The frigid night air wrapped around Agent Rushing’s body and the accompanying little tingles that washed over exposed skin left her feeling alive. Unlike the past hour where Justine had been roasting alive within the confines of the mobile lab’s climate-controlled environment. In that special hell, Jeffrey had preceded to spend the better part of a half an hour extolling the virtues of following orders.

  “What part of recon is not in your vocabulary, Agent Rushing?” Apparently, the director’s monumental ass chewing over the events in the bank had him in the mood to share his pain with the rest of the team unhampered for what seemed like forever.

  Which would have been bad enough by itself, but then she was forced to sit through Dr. Mosley’s incessant whining. Twenty minutes on how long everything was taking and how he thought the direction of the research was foolish and unproductive.

  “I don’t see that man doing anything but wasting our time.” The CERN scientist said while he rubbed the back of his neck with a damp wash cloth. “I mean. We were traipsing around those woods for the better part of two hours. And those deer…”

  “Traipsing,” she said under her breath in an exasperated tone in response to Mosley’s haunting words. Some people just can’t handle the sight of blood, she thought.

  Then, it was Barbara’s turn at the mic. Ten straight minutes of the frazzled mathematician not being able to understand why the computers Hoover had hijacked were falling offline so quickly. She was worried that their calculations could take weeks, not hours. That rant quickly deteriorated into a “pile on Foster” session where the only thing the three of them could decide to agree upon was that Mr. Evers was acting strange.

  Strange? She found that to be the only meaningful statement of the night.

  Weirdly, besides herself, the only person who didn’t complain was Malcolm. And unsurprisingly, he just sat in the corner of the base playing on his phone. Oblivious to cries for help, it was obvious that he didn’t care about any of their problems.

  What she couldn’t understand is why none of them seemed to care about Foster or his cool toys. Cool toys and steak.

  Yeah! Steak, that sounded so much better than this pity party. But not a large piece of steak, a petite one, with a baked potato hiding somewhere inside the Huddle House for her to devour. And when the meeting finally reached its anticlimactic end, Justine decided to follow through on that dream with a quick trip over to the Huddle House.

  Then, something almost eerily shifted her in the direction of the motel.

  It was during this unexpected walk that the last few days swam back and forth in her mind with nothing sticking to one place long enough to matter. Justine referred to this as daydreaming though her exes. And all of them, all three of them would call it her ‘zoning out’ time. And it could go on for hours without her even acknowledging their presence.

  Suddenly, she looked down to see a flurry of snowy footprints at the bottom of the hotel stairs. Who made them? Had Foster? Why was she here again?

  Zoning out even more, Justine began to climb the snow-covered stairs. Soon, she was standing on the second-floor landing. Why was she here again? Her brain ordered her body to turn right, and it obeyed. Step after step, room after room, until she reached the end of the causeway. Room 233.

  Foster’s room, she thought, and Foster’s toys.

  Frozen in place, but not from the cold, Justine debated on what to do next. Should she knock on his door or leave? Part of her wanted to leave, while another part wanted to tear open his satchel to see what other marvels lay within. Her grumbling stomach was about to win out against her curiosity when the door opened suddenly.

  “How long were you planning on standing out there before doing anything?” Foster poked his head outside far enough to look in both directions for anyone else. “You’re alone?”

  “Yes,” Slightly distracted, Justine wondered how long she had been standing there in the cold night air. Time to sidestep, she thought. “I was headed over to the diner, and I thought you might be hungry.”

  “Food?” Foster pulled his skeptical head back into the hotel room’s warmth. “Yeah, I could…”

  But before he could finish, a look of unbridled joy flashed across her eyes as they caught sight of the giant hologram hovering above his bed. He looked back into the room to acknowledge the obviousness of the situation. “I was working on something, but... wait a minute.” He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her a couple of steps inside. “You’re a woman. Maybe you could help me with something.”

