“Do you think it’s some sort of warning?” Ethan asked.
“I don’t know how it could be. The power of suggestion, I suppose.”
“Still, it was enough that you got in touch with me. Was it you who wrote all those warnings? About the Six-Fingered Man, the Valkyrie server, etcetera?”
His father shook his head. “Not at all. They were the same warnings I received. In fact, it was the same paper and the same box. I just repacked it and sent it to you.”
Ethan hesitated asking the next question, but he knew he had to. “You think something’s going to happen to you, don’t you?”
His father widened his eyes, then exhaled explosively. “It’s such an overwhelming feeling. The dread is almost physical. I can’t explain it, but yes, I do.”
“Oh, Dad, what have you gotten yourself into? And me? Why me and not Bryce?” Ethan glanced at the bureau to his father’s left and saw all the family pictures. His brothers and their families and his sister with her partner. Even an older picture with his grandfather standing next to Ethan’s dad and aunt. Then Ethan realized the truth of it. “It’s because I’m alone, right? I don’t have a wife or kids, so I’m expendable.”
His father shook his head slowly and put the coffee down on the desk. “Not at all, son. That’s not the case at all.”
Ethan didn’t exactly believe the answer. It didn’t pass the logic test, especially if the keeper of the box was destined to die. “Then why, Dad? Why?”
The doorknob rattled behind them, then came a knock. “Bob, are you in there? Is Ethan in there with you?” his mom called.
Ethan glanced at his dad, who merely shrugged and smiled. “We’ll talk more later, son. I’m so happy to see you.”
He got up and came around the desk. Ethan tried to stand, but before he was all the way up, his father’s arms were around him and they hugged awkwardly, Ethan half in and out of his chair. Ethan smelled the residue of yesterday’s cologne on his father’s skin and the slightly sour musk of night sweat, then they parted and his father unlocked and opened the door.
His mother stood in the doorway. When she saw Ethan, her eyes lit up. She grinned. “Nice to have you here, son. Was it you who made the coffee?”
Ethan nodded. “You like?”
“I’ve had battery acid that was weaker.”
“Then pour yourself some battery acid,” Ethan said in response to their age-old battle over the strength of coffee.
“Don’t listen to your mother. It’s terrific coffee. I can finally taste it.”
“You old sod. You’d prefer it if you could stand a spoon up in the cup.”
“Oh yeah.” His father lip-smacked. “Thick. Just like in the army.”
Everyone shuffled into the kitchen.
Ethan spent the next half hour answering questions, including about the upcoming school year. He couldn’t help but lie and act as if he hadn’t been laid off. It was work to act properly excited. His mother made them scrambled eggs and toast. They sat around the kitchen table and laughed as she caught him up on the trials and travails of his brothers and sister. His father excused himself from the table first and headed off to take a shower.
After Ethan helped his mother clean up, she went upstairs as well.
It was thirty seconds later that he heard her scream.
LOCATION: “We found the remains of a giant buried in the old Roman galleries in the mines. Once we excavated the dirt around its bones, it was clear that it was no less than ten meters long. The men crossed themselves even though the communist guards were watching. Everyone was excited. Several yelled the word Hyperboreans, then said prayers. The next day, the Soviets came and placed it off-limits.”
—Miner from Rosia Montana, Romania, 1976
Herodotus mentioned them first. I think the Greeks believed they were the gods of the north wind —Sarah
Just another word for “giants” —Matt
Hyperboreans. I remember reading about those in Conan —Steve
TWO
Burying a father sucks.
The doctor said it was a brain aneurysm that killed him, but Ethan McCloud knew better. It had to have been the Six-Fingered Man. Before, he hadn’t known in which direction he wanted to go. Now he did. He was going to find the Six-Fingered Man and do to him what he’d done to his father.
All he had to do was find him first.
He pulled out a piece of memo paper from his father’s desk drawer and grabbed a pen. He began to make a list:
Get new laptop
Find way to pay for travel
See if Matt left any evidence at his home
Find out who the others are and check for evidence
Find Six-Fingered Man
Kill him
He sat back and stared at the list. Only six things to do, but besides the first, the rest seemed so impossible at this point. Then he had an idea. He searched his dad’s office, checking to see if he had a laptop. Ethan found it in a leather case behind the sofa. He pulled it out and noticed that it was new and top-of-the-line. He checked the case and found a mouse, cables, and a debit card from Colorado State Bank. This stopped him. The name on the debit card was his—Ethan C. McCloud.
That was his name.
He’d been meant to find this.
Opening the laptop, he noticed that it required a username and password. Now he was stumped. What would his father use? If the card had been meant for him, then it had to be something obvious, something his father would expect him to figure out easily.
But what?
Ethan glanced around the room at the pictures and books. His gaze fell on each item on the desk, wondering if it might reveal a clue. Finally he stood and went over to his father’s honorable discharge. He removed it from the wall and flipped it over.
Nothing.
Damn it. What would his father have used?
Then he spied the salmon picture. Ethan placed the honorable discharge back on the wall and removed the other picture. He gazed fondly for a moment on his father’s happy face, then flipped the picture over. There on the back, written in block letters, was PW=Columbia_River_Salmon.
Awesome, but what is the username?
He searched the back of every picture in the room but found nothing else written on them. He sat heavily on the sofa, staring at the log-in screen.
What could the username be?
He let his gaze dance around the room until it rested on a plaque he’d bought his father when he was ten or eleven. It read World’s Best Fisherman and had a photo of his father superimposed on a cartoon figure catching a whale.
Ethan smiled.
He typed in Fisherman, then the password.
It didn’t take.
He put the username into all caps and tried again.
This time it took. He was in.
The screen came up, and on the desktop were three files. One titled Introduction to Managed Attribution and Proxy Servers, which reminded Ethan that one of the admonitions was to never connect to the internet without managed attribution. The other file read Notes for Ethan. The third was a thumbnail icon for a video that read In Case of Death.
Ethan took a deep breath and, using the pad on the laptop, scrolled and selected the video-file icon. His father’s face appeared right away. It could have been made his last night for all he knew. His father was wearing the same goofy Dude robe, his hair was askew, and his smile was wan. But it was his father, and for this single electronic instance he was alive.