The Blue Nowhere

few seconds later when the clock hit exactly twelve-thirty and the virus Phate must have loaded in the electric company’s computer shut off the power to the CCU office.
    The room was plunged into blackness.
    Gillette leapt back, raising Backle’s gun and squinting into the dark for a target. Phate’s powerful fist slammed into his neck and stunned him. Then he shouldered Gillette hard into the cubicle wall, knocking him to the floor.
    He heard a jangling as Phate grabbed his keys and other things on the desk. Gillette reached up, trying for the man’s wallet. But Phate already had that and all Gillette could save was the CD player. He felt another stunning pain as the monkey wrench slammed into his shin. Gillette staggered to his knees, lifted Backle’s gun toward where he thought Phate was and pulled the trigger.
    But nothing happened. Apparently the safety was on. As he started to fiddle with it a foot slammed into his jaw. The gun fell from his hand and he went down onto the floor once again.

V
    THE EXPERT LEVEL
    There are only two ways to get rid of hackers and phreakers. One is to get rid of computers and telephones. . . . The other way is to give us what we want, which is free access to ALL information. Until one of those two things happen, we are not going anywhere.
    —A hacker known as Revelation, quoted in The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Hacking and Phreaking

CHAPTER 00100011 / THIRTY-FIVE
    “A re you all right?” Patricia Nolan asked, looking at the blood on Gillette’s face, neck and pants.
    “I’m fine,” he said.
    But she didn’t believe him and played nurse anyway, disappearing into the canteen and returning with damp paper towels and liquid soap. She bathed his eyebrow and cheek where he’d been cut in the fight with Phate. He smelled fresh nail conditioner on her strong hands and wondered when, in light of Phate’s assault on the hospital and here, she’d found time for cosmetics.
    She made him tug his pants cuff up and she cleaned the small gash on his leg, holding his calf firmly. She finished and offered him an intimate smile.
    Forget it, Patty, he thought once more. . . . I’m a felon, I’m out of work, I’m in love with another woman. Really, don’t bother.
    “That doesn’t hurt?” she asked, touching the damp cloth to the cut.
    It seared like a dozen bee stings. “Just itches a little,” he said, hoping to discourage the relentless mothering.
    Tony Mott ran back inside CCU, holstering his massive weapon. “No sign of him.”
    Shelton and Bishop walked inside a moment later. All three men had returned to CCU from the medical center and had spent the last half hour scouring the area, looking for any signs of Phate or witnesses who’d seen him arrive at or flee the CCU. But the homicide partners’ faces revealed that they’d had no more luck than Mott.
    Bishop sat wearily in an office chair. “So what happened?” he asked the hacker.
    Gillette briefed them about Phate’s attack on CCU.
    “He say anything that’s helpful?”
    “No. Not a thing. I almost got his wallet but just ended up with that.” He nodded at the CD player. A tech from the Crime Scene Identification Unit had printed it and found that the only prints were Phate’s and Gillette’s.
    Then the hacker delivered the news that Triple-X was dead.
    “Oh, no,” Frank Bishop said, looking heartsick that a civilian who’d taken a risk to help them had been killed. Bob Shelton sighed angrily.
    Mott walked to the evidence board and wrote the name Triple-X next to Andy Anderson, Lara Gibson and Willem Boethe under the heading “Victims.”
    But Gillette stood—unsteadily thanks to his wounded shin—and hobbled to the board. He erased the name.
    “What’re you doing?” Bishop asked.
    Gillette took a marker and wrote “Peter Grodsky.” He said, “That’s his real name. He was a programmer who lived in Sunnyvale.” He looked at the team. “I just think we should remember that he was more than a screen name.”
    Bishop called Huerto Ramirez and Tim Morgan and told them to find Grodsky’s address and run the crime scene.
    Gillette noticed a pink phone message slip. He said to Bishop, “I took a message for you just before you got back from the hospital. Your wife called.” He read the note. “Something about the test results coming back and it’s good news. Uhm, I’m not sure I got this right—I thought she said she’s got a serious infection. I’m not sure why that’s good