Seizure Read online

  Kent held up his hands. "Wait, I'm sorry, I don't understand this. I thought you were supposed to be treating my son."

  "Yes, I am, Mister Reynolds," Georgia said in a gentler tone of voice. "That's why I brought you here. The only way I can help your son is by helping you. Children learn how to deal with life from their parents. When his mother died, your son looked to you to see how to handle the pain. What he learned was to ignore it. So he did. He's learned to avoid his emotions instead of facing up to them. Now what Troy needs to do is unlearn that. The best way would be if he could see you face your grief, accept your wife's death. I'm hoping that Troy will do the same by example."

  Kent staring at the intricate patterns in the Oriental carpet that seemed to writhe and swirl, forming monsters and dragons before his eyes.

  "I'm afraid you yourself have a serious problem, Mister Reynolds. One that you need to deal with if you hope to help your son. And I think it would do you some good as well. I know of a widowers group that meets twice a week. I could give you some information--"

  Kent finally looked up at her. She was reaching for some brochures on a table nearby, but stopped when he spoke. "I'm sorry. I don't understand how you came to this conclusion, but you're wrong. I have accepted my wife's death. I accept it every second, every minute, every hour of the day."

  Georgia slowly leaned back into her chair. Her voice was firmer now. "No. That's your problem. You haven't accepted your wife's death. You only think you have."

  Kent found himself rising to his feet. "I'm sorry, doctor. I have to go. I have a very...important meeting tomorrow morning, and I still have some work to finish up. Troy, we're leaving."

  Georgia stood up, holding out a hand to stop him. "Mister Reynolds, I think--"

  "I'm sorry, but I really should go. Very important work to do. Thanks for your help. I'll be sure Troy comes to see you next week. I really should go--"

  Georgia let her hand fall back down to her side, her face settling into a worn expression. "Very well, Mister Reynolds. Thank you for stopping by."

  "Thank you. Really. I appreciate it. Sorry--"

  Troy emerged from the kitchen, tipping the contents of a glass of soda into his mouth. Kent handed him his coat and guided him to the door with a hand on his back.

  Troy shuffled ahead of him, looking back over his shoulder. "What's goin' on?"

  "I just remembered I've got work to do," Kent said. "I can't stay. Sorry."

  Troy shrugged, his mouth curling into a weak smile. "No problem. Didn't wanna be here, anyway."

  Georgia followed them, clasping her notebook to her chest. "I appreciate you coming, Mister Reynolds. And I urge you to feel free to consult someone else for a second opinion about what we talked about."

  "Yes, of course. Thank you." Kent opened the door, let Troy walk out, then closed the door behind them. He tried not to see the sadness in Georgia's eyes.

  In the taxicab on the way home, Troy waited until they were driving over the Brooklyn Bridge before saying, "What were you guys talking about while I was gone?"

  "Ah, nothing," Kent said. "Just...psychology stuff."

  "About me?"

  "About you. And me."

  Troy turned in his seat to look at his father, his face registering interest for the first time all evening. "You? Like what?"

  Kent turned away to look out his window. "Just stuff. Nothing big. I think she was a little off-base, anyway. You know psychiatrists. They have to read into everything."

  Troy nodded, facing forward to the driver again. "So what'd she say?"

  "Nothing. Just stuff. But I'd appreciate it if you went to your next session so I don't have to go, all right?"

  "Whatever." Troy's eyes glazed as he looked out the front windshield. His finger tapped the "play" button on his iPhone. Music howled in his ears again.

  Kent listened to the rhythmic hum of the car's wheels rolling over the grating that formed the road of the Brooklyn Bridge. Over the edge of the bridge, he could see the twinkling skyline of the city along the edge of the Hudson River. Normally, it was soothing, but not tonight.

  He still couldn't get over what Georgia had said, that he wasn't coping with his wife's death. That just couldn't be true. She had died three years ago. If he hadn't dealt with it, he'd be in much deeper trouble. And the idea that he was avoiding his emotions--

  A widowers group. That would be just what Kent needed. Sitting in a room full of old men whining about their dead wives. He could handle it much better by himself. In fact, he had handled it.

  But a workaholic...that was what Wayne had said about him two days ago. He didn't understand why people couldn't see him for what he was; a hard-working man trying to provide for what little family he had.

  The cab pulled up in front of their townhouse, and Troy to got out and headed up the stairs. By the time Kent had paid the driver and gone inside, Troy was locked into his room again.

  Kent listened at the door to the familiar howls and musical strains of Odyssey floating out of the room. Troy was back in his world.

  "Troy?" Kent called out. "I'm gonna make something to eat. Want some?"

  There was no answer. Kent waited the usual ten seconds, then sighed and went back downstairs.

  In the kitchen, he clicked on the TV to keep him company as he prepared a Hungry Man frozen chicken dinner. The TV was tuned to the evening news. Kent listened as he cut holes in sections of the plastic.

  "...more on our top story in Arizona," the news anchor was saying, "where thirty-five students of Kachina High School are dead, and police still have no answers as to why."

