Germ

"It's a full-volume encryption. Everything it needs to know it's a computer file—the hibernation files, swap files, the resource fork, all of it—is locked up. It's a pretty recent development in data security. Your computer doesn't know what to do with it, so it just dies."

She felt a wave of relief. "Can you do anything with it?"

"Probably. I'll need to send you an app that'll tell your computer not to attempt mounting it. Then you can send it to me."

"Bonsai, could you go somewhere else to receive it?"

"Are you talking about the tap the feds have on my Tl?"

"You know about that?"

"What kind of hacker would I be if I didn't? I got a second Tl nobody knows about."

"I should have known."

"You got Wi-Fi?"

"With a trace-interlock."

"Nice." A trace-interlock was like an antenna for wireless Internet connectivity. It pulled in Wi-Fi signals within a mile radius and ran a quick decryption on any firewalls it encountered, granting the user access without passwords. It was built into the SATD software.

He gave her a web address where they would meet online to swap files. He also issued her four pass phrases, which she would need to communicate with him online, one pass phrase at a time.

"I need to get back to my room and reboot," she said.

"My site has a VOIP function," he said. "You know VOIP? Voice Over Internet Protocol?"

"I know it."

"We can talk that way. It's secure."

Walking back to the room, she thought about Bonsai. He'd been a seventeen-year-old high school geek in Denver when he'd hacked into the Strategic Air Defense computers at NORAD's facility inside Cheyenne Mountain. He had done it only to see if he could, but Air Force brass, NSA goons, and the FBI came down hard on him. Before he'd fallen victim to a merciless judicial system, however, Donnelley had fought for his rehabilitation, pointing out the value of the kid's incredible computer savvy to national law enforcement. Prosecutors had reluctantly agreed, and Bonsai became a freelance computer hacker for the U.S. government.

The skinny kid with flaming acne and long oily hair had proved to possess one of the sharpest security minds in cyberspace, going on to make a six-figure income showing corporations the chinks in their firewalls—a computer system's version of a vault door. Now twenty-one, he had a wife and a newborn boy—Baby Bonz, Goody had called him, though his name was Christopher. Bonsai credited Goody for his freedom. Julia knew he had always wanted to repay the favor. News of his death must have cut deep.

Repositioned on the bed, Bonsai's web site on the screen, Julia waited for him to send her the application she needed. She started the transfer of the encrypted memory chip data. A bar graph appeared, indicating that the transfer would take a long time, maybe hours. Bosai's Tl line was fast, but Julia's Wi-Fi was slow; transfers always moved at the slowest speed in the conduit.

"Julia?" His voice came over the laptop's speakers.

"Hmm."

"Go to bed. I'm going too. I'll get on it as soon as I get the whole thing."

"Thanks, Bonsai."

She watched the bar graph. Progress was marked by a blue bar moving from left to right. She stared at it for five minutes, and it barely moved.

It might have locked up, she thought. I should call Bonsai, see what he thinks . . .

But then she was asleep.

thirty-four

Eternal night.

The morgue was as black for the shadowy figure gliding through its halls as it was for the bodies tucked coldly into the endless rows of metal cabinets. If human eyes had caught a glimpse of the fleeting shadow, they would look again and see nothing. It moved quickly along the edge of the corridor. Silent. Aware.

No amount of Clorox could eliminate the smell of death from the air. The figure inhaled the odor, discerned the metallic blood scent from the pungency of flesh.

A door opened, seemingly of its own accord. The shadow slipped through.

A fine beam of light erupted from the shadow, glinted off the lipped edges of an aluminum table. It flashed up to the far wall, which was sectioned into three-foot squares, each with its own stainless steel handle and dangling tag, a copy of the one tied to the big toe of the corpse inside.

A hand formed out of the shadow. Clad in black leather, it snatched the tags, turning them toward the light: Willows, R. . . . Jeffreys, M. . . . John Doe.

The hand stopped as the shadow contemplated the non-name: John Doe.

It lowered to the handle. A metal latch clicked, airtight seals ruptured, steel rollers slid on metal. A white sheet billowed up, drifted down.

The drawer slammed shut. The shadow hand continued past the names. Then stopped again.

Another John Doe.

Another click. Another tissshhh of escaping air. More rollers. The flutter of a sheet as the beam fixed on a face, pale and frozen as statuary.

The beam clicked off. The shadow, blacker than the dark air around it, engulfed the body. When it retreated, the body was gone.