Chapter 6 – Ghost
Central London, England. 11:32pm, 3rd November 2032.
The other two had long gone to sleep, Alex meanwhile could not escape into that realm so easily. All he can do is lie on the couch and look at the little poem/warning he was given. He didn't know who this mysterious JLP was; maybe it was added just to complete the rhyming scheme. Whoever JLP was, they knew about his travels and his current occupation, which makes Alex suspicious.
He gets up off the couch and looks around the apartment casually and then focuses on certain dark spots and corners that hide from the artificial lights that light up the room in a warm dark yellowy glow. He feels along lampshades with the tips of his fingers, feeling for the slightest imperfection that would indicate a hidden bug. He then searches along the entertainment unit and anywhere else he could think a bug could hide. He had to be sure that there wasn't an internal breach, but if there wasn't, he doesn't know how else they could get that information about their heist before he left the building.
Feeling more nervous with every second a source of infiltration isn't found, Alex ventures quietly, naturally, into Matt's small bedroom. Looking over at the tiny distance between him and the side of the bed, sneaking in here would be a cake-walk. Alex takes one confident and quiet step into the carpeted room, zero noise emanates from the solid floor beneath and yet somehow Matt wakes up startled.
"Stay back!" Matt says more out of fear than confidence as he fumbles for something in the drawer. Alex approaches him quickly, fearing he's grabbing for a weapon he can use against the shadow. Matt reaches for the side lamp and turns it on, expecting to see someone in front of him about to do some evil act. Matt even had one hand on the top drawer of a side table that contained an illegal Taser gun inside.
"Stop!" Alex pleas, standing just to the side of the foot of the bed. Matt halts his pursuit of self-defence after hearing Alex, but the voice sounded much closer than he anticipated. He thinks that he must still be outside and that somehow the trespasser has evaded his watch. Maybe the silent alarm wasn't working properly, is his next thought, which he quickly disregarded as his equipment is never faulty. The only problem is then, where is the assailant?
"Come out now or be shocked." Matt warns loudly so that anyone outside or inside the room would easily hear. Reacting the only way he could think of, he moves straight to the drawer to take the gun out of Matt's hand. Matt feels a rush of air blow past him but there was no perceivable draft that he felt in staying here before. However, a draft isn't his primary concern, his last line of defence has just vanished into thin air after it was snatched from him by an invisible hand. Matt is overridden by dread and horror from the fear of a supernatural being having entered his space, a supernatural being! Such is the irony.
"There's no such thing as ghosts. There's no such thing as ghosts." He quickly chants to himself as he hides underneath the sheets like a little kid.
"I'm not a ghost." Alex says, as he stands right next to the side of the bed at the cowering rat.
"Alex! Kill it!" Matt shouts in complete fear.
"Just stop it, there's no ghost, please calm down." Alex says but the futility is ridden in his voice as Matt continues to hide under the blanket. He had realized what he had done when Matt didn't see him, he didn't need the mirror to check. After several more seconds, the shallow and brisk breathing slows down back to normal as Matt brings up the considerable courage to peak his head out and finds the reassuring figure of Alex standing beside him.
"Oh, Alex. Um, I was having… a nightmare." Matt says, trying to mask all of his fear and replace it with his more familiar calm self.
"I wish I could say yes." Alex says with inevitability in his voice.
"You mean… this apartment is haunted?" Matt asks, returning to his fear filled state.
"No, please calm down." Alex pleas once again. Matt tries his very hardest to do so and buries that fear deep enough so he can stay calm at least until he is in private.
"Okay." Matt says to himself. Alex just stands opposite him, trying to figure out how to say this without blatantly violating every scientific principle the rat knows. They both stay quiet, Matt looking intently at the raccoon who intern is looking at himself for an answer.
"You know sometimes when you look in a mirror…" Alex begins, but quickly discards that planned analogy
"You know when…" Alex begins again, but there's no appropriate way to say it.
"The ghost; that was me." Alex announces, trying to get it off his chest.
"I appreciate your help but like I said, it was a nightmare." Matt answers; the second time he's said it, he almost believes it was actually a nightmare.
"I know this will sound crazy and, please hear me out on this…" Alex says. Matt rides on every word.
"But I think someone is spying on us." Alex says, coming back to the first reason why he went into Matt's room in the first place, and also chickening out at the same time.
"I checked the apartment when I got here, and I checked it again before you got here. There are no bugs in this apartment." Matt says adamantly.
"I don't know, maybe it's your computer." Alex says.
"No," Matt says as he gets out of bed, wearing an old pair of shorts and t-shirt, ready to inspect Alex's problem. "More likely it would be your phone."
"My phone?" Alex asks.
"Are you sure that we are being watched?" Matt asks, just to be sure.
"I got this." Alex says, fishing out the small note he received and gives it to Matt to read. "Whoever this person is, they know about me."
"I can run a search for who JLP is while I check for viruses, probably someone's initials or and organisations initials." Matt says as he takes the note with him towards his computer that is still stationed near the hologram generator. Alex follows closely behind as he takes out his phone, ready to be examined with more computer knowledge than he has.
"Pass your phone." Matt instructs as he opens up his computer. Alex does as he is told and Matt connects it wirelessly to the computer before running an anti virus program for both the computer and the phone.
"Now I'll search for any JLP's" Matt announces as he pulls up the easy to hack government database of names and birth certificates. It takes less than 1 second to analyse over 80 million names for those initials.
"Nothing, I'll search for company names next, too bad they deleted all of black market databases." Matt comments.
"But, didn't you say, nothing can be deleted from the Internet?" Alex asks as he sits down on the couch.
"I did say that." Matt says.
"But." Alex says, hoping there is an exception.
"There is no but, they're gone. No one keeps backups of darknet sites, that basically incriminates themself in running it."
"So we're just going to go through this heist, not knowing who will be there to stop us?" Alex asks.
"We are going through the heist, but a little differently. I'll make sure we also have one eye on the take and one eye on someone watching us." Matt explains. "This anti virus will take all night to do a full and thorough search, so we should get some sleep."
"Just one thing." Alex says as he gets up. "Don't surprise me like that again, a silent alarm?"
"I can't sleep without it, otherwise I just worry that someone's going to break in or worse." Matt explains.
They both tiredly trudge off to sleep, Matt back to his bedroom and Alex back on the couch as there are only two bedrooms that have both been claimed. He has slept on worse in his travels, compared to some places, this is like paradise. Slowly the soft comfort of the cushions begins to work it's magic and put Alex to sleep amongst the whirring of fans that work tirelessly to cool the computer down. He hopes there will be no more surprises like that; the side effect isn't something he wants to flare up unnecessarily. However, he doesn't wish that he never had it; that would be right at the bottom of the list of things he wanted to happen. In fact, it becomes a tremendously helpful self-defence mechanism when required, which it has been of course.
A/N: The next chapter is a bit more graphic than usual.