  Kent had opened the microwave and was standing there reading the instructions, but stopped to listen.

  "The students all died simultaneously while working in the school's new computer center. Eyewitness reports indicate that everyone in the room died simultaneously from fatal seizures."

  Kent's eyes locked onto the TV, which showed wobbly footage of the inside of a classroom. Rows of computers were set up on desks spanning the room.

  "No explanation has been provided as yet for the cause of this tragedy," the anchorman continued. "Police are investigating the possibility of carbon monoxide or some other poisonous gas being released in the classroom, but so far, no evidence has been found to support the theory. In other news--"

  The TV dinner tumbled out of Kent's hands and crashed to the floor. Frozen peas rolled away from him, as if fleeing from the horror that Kent himself could not escape.

  It had happened again. Computers and seizures with no explanation. But this time, it wasn't just an old man and a young woman. It was a roomful of children.

  Kent bolted out of the kitchen, ran up the stairs, down the corridor to his den. He snapped on his computer, then sat, his legs trembling as he waited for the computer to reboot. When it was alive and humming, Kent went to his web browser, and went immediately to Google News.

  Kent typed in the words "epilepsy," "seizure," "fatal," and "computer." He also set the options so Google restricted its search to articles from the last few months.

  A listing of all the articles with the keywords he had chosen flowed down the screen. There were seventeen of them. Kent went down the list, one after another, calling up the full text with a click of his mouse. With each article, Kent felt a little colder. They were reports of incidents all over the world, each from different areas, each in different situations, but they all had a common thread.

  They were all cases of people mysteriously dying of epileptic seizures, most of whom had no history of epilepsy. And all of them had been working on a computer before they died.

  This made fifty-four cases of computer-related epileptic attacks. It couldn't be a coincidence. Something was causing it. Something that was killing people all over the planet, maybe even something that had killed his friend, Victor Morgan, and was continuing to do so.

  Kent swiveled his chair in a slow circle. This changed everything. It meant that maybe he wasn't paranoid. Maybe Morgan
's death wasn't a simple tragedy. Maybe it was something more deadly and powerful that was growing day by day.

  Kent wondered if he was the only one to notice it. No one had written an article about the connection so the media wasn't aware of it. The police investigating the Arizona deaths hadn't offered any explanation. The other cases were so far apart and unrelated that no one else would have made the connection unless they were looking for it.

  Kent went back to his computer. On a whim, he clicked the link to another article, hoping it would tell him more.

  It did.

  Kent Reynolds found an article that explained something he had never heard of, something so unusual that he wondered if it was even real. But it was.

  It was the answer.

  8.

  IT WAS almost midnight in New York, but still ten o'clock in Los Angeles. Roland Weaver was engrossed in a copy of Goddesses: A Study of Women In Greek Mythology when he was interrupted by a chirping siren that went off in his computer room.

  Roland put a bookmark into his book, then brushed himself off. He sat in one of the corridors of his Labyrinth, a dark stonewalled maze he had constructed in his home. It was a place in which he could relax in perfect solitude. He paused to pick up his gun from where it lay beside him, then moved easily through the maze until he reached the computer room. On one of the computer screens was a simple message that read "Warning: Possible Cerberus Discovery In Progress."

  A year before Roland prepared to unleash Cerberus for the first time, he had arranged a system designed to warn him if anyone got close to uncovering its existence. Roland had spent weeks breaking into the computer systems of major Internet and technology companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, and Google. In all of them, he had added a program that monitored all information passing through them for keywords like "epilepsy," "fatal," "computer," and hundreds of other variations on the same thing.

  The idea behind it was that if any law-enforcement official, reporter, or politician wrote a message or accessed information using those keywords, there was a chance that the user was close to finding Cerberus. Whenever this happened, his program sent a warning to his computers. The attacks by Cerberus were so far apart that anyone who wanted the full picture could only get it by using a computer. In this way, Roland hoped to get advance warning of anyone who pieced together the mystery of Cerberus.

  It was this program that had interrupted his reading. Someone had triggered it using the keywords.

  Roland wasn't too worried. He had received a number of warnings since he had installed the system, but they all had turned out to be false alarms. Even so, he couldn't afford to be lax. The plan could not be allowed to fail.

  He set his computer to trace the source of the disturbance. A few seconds later, a thumbnail sketch of the problem appeared on his screen. Someone had looked up a variety of articles, most of which dealt with deaths involving computers and epilepsy.

  He felt heat rising from his body as he realized that all the articles discussing Cerberus' prey were on the list. This was no mere false alarm. Someone had made the connection.

  He worked swiftly to trace the IP address of the user who had done the search. His computer finally listed it as one belonging to a user named Kent Reynolds.

  He spent a few minutes running the name through government databases like the Department of Motor Vehicles to get some basic information.

  Kent Reynolds, age 34. Widowed. Interesting. A little more digging found that he had one son, Troy Reynolds, who attended Bingley-Carroll, a private school. Kent was currently employed at the consulting firm of Gaines and Company.

  Gaines and Company. That name was familiar, and he realized it was the firm where Victor Morgan had worked.

