Chapter 35: Empirical Data
Timeline: 08:30, Monday
Location: The Greyson Textile Factory
We rolled through the rusted chain-link gates of the Greyson Textile Factory. The site was exactly as Alex had described it—a hulking monument of red brick and rusting metal against the gray morning sky. Its boarded-up windows looked like the perfect setting for a campfire story that ends with. "..and they were never heard from again."
"This place looks like it's held together by rust and good intentions," Marcus commented over the radio from the SUV behind us.
"The decay is mostly superficial," Alex replied from the lead sedan. "The foundation is what we care about. Let's get set up. Marcus, park over at the North corner. I'll take the South. Julian, bring The Anchor to the East loading dock. That should give us a wide enough triangle to get a clean read on the main building."
"We're here," Julian said, putting the car in park. "I'm leaving the engine idling. The inverter needs the alternator to keep the voltage sag under control."
I opened my laptop. The screen flared to life, showing the position of all three vehicles on the map.
"I can see everyone," I said into the headset. "It looks like we're linked." I watched the data stream. The numbers flickered, wildly unstable.
"Julian, tell them to kill their engines," I said, typing rapidly. "The vibration is throwing off the accelerometers. I can't get a baseline."
"If we kill the engines, we lose the power conditioning," Julian argued.
"If we don't, we lose the data," I countered. "I'm seeing three factories right now because the sensors are shaking."
Julian sighed. "Alex, Marcus. Cut the engines. We need a static environment."
The courtyard went silent, save for the white noise of the cooling fans in the trunk behind me.
"Okay," I said. "Re-syncing."
The screen cleared slightly, but the wireframe was still tearing. It looked like a glitchy video game from the nineties.
"I'm still getting ghosting," I muttered, frustration rising.
Alex broke in, calmly explaining, "The walls are full of iron. Rebar, pipes, old machinery… the signal is bouncing off everything. It's probably creating a hall of mirrors effect."
"Can you filter it?" Julian asked from the front seat.
"I can't rewrite the algorithm on the fly," I said. "I'm not a software engineer. But Dave might have anticipated this."
I reached into my bag and pulled out the ruggedized orange drive Dave had given me yesterday. He had called it The Dave Suite—a collection of patch filters for specific environmental hazards.
I plugged it into the side of the laptop. The folder popped up on the screen.
DAVE OS SUITE:
* Filter A: Urban Canyon
* Filter B: High Voltage Interference
* Filter C: Rust Bucket / Industrial Noise
"He actually labeled one 'Rust Bucket'," I said, a small smile touching my lips. "I'm loading the industrial filter."
I executed the file.
The screen flickered. The software chewed on the data for an agonizing ten seconds. Then, the wireframe snapped into focus. The ghosts vanished.
"Dave for the win," I exhaled. "He's so good at coding. So bad at naming."
I watched the graph populate. "The noise floor is stable. Searching for negative entropy." I ran the scan. The bar crawled across the screen. "Scanning ground level… nothing. Sub-basement A… nothing."
"Go lower," Alex said. "Sub-basement B.
"I have… something," I said.
"Is it the sensor or the target?" Julian asked.
"I don't know," I admitted. "It could be multipath interference. I can't confirm a lock with just the passive mesh. It's too fuzzy."
"Then we need a harder ping," Julian said. "Phase Two."
"Alex?" I asked. "I can't guarantee the target coordinates."
"We're close enough for a pulse," Alex decided. "We're here to test the system, right?"
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Timeline: 09:15
I sat on the bumper to swap my running shoes for the heavy combat boots I packed. I tied the laces tight. I wore dark jeans and a thick flannel shirt over a tank top. My legs still felt heavy from the gym, but my mind was sharp. The adrenaline from the treadmill had settled into a cold, hyper-aware focus.
The air carried a faint, metallic tang mixed with the putrid scent of mold and something earthy, like decay. It smelled like a place that had died a long time ago.
Julian walked around the car with a handheld sensor. He watched the readout for a second, then nodded to Alex. "The Apex team tested the air and scraped samples. The air's clear and no chemical leaks. Just a lot of dust."
Alex looked different here. At Agonwood, Alex was the benevolent architect. Here, standing in the shadow of his family's legacy, he looked harder. Structural. He wore a heavy canvas jacket and work boots, and he moved with a grim purpose.
Now THAT I would consider cosplay. Change the costume, change the man.
"Let's unload and test the latest version of the emitter," Alex said.
It wasn't long before I stood ten feet away from the rear bumper, the handheld chaos emitter heavy in my hands.
