“I don’t know who did the programming,” said Kelly, with increasing annoyance. “Dr. Wynne mentioned ‘the Brainpan’ once, but that was all. Everything was done through electronic transfer and encrypted messages. I never saw a face.”
Dave and Alaric exchanged glances, saying, almost in unison, “The Monkey.”
“It’s creepy when you two do that, so stop.” I raised a hand. “Somebody want to share the reason this makes us not panic?”
“The Monkey is possibly the single best identity counterfeiter in the country.” Dave shook his head. “If you want an ID that can stand up to anything, you find a guy who knows a guy who might be able to put you in touch with one of the Monkey’s girlfriends, provided you’re willing to pay a deposit on faith.”
“How much ‘anything’ are we talking here?” I asked.
“Scuttlebutt says one of the news anchors at NBC has three felony convictions and an ID by the Monkey,” said Alaric.
“First, never say ‘scuttlebutt’ again,” I said. “Second, good to know. All right, Kelly, you’ve got an ID. So who, exactly, are you supposed to be?”
“Mary Preston,” she promptly replied. “Dr. Wynne’s niece.”
“Right. Alaric, can you—”
“Already on it,” said Alaric, turning to one of the computer terminals that had yet to be torn down.
“Good. So ‘Mary,’ does this mean you have a paper trail?” I turned back to Kelly, who was starting to nod. “How much of a paper trail?”
“Mary’s a real person, and she’s really Dr. Wynne’s niece,” said Kelly. “Born in Oregon, joined Greenpeace straight out of high school, and got her conservationist’s pass to move across the Canadian border five years ago. Last Dr. Wynne heard, she was working on one of the dog preservation farms and had no intention of ever coming back to the States.”
“So she’s disreputable enough to get along with journalists, and unlikely to come demanding her identity back when you’re still using it.” I looked over at Alaric. “Well?”
“Damn. I mean, just… damn.” He was staring at his screen in open admiration. The rest of us took that as an invitation and put down whatever we were holding as we clustered around to peer over his shoulders, leaving Kelly by herself. Alaric shook his head. “I’ve never had a confirmed piece of the Monkey’s work to look at. This is… it’s not just amazing; it’s elegant.”
I frowned. “What are we looking at?”
The entire screen was filled with pictures of Kelly. Kelly in elementary school. Kelly at what looked like her senior prom. Kelly holding up one end of a banner that read STOP SHARK FISHING in big yellow hand-painted letters. Pretty standard snapshots, the kind you’d find on anybody’s personal site or bias page.
Look again, prompted George, sounding exasperated.
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I looked again, and actually saw what I was looking at. “Holy… are all those pictures fakes?”
“Yes and no,” Alaric said, pulling up another set of pictures, including what looked like a still frame from an ATM’s security camera and a shot where she was clearly drunk and flipping off the camera. “They’re not really pictures of the Doc,” he nodded toward Kelly, “but they’re real pictures. The Monkey must’ve taken every picture of Mary on the entire Internet and somehow forced Kelly’s physical isometrics over them. Seamless transition. Add the paperwork I’m finding, and—”
“No one ever knows the difference,” Becks finished. “Slick.”
“I’m glad you all understand what the f**k that means, because I don’t,” I said sharply.
“Magic computer pictures make old Mary go bye-bye, put pretty new Mary instead. Now pretty new Mary not get shot by CDC for failure to be her own dead clone,” said Dave, in the lilting voice of a children’s teaching-blog host.
“Great. So you’ve got an ID that’s unbreakable as long as some chick in Canada doesn’t get homesick, a bunch of numbers I don’t understand, and a bunch of dead researchers. Oh, and folks like George are dying way too fast for anything short of a massive conspiracy. Okay, people, can anyone come up with a way to make this day any worse?”
That’s when everything started to happen at once.
The building’s siren began blaring almost at the instant that my phone started screaming with Mahir’s emergency ringtone. I smacked it without taking it out of my pocket, triggering my headset to pick it up. “We’re having a situation here, Mahir,” I snapped. I could see Dave and Alaric out of the corner of my eye, rushing through the effort of tearing down our gear. “Sirens just started going off. We don’t know why yet.”
“Yes, well, I bloody well do!” he shouted. “Your building’s surrounded, you’ve got no evac routes, and the civic authorities are declaring a state of general emergency through the surrounding cities! I don’t know how you’re supposed to do it, but you need to get the hell out of there, and you need to do it now!”
“Wait—Mahir, what the f**k are you talking about?” Becks started to say something. I held up a hand for quiet. It was already hard enough to hear Mahir over the siren.
“Good God, man, you mean you didn’t know?” Mahir managed to sound horrified and unsurprised at the same time. It was a nifty trick, but I didn’t have long to appreciate it; his next words took all the appreciation out of the world: