Virtual Vandals nfe-1 Read online

  Turning to resume his unfinished business, the Savage made the kind of noise lions do after being cheated out of a kill. “You let him get away!” he screamed, his voice thick with blood-lust.

  Fists clenched, he advanced on Matt and Caitlin.

  “Trashing a veeyar is one thing!” Matt shouted. “Killing someone is another!”

  “However it happened, he’s out now,” Luc Valery said. He and Serge had finally stopped their vandalism at Savage’s scream and run to join the others. “Security will be here any second.”

  Serge didn’t even comment on that. His cartoon cowboy proxy was simply gone, like a blown-out candle flame.

  The thought of consequences finally penetrated Savage’s fury. “Right,” he finally said. Then he jutted a finger at Matt. “But I’m not done with you.”

  The British boy vanished; then Luc winked out.

  Cat grabbed Matt’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He let Caitlin do the piloting, wondering if they’d wind up back at Bradford’s chem lab again. Instead, they popped up in another library.

  “Library of Congress,” Cat explained. “Even at this time of night — or morning, they get a lot of queries.”

  “Saves on the phone bill,” Matt said.

  They bounced through a series of heavily trafficked Net nodes until they arrived at last at Casa Corrigan.

  Matt noticed, however, that Cat landed them on the virtual lawn outside the replica of Mount Vernon, not in her own veeyar. Somewhere along the way, she’d shed her Madame Dracula proxy. It was a teenaged girl who faced him — pretty, disheveled…and very scared.

  “Thanks for doing what you did,” Caitlin said. “I couldn’t even think — and there was no way I could have moved that chunk of wood by myself.” She shuddered. “The Savage really lost it this time. I was afraid he was going to squish that guy like an overripe tomato.”

  “Look, Savage isn’t the boss of this gang, is he?” Matt asked.

  Caitlin shook her head. “He’s just the biggest of us — and the loudest.”

  “I wouldn’t think he had the brains to find his way out of a paper bag — unless he tore it.” Matt gave the girl a long, hard look. “And from the way he talks about computers, he doesn’t have the programming smarts to create the bag of tricks you guys have been using. But then, we already know about that. Savage blabbed about him — it had to be a him, didn’t it? Old Gerry called him a ‘dangerous sort of chap’ before he realized what he was doing.”

  He looked into Caitlin’s eyes. “The big brain is also your boss, isn’t he, Cat? The one who really calls the shots?”

  “Sometimes,” Caitlin admitted. “We get a bunch of labels — trapdoors. Some we’re supposed to drop on certain kids or places. The rest are for us to use any way we like.”

  “So you visit them later and trash ’em.”

  She shook her head. “Some we’re not supposed to. The Irish kid — McArdle — we weren’t supposed to go back there.”

  “And that thing in the baseball stadium…that wasn’t just a trapdoor.”

  “When he told us — when I first heard, I thought it would be a joke. Just shooting down a bunch of simulated baseball players, right?” Caitlin looked sick. “But then people in the stands began falling. I never realized how many people came to those games in holo.”

  “So is this ‘he’ you’re talking about as dangerous as Savage says?” Matt asked. “If he is, why don’t you just bail out?”

  His questions seemed to snap Caitlin out of her cooperative mood. “Yes, he is,” she replied, both angry and scared. Then she sounded sad. “And, no, I can’t.”

  A second later, she’d disappeared inside the imitation Mount Vernon.

  Matt knew better than to try following her. If the security systems didn’t get him, the systems crash would. And if he was going to end up back home, he might as well get there without a pounding headache.

  He bounced out of the Corrigans’ virtual estate, taking yet another complicated route until he finally opened his eyes back in his own room. But Matt didn’t get out of his computer-link chair. He just sat there, his chin resting on his clasped hands.

  He’d done a couple of good things this night — identifying the virtual vandals, shaking them up, and learning a little bit about the still-shadowy figure who provided their technology — and their orders. On the minus side, he hadn’t found out about the programming trick that allowed the vandals to hurt people in veeyar. He’d let himself be pressured into going along on a trashing expedition where a victim had almost gotten killed.

