah. Great,” Matt echoed. Just at that moment, Cat Corrigan passed by, surrounded by what looked like an impenetrable wall of girlfriends.

Matt was going to ask Sandy to sit with them, hoping to slip a note to Cat, but the rich kid was already moving off. “I already dropped the datascrip off at the library,” he said. “See you there.”

With a defeated shrug, Matt went in to find something to eat.

Walking down the hallway after lunch, Matt had no idea what he’d just eaten. He’d thought it was soybean mock-meat, but it seemed to leave a fish-oil aftertaste in his mouth.

I really should try and remember what it is, he told himself, just so I can never order it again.

He arrived in the library, where Sandy Braxton sat eagerly awaiting him. Mr. Petracca, the librarian took attendance. Then Sandy went up and spoke quietly.

The librarian turned to his console, cued the holo-screen, and gave a couple of commands. “I have the authorization from Dr. Fairlie for Alexander Braxton and Matthew Hunter, and the datascrip you left for me.” Mr. Petracca cued the system and handed a printout to Sandy. “You can use Lab Six. Here’s your authorization code.”

Sandy marched out into the hall with a surprised Matt following. He’d expected to watch the reenactment in holo, probably with a pair of earphones. Somehow, Sandy had wangled a visit to one of the veeyar labs!

“These reenactment people must have plenty of bucks to create such a high-grade sim,” Matt said.

“Nothing but the best for the Virginia Volunteers,” Sandy assured him with a grin. “This will be great! We’ll be right in the center of the action!”

The veeyar labs were actually part of the library, overseen by Mr. Petracca’s console. They represented a serious investment, even for a ritzy school like Bradford. Automated doors hissed after the boys keyed in the code the librarian had given them. Lab Six was one of the smaller setups, with only four computer-link chairs. Matt realized with a slight shock that he’d recently been on the other side of the computer-link in this computer system. He and Caitlin had passed through the virtual chem lab on their way to Sean McArdle’s press conference.

A small but extremely expensive computer console faced the four chairs. Sandy slipped in the school’s datascrip, booting the computer for independent use. Then he reached into his pocket and came out with another datascrip. This one was decorated with the old Confederate flag, the stars and bars.

“What do you expect from an outfit called the Virginia Volunteers?” Sandy said with a grin. “Of course they play a Rebel unit!”

“You’re not going to play the whole fight, are you, Sandy?” Matt asked as the other boy went to insert the datascrip with the simulation. “The artillery barrage alone went on for two hours.”

Sandy shook his head. “Nah. We don’t have time for that. I’ve got it cued from where the Confederates fire their rifles and make the final charge.” He gestured to the computer-link chairs. “Plant it — we’re almost ready.”

Matt took a seat, and so did Sandy. “Computer, load Gettysburg simulation, from cue two-two-seven.”

Leaning back in the chair, Matt let the receptors tune into his implants. There was a slight feeling of disorientation, but it wasn’t as noticeable as the brain-buzz that took place with his unit at home.

That’s the mark of a really expensive system, he thought. He’d heard the best systems have no sensory threshold at all. You’re just there in the sim.

He closed his eyes and found himself on a grassy hillside, a perfect place for a picnic — if the artillery barrage hadn’t passed through. Some trees had branches torn away; others had their trunks shattered by incoming shot and shell. A line of old-fashioned cannon stood in front of a stone wall. Several guns had been hit, too. The heavy metal tubes of the cannon barrels had been torn from their wooden carriages.

Matt gulped slightly when he saw the still, bloody forms of the cannoneers lying beside their wrecked guns.

Man, he thought, they go all out on these reenactments.

There was only one thing wrong with the picture. It was still a picture, incredibly realistic, but nothing was moving. The infantry crouching behind the stone wall were motionless. The blue-clad soldiers didn’t even seem to breathe. The grass was absolutely still, not waving in the breeze.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Sandy Braxton’s voice called.

Matt turned, and his stomach did a flip-flop.

A long, ragged line of men in gray and brownish uniforms was coming up the hill, frozen in mid-step. Information that he’d read came swimming up from his memory. The battle line had been a mile long, composed of fifteen thousand men. There were a lot less of them now, after marching almost half a mile through a storm of death. They looked grim, slightly hunched over, as if they were walking into a stiff wind. Most of the men were bringing up their rifles to aim.

“Now I know how the little duck in the shooting gallery feels,” Matt joked. “I really think we’d be better off watching this from behind the Confederate lines.” He gestured toward the thousands of rifles. “Looks like it’s going to get a little noisy around here.”

“Suit yourself,” Sandy said, stepping through a gap in the line. “Armistead ought to be over here, leading the left wing.”

When they reached what looked like a good vantage point, Sandy clapped his hands over his ears. “Execute!” he yelled.

Matt quickly followed his example as the Confederate line suddenly leapt into life, aiming their weapons and firing.

The sound of the rifle fire wasn’t what Matt had expected. Instead of the sharp, metallic rap he was familiar with from the holos, these weapons gave off a bass fwoomp! accompanied by clouds of grayish powder smoke.

The objectives ahead disappeared in the powder-smoke haze, but the troops marched on.

“Watch carefully now,” Sandy advised. “This next part is going to hurt.”

Even as he spoke, one of soldiers in the line ahead suddenly whirled around and swung his musket. The rifle butt caught Sandy in the side of the head. He went down like a poleaxed steer.

Injured in veeyar!

Matt rushed to his classmate. But even as he moved, he saw that three soldiers were moving out of line to come toward him. Each of them had a bayonet on the end of his rifle barrel.

Taking a step back from Sandy, Matt watched the gleaming, foot-long lengths of steel swing to follow him.

He didn’t know how, but the Genius — Rob Falk — had been using the school’s systems to check up on Matt. When he saw Sandy and Matt’s names logged for the virtual lab, he’d set up this trap. Very slick. Very deadly.

This sim had just changed from the Battle of Gettysburg to the fight of Matt’s life!