The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

Arty, and good luck.”
    “You too.”
    Aurora turned around once more, making a complete circle, and peered through the artificial light. She searched one last time for her colleague and dear friend Denes, hoping that he might at any moment step out of the shadows to greet her, but knowing he would not.

Twenty-Three
    Oddly, Wheeler’s apartment door was slightly ajar. Kelly opened it just wide enough to peer in. All she could see from there was Wheeler’s back hunched over the table, the greenbar printout firmly pinned down by his outstretched left arm, his right hanging loosely at his side, nearly knuckle-dragging the carpet. But she could hear his snoring quite plainly.
    She entered, closed the door securely, and walked around the table. She looked at him, amused. Out like a light, face mashed in, drool everywhere. “A pretty boyyy,” she crooned gently, “is like a mel-o-deeeeee.”
    “Whaa?” Wheeler opened his left eye, the one that wasn’t stuck to the paper.
    She shook her head, smiling. “All that education and you still don’t know where the bed is.”
    Suddenly he jerked upright, fully awake, his cheek taking half the page with it. “Kelly? How’d you get in here?” He pulled the paper from his cheek and roughly dragged a shirt sleeve across his face. He looked at his sleeve. “Ew.”
    “Your door was open.”
    “Aren’t you supposed to be at ninja school or something?”
    “I was. That was hours ago. I went home, ate, watched some TV, and went to bed, but couldn’t sleep.”
    “Oh. What time is it?” Wheeler asked.
    She glanced at Wheeler’s wall. “Let’s just say that Thursday has long since passed on to that big Maxim calendar in the sky.”
    “Oh.” Wheeler pulled the ubiquitous recorder from his pocket and pressed a button. “Um, buy a watch,” he said into it.
    “Steve, we have to talk.”
    “ We have to talk? Ooo, ooo, wait, I know this one!” Wheeler said brightly. “It means, I have to listen. ”
    She ignored him. “I’m serious.” She looked for another chair, didn’t find one, and sat carefully on the coffee table in front of the couch. “I just had a very disturbing conversation with Eli.”
    “Really? Disturbing how?”
    “He’s hiding something, I know he is. I pressed him as hard as I could without directly confronting him, and he evaded my questions. Rather expertly, too,” she added.
    Wheeler nodded.
    “He actually used the phrase playing it close to the vest. Where the hell do you suppose he got that?”
    “Hmph. No idea. Not from me, that’s for sure. Scout’s honor.” Instead of the three-finger Boy Scout salute, he made the Vulcan live-long-and-prosper sign. Kelly absently wondered whether it was deliberate, then realized she didn’t care.
    “Well, whatever trouble he’s in, he’s apparently got the idea he has to work it out on his own, and that’s what worries me.”
    “I follow. Want to see what worries me ?” Wheeler asked, turning the big greenbar printout around so she could read it.
    She leaned in close enough to see the circled sequences. “NADCOM, MDA,” she read. “Oh, crap. Steve, I recognize these acronyms. On the news tonight there was a story about a big military base in Colorado being hacked. North American Defense Command—NADCOM.”
    “Aha,” Wheeler said. “Fits with the online rumor my buddies told me about, doesn’t it?”
    “Yes, it has to be the same thing. Someone hacked into their computer system and stole data relating to a top-secret project. The Army of course won’t reveal what the project was, but the article said it was code-named Molly Day.”
    “So?”
    She frowned at him. “What, are you still asleep? MDA—Molly Day. Hello?”
    “Oh, I see. You think?”
    “Well, I could be wrong but I’m, you know, not,” she said pointedly. “MDA, especially in connection with NADCOM. That’s got to be it.”
    Wheeler nodded. “Christ on a bike,” he said dully. “That means—”
    “It means that Eli is the hacker. Steve, Eli stole that project data from the military! There’s no telling what that stuff is!”
    They looked at each other in silence for a long moment. Finally, Wheeler thumbed forward several pages in the printout to where he had repeatedly circled the third recurring hexadecimal sequence.
    “Well, whatever it is,” he said dryly, “it’s got a few bugs.”
    Kelly looked at the pages, fear growing in her eyes. Dozens of circled instances of the same sequence—45 52 52