Dale Brown - Puppet Master

He also liked having the building entirely to himself for a few hours.

The no-work policy was well known and absolute, so when he heard what sounded like footsteps below as he walked through the third-floor hallway, he dismissed the sound at first, thinking it just ambient echo of his own steps. But then the noise grew louder, and he thought he heard a whisper.

“Who is that?” he said aloud. “What’s going on?”

There was no answer.

Foolish. Massina walked to the security station near the elevator and tapped the screen. Everyone’s tag was coded, and the system kept track of everyone in the building. So it was a simple matter of typing a command to identify who was here.

It was him. With two guests.

“But I’m on the third floor, and they’re on the first,” Massina told the machine.

He clicked the rescan command, unsure whether he had typed a wrong command. But the system repeated the information. It was showing two Louis Massinas were in the building.

Which ought to have been an impossibility.

Massina lost himself in the problem for a moment. He was sure duplicate employees would set off an alarm within the system; both sets of IDs would be locked down and an alert would be sounded. But his ID superseded the system: he could go anywhere at any time, without being blocked.

The error must have to do with the way that part of the program was written — my ID overrides everything. And it has never been tested for two Louis Massinas.

The simplest things were always what tripped you up.

Massina got hold of himself. The first thing to do was to turn off his own transponder. That could only be done from one of the two master stations — one at the security control downstairs, and the other in his office.

Upstairs. Quickly.

“Someone is upstairs,” Stratowich told his two accomplices. “I thought the place was empty Sundays. Didn’t that article make a deal of that? The one Medved gave us?”

Neither man answered. Medved had supplied both men and the IDs, along with the schematic and information on the place’s layouts and security procedures. Clearly the intelligence had its limitations.

“Go take care of whoever it is,” Stratowich told the men. “I’ll get the robot thing.”

Fearing that the elevator would give him away, Massina decided to take the stairs to his office, moving as quickly as he dared without resorting to running, fearing it would make too much noise.

The door to the stairwell slipped from his hands as he went to shut it; it wasn’t a slam, but to him it sounded almost as loud as a firecracker.

It was too late to do anything about it. He bolted up the stairs, two at a time, running now for all he was worth until he reached the final landing. Nearly out of breath, he put his hand on the door and pulled it open, trying as hard as he could to be quiet. He squeezed out into the hall and this time held the door as it closed, holding it back so it wouldn’t slam.

The elevator was moving upward.

Massina let go of the door handle and bolted toward his office.

He heard the elevator opening behind him as he reached the outer door. He took his ID from his pocket and tapped it against the reader.

“Hey!” yelled one of the men who’d been in the elevator. “Hey!”

The door opened. Massina threw himself inside, then reached to hit the auto-close switch.

Something whizzed past as the door closed.

A bullet.

Jesus.

He ran to his office and shut the door. This was just a regular door, with an old-fashioned lock — something he guessed wouldn’t withstand a bullet.

How long would the outer door hold? Or the glass front of the office?

Stratowich cursed as soon as he heard the gunshots. His simple job was suddenly extremely complicated.

Get the robot thing and get the hell out!

He tapped the card on the door reader, but the door didn’t open. Instead, an alarm began to sound in the building.

What the hell?

“Shots fired, floor four,” said a mechanical voice. “Lockdown in effect.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” he cursed. “Where the hell are the damn stairs?”

Once it detected the gunshots through audio analysis, the security system was designed to shut all of the doors and contact the police. The labs were locked as a precaution. These could not be opened except by coded overrides; simply swatting the card reader wouldn’t do — a PIN number had to be spoken and the voice recognized. The elevator also shut down, and an alarm periodically rang through the building.

But any temptation to believe he was safe inside his office died in the fusillade of bullets that flew through the door at chest level. Massina’s insistence that his employees be able to see him was now a serious liability — the glass at the front of the office was thick, but not so thick that it couldn’t be shattered, as the two thugs in the hall were working to demonstrate.

Massina felt trapped by his own errors — the glass at the front of his office, the security flaw — who to blame for those but himself?

Kick yourself in the butt later. Right now, you need a way out.

Johnny Givens ran for about an hour, until finally he had had enough. Not that he was tired — in fact, he felt strong, ridiculously strong. He just didn’t feel like running anymore.

But he didn’t feel like going home either, so he started walking instead. He walked around the Common and Faneuil Hall, though it was closed. He walked to the Aquarium — also closed. He walked to the North End, where the Italian restaurants were still doing a decent business. Though dressed in his tracksuit, he knew he could be served at Lou’s Basement, a small place generally skipped by tourists and run by a man friendly to cops; the hostess got Johnny a place at the bar and he sat for a while, eating homemade ravioli and watching the end of the Red Sox game, a victory in Seattle. By the time the game was over, the place was ready to close. Johnny left a good tip and went out walking again, this time with more purpose — he was going home to bed.

All this energy was a by-product of the drugs he’d been given. The therapist and the doctors had made it clear what to expect. Throttle back, they said, or eventually you’re going to crash.

So it was time to go home, even though he didn’t feel like sleeping.

Though by now it was close to 1:00 a.m., this part of the city was still lively, and as he wound his way in the direction of the T — no sense walking all the way home — he found himself in the middle of a small crowd. He started listening to the different conversations. A couple was talking about parents coming for a visit; another sounded desperate to have children. A feeling of estrangement fell over him; the people were talking about things he had always wanted — marriage, family — but now thought he could never have.

The doctors claimed there was no physical reason he couldn’t have children, let alone a girlfriend or wife. But who would want a cripple? Who would want a man with mechanical legs, no matter how good they were? They might look real in the street; they might even carry him farther and faster than his “originals”—the marathon might be an interesting test — but he took them off when he got into bed.

He began feeling sorry for himself. That was a bad trap, something he knew he had to avoid, yet he couldn’t help it. It was as if a cloud settled on his head, blocking out the positive feelings he’d felt earlier. Maybe it was the drugs wearing down — he ought to have taken his nightly dosage by now.