"You have good slack on the cable," Julian observed. He stood halfway between me and the car, holding the thick line in one gloved hand. He looked tense. "How's the grip?" he asked.
"My grip is fine," I said, adjusting my fingers on the rubberized handle.
"Is everyone clear?" Alex asked through the radio.
"Clear," Marcus replied.
"Okay," Alex said. "Lonna, give us a ping. Let's try to get more data on that 'something' we picked up in the mesh."
I flipped the toggle. The capacitor bank whined.
CAPACITOR STATUS: 98%
I aimed the emitter at the brick wall where we picked up something. I widened my stance. "Firing in three… two… one."
I pulled the trigger.
CRACK.
The emitter jerked violently in my hand. A spark showered from the connection point on the bumper. The SUV's lights flickered and died. The cooling fans in the trunk spun down into silence.
My headset screeched with static.
"Lonna!" Julian shouted.
I looked at the screen on the emitter. It was dead. Black.
"I think we just tested the surge protector," I yelled, ripping the headset off. "We blew a fuse. The main breaker tripped."
"Did we get data?" Alex called out from the sedan, stepping away from his car.
I looked at the laptop in the back of the SUV through the rear window. The screen was frozen.
"No data," I said, my heart hammering. "The pulse created a spike that crashed the collection buffer. The shielding wasn't enough."
Marcus ran over from his position. "I saw sparks. Did the cable arc?"
"You or Alex would know better, but I think the connector arced," I said, inspecting the port. "I think maybe the resistance was higher than we calculated. My guess is that the current couldn't flow through the wire, so it ionized the air and jumped the gap."
"Impedance is futile," Dave said over the radio.
Alex and I snickered. Julian looked displeased.
"Fix it," Julian ordered. He was already at the trunk, popping the latch to get to the breaker panel.
"I can't fix the ground loop without rewiring the building," I snapped. "And I can't stop the spike without more shielding."
"We don't need shielding," Julian said, flipping the heavy breaker switch back to ON. The fans whirred back to life. "We need speed. You need to dump the data to the hard drive before the buffer crashes."
"The write speed is throttled by the error correction protocols," I argued.
"Then turn them off," Julian said.
"If I turn them off, we risk corruption," I argued. But then I looked at Alex. "Is it something you can do?"
Alex nodded, climbing into the backseat. "I can bypass the checksums. But the drive controller is going to overheat trying to keep up with a raw stream like that. So, just a warning," he said, typing a command. "This is going to run hot. If the laptop fries, we lose everything."
I pouted.
"I'll buy you a new laptop," Alex said with a placating chuckle.
After Alex finished, I grabbed the emitter. The grip was already warm from the interrupted first shot. "Ready as I'll ever be," I said. "But the connector is damaged. If it arcs again, it might weld itself to the port."
"Just hold it steady," Julian said. He gripped the cable with both hands now. "Fire."
I pulled the trigger.
THUMP.
The recoil was massive. The sudden thermal expansion created a pressure wave that hit my chest like a physical blow. The SUV groaned and the lights dimmed but didn't die.
I stared at the emitter screen. Static… static…
"Come on," I whispered.
A jagged line appeared, then smoothed out into a deep, perfect valley. "Yes!" I yelled. "We have data!"
"Signal Return confirmed," Dave's voice came through, sounding shaky. "That was a massive spike, guys. You nearly blew my servers remotely."
"What do we see?" Alex asked, walking over.
I looked at the graph. "There's definitely something there."
"Sub-basement B?" Julian asked.
"Yes," I said. "It's right where the worst of the ghosting was."
I lowered the emitter. My hands were shaking uncontrollably now. "The cable is hot," I warned. "Don't touch the copper."
Julian dropped the cable. It hissed where it touched a damp patch of oil on the ground.
"We got it," Julian said. He looked at me, a fierce grin breaking his composure. "It took a kick, but we got it."
"I feel like this was less science and more brute force," I corrected, unplugging the smoking connector.
"Sometimes that's all that works," Alex said. He looked at the factory door.
"Alex, I believe you just channeled Julian," I said with amusement.
"God forbid," he smirked. Then grinned. "Now we go look at it."
"Wait," Marcus said. "The gear is overheated. The power grid is unstable. Maybe we should regroup."
"We're here," Julian said. "And. We have flashlights. We have the gas probe. We're going in."
"Now I'm thinking 'Ghost Trap' was a better name, afterall," I said and smiled at Marcus. He puffed out his chest like he's been vindicated.