  “What?” she stammered as Foster crawled back under the projection then slid over far enough for Justine to join him. Instead of taking the hint, the skeptical agent merely stood there in disbelief at the setup she was witnessing. “How in the world…”

  But before she could finish her question, Foster butted in with one of his own. “Could you look at this picture and tell me what you think? I’m afraid women’s hairstyles are a little bit out of my wheelhouse.”

  The light pouring forth from the tiny emitters obscured whatever picture he was talking about. But her imagination filled in enough to understand. She had a thought, then laughed. “If I had a dollar for every time some guy tried to get me in bed by projecting a hologram over it, I would be super rich.”

  “Well…?” Since reading her facial expressions was out of the question, Foster patiently waited under layers of projected information to see whether Justine’s distorted appearance would join him. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he just came out and asked.

  “Is it going to work, or am I going to have to give you a dollar?”

  Even with the mountain of medical bills piling up at her apartment, whoring was still frowned upon by the federal government. Besides, a dollar? Please. Maybe if he had offered her a few million dollars. And it’s not like she was worried about Foster doing anything inappropriate. Justine could easily handle someone twice his size.

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  So, feeling a bit awkward, Justine crawled into bed with a strange man.

  “What am I looking at?”

  The sheer number of windows scattered before her wide eyes was overwhelming. Her previous record for open windows was maybe eight, and that was on her tiny laptop. Now though, her attention was stretched in what seemed like a million different directions. Foster noticed this confusion and minimized everything besides the picture of the woman. Justine recognized her right away.

  “That’s the woman from the morgue. But she looks different.”

  “Yeah,” he readjusted the picture until only her hairstyle remained in focus. Then, he slid the window over and motioned for her to look. “Now I know I’ve been away for a while, but there’s just something off about the way she has it styled.” Foster tilted his head to the side like a lost puppy. “What do you think?”

  Justine tugged at her plain old ponytail. What did she know about hairstyles? The last time her hair was in anything other than a ponytail was prom night ten years ago. And even then, her older sister did all the work. “Beats me, maybe it was something from the wreck. I’ve seen some strange things at accident scenes.”

  “True, but if the accident caused this, I would expect more of a… mess.”

  “You mean besides all of her injuries?”

  “Yes, besides all her injuries,” he repeated sarcastically. “This one detail is going to bug me all night long. Hoover?” Foster took back the photo from Justine and began stripping away all his changes until only the original bruised, and battered visage remained. “Run a comprehensive search for hairstyles that match the victim’s. Go back at least seventy-five years.”

  “Seventy-five years?” The odd request caught Hoover’s attention. “That’s a lot of hair to comb through.

  “Funny.” Foster didn’t laugh. “Can I get an estimate of how long it would take?”

  “A search that complex will take me the better part of an hour. What are you going to do for an hour?”

  “An hour? That doesn’t sound like the most advanced computer program on the planet.”

  “What do you expect? I’m busy.” The picture of the woman slid sideways, soon followed by another window that flashed different hairstyles to compare against the victim’s. “Check back with me in an hour.”

  Defeated, he turned to find Justine still wonderstruck by the hologram floating above her body. What was the big deal, he wondered? It was just light reflecting at different wavelengths. It’s not like it was magic or anything. “You said something about dinner, Agent Rushing.”

  “Yes,” checking the corners of her mouth for signs of drool, Justine smiled apprehensively. “I was going to head over to the Huddle House when…”

  “When you found yourself on my doorstep.”

  Justine tried to respond, but being this close to a man she didn’t find repulsive was throwing her usually professional demeanor off. All she could muster was a goofy grin.

  “Well,” Foster slid off the bed, grabbed a small bag from his nightstand, and headed into the cramped motel bathroom. “It would seem I have an hour to kill. Just let me clean myself up, and we’ll go.”

  Alone, Justine returned to the hologram. Near the bottom left-hand corner, she noticed a window Foster hadn’t closed. It contained the picture of a man with tightly cropped hair and a scar over his right eye. At the bottom of the image was a single word: MOUSE.

