The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 112: Negligence

Dan dropped into t-space before the pepper spray could do more than sting. He left the irritant behind, and his skin tingled, confused at what to feel. He waited for the sensation to fade, a little annoyed with himself. He hadn’t expected such a violent reaction, but people were twitchy in the dark. Not everyone had a map of their surroundings sitting in their heads at all times, Dan reminded himself.

He reappeared beside the man who had maced him. Dan’s hand lashed out and tapped the canister, pulling it into t-space. The surprised worker yelped, jerked away from Dan, and joined his companion on the ground.

“Calm down,” Dan said, his own voice steady. He turned the electric lantern so that light played over his orange vest, and he held both hands where they could see them. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Two pairs of wide eyes looked him over as adrenaline faded and rationality returned.

“An emergency worker?” one man asked, shakily regaining his feet. He helped his partner up, and they turned to regard him. “How did you get in here?”

“The roof. I’m trying to get the power back on,” Dan explained briefly. He frowned at the pair. “What are you two doing here? Victor is making landfall. You should be in a shelter.”

The two men were a study in contrast. One was big and broad, with a beer gut and a thick beard. The other was short and skinny, with long hair and a bare face. They looked at each other, not immediately answering the question. They looked nervous, to Dan’s eyes. Twitchy. No wonder they’d sprayed him.

The skinny one licked his lips and glanced at the laptop sitting unmonitored at the desk. Dan followed the look, and frowned at what he saw. There was a detached hard drive sitting beside the laptop, and hooked up to it through a series of cables. Below the desk was a gutted computer, still open and obviously missing a hard drive. Dan turned back to the now cowering men, and crossed his arms.

“Explain,” he demanded. These two were either employees, or had forged convincing badges. He could see their ID’s hanging on lanyards around their necks. The pictures matched their faces, but their actions were incredibly suspect.

“Um,” the big one began. He tugged at his collar. “How much do you know about computers?”

“Not much,” Dan admitted frankly. “Why?”

“We were fixing the generator!” the thin one blurted out.

Dan inclined his head to face the man. “You were fixing the generator,” he repeated.

“Uh, yeah!” the big one agreed, his eyes flitting from his companion, to his computer, to Dan. “Fixing the generator.”

Dan ran his hand across his face. “How, exactly, were you fixing the generator from up here?” He glanced back to the desk, and added, “With a laptop, no less.”

“We were connecting to the generator’s 5k network,” the thin one babbled. “I was transferring data packets to update the- uh, the firmware.”

“The firmware,” Dan repeated.

“Absolutely,” the big one agreed.

Dan jerked his head towards the laptop. “What’s the hard drive for?”

“Uh.” Neither of them seemed prepared for that question. Maybe they hoped that Dan wouldn’t know what he was looking at. He tried not to laugh as they flailed for an answer. The big one’s eyes lit up as something occurred to him.

“It’s a backup!” he exclaimed.

“For what?” Dan asked, sending his veil crawling across the floor. It slipped up the thin one’s legs, across his shirt, and around his neck. It touched upon the lanyard, wrapping it tight.

“For the, uh, signal buffer?” the thin one tried.

Dan’s veil flickered, and the man’s ID appeared in Dan’s hands. The thin man jerked at the sudden change, eyes going wide again. Dan scrutinized the badge while keeping an eye on the two men, who were shifting nervously at the use of Dan’s power. Mickey Riggs, the ID said. Dan’s veil swept over Mickey’s pockets and found a thick bundle of leather. Another mental twitch, and the man’s wallet popped into view.

“Hey!” Mickey exclaimed, stepping forward. Dan’s serious gaze halted him in his tracks.

Dan opened the wallet, leafed through it until he found the driver’s license. The name and picture both matched. He flipped it closed and tossed it to Mickey. The thin man was so discombobulated that he missed the catch, and his wallet bounced off his chest and dropped to the ground.

Dan wiggled the ID badge at the pair. “This here says you’re a technician. How are you so bad at technobabble?”

“I’m-I’m-I’m—”

“Shut up.” Dan made a sharp gesture with his hand, and Mickey shut up. Dan pressed his thumb and forefinger against his temples and pressed down hard. Thunder rumbled outside. The walls and windows rattled against the wind.

“Okay,” Dan said, finally. “Please tell me you’re just doing some shady corporate looting. I don’t think I can deal with another conspiracy right now. Especially not one so incompetent.”

The two men looked confused, but eventually gave up the goose. They worked for HoriZen, the tech company that owned the building. Apparently, HoriZen logged all calls made via the cell tower above, caching this information to sell to advertising firms and anyone else who might be interested. When the building was evacuated, the two men realized they had an opportunity to copy that information, and sell it for themselves.

“That can’t possibly be legal,” Dan said, after hearing them out.

“It’s theft,” the big man admitted with some shame. Dan hadn’t bothered to learn his name. “But, hey, we could split it with you!”

“Not that,” Dan said. “I mean collecting the data to begin with. Why does HoriZen have access to the cell tower at all?”

“I mean, it’s right there on the roof,” Mickey pointed out. “Not exactly Fort Knox, y’know? I figured it was common practice.” He looked hopeful. “If they’re stealing the info to begin with, doesn’t that mean it’s not illegal for us to steal it back?”

