“I’ll have one of those,” Roarke said without looking around.
Jamie pulled out a second tube. Across the room Feeney and McNab worked on filter analysis. Jamie had never been in a house that boasted its own fully equipped e-lab.
Then again, he’d never been in any other house like this one. What it didn’t have, hadn’t been invented.
The floor was a steel gray tile. The walls were a pale green and covered with screens. The light came from sky windows, a half a dozen of them, all tinted to cut the glare and heat that could play havoc with the equipment.
And that equipment was so cutting-edge, the edge hadn’t even been cut yet. There were a full dozen data and communication centers, including one of the RX-5000Ks that he’d seen tested in R and D. It wasn’t scheduled for release for three months, maybe six. There were three VR stations, a sim tube, a holo unit, with d and c capabilities, and a global and interstellar search-and-scan navigator he was itching to get his hands on.
He glanced toward his own screen, checked the status of his sim run, then sat beside Roarke. He scanned the codes jammed end to end over the screen, calculated.
“If you filter out the sound, blank all frequencies, you won’t get the ID or source.”
“You’ve missed something. Look again.” Roarke continued to work while Jamie rearranged the codes in his head.
“Okay, okay, but if you flipped this equation, see? And this command. Then—”
“Wait.” Roarke’s eyes narrowed as he read his own program, considered the direction of Jamie’s suggestions.
The boy was good.
“That’s better. Yes, that’s better yet.” He made the adjustments, and with them in mind began on the next series of commands.
“Roarke.”
“There’s no point in asking me again. Answer’s still no.”
“Just listen, okay? You always say a guy should be able to make his pitch.”
“Nothing more irritating than having your own words tossed back at you.” But he stopped, sat back, and took the tube of Pepsi. “Pitch then.”
“Okay. Without a diagnostic, with direct data from one of the infected units, we’re blind. You can come up with filters, with shields, but no matter how good they are you can’t be a hundred percent that they’ll shut out the virus. If it is a virus, which we don’t know without a diagnostic.”
“We’ll be a great deal more certain of operator safety once we have shields in place. If it’s a subliminal, which is the highest probability, using either visual or audio to infect, I’ve dealt with something similar before and am constructing a series of shields to filter it out.”
“Yeah, but similar isn’t a hundred percent. So you’re still going to be playing odds.”
“Son, playing odds is a kind of religion to me.”
Jamie grinned, and because he wasn’t being dismissed, dug in. “Okay, odds are good, given the log time Detective Halloway had in when he first showed symptoms—and factoring in how long the other bad guy dudes were on—that it takes a couple hours, maybe more to hit the danger zone. Logically, Halloway had the brain eruption faster because he had all this time on at once. Straight computime instead of on and off, tasking, surfing, whatever. And he was in the unit, not just working on it.”
“And you think I haven’t factored that in?”
“If you have, you know I’m right.”
“Probably right. Probably is a lot to risk dying for.”
“You’d increase success rate if you used the first of the completed filters before going in.” Jamie had to fight the urge to wiggle in his seat because he knew he was making progress. “Kept log time to under ten minutes. Ran a medical on the operator while he’s on to catch any neurological changes. You got equipment in here that can be rigged to do that.”
And Roarke had been considering doing just that after he’d gotten the boy, and the cops, out of the way.
But perhaps there was a more straightforward method to it all.
“Do you see where I’m going with this filter here?” he asked Jamie.
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Finish it,” Roarke ordered, then got up to make his pitch to Feeney.