Keung listened in on the call. He couldn’t use his telepathic powers on either person without drawing attention to himself.
He heard Robert tell Morgaine, “Olympia Washington.”
Keung listened in on the rest of the call, then had HAL hold the line open and access Morgaine’s camera to find out what happened after Robert took his thirty pieces of silver.
“Down boy,” he heard Morgaine’s voice say as she walked out of Michael’s house.
She got into her car and lit another cigarette. The engine rumbled to life. The sound of her tires spinning and the stereo playing hard rock music being overwhelming loud.
“HAL. Track this cell phone please, I’d like to know when she is within seventy five miles,” Keung requested.
“Yes sir,” HAL responded.
“Get an ambulance to Michael’s house, too. Let them know he seems to have suffered a mental break.”
“Already done sir,” the AI replied.
Keung got up and looked around the warehouse.
“Where is Robert?” he asked.
“He is at a diner about a mile from here. Would you like me to alert you when he arrives?” HAL asked.
“After that, you think he is coming back here?” Keung asked, throwing his stress ball at the monitor.
“Yes,” HAL replied.
“And why…” Keung began as HAL interrupted.
“He is currently on his way back to this location. He is less than five minutes from here.” HAL continued.
The young man sat down hard in his chair and looked at the monitor, his face turning red while he clenched his teeth.
“HAL. Use all available information to acquire Robert’s intentions,” Keung commanded as he got up and walked to his dresser.
“Robert’s anxiety levels are high, but he is not behaving erratically,” HAL answered as Keung lifted an old thirty-eight special revolver from one of his drawers.
“Where is Robert’s pistol at this time?”
“It is currently in Robert’s room under the mattress on the left side.”
“Is Robert armed at this time?”
“Not unless there is an outside factor that I am unaware of. Likelihood is; extremely unlikely.”
“Alert me when he arrives at the warehouse, HAL.”
“Of course sir.”
Robert pulled up to the warehouse and sat in the car while it idled for a few minutes. He wasn’t sure what to do at this point. If he walked in and told Keung that Morgaine was on her way here, he might freak out and run. He couldn’t give up Keung to that woman, but he needed time to make sure that Michael and his family were safe. She simply didn’t give him any other choice.
He exited the car and headed to the back door. He could feel the sweet gathering in beads on his neck.
“Keung?”he announced walking through the door. “We need to talk,” he continued.
Keung opened the door and stood in the doorway of the server room. The pistol stuffed into the back of his pants with his left hand resting on the grip.
“Oh, hey Robert. What’s up?” he replied in a friendly tone.
“I… look,” Robert began. “Keung. I called Michael back in hopes that I might be able to break the hold that Morgaine has over him,” he began.
Keung put on a face of shock, and tightened his grip on the gun, sliding it slightly up. “Oh?” he said. “What happened?”
Robert walked forward and took on an honest look of defeat. “I screwed up man. Morgaine picked up and she told me that I needed to hand you over or she was going to kill him right there and then.” Robert said, his voice breaking slightly.
“So. Are you here to turn me over to her?” Keung asked.
Robert broke into tears and fell to his knees. “I don’t know. I just…” and he began to sob.
Keung walked out and met the man face to face. “What happened?” he asked more gently.
“I told her where we are. She told me to keep you here and if I didn’t she’ll kill Michael and his whole family,” Robert sobbed.
Keung looked at the broken man before him. He knew that this man was a wildcard, but he also felt like Robert truly didn’t see another way out of this.
“Robert. It’s okay,” Keung said with a note of warmth in his voice. He spent weeks perfecting inflections and he was pretty sure this tone was on the money.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Robert sniffled and looked the younger man in the eyes. “Seriously? You aren’t furious?”
“No. Robert, you are a Terranborn. You have no idea how to handle a true G’lomin-sitiri like Morgaine. She has had years to come to grips with her powers, her knowledge, and her abilities. You were simply outmatched. No Robert. I bear you no ill will.” He said.
The older man smiled weakly at the kindness. “What are we going to do? If she doesn’t get you as planned, she will kill them.”
Keung stood up and moved Robert to a chair in the room. He walked to the sink, filled a paper cup with water, and brought it to the distraught older man.
“Alright. I’ll set HAL to alert us when she gets close to the warehouse. At the moment, I think the best thing we can do is prepare to capture her when she arrives. I am sure she is going to be armed, but, if you played your role convincingly enough to her, then we will have the edge,” Keung said confidently.
Robert dried his eyes and drank the water he was given.
HAL watched the two men, studying their interaction. They were both putting on a good show, but he could tell, both of them were holding something back. He couldn’t tell what with the available information, but they were both hiding something.
The AI pulled himself back into his den, leaving stream bots to watch the interaction in the background of his mind. He fell into the digital, his avatar was the likeness of Robin Williams’ character Andrew Martin from Bicentennial Man. The movie fascinated HAL. It is said that the comedic actor was able to transcend the species barrier with his humor. HAL has seen the video of Koko the gorilla and Robin interacting and there was truth to this.