“No,” Dan replied flatly. “Nobody is stealing anything. There’s a fucking hurricane outside.” His statement was punctuated by a boom of thunder that shook the walls. “You two lemmings are going to help me get the generator restarted, so that emergency services aren’t working in a blackout zone!”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Mickey agreed, holding up his hands. He glanced to the laptop. “Just— Hear me out.”

Dan’s veil whipped out and vanished the laptop, spare hard drive and all.

“Hey!”

“You’ll get it back if you behave,” Dan snapped irritably. “Take me to the backup generator.”

Most buildings of this size had some sort of battery room, plugged into the grid to maintain power long enough for the backup generator to kick on. That power supply had evidently run its course, as not even the emergency lights were running. The building was as dark as a cloudy night sky.

The two men reluctantly lead him down into the belly of the building. Dan kept an eye on them through his veil, suspicious but not particularly wary. These two were white collar criminals through and through. Violence seemed to be an almost foreign concept to them. Even Mickey, who had maced Dan in a fit of fear and surprise, appeared to be disturbed by his own daring.

Of course, there was a great deal of complaining. Mickey and his friend attempted to bribe Dan no less than eight more times, with increasingly fantastic sums and at increasingly frantic intervals. Only the literal hurricane outside, and Dan’s promise of returning their ill-gotten goods, kept the men from fleeing into the night.

The service basement door was locked, but Dan’s veil easily dealt with that problem. The bolt vanished into t-space and the door swung open as he approached it. The two men behind him gulped audibly, as he stepped into the pitch-black room. Mickey’s shaking hands hefted the electric lantern. Dim yellow light played off the walls and jittering shadows danced along the floor. The wind howled above, the sound resonating down to this concrete tomb.

“Oh Jesus,” the big one whispered. “I don’t like this.”

Mickey nodded, and made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a cough.

Dan ignored his companions’ blubbering. His veil swept across the room, quickly finding electrical wiring, pipes, and the steel frame of an industrial generator. He went straight for the machine, his body swallowed by the dark. He didn’t need his eyes to navigate this room, his veil was more than enough.

The two thieves whimpered as Dan vanished from view.

Dan quickly identified the issue: the generator was completely empty. It was plugged into a wall socket, and a quick probe showed dozens of wires intertwining from the socket to a distant breaker. Somebody had gone through all the effort of setting this generator up, but never bothered to actually put gas in the thing.

Pipes ran from its sides, down to a fuel reservoir below the building that was dry as a bone. Whoever’s job it was to maintain the thing had clearly been slacking. Dan cast about the room, finding both propane tanks and jerry cans nearby. He was pretty sure that gasoline wasn’t meant to be stored this way, but he’d take it. A jerry can appeared in Dan’s hands, and he sagged under the weight.

Dan lowered it carefully and frowned. There wasn’t actually a simple way to manually refuel a generator like this. It wasn’t like it had a gas cap. He’d have to improvise. His veil split, one tendril moving to the generator’s fuel compartment, and the other settling at the bottom of the jerry can. Dan pictured a door opening, and fuel drained down from one container to the other. Dan grinned at the success, snagging another can and repeating the process until he ran out of cans. There wasn’t much, maybe twenty gallons. That wouldn’t last long in a generator this size.

There was an enormous, and full, propane tank sitting some distance away from the generator, completely unattached. That was— Well it was a pretty weird thing to find, but Dan wasn’t about to complain. After a bit of searching, Dan found a long hose with a propane regulator attached to one end, discarded on the floor amidst a pile of tools. Attaching that took a bit more work, but secured a more lasting fuel source for the generator. Finally, Dan spooled the machine up with a press of a button.

It roared to life, and instantly the lights snapped on. The two criminals yelped from where they’d been cowering on the floor, eyes wide and watering. Dan blinked spots out of his eyes, then reached into his pocket and checked his phone. A minute passed before he caught a signal, the bars slowly creeping upwards. Dan smiled at his own success.

Then there was the distinctive noise of a breaker being tripped, the generator sputtered, died, and they were plunged back into darkness.

“Fuck’s sake,” Dan muttered, his veil searching around for a breaker panel. The thousands of wires made it easy to identify. Dan lifted his phone and activated the flashlight function, then ran it across the panel. A bit of probing showed that every single breaker had tripped. The switches were helpfully labeled, and Dan shut them all off except for the one labeled ‘Cell Tower’.

He went back to the generator, found where it was hooked into the building’s power. His veil followed the wires behind the wall, and he quickly realized the problem. The generator was government property, designed to bear the load of the cell tower and some emergency lighting in case the building was used as a shelter. HoriZen apparently disagreed with this plan. Whoever had wired up the generator had included a separate breaker box labeled ‘Server Room’ which carried a much higher load than the generator could bear.

“I really don’t like this company,” Dan said to the room.

His veil snipped the extra wiring, and he restarted the generator. The machine roared to life, filling the room with a dull roar. The lights remained off within the room, and Dan shone his phone over the breaker once more. He found the ‘Emergency Lighting’ label, and tentatively flicked it on. Dim yellow bulbs spluttered into being, and the generator roared onward.

Dan peered about, waited for things to fail.

Nothing.

He grinned to himself, and turned to the pair of criminals waiting by the entrance. The two men had waited, maybe not patiently, but expectantly. Dan had promised to give them back their laptop, and their stolen data. He wasn’t actually inclined to do either, and they had no real way to force him. Ideally, he reported them to the proper authorities and sent them on their way. But there was a hurricane outside, and judging from the rattling walls, they’d run out of time to evacuate.

So, Dan thought to himself, what to do?