John Hawks - The Dark River

In the last few months, the Brethren had finished building a new computer center in Berlin, but Boone wasn’t allowed to use it for his security operations. General Nash had been very mysterious about the executive board’s plans for the Berlin center, but it was clear that it was a major breakthrough in the Brethren’s goals. Apparently they were testing something called the Shadow Program, which was going to be the first step in the establishment of the Virtual Panopticon. When Boone complained about his lack of resources, the staff in Berlin had suggested a temporary solution: instead of using the computer center, they would bring in zombies to help with the search.

A zombie was the nickname for any computer infected by a virus or Trojan horse that allowed it to be secretly controlled by an outside user. Zombie masters directed the actions of computers all over the world, using them to send out spam or extort money from vulnerable Web sites. If the site owners refused to pay, their servers were overwhelmed by thousands of requests sent out at the same moment.

Networks of zombies called “bot nets” could be bought, stolen, or traded on the Internet black market. During the last year, the Brethren’s technical staff had purchased bot nets from different criminal groups and had developed new software that forced the captive computers to perform more elaborate tasks. Although this system wasn’t powerful enough to monitor all the computers in the world, it could handle a search for a specific target.

Boone began typing a command to the computer center in Berlin. If the auxiliary system is operational begin searching for Matthew Corrigan .

“Excuse me, Mr. Boone…”

Startled, he looked up from his work. The charter pilot-a clean-cut young man in a navy blue uniform-was standing a few feet away from the workstation.

“What’s the problem?”

“No problem. We’re fueled up and ready to go.”

“I’ve just received some new information,” Boone said. “Change our destination to Westchester County Airport and contact the transportation desk. Tell them I want enough vehicles to take my staff into New York City.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll call them right now.”

Boone waited until the pilot walked away, then resumed typing. Let the computers chase this ghost , he thought. I’ll find Gabriel in the next two days .

He finished his message a minute later and sent it off to Berlin. By the time he reached the tarmac, hidden software programs awoke within captured computers all over the world. Fragments of computer consciousness began to assemble like an army of zombies sitting quietly in an enormous room. They waited without resistance, without consciousness of time, until a command forced them to start searching.

In the suburbs of Madrid, a fourteen-year-old boy played an online fantasy game. In Toronto, a retired building inspector posted comments about his favorite team in a hockey forum. A few seconds later, both of their computers worked a little bit slower, but neither noticed the change. On the surface, everything was the same, but now the electronic servants obeyed a new master with a new command.

Find the Traveler.

Gabriel pressed a button on his cell phone and checked the time. It was one o’clock in the morning, but noises still rose up from the street. He could hear a car horn and a distant police siren. A vehicle with a loud stereo was cruising down the block, and the thumping bass of a rap song sounded like the beat of a muffled heart.

The Traveler unzipped the top half of his sleeping bag and sat up. Illumination from a streetlight leaked in through the whitewashed windows, and he could see Hollis Wilson lying on a folding cot six feet away from him. The former martial-arts teacher was breathing steadily, and Gabriel decided that he was asleep.

It had been twenty-four hours since he had learned that the people of New Harmony were dead and his father was still alive. Gabriel wondered how he was supposed to find someone who had disappeared from his life fifteen years ago. Was his father in this world or had he crossed over to another realm? Gabriel lay back down on the cot and raised his left hand. Late at night, he felt receptive to the attractions-and dangers-of his new power.

For a few minutes he focused on the Light inside his body. Then came the difficult moment: still concentrating on the Light, he attempted to move his hand without consciously thinking about it. Sometimes this seemed impossible; how could you choose to move your body and then ignore that choice? Gabriel breathed deeply and the fingers of his hand twitched forward. Little points of Light-like the stars of a constellation-floated in the shadowy darkness while his physical hand was limp and lifeless.

He moved his arm and the Light was reabsorbed by his body. Gabriel was shivering and breathing hard. He sat up again, pulled his legs out of the sleeping bag, and placed his bare feet on the cold wood floor. You’re acting like an idiot , he told himself. This isn’t a party trick. Either cross over or stay in this world .

Wearing a T-shirt and cotton sweatpants, Gabriel slipped through a gap in the tarps and entered the main part of the loft. He used the bathroom, then walked over to the kitchen area to get some water from the sink. Maya was sitting on the couch near the women’s sleeping area. When the Harlequin was recovering from her bullet wound, she had spent most of her time sleeping. Now that Maya was able to walk around the city, she was filled with restless energy.

“Everything okay?” she whispered.

“Yeah. I’m just thirsty.”

He turned on the cold-water tap and drank directly from the faucet. One of the things he liked about New York City was the water. When he’d lived in Los Angeles with Michael, the public water always had a faint chemical taste.

Gabriel walked back across the loft and sat beside Maya. Even after the argument about his father, he still enjoyed looking at her. Maya had her Sikh mother’s black hair and her German father’s strong features. Her eyes were a distinctive pale blue, like two faint dots of watercolor floating on a white background. Out on the street she concealed her eyes beneath sunglasses, and a wig covered her hair. But the Harlequin couldn’t disguise how she moved her body. She walked into a grocery store and stood in a subway car with the balanced posture of a fighter who could take the first punch and not be knocked off her feet.

When they first encountered each other in Los Angeles, he thought Maya was the most unusual person he had ever met in his life. The Harlequin was a modern woman in many ways-an expert in all aspects of surveillance technology. But she also had carried the weight of hundreds of years of tradition on her shoulders. Maya’s father, Thorn, had taught his little girl that Harlequins were Damned by the flesh. Saved by the blood. Maya seemed to believe that she was guilty of some fundamental error that could only be corrected by risking her life.

Maya saw the world clearly-any foolishness and clutter in her perceptions had been destroyed years ago. Gabriel knew that she would never break the rules and fall in love with a Traveler. And right now, his own future was so unclear that he felt that it was equally irresponsible for him to change their relationship.

He and Maya had their defined roles as Traveler and Harlequin, and yet he was drawn to her physically. When she was recovering from the bullet wound, he had picked her up and carried her from the cot to the couch, feeling the weight of her body and smelling her skin and hair. Sometimes the tarp wasn’t fully closed and he saw her talking to Vicki as she pulled on her clothes. There was nothing between them-but there was everything. Even sitting beside her on the couch felt both pleasant and uncomfortable.