Stan
I woke up alone that morning, which wasn't unusual. Stansy typically slept for about five hours, woke with the sun, ate a modest breakfast, and headed immediately to her worksite. Me? I needed at least seven hours to function well.
I dressed and said "hello" to Stanford on the way to the kitchen, and to Gena, who was also just getting started with her day, nibbling on a piece of toast behind her terminal. I had just settled into my desk, sipping a steaming mug of our precious coffee, looking forward to a day of coding and testing, when the front door opened and immediately slammed shut. I looked up from my terminal just as Norm stalked in. Stanford and Gena looked at him, then at me, so I shrugged at them. Norm scanned the room quickly, his gaze falling on me as he prowled. "Is Stansy here?"
I stood and moved to intercept him. "I thought she was working with you today."
Norm shook his head. "No, she didn't show up to work. She's not at the lab or anywhere in the big house. No one over there has seen her since last night."
"I saw her this morning." We both looked over at Stanford, another early riser, and he pointed to my terminal. "She logged on for a few minutes. Then she took off out of here." He frowned suddenly. "I think she took the cell phone with her. She didn't say why. She didn't even look at me, for that matter."
I checked my desk and saw that, as described, the charging stand was empty. I went through the desk drawers just to be sure, but the phone was nowhere to be found. "Why the hell would she take it? And where could she have gone?"
Norm pulled his phone from his pocket and waved it at me. "Why don't we call her and find out?" He flipped it open, dialed and set it on my desk, turning on the speaker. It rang twice before picking up.
"Yeah." Stansy's voice. She sounded almost bored, and I could hear a lot of ambient noise coming through the phone.
Norm crossed his arms, glaring at the phone. "Stansy, where the hell are you? Are you driving?"
She sighed. "Yeah, I'm about ten miles from Salem, going north on I-5."
"You're what?!" He looked at me in confusion, and I frowned, shaking my head to indicate that I had no idea. "Why?"
"I'm bringing my son home. He sent me an email and he's been..." She sighed again. "Look, Chris needs me, and I'm going to him. That's all you need to know."
Norm began to reply but I spoke over him, keeping my voice calm and controlled. "You know you can't do that, Stansy. That's a major breach of our security."
"I don't give a fuck about security, Stan. I'm not leaving my son on the streets for one minute longer."
Norm leaned over the phone, "Don't do this, Stansy. Just come back and we'll--" But the line had already gone dead. "Shit!"
He dialed her again, but this time, the call went straight to voicemail. "Goddammit!" he spat, raising the phone as though he were going to throw it, but he visibly controlled himself and lowered his arm. I glanced over at Stanford, who had stopped working and stared at Norm, mouth agape. He saw my look and deliberately turned back to his work.
"At least she doesn't have the genemod markers anymore," I said. "She'll breeze through any checkpoint."
Norm frowned. "Yeah, and that's something else to ponder. She was really insistent about getting that procedure done as soon as possible. I wonder how long she's been planning this."
"Well, she never said anything to me, if that's what you're wondering."
"Which car did she take?" Gena asked suddenly, swiveling in her chair to face Norm. She flashed a grin. "I've got an idea."
Five minutes later, after a quick run over to the big house, Norm unlatched the barn door and swung it back. The old box truck we had brought from Sasha's storage unit was there, but the spot next to it, where Tilly's truck would normally have been parked, was empty.
"Ha, I knew it!" Gena said triumphantly. "She took the Chevy. We can track her."
"And how are we going to do that?" Norm asked.
Gena smiled. "Easy. I rigged Tilly's truck with a wireless transceiver and router so we have a mobile test node for the mesh network. It activates when you start the car, and it'll run until you shut it down or it drains the batteries. There's a dedicated bank of them in the truck bed that recharges from the alternator. All we have to do is get within a few hundred meters and I'll be able to pick up the signal. We can pick her up from further away, if she's in a rural area, and even further if we can get somewhere high up."
"Whoa, hold on," I said. "You want to go after her? Are we sure that's a good idea?"
