“This is what passes at CERN for genius? No wonder people think they’ll end up destroying the world.”

  Pretending to ignore Hoover’s disparaging comments, Foster sat quietly in a corner of the mobile lab’s expansive command center, fiddling with his tablet. While Samuel, still fuming from the last couple hours, sat near a terminal on the opposite end of the room staring intently into a large monitor affixed to the wall.

  One of four, these state-of-the-art computer terminals comprised the “Wall of Information.” During field operations, this “Wall” was the primary source for agents to receive any mission-relevant data. Though right now, Samuel wasn’t going over background info or threat assessments. He was using it to go over a series of numbers.

  “Barbara,” his hoarse voice betrayed a growing frustration. “Is this the latest series of extrapolations? I mean, these cannot be the current ones. Are they the latest ones?” Samuel often repeated himself when he felt up against the wall. “Because they don’t look any different from the last set of numbers we were getting from the supercomputers.”

  Typing furiously on a keyboard two stations down from Samuel’s meltdown, Barbara was somehow in an even worse mood than her boss. “Those aren’t even a complete data set. Last night, I installed a program on the server that allows us to stream the data live. The mainframe back at Bleaker is nowhere near finished analyzing the new data sets.”

  “How much of the program cycle is complete?”

  “From what I see on my terminal…” She brought up an internal compiling program that consisted of a loading bar which represented the percentage of completion. After staring blankly at it for a second, Barbara smashed her palms down onto her keyboard with enough force to almost break it in two. “Ten percent.”

  “Ten percent?!” The ordinarily quiet mathematician’s eyes went wide with anger. “This thing has been running at full capacity for the last two hours, and it's only ten percent complete!”

  Both scientists slunk back into their plush, ergonomic chairs with more than slightly bruised egos.

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Foster snickered from his comfortable spot on the couch. “The data’s just too large to crunch.”

  Completely caught up with his own research, and only half paying attention to what they were doing, he tapped on the tablet’s screen until the desired information appeared. When it did, he smiled. “Are you sure you can trust him? After all, he does frequent that website of yours.”

  “Yes,” Hoover chirped through the earpiece where only Foster could hear him. “For this stuff, I do.”

  Samuel heard them talking again. Still smarting from Foster’s previous comment, he swiveled around in his chair. “If you don’t start letting us listen to what that little program of yours is saying, I swear to all that is holy. I am going to throw that tablet out of the nearest fucking window!”

  Barbara looked on without saying a word. She had heard from the other techs at Bleaker that Mosley only swore when he was really pissed off. From his current level of swearing, it was clear that Mosley had never been this upset in his life.

  “I guess the best and brightest is starting to feel a little outmatched. Isn’t he?” Hoover found the whole situation immensely amusing.

  On the other hand, Foster kept his eye on the clock. The forty-eight hours Fitz Hume had given him was ticking away much too quickly. “This is pointless.”

  He rose from his chair, and for the first time in an hour, laid his tablet down. Planting himself between Samuel and Barbara, Foster leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head. “You two can run the numbers all day long if you want, but there won’t be any difference in the response. Given our time constraints, there’s simply too much data for the program to sift through.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “But this is your program,” Barbara loudly countered. “How long did it take you last time to crack it?”

  Without thinking of the consequences, Foster blurted out, “Two weeks.”

  Samuel threw up his hands in defeat. They had been going at it like this for almost two days straight. The fragile decorum they had begun the mission with was now showing signs of strain.

  “Forty-eight hours. That’s what the director gave us...” he stopped himself, “…you to solve this little mystery, and we still don’t even have all the facts yet.”

  “Maybe that little program of yours can just do all the work by itself.” On the verge of tears, Barbara’s lack of sleep was beginning to turn into rage. “I’m getting a little sick and tired of feeling my way around in the dark, Mr. Evers.”

  Foster measured his next words very carefully.

