Do No Evil (Aeon Trilogy Book 2)

Chapter 2

Nick Lal was standing in the stone halls of Sparkwise Energy's servers. He knew that the information he needed to prove Laura Mayer's criminal activities was hidden within the most heavily guarded storage crystals in the encrypted servers.

Someone - maybe government agents, maybe agents of Tracy Cruz, or maybe operatives of a competing energy firm - had broken into those servers a few days ago while Nick was recovering from the severe burns he'd suffered in the firebombing that had killed his parents.

The firebombing he was sure Laura had orchestrated.

He clenched his fists in some mix of anger and bitterness that he couldn't name. He had to get into the secret databases himself. He needed to prove Laura's crimes. For revenge. For his conscience. To avoid prison for being her accessory. And most of all, because he was afraid she was intent on doing even greater evil.

How could he break into the array of safes that floated in front of him? The intruders that had recently succeeded had turned the server's own defenses against it, confusing the hunter-killer bots into attacking the very security systems they were designed to protect.

But he knew Laura would have fixed that vulnerability by now. Nick would have to find another way in. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was observing him and walked towards the nearest safe.

He rapped it with his knuckles, generating hollow echo from inside the thick steel walls. Then he tugged on the handle. It didn't give at all.

How was he going to break in without alerting the hunter killer bots, or even Laura herself? The fact that she was physically in Scotland wouldn't prevent her from observing anything he did here in Maryland.

His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden emergency alert from his MindWave. He focused his consciousness on the cause.

Had Laura discovered him?

No.

It was something else.

It was worse.

Abril was dead! She'd been on the rooftop of Sanctuary's Divine Residence, his MindWave told him. And then she'd suddenly died.

Nick's body was in its sturdy plastic sarcophagus in the deep underground basement of the Divine Residence. Only his mind had been in Sparkwise's server systems. He summoned his consciousness back to his body. His mind's return was instantaneous, but he'd have to wait a few moments while the sarcophagus gently rotated down to the floor before he could exit it.

He sought out and found Jakobus Van de Merwe and Laura Mayer in the artificial expanse of nothingness created by the interplay of his MindWave and his imagination - the ether. He also linked his MindWave directly into Sanctuary's security systems so that he could simultaneously see and hear everything happening inside the haven.

"You're under attack!" Laura was barking across the ether, her face so red with anger that it nearly matched her hair. "One of them just murdered Abril! And now more of them are scaling Sanctuary's walls."

Nick quickly gathered that Jakobus was in Sanctuary's courtyard, where he'd been practicing using the electro-magnetic force bracelets Laura had designed. Caught in the open by the sudden firefight, Kobus was scurrying his way towards the Divine Residence. From a camera set above the fortified doorway to that building, Kobus's form was unmistakable: he was an athletic 6 foot 4 and his height was increased another foot by the metallic horns emerging from the back of his head. His light brown skin was the artifact of his mixed Afrikaner-Xhosa blood, but Nick knew Kobus's blue eyes and perfect features had been genetically programmed into his DNA before he was born.