The Apocalypse Contract

CHAPTER 18 - SAMANTHA

"You've got a backdoor into the Bexley network?" Samantha was holding her coffee halfway between the table and her mouth, any thought of drinking from it forgotten.

"Just the maintenance system," Peter admitted.

"Dude, that could get you into so much trouble."

"I didn't create the thing. I just stumbled across it when I was working there. It's not my fault nobody's shut it down."

"Hey, not my problem. You do you. I'm more worried about how we track down Sydney. She didn't mention anything? No hint about where she might go?"

"You saw our text messages. That was pretty much it." He paused before going on. "I do have her laptop. That might have something on it."

Samantha raised an eyebrow. "You are just full of surprises. How did you get your hands on that?"

"Her landlord had it. I sorta guilted him into forking it over."

"Smooth. You find anything on it?"

"No, I haven't managed to log in. It's password protected."

"Well let me take a look. I did PC maintenance in a previous life."

Peter retrieved the laptop and handed it over.

"It's a Linux system," Samantha observed, "I might have something in the van that can help."

Peter fetched them two more coffees while she was out.

Samantha returned with a generic rewritable CD with the words 'Linux Fix-All' written on it in black sharpie. "This might do the trick. It's a Linux Live CD that we use to recover data off of crashed servers. As long as she didn't encrypt her hard-drive, we should be good."

"Thanks, I wouldn't have thought of this. I'm not that familiar with Linux."

"And you call yourself a hacker."

"Um, no. I don't actually call myself that."

"Says the man with a back door into my network."

They inserted the CD into the laptop and rebooted. A torrent of cryptic messages poured across the screen, culminating in a blinking cursor at a command prompt.

Samantha tapped away at the keyboard. "Sydney, Sydney, Sydney, I am pleased yet disappointed in you. So smart, yet you don't encrypt your hard-drive."

"Wait, that's a good thing," Peter countered.

"For us, yes, but it still wounds my professional sensibilities. Anyway, I've mounted the hard-drive in read only mode. You know her better, so why don't you poke around and see if anything jumps out at you."

Peter spent some time sifting through the contents of Sydney's computer. It was slow and ultimately frustrating work. "All of these files are years old. There's nothing recent," he complained.

"You're sure it's her laptop?"

"Definitely, but..." His face assumed a thoughtful expression.

"What?"

"A couple years ago she was talking about wanting a newer laptop. I don't know if she actually got one, but she might have. Maybe she doesn't use this one anymore."

"Move aside, let me try something." Samantha opened a terminal window and typed something. "There. I'm running a recursive search for any files modified within the last three months. Hopefully we'll find something squirreled away in a deep subdirectory somewhere."

"And if we don't?"

"I don't know. Go to the police? Hire a private detective? Hang posters? I'm open to suggestions."

Peter sat looking at his coffee, staring at it as if answers might float up to the surface. "Sydney mostly communicated via email and text messages. If we could access her email, that would give us the clearest window into what she was doing before she disappeared."

"But she hasn't used this laptop in forever... oh, but her email would be stored on a server somewhere. We just need her login credentials, and those might be stored on this laptop. It depends on how often she changes her passwords and how paranoid she is. I'll try another search." Samantha turned back to the laptop. "Huh. Looks like she did use this laptop for something. My previous search turned up some files created only a few weeks ago."

"Cool. What do we have?"

"Looks like MPEG videos." She clicked on a file and was rewarded with a view of Sydney's apartment. It might have been a static image, until a cat eventually wandered into view.

"What the hell," Peter exclaimed, "was someone spying on her?"

"That makes no sense. It's on her laptop."

They continued watching, speeding through the empty parts. Occasionally Sydney would enter the frame. She spent a lot of time at her computer and some time in her reading chair. She played with her cats. She took breaks to make tea.

"This feels a bit creepy and wrong, watching this," Peter admitted.

Samantha nodded, "I know what you mean, but if something has happened to her, she would want us to find out. Maybe that's what this video is for. Maybe that's why she recorded herself."

They turned their attention back to the video, playing several other files, each very much like the previous.

"This is useless," Peter moaned, "All we've learned is that she likes tea and plays with her cats a lot. If the resolution was better maybe we... What? What the hell was that?"

Two people had just appeared from nowhere in Sydney's living room. A guy in a suit and another in a polo shirt and shorts.

"The video jumped. Part of it must have been deleted." Samantha backed it up and played it again."

"I don't know. That doesn't look like a jump to me. Look at her. She doesn't suddenly change position. She would have to be standing in exactly the same position for that to work. She even looked startled after they appeared."

"It's a special effect. Someone is screwing with us. Has to be." Samantha didn't seem totally sure of herself.

They watched the video again, then continued watching. Sydney talked to the two pale strangers, then read and signed a bunch of documents. Suddenly she grabbed a backpack and bolted from the apartment. The strangers remained sitting on her sofa, completely motionless. Samantha might have suspected the video of freezing if not for one of the cats claiming a lap to sleep on.

"Is it my imagination, or do those dudes have no facial features," Samantha asked.

"It's got to be a video artifact."

Suddenly the apartment door opened. Sydney entered with two bags of groceries, followed by a police officer with several more. Eventually the officer left, the groceries were put away, and then Sydney was sitting on a large crate, wearing her backpack and holding a cat.

Peter squinted at the screen. "What the hell is she..."

Suddenly the image began to flicker. Blue flashes of light distorted the video.

And then Sydney was gone, leaving only a scorched circle on the carpet.

The video cut off a few seconds later.