Norm shifted on his feet, considering. "Well, you also had your genemod markers removed. Technically, Gena isn't illegal because she's a revert."
"I've gone through checkpoints before," Gena affirmed. "Though that was a long time ago."
"I'm still on the FBI's radar," Norm continued, "but I've evaded detection this long. I'd say if anyone goes, it should be the three of us. Either way, we need to make a decision quickly, if we're going to catch Stansy. She's got more than a half-hour head start on us."
I considered Norm's words. The risks were manageable, and we needed to get a handle on this situation. "Alright," I said. "I'm in. When do we leave?"
"Right now," Norm said. "We take the big truck and we catch up to her, or at least catch her coming back." He started moving towards the box truck as he said it, already taking out a set of keys from his pocket.
"Oh," Gena said, frowning.
"What?" Norm and I said together.
"Well, I won't be able to detect the Chevy's network node just yet. I need to put together a portable wireless unit for that."
Norm glanced at his watch. "I thought this was something you had ready. Stansy will be in Portland in less than an hour. How long is this gonna take?"
Gena chewed at her lip. "Um, I guess I can grab the equipment I need from the west house and put it together on the way. I'll have to ride in the back."
"Now that's more like it," Norm said, though I detected a hint of sarcasm in his tone. He resumed striding towards the truck and spoke without turning back. "So get your asses in gear, both of you."
Norm drove over the gravel road a bit faster than I was comfortable with, both in terms of the outright speed and the way the old truck's suspension bottomed out on the pot holes. We pulled up to the house and Gena leapt from the truck, disappearing inside. About five minutes later, she reappeared with Stanford, the two of them carrying various tools and electrical components, including a spare car battery. She had even thought of bringing some portable lighting--smart, since the truck had only a single, dim bulb at the front of the bay.
"Hope you can work under pressure, sis'," Norm said through his open window as she hurried past. "You've only got an hour and a half to Portland, less if I can help it."
"You worry about driving," she retorted. "I'll worry about the engineering."
A minute later, Gena and her gear were loaded in the back and we were on the road. Stanford would let everyone know where we had gone and why. If they needed to contact us, there were two more cell phones, one with Nock and one in the lab.
On the way North, Norm and I tried to figure out the most likely places Stansy might have gone. One idea we had was to just pull over at an overpass and wait for her to return, but there were a few problems with that. There were two major highways coming out of Portland going south, and we couldn't be sure which one she would take. We also had no idea how long we might be waiting there and no way of knowing if we somehow missed her.
Instead, we pieced together what we knew to come up with the most likely options for meeting up with her son. I knew from my conversations with Stansy that there was a homeless shelter that would sometimes feed him, and there was a library where he would go to access a terminal for email.
"That probably doesn't narrow it down a whole lot," Norm said. "There has to be several homeless shelters in town, libraries, too. He could easily roam a few miles between them."
I nodded and turned to stare out at the countryside rushing by, wracking my brain. The memory came to me abruptly. "There'll be a bridge, one that spans a river. Stansy said he had been sleeping under a bridge, and that it got cold and damp most nights."
Norm nodded. "Okay, now we're talking. There's two rivers in Portland, the Willamette and the Columbia." He flipped open his phone and dialed.
Nock picked up a few seconds later. "What's up, boss?"
"Hey, I need you to look for a homeless shelter, a library, and a bridge over a river in the Portland metro area, all within, say, a mile or two of each other. Can you do that?"
"Already on it," Nock said, the clacking of keys just audible on our end. "Lots of libraries, some of them pretty small, though."
"Make sure they have public terminals," I put in.
"Got it. That might pare it down a bit. This bridge for a highway or a surface street?"
Norm frowned. "Not likely a highway. Needs to be somewhere that people can easily get beneath it for shelter."
Another burst of clacking keys. "Okay, I think I got it. Most likely place is downtown. You've got the central branch of the Multnomah County Library, four different shelters nearby, and about nine bridges along a stretch of the Willamette."
"That's our destination, then," Norm said. "Thanks, man."
