Rating's going up for this chapter and subsequent ones; There's an Ebay reference that I used due to a 60 Minutes bit I caught last week
Two weeks had passed. With the semester over Ray had no classes to miss, but his answering machine was nearing its capacity with the voices of concerned acquaintances and friends, and the notes pasted to and slipped under his door had gone unread.
Ray had stopped answering his phone, or paying attention to the people who periodically came to his door to see if he was alright. Gena had left a message on his machine the night before, breaking up with him- apparently she was feeling neglected, quite satisfied to look elsewhere for the level of maintenance she demanded. Oh well. He hadn't been a good boyfriend, and how could that be surprising when he had neglected one of his best friends?
Ray had looked at himself in the reflection of his bathroom mirror that morning and experienced a painful bout of déjà vu when he remembered how bad Nexus had looked the last time he'd seen her before she had disappeared. He still had the card from that agent who he'd spoken to at the police station, but the moment he considered making use of it the nightmares crowded back into his mind's eye, and he couldn't bring himself to call the number on the card no matter how hard his rationality tried to assert that nightmares were not the same as real life.
Stumbling from lack of sleep over to his computer, he logged in and reviewed what he had come up with for what felt like the hundredth time. Eva's screen name was Nexus, which he had already been well aware of. She had told him a year after they had met that her older brother had been of the hacker variety in high school, and had gone missing when she was a little kid, likely a runaway. Maybe there was a connection there, but having happened several years ago, it would not be easy to dig up. The police records on the matter were annoyingly vague, and, not knowing his screen name, he likely would not find much more on that particular subject.
He had found plenty of rumor sites on the Matrix, but nothing seemed solid to him. Every now and then he wondered whether he had hallucinated what he had seen in front of that warehouse, but…it had felt so profound, like…like being able to see for the first time, if only for an instant. He rubbed the side of his face with one hand, calling up the research he'd done on what Eva had been looking into in the days before she disappeared. He had been able to get ahold of her computer soon after she had vanished, initially for safekeeping until she came back- hopefully with an amusingly logical account of what she had been up to. He had uploaded her online history files onto his computer and was now following the trail of breadcrumbs she had left. A lot of it was the same rumor crap that he had been sifting through mixed with some philosophy bits on Plato that gave him the willies. Not much to go on.
He pounded away at the keys for a few minutes before he got into a special hacker's chat on the Matrix, one of several he had been frequenting for the past few days. He didn't speak of it, but a buddy in high school had gotten him into hacking briefly to take advantage of so-called secure systems that handled online auctioning transactions. He had dropped it once he had enough money to comfortably get through school, but the skills he had developed had not gone rusty, he could now see. Someone in that particular chat had passed along a message for him to log in that morning, and Ray was growing desperate enough for a lead to listen. He watched tiredly as the chat scrolled down the screen:
Briareus00 has entered the room.
Nilla: Hey, it's the appleseed dude! How goes it?
DeATH2L33T: Gah, it's really slow it here today. Hey Bri, you find any new leads on your friend?
Nilla: Her stuff is probably wiped by now. The trekkie dude I told u about should be here any minute, he seems to actually know what he's talking about.
Kitten3632: Whatever, I bet the guy just gets off on jerking you assholes around.
Nilla: flips off kitten who the fuck asked you bitch? No one's forcing you to be here. What's wrong, ran outta pedophiles to bait?
Briareus00:I haven't found much new, Nexus had a bunch of stuff on Plato mixed in with her other files, but I didn't really see any connection till I found this essay she had on disk that she wrote about a week before she went away
Briareus00:Guys this is getting way past weird, are you sure this guy is showing up? Im running out of leads and my typing is going to shit.
DeATH2L33T:He'll show, he's a good guy. I don't think he's actually a trekkie nilla, its just a pun. Not a particularly great one but you don't have to be funny when your kung fu beats just about everyone else's in the room
Nilla:…
Nilla:Never watch the core again. Promise me, OK? That was fcking terrible
Kitten3632:You guys are fucking pathetic
Briareus00:…
Briareus00:I see you use kitten…thanks for paying my rent for this month, I do appreciate the donation
Nilla:LMFAO! Take that bitch!
Kitten3632 has left the room.
Nilla:You really got into her account?
Briareus00:Yeah, a few days ago. Works well as a troll repellant
Briareus00:Although my rent IS coming due soon…
Wyrmhole has entered the room.
Wyrmhole:Hey, I'm here.
DeATH2L33T:Hey man! You just missed Bri vanquish the chat troll!
Wyrmhole:…
Wyrmhole:Buddy, you said you'd cut down on the D&D
Nilla:He means that kitten bitch
Wyrmhole:Ah.
Wyrmhole:Hey, Briareus, you made it. Your connection's secure, right?
Briareus: As secure as I can get it anyway.
Wyrmhole:Alright.
The phone rang, and Ray nearly jumped out of his skin. Catching his breath, he chuckled
at his reaction. It was probably one of his friends again. He turned back to the screen to see
that DeATH2L33T and Nilla were both gone. The next message froze Ray's blood in his
veins:
Wyrmhole:Pick up the phone Ray. I don't have forever here.
Slowly, Ray reached out and lifted the receiver to his ear, cutting it off mid-ring. The slightly
gruff voice of an older man came through the earpiece. "This is a tapped line. If you want to
know what the Matrix really is, then go to the Downsview Park entrance. Do it now, you
won't be given another chance." With that the phone went dead.
Fifteen minutes later agents burst into Ray's apartment, but he was nowhere to be found
among the mess. By this time Ray was sitting in the back of a black Cadillac, eyes streaming
and fingers digging into the leather seat as some crazy woman decked out in club gear who
called herself Maiar straddled him and ripped out one of his back molars with a pair of pliers.
rolling off of the young man, she triumphantly deposited the false tooth- which was quickly
reverting to all of its original metallic glory- outside the window of the speeding luxury car,
where it bounced twice on the pavement before dropping down into a sewer grate.