  Okay, Matt thought, by being there, I probably managed to save Sean McArdle. But if I hadn’t pushed Gerry the Savage, we might never have ended up hacking into that virtual consulate in the first place.

  Last and most worrying, he’d turned himself into a definite blip on the Genius’s enemy-detection scanners. Before, he’d just been a wannabe trying to find a place with the in-crowd. Now, however, he’d definitely rocked the boat, identifying the vandals, causing Gerald Savage to disobey the Genius’s orders. And he’d seen the vandals in action.

  None of those things would make the Genius very happy. And the Genius, to quote the words of a big and nasty bully, was “a dangerous sort of chap.”

  Dangerous, and full of computer smarts, Matt thought, scowling. It’s definitely time for me to retreat to my secret identity — Matt Hunter, everyday student.

  It was hard enough being an everyday student with only a couple of hours’ worth of sleep. Matt dragged himself through his morning classes. He was lucky that his first after-lunch time slot was a Library period.

  Even so, he was yawning as he began to go over some of the historical material Sandy Braxton had given him. The two officers they were researching, Armistead and Hancock, had served together on several posts out West before the Civil War had started. When the fighting began, they had quickly risen to responsible commands.

  Matt began to show a little interest as he kept reading. He was fascinated to see how different leadership had been during the Civil War. Officers, even generals, led charges from the front ranks rather than managing their troops from the rear.

  Or hiding completely, like the Genius, while others took all the risks.

  But 170 years ago, officers believed that their men had to be inspired. It was an idea from centuries earlier, when smoothbore muskets couldn’t be aimed more than ninety yards. But in the Civil War, the troops were firing rifles accurate to 660 yards. Gallant gestures by officers turned them into targets.

  Brigadier Armistead had tried a morale-boosting measure on the fatal day of July 3, 1863. He’d placed his officer’s hat on the tip of his sword, holding it high over his head so his troops would know where “the old man” was. Certainly, his men had kept following, even though they’d taken horrifying casualties. Only a handful had made it to the top of Cemetery Ridge, and they’d faced point-blank fire. Armistead had gone down, still at the front of the attack.

  At least Matt was awake for the rest of the day. But he was fading again as he headed for home on the autobus. His folks weren’t home, so he hit the rack for a couple of hours. He was up in time for dinner, although his father couldn’t help teasing him a little.

  “In my day, we’d be up late at night hitting the books. What do you call it when you’re plugged into your computer until two in the morning?”

  “Could be worse,” Mom said with a smile. “He might have been sitting in front of an old-fashioned computer monitor all that time.”

  “I remember that.” Dad laughed. “We’d call it ‘getting a CRT tan’—computer nerds used to turn that delicate shade of green.”

  Matt just kept his eyes on his plate, shoving the food in. He cleaned the plates, and finally headed back up to his room.

  Better start hitting some of that classwork, he told himself.

  Sinking into the upholstery of his computer-link chair, he began to tune his implants to the receptor equipment in the headr
est. A high-pitched buzzing rose in his ears as he closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, he was in his personal veeyar, facing the familiar starry sky with the marble slab floating in midair. A second later, though, he faced a very unexpected addition.

  Caitlin Corrigan popped into existence, lying across the marble slab like a swimsuit model, one elbow cocked so she could rest her head on her hand.

  “Better close your mouth, Matt,” she teased. “Unless you’re trying to catch virtual flies.”

  He did his best to make a comeback. “It — it’s just that I don’t recall leaving an icon quite so large on my workspace.”

  “You were using enough of them last night.” She giggled, toying with the icons across the slab. “This is your Mr. Sticks proxy, your telecommunications program, and the awful things you did to my friendly little protocol.” Cat’s eyebrows rose as she poked at her altered earring.

