The Blue Nowhere

the rest of his life.”
    “You think prison would keep somebody like him offline? It didn’t stop you.”
    “You can’t do it!”
    “Trapdoor’s too dangerous,” she explained. “And he’s got the code in his head. Probably a dozen other programs, too, that’re just as dangerous.”
    “No,” Gillette whispered desperately. “There’s never been a hacker as good as him. There may never be again. He can write code that most of us can’t even imagine yet.”
    She walked back to Phate.
    “Don’t!” Gillette cried.
    But he knew his protest was futile.
    From her laptop bag she took a small leather case, extracted a hypodermic syringe and filled it from a bottle of clear liquid. Without hesitating, she leaned down and injected it into Phate’s neck. He didn’t struggle and for a moment Gillette had the impression that he knew exactly what was happening and was embracing his death. Phate focused on Gillette then on the wooden case of his own Apple computer, which sat on a table nearby. The early Apples were truly hackers’ computers—you bought only the guts of the machine and had to build the housing yourself. Phate continued to gaze at the unit as if he were trying to say something to it. He turned to Gillette. “‘To . . .’” His words vanished into a whisper.
    Gillette shook his head.
    Phate coughed and continued in a feeble voice, “‘To thine own self be true. . . .’” Then his head dipped forward and his breathing stopped.
    Gillette couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss and sorrow. Sure, Jon Patrick Holloway deserved his death. He was evil and could take the life of a human being as easily as he’d lift a fictitious character’s digital heart from his body in a MUD game. Yet within the young man was another person: someone who wrote code as elegant as a symphony, in whose keystrokes could be heard the silent laughter of hackers and could be seen the brilliance of an unbound mind, which—had it been directed on a slightly different course years ago—could have made Jon Holloway a computer wizard admired around the world.
    He’d also been someone with whom Gillette had carried out some,yes, truly moby hacks. Whatever direction your life takes, you never quite lose the bond that develops among fellow explorers of the Blue Nowhere.
    Then Patricia Nolan stood and looked at Gillette.
    He thought, I’m dead.
    She drew some more liquid into the needle, sighing. This murder, at least, was going to bother her.
    “No,” he whispered. Shaking his head. “I won’t say anything.”
    He tried to scrabble away from her but his muscles were still haywire from the electrical charges. She crouched beside him, pulled his collar down and massaged his neck to find the artery.
    Gillette looked across the room to where Bishop lay, still unconscious. The detective would be the next victim, he understood.
    Nolan leaned forward with the needle.
    “No,” Gillette whispered. He closed his eyes, his thoughts on Ellie. “No! Don’t do it!”
    Then a man’s voice shouted, “Hey, hold up there!”
    Without a second’s pause Nolan dropped the hypodermic, pulled a pistol from her laptop case and fired toward Tony Mott, who stood in the doorway.
    “Jesus,” the young cop cried, flinching. “What the hell’re you doing?” He dropped to the floor.
    Nolan lifted her gun once more but before she could fire, several huge explosions shook the air and she fell backward. Mott was firing at her with his glitzy silver automatic.
    None of the bullets had struck her and Nolan rose fast, again firing her own pistol—a much smaller one—at Mott.
    The CCU cop, wearing his biking shorts, a Guess shirt and with his Oakley sunglasses dangling from his neck, crawled farther into the warehouse. He fired again, keeping Nolan on the defensive. She fired several times but missed as well.
    “What the hell’s going on? What’s she doing?”
    “She killed Holloway. I was next.”
    Nolan fired again then eased toward the front of the warehouse.
    Mott grabbed Gillette by the pants cuff and dragged him to cover then emptied the clip of the automatic in the woman’s direction. For all his love of SWAT teams the cop seemed panicked to be in a real shoot-out. He was also a really bad shot. As he reloaded, Nolan disappeared behind some cartons.
    “Are you hit?” Mott’s hands were shaking and he was breathless.
    “No, she got me with a stun gun or something. I can’t move.”
    “What about Frank?”
    “He’s