  “I understand your frustrations. I do. But we have…” He looked up at the atomic clock hanging from the mobile lab’s pristine walls, “just under 35 hours to crack this nut. And the amount of time it would take me to bring you up to speed on what took me years to develop would put us in a hole so deep that authentic Chinese takeout would be just a couple of scoops of dirt away.” Foster patted Mosley on the shoulder. “No. I’m afraid that in this instance, I am just better off working alone.”

  “But that isn’t an option available to you, Mr. Evers.”

  Startled, the three scientists turned around to see Saunders and Rushing standing there stripping off their coats. Justine seemed happy, but the look on Saunders' face seemed to say it all. “What is an option is telling us what our next move is. And if you could do that right away, I would really appreciate it.”

  “No coffee, Agent Saunders?” Foster acted hurt. “I thought that was our special thing.”

  Saunder’s face never cracked a smile. On the other hand, Justine couldn’t help but giggle at Foster’s little comment, even if the meaning behind the joke wasn’t exactly clear. After they hung up their coats, both agents grabbed a couple of seats beside the long conference table.

  “How’s that artificial intelligence of yours doing?” Justine asked, catching Foster’s eye.

  “I don’t think there is one.” Samuel snorted out what sounded like “Please,” which was followed by a series of inaudible profanities no one wanted to decipher. “All he’s done this morning is tap on that gothic looking piece of shit tablet. He’s probably just playing Angry Birds.”

  “I helped beta test that piece of shit. I still don’t know what all the fuss is about.”

  Shaking his head at the absurdity of that statement, Foster lamented that his ragtag team had turned into a gaggle of crying babies. To make Fitz Hume’s deadline. They needed something to refocus on. “Everyone wants to meet my little program, huh?”

  Returning to where he had spent most of the morning, he reclaimed his tablet and placed it face up on top of the table. “Remember, this technology is still top secret... at least to me anyway.” With all eyes in the command center focused on him, he sat back down and got comfortable.

  “Hoover,” his voice rose confidently above their sour mood. “Let’s begin the briefing.”

  Simultaneously elsewhere in cyberspace:

  A series of posts from the website: EVERYONE’s OUT TO GET you.

  UNDER THE SKIN: I ran a series of x-rays on the subject we talked about, but I’ll be damned if I can come up with a good reason why this twenty-year-old girl would have a stainless-steel implant in her leg. No one’s manufactured these types of implants in over forty years.

  EYE ON YOU: Have you taken a sample of the metal and run tests on it? You know, to make sure it’s even what you think it is.

  UNDER THE SKIN: I don’t need to run any tests to be sure. I know what stainless steel looks like. Besides, taking a sample large enough for testing would be problematic.

  EYE ON YOU: Why?

  UNDER THE SKIN: Because… the subject is a Jane Doe. If by some freaking miracle we do eventually happen to locate her family, I’m not sure how happy they will be to find out I started cutting pieces out of their little baby just to satisfy my morbid curiosity.

  EYE ON YOU: You mean… our morbid curiosity. Don’t you?

  UNDER THE SKIN: Point taken.

  EYE ON YOU: What about the animal? Have you gotten the blood tests back yet?

  UNDER THE SKIN: No, and that’s another thing that’s pissing me off. The state lab always puts my shit at the bottom of their priority list. It doesn’t matter what it is. They think I’m just a fucking joke. But I don’t expect to find anything out of the ordinary. Deer die in the woods all the time.

  EYE ON YOU: But that wildlife guy you told me about brought it into you for a reason. What do you think it could be?

  UNDER THE SKIN: Beats the hell out of me. I just wish I knew what was going on with the girl. If I could verify what type of implant it is and when it was manufactured. I could answer a lot of our questions.

  EYE ON YOU: So what you’re saying is…you just need someone to give you the authority to proceed.

  UNDER THE SKIN: Yes, but that’s not going to happen. You know the problems I have with my boss. He thinks I’m being paranoid again.

  EYE ON YOU: You are being paranoid again. Why else do you think you visit this website?

  UNDER THE SKIN: LOL… motherfucker.

  EYE ON YOU: Let me see what I can do.

  UNDER THE SKIN: What do you mean “what you can do?”

  UNDER THE SKIN: Hello.

  UNDER THE SKIN: Are you still there?