Chapter 15

"If you want Rick and Lauren to go to California alone to find and confront Victor, turn to page 77. If you want Rick and Lauren to stay in New York and help Lisa and Courtney, turn to page 105."

Lauren looked at me, amused. "Choose Your Own Adventure?" she asked.

"No, thanks, already did that," I quipped.

She giggled. "Yes, you did, didn't you?" She rolled over to the side of the bed, propping her face up on her elbows to stare at me as I finished up my notes.

"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" I asked her. "Stop distracting me with that beauty of yours and let me finish." She stuck her tongue out at me and grinned.

I had decided to continue the note-taking I had done at the end of my conversation with Brock and try to capture everything I remembered about the scene in the computer room, the players, and anything else that might be relevant, and then use that as the basis for a decision about what to try next. Unfortunately, I wasn't getting anywhere with the latter.

Brock had been a tremendous resource. I explained how I had heard the voice commands work, and relayed Victor's claim that they were just a reading screen prompts. He had muttered something about finding the right IO node and doing a full-text index of something or other.

Rightly or wrongly, I was frazzled enough by the events of the past two days, and especially the episode wherein I convinced a man to leap to his death (a really bad man, I kept reminding myself) that I kept waving the waitress over for more drinks. When Brock finally gave me the setup I could use to track commands given to the computer, and study the commands that were already set up, I was suitably impressed, but also somewhat squiffed. He had tried to explain what he thought the analysis queues were for, and I had dutifully made notes, but I was at the point where I simply wasn't taking much in. I extracted his promise of utter silence and a further promise not to do anything on the computer that would actually change anything, and said we'd talk further tomorrow.

My head cleared a bit as I was walking by towards the elevators, and I had decided to take a quick evening stroll out before heading back to the rooms. I was uneasily curious to see if I could figure out where the body had landed, but my architectural and spatial senses weren't up to the task. There was an alley, but it was clear of everything except garbage bins, although I didn't venture all the way in to complete the recon. I returned to the hotel a bit more sober, both emotionally and physically, and headed upstairs to find Lauren. She got Courtney collected as well, and I briefly summarized what we had done so far. I didn't go into details about how we were getting computer access, just that we were able to review the computer commands and believed this would help us plan. Lisa, despite our occasional efforts to include her, had kept her face to the wall, curled up in a tight ball under the bed covers on one of the beds. It was only when I was concluding my talk about our hope that we could still use the device to reverse what had been done that I detected some movement from her, a brief gesture that could have been her raising her head under the covers. But it passed, and she resumed her prone position without saying a word.

I had thanked Lauren for staying with Lisa thus far and then asked Courtney if she'd be willing to take the overnight shift here, which she was. I cautioned them all not to open the door for anyone unless it was one of us. I didn't think we'd see another visitor tonight; it seemed beyond the bounds of reason that this guy had an army of thugs at his disposal... but it didn't hurt to take elementary precautions.

Lauren had, of course, ended up in my room. I suppose it was silly to keep paying for a third room that no one was using, but it was considerably past check-out time and so the issue was mooted. And if the truth be told, I think there were still valid reasons to refrain from trumpeting our budding relationship from the rooftops.

So she was stretched out on the bed watching me write, and I was just about empty of everything I could remember. It annoyed me that there were so many questions and so few answers, but I guessed I had to live with that for now. At least we had taken solid steps tonight to start accumulating answers. It also annoyed me that Victor had been so far ahead of the game. He knew that Lauren had escaped, he knew that he needed her to come back, and he was trapped in a body that was not his and if he rebooted his machine he'd die. So he baited the trap. He used his disadvantage to his advantage — got himself arrested, and waited for Lauren to find him. And despite my seeming advantage and the trickery with the GHB, he did not get hysterical or flustered in the slightest. He simply bided his time and maneuvered himself into exactly the situation he wanted. The only thing he failed to plan for was someone shooting at the machinery itself, and I had a funny feeling that he wouldn't make that mistake again.

If this were a movie, and I were a super 007-type agent, I'd have been nodding grudgingly about what a worthy opponent I was facing. And I had no objections to admitting admiration when I faced someone smarter than I was; plenty of times in the courtroom I'd been beaten by superior skill and I could honestly say I hated the loss but admired the winner's skill in delivering it.

But that was because the winner was playing by the same ethical rules I was. Here I faced an opponent whose goal was odious, evil. I had no admiration for him, just the appreciation I would have for a deadly snake or an invisible undertow: I acknowledged the lethality and didn't underestimate it. But the most respected poisonous snake in the world is still just a poisonous snake.

I looked down at my yellow pad to see I had written the words poisonous snake and drawn a box around them. I shivered a bit. I could walk away from all of this, I thought, but for that amazingly endearing and lovely girl on the bed looking at me. It was the thought of losing her that made me most aware of how much I wanted her: to help her, yes, but also to be there for her, to be good for her, to be with her.

I sighed. "Death is the mother of beauty," I said. Lauren looked questioningly at me as I got up from the desk and made sure the door was locked, then killed the light and got into bed, the room lit now by only by the city's ambient light. "It's from a poem," I said as I got settled. "The possibility of losing something is what makes us realize its value."

She nodded. "I know. Wallace Stevens. Sunday Morning. And he's right, it does." She stared at the ceiling for a long moment, then said tremulously, "I miss my family, Rick."

"I can only imagine," I said. "I wish I could fix that for you now. I can't. I'm trying, hon."

She turned and snuggled into me. "It's not just... I miss little things. I was on tour, but I would call them every night. My mom was going to meet me in Philadelphia. I miss her. I miss being able to talk to my sister about everything, about... about finding a guy I love. She was always telling me I should go out with guys more, and I was always telling her they bored me or they were stupid. I want so much to talk to her and tell her that I found a guy, a great guy, a guy who is brave and kind and tosses quotes into casual conversation from musicals and poems and classical literature. This is a guy I can barely keep up with, let alone be bored by. And it just... sucks... that just when I find that guy... I lose her."

"Lauren, I..." I was stuck. I didn't want to promise her that it would all be ok, because I thought fixing all this was a long shot. I wanted to tell her that no matter how much of a long shot it was, I'd fight to make it happen. But I didn't know how to say it without it coming out wrong, so I didn't try. "I know," I settled for. "I know."

She rolled on top of me suddenly, almost fiercely. "What will happen with us?" she asked me.

"Lauren, I don't know," I answered honestly. "I don't think we can walk away from this now, even if we wanted to. And I don't know if we can win. And if we win... even if that happens, we have challenges to face." I reached up and touched her cheek gently. "But whatever happens, we'll see it through together as best we can. Whatever end awaits us, awaits us both."