The images froze as the knife sliced Cill’s arm.
“She sustained this injury—one Morris states was the result of insult with a smooth, sharp object. Knife or sword. Resume program. She’s shocked, hurt, and off balance on the slippery path, falls before her opponent can follow through. Or, he gives her a nice shove. She hits the rocks, and is knocked unconscious. Game over. Since she loses consciousness, the program no longer reads her, and ends.”
She turned away from the screen. “Meanwhile the son of a bitch who arranged it is sitting at home with his fucking feet up entertaining himself, establishing his alibi, probably practicing his shock and grief. He eliminates two of his partners—two of his obstacles—and never gets his hands bloody.”
Feeney scratched his chin. “I’ll give you the timing works, and I’m not going to argue with Morris if he says that girl fell. But if this bastard figured out how to manipulate holo to this level, I’d sure like a look inside his head. Running that hot, hot enough to do this should’ve toasted the system.”
“Maybe not the first time,” Roarke put in. “He may have found a way to shield it. I don’t think a standard system would hold up to multiple plays.”
“He only needed one,” Eve pointed out.
“That’s what’s so screwy about the disc, the one we’ve been working to reconstruct.” McNab shifted to Callendar. “The high intensity of focused light, the concentration of nanos.”
“Cloak that in tri-gees to keep the system from snapping.”
“I’d use bluetone.”
“That’d gunk it inside of six UPH.”
“Not if you layered it with a wave filter.” Feeney joined in, and Eve turned back to her board as the geek team argued and theorized.
Peabody came over to join her. “I speak some basic geek, but I don’t understand a word they’re saying. I guess I’ll go back to Callendar’s first comment. It’s wicked freaky.”
“It’s science. People have been using science to kill since some cave guy set some other poor bastard’s hair on fire.”
She turned again, studied Cill’s broken body on the holo-room floor.
“The underlying’s the same, but sometimes the methods get fancier. He’s a cold, egotistical son of a bitch. He used friendship, partnership, trust, relationships, and affection built over years to kill a man who would never have done him any harm. He put another friend into the hospital where one more friend has to suffer, has to watch her fight to live. And he’s enjoyed every minute of it. Every minute of being the focus of our attention, absolutely confident in his ability to beat us. And that’s how we’ll bring him down. Hang him with his own ego, his need to win.”
She glanced over as the monitor began to beep.
“McNab!” The snap in her voice cut McNab off in the middle of a passionate argument over hard versus soft light.
“Sir.”
She jabbed a finger at the equipment. He sprang up, rushed over. “We got a breach on the outer layer. He’s testing it.”
“Track the signal.”
“Working on it. He’s got shields up, and feelers out. See that? See that?”
Eve saw a bunch of lights and lines.
“Two can play,” McNab muttered.
“Three.” Callendar put on a headset, began to snap her fingers, shift her hips. “He bounced.”
“Yeah yeah, he’s careful. There, that’s . . . No, no, that’s a fish.”
“I’ll run a line on it anyway. Maybe he’ll wiggle it back.”
“Try a lateral, Ian,” Roarke suggested. “Then go under. He’s just skimming now.”
“Let that fish swim,” Feeney told Callendar. “It’s not . . . There, see, there, he’s sent out a ghost. Go hunting.”
Eve paced away, circled, paced back as for the next twenty minutes the e-team followed squiggles and wiggles, flashes and bursts.
“He’s nipped through the next layer,” Roarke pointed out. “He’s taking his time about it.”