  Matt wished for a proxy right now. He just hoped his face wasn’t giving away his total shock at Caitlin’s familiarity with his personal veeyar. She must have been in and around his veeyar for a while, to figure out all the programs he had set out.

  She kept her cover-girl pose, even though she was wearing an old sweater and beat-up jeans. “I don’t know why you’re so surprised to see me. You did just about challenge us to track you down.”

  Then she shook her head, trying to sound stern but somehow coming across as flirty. “For a whiz, I thought you’d be a lot more serious about using your computer. It’s — how long since we got out of school? And you haven’t even logged in! Not even a voice command! I’d hate to tell you how long I’ve been sitting around, waiting for you to turn up.”

  “Not all of that time in my computer, I hope,” Matt said, still trying to come to grips with this bolt from the blue.

  Cat wagged a finger at him. “Don’t think the whole world revolves around you,” she scolded with a grin. “I had a couple of other things to do.”

  She cocked her head, twirling the ends of her hair around one finger. “You know, I really wondered what you looked like behind that stick proxy.” Caitlin’s grin grew wider. “I’m glad it’s you, even though I have to say I’m surprised.”

  “Surprised?” Matt echoed.

  She shrugged, swinging up so that she was sitting on the slab. Her hands clasped over her right knee, while her left foot dangled off into the star-filled void.

  “I always thought you were one of the good boys,” she said, her voice becoming even more flirtatious.

  “Oh, you mean poor but honest?” Matt teased back.

  The girl giggled, nodding her head. “You got it! I never thought an upstanding junior citizen like you would ever want to hang with us naughty rich kids.”

  Matt remembered a line Leif Anderson had used about the wealthy and bored. “Skill and sneakiness can beat mere money any day.”

  Cat laughed, but Matt noticed that her pose was suddenly a lot more tense.

  What did I say? he wondered. Why is she worried all of a sudden?

  Then it hit him. It wasn’t Caitlin’s computer skill that had allowed her to find him. Her sudden appearance — and her flirty act, too — was probably a setup to distract him.

  But Matt’s thoughtless words had cut through her little act. They’d reminded her of someone else whose skill and sneakiness had let him dominate the rich kids who made up the virtual vandals.

  It’s the Genius who tracked you down, a cold voice whispered in Matt’s skull. Now he knows who you are.

  A chill ran down his back, but he did his best to keep up the byplay with Caitlin.

  “I hope you think this little visit was worthwhile. I mean, it must have taken you a lot of effort.”

  Cat relaxed a little, until she caught the barbed hook hidden in the last four words. Her breath caught a little, and for just a second, he could see the fear in her eyes.

  “Enjoy it while you can,” she said lightly. “If I see you tomorrow in school, I’ll have to pretend I don’t know you.” She leaned forward. “Remember, none of us are supposed to be meeting…out there.”

  She made a little gesture, indicating something beyond the starry skies of Matt’s veeyar — the real world.

  “‘In the flesh’ was the way you put it the last time,” Matt reminded her. “Does this mean I’ve finally become a member of the team?”

  Cat still kept her sexy pose, but her eyes grew sharper. “I couldn’t tell you that — but better safe than sorry.”

  “Okay,” Matt sighed. “I guess I’ll just have to get used to being just another Dexter.”

  For a second, he shocked a genuine smile out of Caitlin. But her eyes were still intent as her finger went back to twirling her hair. “’Fraid so. Till I see you again….”

  She vanished — but just before she did, something dropped among the icons on the marble slab.

  Cat Corrigan had left him another earring.

  Chapter 13

  For long minutes after Cat Corrigan cut out of his veeyar, Matt simply sat still, shattered bits of thoughts running through his mind. Outwardly, he paid no attention at all to the earring lying on his workspace. Had Cat’s visit been even more of a setup than he thought? Had the Genius not only used her to distract Matt from who had tracked him down — but also to create a trap?

  By picking up that earring, Matt could be setting off any kind of program.

  The Genius knows how to hurt people in veeyar. The warning echoed through Matt’s confusion. Touching that icon was about as safe as pulling the pin from a live grenade.

