Lost Girl by L. J. Kendall

Author:L. J. Kendall [Kendall, L. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: amnesia, assassin, fantasy, sci fi, science fiction, some adult situations, some humor, some violence, strong female lead
ISBN: 9781925430196
Publisher: L. J. Kendall
Published: 2020-12-10T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter 44

Nelson, the genius ‘hacker’ of the black ops group operating as the innocuous Accounts Department of the Bureau of Internal Development, squirmed. He felt crippled, separated from his supercomputer, not to mention Ghost. Why did he have to be physically present for the meeting with Mother, Father, and Eagle?

Mother’s glare was much harder to ignore when you were sitting in the room with her. Did this have something to do with the psychological assessment the Doc had warned him about?

Mother turned that withering gaze on him now. “The incident at the Tazman-Dungog clinic has Leeth’s hand prints all over it. Eighteen people dead and the hospital burned to the ground within hours of a girl of her general description entering. How can you have zero video of the incident? You of all people, Nelson?”

He wet his lips. “Someone hacked the systems in that whole area. The virus is kinda chill. A worm really, not like any I’ve ever-”

“Nelson. Brevity is virtue,” Mother interrupted.

“A virus took out the whole area, spread through half of Sacramento before the CDDC systems evolved a defense and stopped it.”

“The new counter-malware systems stopped it?” Eagle asked.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t like Leeth’s ‘alien’ hackers back in February. Totally different style.” At Eagle’s look, he added “Much more understandable. Just odd control flow: total use of recursion.”

“Created by a very mathematical mind, perhaps?”

“I guess. Ah, also, very single purpose. I get the feeling whoever wrote it wasn’t that interested in it, in doing more with it.”

“Was the clinic the point of infection?” Mother asked.

“I can’t tell, the fire trashed all the clinic’s systems. And before you ask, no, they’re another paranoid shady mob who don’t trust the cloud, even encrypted.”

“The girl described could have been Leeth, though,” Father said. “She could easily have cut and dyed her hair.”

“The grubby clothing is hardly her… style.” Mother paused, as if associating that word with Leeth caused her physical pain. “Nor is the cat the young woman insisted on keeping with her. She normally disdains them, out of loyalty to her childhood ‘friend’, the wardog. And why would Leeth go there for blood and MRI tests rather than call on us?”

“The girl wore no choker, either,” Father added.

The Doctor had not visibly reacted to that news, when he had heard it. Like all of them, he knew its significance. In anything except a combat situation, tampering with Leeth’s disguised comm unit would have had fatal consequences for her.

Eagle spoke for the first time. “You found no evidence that Dr Yamamoto or Crystal Winters attended any ‘nightclubs’ in the hours around her Link’s last network access, Nelson?”

“Nup.”

“Nor any response to any of your pings to her choker since, even during this latest incident?”

“Right.”

“If it is Leeth, the Doctor will let us know momentarily. He would have notified us if he’d needed to refresh the hermetic circle he created this morning for his attempt to find her. If the girl of the hospital attack is Leeth, she’s on the move, therefore unable to be magically screened.

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