Chapter 10

The drive from Albany to Tarrytown felt like days. When Edward Brandt had broken the news about Andrew to his wife Joyce, she couldn’t get him out of the house fast enough. “Go, find out who did this. Bring them to justice.” Those words echoed in his mind during the entire trip. The heartache was no less now than when he first heard of Andrew’s assassination. Who the hell would want to do this to him? He already knew this would be a difficult puzzle to solve. If it was even possible to solve. There was one thing that Edward Brandt was sure of: when this is over, he was done with the FBI. He was tired of seeing good people meet tragic ends. He was tired of the politics and secrecy. The only thing fueling his desire to continue was that this felt personal for both him and Joyce.

When Agent Brandt arrived at the house, he immediately felt cold and alone. First, the parents and now the only son Andrew had fallen victim to deliberate attacks. It was a fact that he couldn’t put out of his mind. He wasn’t sure how his relationship with Andrew would affect his investigation, but he had to try his best. The local law enforcement had already removed the body from the house, the front door crossed with yellow crime scene tape. Dan had ensured that no further involvement from the local authorities had occurred. Something that likely caused confusion among their ranks but was too far of an uphill battle for them to appeal. Brandt wanted to keep a fresh mind for his own personal investigation, so he declined to be advised of any initial findings from the Police or FBI.

“Special Agent Brandt, coming in!” he yelled as he put on a pair of latex gloves and entered under the caution tape. Announcing one’s presence was always a good practice when arriving at a place of interest. This made it clear to friendly personnel inside not to be alarmed, or in the case of hostiles, to be very alarmed.

“Good morning, Agent Brant. Agent Beckett and Smith from STB just wrapping things up.” The sound felt like it had come from far away and had an echo to it.

The echo had seemed odd to Brandt, but again, what has made sense about this situation so far? He knew the direction that the voice had come from, but he was not ready to go into Andrew’s office just yet. As many people in the field practiced, he tended to talk out loud, or at least whisper to himself as he conducted an investigation. The audible repeat of his mind’s thinking helped him paint a better picture rather than writing everything down. If he had been a first responder, he would have sealed off the area and established an appropriate cordon. Then he would determine the type of crime that had been committed. Two steps that had already been done for him which brought him to surveying the scene. “Look for an entry.” The killer obviously didn’t go through the front door; there were no signs of forced entry and no recording from the security camera.

He worked his way through the living room to find an obvious entry point. It didn’t take long for him to discover the sliding glass window in the living room. The rectangular, almost laser-precise piece was missing from it. “This looks cut.” In that moment, he knew that this was not the work of a local gang or a simple smash and grab from the petty criminal. This level of sophistication was not common for those that needed to move fast. “This is intentional and calculated.” More chills ran up and down his spine. Still hesitant to visit the office, he wanted to check outside the house first.

“Special Agent Brandt exiting the residence.”

“Roger.”

The living room window was nearly thirty-five feet from the fence that bordered the property. The grass that decorated the path between the two structures was only about one inch high. Andrew really enjoyed having a well-manicured yard, much like his tidiness on the house’s interior. Brandt felt safe to assume that any first responders would have already searched this area of the grounds. Still, he wanted to be thorough, so he performed his own search. He decided on the spiral search, which many regard as one of the most effective methods of searching terrain. He found the centermost spot between the fence and the window and worked his way outward in concentric circles. If something of interest was in this area, he was very likely to reveal it.

“Nothing… not even footprints.” Someone fleeing the scene, especially in a panic, would often at least leave a deep enough impression in the turf to see. Yet there was nothing. “Either this person can fly, or he was as nimble as a cat.” Brandt had no choice but to accept the disappointing outcome of the search. His examination of the side of the house and rooftop yielded nothing of interest either. However, the small guest house in the back yard was interesting to him. Brandt had not been back there in at least two years, so it was new to him. He noticed the keypad to the right of the door frame and immediately thought of a security lock. He didn’t know any code but decided to try to turn the doorknob anyways. The door opened effortlessly. “Hm, I suppose the other agents had already disconnected the lock.” Brandt flipped on the lights and began to study the surroundings. Nothing felt out of place. It looked like storage for old computer junk but had a sofa, small bathroom, and kitchenette. A sixty-inch flat screen tv was mounted to the wall in front of the sofa, and circles cut into the ceiling, which looked like an office intercom system. Brandt passed it off as probably just one of the higher-end sound systems, likely some kind of get away from the main house. “Moving on.”

The part that Edward Brandt was dreading the most was now upon him. He didn’t know what he would feel when he entered the office. Could he keep his composure? Would he be professional enough to finish what he started?