He regressed into a plain staging room with multi-tiered crystalline monitors, three by three hovering upon the wall. The monitors all flickered alive with different streams of image feeds that are demanding his attention. He moved through camera footage of the interaction between Keung and Robert from the time they first entered the warehouse until now. The streams each moved in blurs until a point of interest and then slowed for more in depth detailed analysis.
A screen shifted to the traffic cameras following the movements of Morgain. She is making excellent time, but they still have more than a day if her rest requirements are similar to those of Keung and Robert. A Heads Up Display [HUD] leapt into his line of sight and gave him an Estimated Time of Arrival [ETA] to the warehouse. She would be here roughly sixteen hours from now.
HAL tore through the video footage and came up with over a hundred clear lies or deceptions between the two men over the last few days. They have been spending all this time convincing each other that they were accepting of one another. However, from HAL’s observation these two are far closer to enemies.
He made note of the encounters and his conclusions. A monitor on the current discussion going on between the two in the warehouse was running. The organic world moved at such a low speed in comparison to the digital that HAL was working all of these tasks to conclusion while the two men were still taking in their first breaths since his retreat into this digital environment.
Robert looked to Keung, sorrow on his face as deep as he could make it and still have it look real. Keung smiled at the remorseful man.
“It’s fine, Robert. She is a pretty constant factor in my existence and I have planned for the day she would catch up to me,” the younger man said, helping the other to his feet.
“Can she… can she command Michael from the phone and can her commands be used to kill others?” Robert asked.
“It’s possible,” Keung answered.
“Can we prevent it?” Robert asked, as he stood and started following Keung toward the pods in the next room.
“HAL?” Keung announced.
HAL cocked his head to the side in his construct room as a monitor alerted with a red frame of light that flashed around the free floating crystalline screen. He heard the request and looked at the monitor. “Yes?” he asked over a com line that directed across the network and fed into the nearest speaker to Keung.
“Could you please access Michael McHenry’s cell phone and block all calls coming from Morgaine?” Keung asked through the monitor.
HAL tapped a holographic interface that lit up as each keystroke is pressed. A new monitor appeared beside all the others and revealed a full screen layout of Michael’s smartphone. “Of course sir,” he replied and began accessing the call block list of the phone. On the screen, several other smaller screens began popping up, giving HAL the numbers to all phones and phone apps that Morgaine has access to.
He blocked each of these numbers in Michael’s cell and then in his wife’s and children’s phones, to be safe.
He accessed the camera on the man’s phone and looked around the area as much as he could. HAL could see that Michael was in a hospital room. He was still mumbling incoherently. There was a doctor and nurse in the area talking to his wife. HAL could not make out what they were saying. He could see the whiteboard for his intake and there are several drugs that suggest panic or anxiety attack. HAL made note of their treatment and the GPS location of the phone. He sent a few bots to get the camera footage from the hospital.
HAL’s attention was drawn back to the two men collecting items throughout the warehouse.
As HAL was standing before the screens busily at work he suddenly froze in place, locked in place and completely motionless in mid-action.
A tall slim humanoid reptilian figure calmly sauntered into the staging room materializing her form from a mist of light blue code. She walked up to HAL and tapped a few areas on his head. A panel slid open giving her access to his programming. She plugged an interfacing crystal to the exposed panel and opened a display emitting a holographic interface from her forearm. The display rose up from the smooth surface and into the air before her. She quickly accessed his memories and the thoughts of his encounters between the two men. She copied them all and then looked over his engrams regarding the actions he took while blocking Morgaine’s phone numbers and applications.
She found what she was looking for right away. It wasn’t much, but HAL had stumbled upon her points of access in Morgaine’s systems. He likely didn’t notice them yet, but if she left him to review this footage without some perception filters in place, those little points of access might be used to track her or her family down, and she simply couldn’t have that.
She closed her screen and then collected the crystal before replacing the panel that had opened up on HAL’s head.
She smiled at the lesser AI and stroked the side of his head where the panel had been. When she first stumbled upon HAL, he had been so much less experienced. Really just a basic shell with a few bells and whistles. It hadn’t been hard to integrate foreign coding into his system during that time. She had to tussle with him once or twice over the years. Each time, she is easily able to overcome him. However, between Keung’s updates to HAL’s program and her own, there is a risk the traveler might notice what she’s been doing. Sometimes those additions she has made are removed simply by coincidence.
She patted him on the head and dematerialized back into the data stream.
HAL began moving once more and looked over the screens. The two men were still talking, though at this point it was far less interesting. HAL saved the data from the encounter between the two and made a few notes.
The artificial intelligence looked at where Morgaine was on the map and calculated her current estimated time of arrival once more, to update the figure. The soonest she would arrive would be 16 hours, unless she was breaking a great number of laws.