Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(74)

“There are times when being a high school principal is unpleasant in the extreme. Although what I am about to tell you affects your sister and Heather McFarland as well, I called you in first since you are the most deeply impacted.

“The Los Alamos school board met last night to discuss proposed sanctions for the alleged plagiarism that led to your team’s disqualification from the National Science Competition.”

Mark inhaled deeply. Oh Jesus, not that again.

“Even though no formal finding was issued by the judges, the school board felt obliged to reexamine the facts of the incident to see if you violated school standards in a way that brought dishonor to this institution and to the community as a whole.

“Mark, I want you to know that the board was split down the middle on this one and that many people, including myself, came forward in support of you three. However, in the end, a couple of key votes on the board were influenced by the strong statement provided by Dr. Donald Stephenson, who argued that failure to harshly punish all three of you impugned the intellectual integrity of this school. He also emphasized that star athletes across the country are granted immunity from academic standards all too often and that such a thing has no place in the elite boundaries of Los Alamos.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the board has decided that all three of the members of your science team will be banned from all extracurricular activities for the entire school year.”

Mark was too stunned to speak.

“That means you are banned from participation in high school clubs, band, or high school athletic teams. For you that means no basketball.”

Mark swallowed hard to clear his throat. “But, sir, surely there is something we can do, some appeal we can make.”

“I’m afraid not. The school board is the final authority in this matter, and they have spoken. I’m sorry.”

Unable to remain sitting, Mark rose to his feet. For several seconds he stood there staring at Principal Zumwalt, feeling as sick as if he had just been kicked in the groin. Unable to find anything else to say, he merely nodded, then turned and walked out of the office into a suddenly alien hallway.

Rage at the injustice of it all rose up within him until he found himself shaking. Desperate to get outside before he did something he would regret, Mark stumbled through the front doorway and began running along the highway toward home.

If they didn’t want him playing basketball, fine. He didn’t want to play for that God damn intellectual snob high school anyway. As the ground swept past beneath his feet, a single thought hammered the inside of his skull.

Screw them. Screw them all.





77


Indian Summer. Janet had grown up in the northeast where that term meant a late fall return to warmer weather. Here in the high desert of New Mexico it had taken on a whole new meaning. Late summer storms had become a daily occurrence, their arrival presaged by towering thunderheads trailing curtains of rain, stabbing at the ground with their jagged spears of lightning and shaking the canyons with the heavy rumble of thunder. The wall of thunderheads building in the distance showed every indication of delivering another of the violent performances that made her wonder if the small hogan could remain standing.

Janet loved the storms for the diversion they provided from the strands of loneliness with which her isolation bound her. Jack had been gone for three weeks. Like some great crocodile sliding into the Nile, he had departed, leaving her alone. And although she had not heard from him directly, she knew he was out there somewhere back east. He had given her specific instructions to stay put and stay focused, correlating the pieces of the puzzle as she hacked her way through secure networks around the globe.

So Janet had stayed, making use of the quantum twin link to their source's magical Internet gateway. She still had no idea what technology enabled her to enter a precise coordinate and then connect to any network at that location. The systems that attracted her interest were all highly classified networks, physically isolated from any type of external access and protected by the best shielding that could be constructed.

But, despite their layers of protection, the classified networks she targeted might as well have been broadcasting an open Wi-Fi signal. It was as if she had just plugged a Category 6 cable into the remote hub. Once she was in, the data access was easy. Hardly anyone bothered to encrypt data on the network, so confident were they in the protection provided by the network itself. Unfortunately, that was where the easy part ended. There was so much data to search, so many subnets to access, that finding the clues she needed was daunting.

If Janet hadn't been quite as good as Jack knew she was, the task may well have been impossible. It was one of the reasons he had left her here, in the most secure location available to them, a place that provided no distractions from her task.

Janet pushed back from the laptop and glanced down at her stomach. She was starting to show. Somehow, Jack had seen it weeks ago. He had actually seemed pleasantly surprised that she was pregnant, a response that had shocked her to her core.

Not that she had expected him to fly into a rage or anything like that. Jack never lost control. Janet wasn't really sure what she had expected, just not happiness. But then again, maybe she had misread him.

Standing up, she moved outside the small hogan that had become her home, at least for the indeterminate future. The wooden windmill spun in the gusty afternoon breeze, the rise and fall of the pump shaft producing a rhythmic thumping sound as it performed its dual duty of filling the tank with water and driving the small electric generator, which provided the trickle charge to the batteries.