“Special Agent Brandt, entering the residence.”

“Got it!”

Well, that was professional, he thought to himself. Brandt moved slowly toward the office door. Standing within the door frame, he immediately noticed the dried pool of blood that started at the desk and made its way to the floor below. The emotion that the image brought to him had clouded his mind. He walked closer to the desk, the video he had witnessed the day prior repeating in his mind. He looked around the room, checking to see if anything obvious was missing from the office. The cloud in his mind lifted when the thought dawned upon him. “Where did those voices come from? They had to have come from this room.” It wasn’t immediately apparent to him that the bookshelf was turned at a forty-five-degree angle. “What?” He looked behind to reveal the hidden passage. In disbelief, he descended the staircase.

“Coming down.” Brandt had almost tripped on the blue cable that trailed up the stairs. He looked at it for a second; he knew what it was but didn’t feel concerned about it until he looked back up. What he saw, he could not comprehend. A bunker-like structure with three rooms. He could see Agents Beckett and Smith through the window in the room on the right. They were placing some kind of golden fragments into a black pelican case. The room on the left had only empty racks. Server racks, he figured. While it all just seemed like the world of an extreme computer enthusiast, he noticed the blackened and charred abrasions on the walls.

Edward Brandt was no more tech savvy today than he was yesterday. He needed to talk to these guys. Judging by their banter, the pair were obvious techno-geeks.

“Careful, man, don’t bend that superconductor line.”

“Why not? This thing is toast. The qubit amplifiers are barely recognizable.”

Brandt would be shocked if they were even carrying their issued handgun, much more if they even knew how to fire the weapon. He entered the room, taking notice of the sign that read Mind.

“Hey guys, what happened in here?”

Besides their names and the fact that they worked in the same building as Brandt, he knew little about the two agents. Agent Beckett was the only of the two interested in talking. Apparently, Smith didn’t feel up to the task of explaining the technology that once worked here.

“Chandelier fell.”

“What? That’s a chandelier?”

“Oh, sorry, man. That’s just what many people in the business call it. It’s actually a quantum computer.”

Brandt was taken aback by how casually Beckett had described the device. It didn’t look like much of a computer to him.

“Why did it fall?”

“It was hanging on by a thread when we got here. You could breathe on it wrong, and it would have fallen. In fact, I think that’s what Smith did.”

“Piss off,” Smith said under his breath, continuing to place the fragments into the case.

Brandt rolled his eyes; he was not in the mood to play referee with these two. “Can you at least tell me what happened to it prior to your arrival?”

“I can really only guess that the cooling system failed, and the chand-- I mean, quantum computer overheated. The extreme pressures inside likely caused it to explode. We are taking these fragments back to the lab for more analysis.”

“Ok, what about the other room? The walls look just as charred.”

“Yes, that room. The servers in there were all burnt to hell. There must have been such a strong power surge to create that mess.”

“Yeah, more like a bolt of lightning.” Smith gave his two cents.

“We’ve already loaded those into the Van outside. They might never work again, but maybe we can still pull some data off the drives.”

“The blue network cable that I almost tripped over?”

“That’s more likely where our two jobs will intersect. The elaborate security mechanism upstairs did not have room for cables. We think that someone purposefully connected that cable to the outside world.”

“So, you two believe this was some act of sabotage?”

“Well, it certainly appears that way at first glance. Not much of this had made sense for us as well. When we finally get time to examine all of this stuff, we may have a better idea. Perhaps you should come to the lab in a few days and we can exchange notes then.”

“Sure, we’ll see. I’m going to get out of here; there’s not much I can do down here.”

“Later.”

Brandt was still baffled by how casual the two agents were. He didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, but it caught him off guard. At least one of them was helpful, Brandt motioned his way out of the room and out of the bunker. The bunker had felt like a completely different world to him. And for the briefest moments, he had put Andrew’s death out of his mind. That all changed when he reached the top of the staircase.

Reality had set back in and all of the emotions flooded back into him. The bloody remnants of a best friend splattered across the desk and floor. The video again playing on a loop in his mind. His body clenched up. He felt the pressure in his head increase while his chest rose with the deep draw of breath. The sounds of the environment fell silent. He felt like he was about to explode in a fit of rage. Then the pain suddenly and without warning left his being. He stood in the center of the room for a moment, looking at the wall to the left of the doorframe. His body was lost in time and space. His eyes turned into a frigid gaze upon the family portrait. Andrew was seven years old, smiling and standing between his mother and father. Brandt’s mind went calm. He looked down at his hands and unclenched his fists. He felt numb and emotionless all over his body. Turning around, he walked out of the house with a sense of purpose he had never known before.