  He ran a sweaty palm over his mustache, pressing it down over his upper lip. This was definitely not a false alarm. An employee of Gaines, possibly even a friend of Morgan's, was reading articles about Cerberus' victims. It was too much to hope that Kent Reynolds wouldn't make the connections. It was right there for anyone to see.

  This was the one thing that Roland had foreseen that could stop the plan. He had used Cerberus before it was ready, knowing that someone might figure it out prematurely. But the temptation to use the perfect murder weapon had been too strong.

  If this Reynolds guy figured it all out, he could stop Cerberus before it was time. He had to be stopped first. There was no other way.

  He rolled his chair over to the PC he used to connect to the Web. When it was running, Roland clicked the ALARM button on his computer that would send a message to six smartphones around the world. The message would signal their owners to turn on their computers and enter the CLF chatroom.

  When all the members of the CLF were assembled, Roland gave them a brief review of what he had discovered.

  And that's the situation.

  This is bad. This is very, very bad.

  Don't sweat it. We can handle it.

  But someone knows.

  Reynolds doesn't know anything, not yet. He's just suspicious. We still have time.

  That's right. All we have to do is make sure he doesn't get too close.

  And if he does?

  It's obvious, isn't it? We kill him. You were right to bring this to our attention, Pluto.

  No matter. We're all in this together. I just need a vote on this. I'll need to draw cash out of our Swiss bank account to pay for Sonya's overtime as well as any additional expenses. I'll also need a private jet sent to LAX.

  I think we should send some extra people in. This is too important to leave to her alone.

  I agree. I can have two of my men meet Sonya at the airport in fifteen minutes.

  Agreed. All in favor?

  Aye.

  Aye.

  Aye.

  Aye.

  Aye.

  Aye.

  Excellent. Meeting adjourned.

  Roland switched off his computer and walked out of the computer room to get his cell phone. He punched a speed dial to call Sonya.

  * * *

  Sweat ran down the woman's face, which was contorted in a grimace that tightened the veins in her neck like steel cords. The muscles in her biceps swelled to the size and shape of cannonballs as she hoisted the barbell to her chin again and again. Some of the other patrons of the gym watched in awe as she lifted the weights with ease, even though they were marked 100 pounds, and there were three on each side.

  Her cell phone rang. The woman finished her set, and rested the barbell on its rack. She walked over to where she left her phone against the wall, dabbing the sweat off her face with the towel around her neck. She ignored the people who gaped at her muscular six-foot-five frame.

  When the woman saw the caller ID, it showed an incoming call from Roland Weaver. Even though he couldn't see her, the woman stood up a little straighter as she brushed back a shock of her blonde hair to bring her phone to her ear. "Yes, sir. You want me to bring the car around?"

  "No, I have a special job for you. There's someone in New York snooping around. We need to check him out, and possibly eliminate him."

  The woman nodded. "Yes, sir. When do I leave?"

  "As soon as possible. We've arranged for a jet to meet you at LAX, flying nonstop to New York. We're also sending a few more of our agents to accompany you."

  The woman's face darkened. "I can handle it myself, sir."

  "That's not the point. We don't want any screw-ups, and this isn't a one-woman job. We need to have everything about this man checked out as quickly as possible. You'll be following him as well as his fourteen-year-old son. Trust me, you'll need all the help you can get."

  The woman was about to object, then forced herself to remain calm. "Yes, sir. Who's the target?"

  "His name is Kent Reynolds. He works for the consulting firm of Gaines and Company. We want you to
head up the investigation, and report everything you find back to me. If he gets too close, we'll need you to take him out. But, and I can't stress this too much, you are not to take any action until I give the order."

  "Yes, sir," the woman said.

  "Good. I know I can count on you." There was a click as her employer hung up.

  The woman hung up the phone on her end, then headed for the locker room to change out of her leotard back into a T-shirt and shorts. It was unusual to be sent to New York in the middle of the night, but she wasn't curious. Over the years working for Mister Weaver, she had been sent to many unusual places and done many unusual things, but had learned there was always a good reason. She had never questioned an order from him, and never would.

  The woman enjoyed her job. She got to travel, and sometimes, she even got a chance to kill. She was hoping this was one of those times.

  9.

  KENT HAD spent all night working on his theory. The next morning, he left early to get to the home of his late friend, Victor Morgan. It was a comfortable three-story brownstone in the heart of Brooklyn.

  Kent had expected Adrian to still be asleep, but she answered the door dressed to go out. She looked tired and confused, even when she realized who was at her door. "Oh. Hi, Kent. It's good to see you. Come on in."

  Kent followed her into the house, which was quite different from he remembered. It was filled with a silence that went beyond a lack of words. Through the hazy light of curtained windows, he saw that all the furniture was either gone or lined up in the hallway. Boxes stacked everywhere, some of which were still open, revealing them to be stuffed with Morgan and Adrian's belongings.

  It was an all-too-familiar sight to him. Kent remembered the days of packing away all of Sharon's things after her death. They were still in his basement. He didn't have the heart to throw them away.