Reach For the Spy by Diane Henders Page A

I’m sorry! If
I’d known it was you, I never would have said that.”
    “Said what?” Kane
asked.
    “I said if I caught the
fucking moron who’d phoned me, I was going to rip his nuts off and
feed them to him,” I told him sheepishly.
    “On crackers,” Spider
added with obvious dismay.
    Kane burst out
laughing. After a few seconds, Spider and I joined in, and I
laughed until tears came. Finally, I clutched my aching stomach.
“That bit about the crackers really got to you, didn’t it,” I
wheezed.
    “Yeah,” Spider gasped.
“Please don’t ever say that to me again.”
    “I promise.”
    Kane sobered as we
parked in front of Fiorenza’s. “I’m sorry it has to be this way,
Aydan, but we’ll have to respond the same way if you keep screaming
at night. We need to make sure you’re all right. That means that
you have to answer the phone and say something.”
    I sighed. “It’s okay.
If I’m screaming, you’ll be doing me a favour by waking me up
anyway. I’ll try not to be so obscene in the future.”

    Back in the lab after
lunch, I breathed deeply in my chair while I clutched the network
key.
    “Just stay focused,”
Kane encouraged.
    I nodded and stepped
carefully into the void. It wavered, ghostly bars drifting toward
me, but I marched forward and they parted along my path. I made my
way to the file room and grabbed the next file.
    Letters and numbers
swam on the page in random combinations. I shook my head and peered
at it, willing it to settle down. The text stabilized, but it was
still incomprehensible. I frowned and laid the paper down, rubbing
my eyes. Then I slapped my cheeks gently and tried again.
    “Aydan? What’s wrong?”
Spider inquired through the network interface.
    “I’m not sure. Hold
on.” I squinted at the page again. The groups of numbers and
letters remained adamantly cryptic. My tired brain seized on the
joke, and I giggled before I could stop myself. Cryptic. No
shit.
    “Aydan...?”
    “Hang on.” I laid aside
the troublesome file and picked up the one I’d finished before
lunch. It was still clear and understandable. I grabbed the next
one off the pile. Equally easy to decipher.
    “What the hell?” I
muttered, and picked up the page again. Still random letters and
numbers.
    “Okay, this is weird,”
I told them. “This one is just a bunch of random letters and
numbers. I’m not sure whether I can’t decrypt it, or whether it’s
really just numbers and letters.”
    “Just a second,” Spider
said. There was a short pause before he continued, “Kane says to
get started and give us what you’re seeing. It might mean something
to us.”
    “Okay.”
    I frowned at the
document and started to transcribe. It was laborious work as I
double-checked each line, getting lost and starting over again in
frustration. I finished the first page and sat back with a groan.
“What do you think?”
    “Hold on again.”
    I squeezed my eyes shut
and rolled my shoulders. When I opened my eyes again, the sim
wavered and vibrated around me. Something moved in my peripheral
vision and I whipped my head around, but nothing was there.
    I groaned and rubbed my
eyes. A surreptitious movement to my left made me jerk around
again, staring at the wall of the file room. A wraith-like body
slipped through the wall away from me, its skeletal limbs rippling
the surface of the wall like water.
    I blinked and stared as
more apparitions began to drift through the room. One swooped at my
head, and I ducked.
    They gained form and
substance. They had teeth...
    “Aydan.”
    I started, and the file
room solidified around me. I shook my head. Jeez. I must be more
tired than I realized.
    “Aydan!”
    “Sorry, what?” I
refocused on the task at hand.
    “Aydan, this is gold!
Keep going!”
    “Okay.” I bent to my
task.

    My eyes burned. A small
flame licked across the page, and I snatched my hand away before
realizing I’d created the fire out of my own metaphor. I sighed and
visualized cool