  But….

  Cat hadn’t looked like a girl about to let someone get blown up. He’d seen through her flirting to recognize who was behind her. Wouldn’t he have seen if she’d meant to do him in?

  Right, he told himself sarcastically. You know all about how pretty, rich girls react when they’re backed into a corner.

  But….

  Cat hadn’t wanted Gerry Savage to kill Sean McArdle. She’d begged Matt to stop him — and more importantly, she’d helped Matt get Savage off the other boy.

  Sure, his interior arguer replied. She also sprayed Camden Yards with virtual machine-gun bullets — hitting Leif.

  Yes, she’d admitted doing that — but she’d also said she hadn’t realized how many people were there in holo, vulnerable to her virtual bullets.

  The earring could be a trick, a death trap…or a message. Matt had to find out.

  But the first thing he did was cut his computer connection. Jumping out of the computer-link chair, he headed down the hall. His parents were in the living room, watching a holo-drama — something about cops and robbers.

  “Something up, son?” Mr. Hunter asked.

  Matt shook his head. “Nope. Just wanted to stretch a little.”

  He went back to his room, opened the window, and slipped out.

  Good thing I’ve got a separate farecard with some money on it, he thought.

  Maybe he was being completely paranoid. A telephone call could have gotten what he needed — even a quick telecommunications visit through the Net.

  But Matt wasn’t about to trust himself to the webwork of circuitry most people used. Not after someone had invaded his personal system, sending Cat Corrigan into his own veeyar. Matt had always thought he had pretty good security for his computer — but not the megabucks type that rich people could surround themselves with, or the heavy-duty government programs that Net Force used.

  Against the Genius, his security had been about as strong as wet toilet paper. Before Matt could use his system again, he wanted to check for bugs, tracers, trapdoors, and tricks.

  Since the Genius knew who Matt was, he could tap the Hunters’ phone as well as Matt’s computer. He might even be able to snag Matt’s credit-card transactions out of computer systems.

  Matt might indeed simply be paranoid about a guy who seemed to be working on a bargain-store antique. But he couldn’t be sure what the Genius had in the way of resources — or what trick
s his opponent might have up his sleeve.

  No, Matt thought as he walked from the Metro station to the building where David Gray lived. It’s better — safer — to do this face-to-face.

  Luckily, David was the one who answered when Matt buzzed from the downstairs lobby. “David? It’s Matt. I’ve got trouble, and I hope you can help me.”

  “Come on up,” David replied.

  Matt was ready the moment David opened his apartment door. “The guy behind the virtual vandals got into my computer,” he whispered.

  “Sure, Matt,” David said loudly. “It’s in my room.” He led the way into the living room, where Mrs. Gray was watching a hologram comedy. “Hello, Matt,” she said.

  “Matt needs something for school,” David said. “It will only take a minute.”

  As they headed down the hallway, David spoke in a lower voice. “You’re lucky my dad is working the night shift this month, so you’ve only got my mom to deal with.” David’s father was a detective on the D.C. police force. “He’d have taken you to interrogation city, wanting to know why we couldn’t do whatever it was in veeyar.” He grinned. “Plus, it’s her favorite show—Old Friends.”

  They reached the room that David shared with his two younger brothers, Tommy and James. Even with bunk beds, the place always seemed crowded — the kids’ toys fighting for space with David’s computer. Right now, the younger boys were playing a loud shoot-’em-up game on part of David’s system.

  “Out!” David said, pointing to the door. “We need the computer for a little while.”

  “Awwwww!” ten-year-old Tommy complained. “Right when I finally got to the next level!”

  “Computer!” David ordered. “Game override. Save present simulation. Store as TOMMYTOPSCORE dot GAME.”

  The bright holographic image that the boys had been playing on dimmed away. “Game saved,” the computer announced.

  “Hey!” Tommy said. “I didn’t know you could do that!”

  “You can’t,” David told his youngest brother. “I can. Come back and finish when we’re done.”