  “Who’s Mouse?” She asked innocently.

  “Oh,” Foster felt a twinge of sadness. “Mouse was… is one of my friends from Wilson. Actually, he’s my best organic friend.”

  “Best friend? How could you have a best friend in a place like that? It’s not like you're crazy.” Not knowing him that well, she tempered her judgment. “At least as far as I can tell. How were you able to get along with him?”

  “Being crazy,” Foster made ironic air quotes, “Doesn’t preclude a person from being a friend to you when you desperately need one, Agent Rushing. Sure, Mouse had his faults. But he always made me laugh.” Foster turned off the faucet and dried his face with a cheap towel. “Listen to me. All I’ve done since you’ve met me is whine about being wrongfully imprisoned and being screwed over by my old boss. That song must be starting to grate on your nerves.”

  “Actually,” Justine maneuvered the tightly packed windows away from each other. “I’m surprised you don’t vent more often than you do.”

  “Who would listen? You’re only here because you like my holographic projector.”

  “That’s not the only reason,” Justine said, telling a half-truth. “There’s also the slinger.”

  “True,” he said with a slight chuckle. “But it’s the main one.”

  “Probably,” Justine started opening the other windows that included various EM studies, four articles on mass animal deaths and a hotel review for a beach resort on Hawaii’s big island. Any previous thoughts of snowboarding quickly switched to surfboards as she began to daydream of tanning in the tropical sun.

  “But also,” she placed a finger on an open video player. It displayed a paused episode of the television show Firefly. The mere sight of it caused her to giggle excitedly. “You have good taste in television.”

  “What was that?” Foster missed half of what she said over the sound of water splashing in the sink.

  “Nothing,” she quipped, pushing back her inner geek. “So how do I bring up a Google search bar?”

  A squelching sound from her earpiece made her neck twist around violently. Foster heard it too, so he popped his head out of the bathroom. “I wouldn’t mention Google around Hoover.”

  “Why?” Justine liked using Google.

  “Because Hoover is what you might call a conspiracy theorist. He thinks that all the major players in the software industry are corrupt. In turn, their programs are nothing more than an extension of their attempts to control information.”

  “Really?” Justine shot him a “that’s bullshit” look, but all Foster could do was shrug his shoulders apathetically. “Why does he think that?”

  “Because he’s Hoover.” Foster sighed then stepped back into the bathroom without saying anything else.

  After a few seconds of silence, Justine shouted, “Then how in the hell do you search on this thing?”

  Without a word from Foster, the tiles which had been hovering above her vanished instantly. In their stead, two simple search boxes faced one another like adversarial foes. One side had a simple pulsing question mark inside a blank text box. The other was a prevalent search engine by the name of BING.

  “I don’t get it.” Justine pressed BING and the appropriate search page loaded. “I can understand the generic bar given his paranoia. But why offer up BING as an alternative? Isn’t Microsoft part of the cabal?”

  “BING’s too stupid to be dangerous.”

  A minute later, Foster emerged from the bathroom dressed in jeans and a brown fleece hoodie. Wasting no time, he strolled toward the door and his jacket laying on a small table next to the window.

  Aware of something moving beyond her fulfilled dreams, Justine did not attempt to extricate herself from beneath the hologram. She could lay there forever under all those digital dreams.

  “I’m hungry,” he prodded, smiling at her enthusiasm. “Let’s eat.”

  She remained still.

  “Hoover,” the freshly dressed Foster poked his head under the hologram. He had that same stupid grin on his face that drove her a little mad. “Shut it down. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  The emitters responded to his command almost instantly. Soon, only the bathroom lights made anything in the room visible. Tucking his earpiece into his pocket, he extended his hand to help her off the bed. A little crestfallen, Justine took it. Soon, they stood motionlessly in the dark room, looking at each other, unsure of what to say next.

  “So,” Foster said, breaking the proverbial ice. “How did you want to spend that dollar?”