Breach Point - Prologue
SEATTLE, WA
John hadn’t been to a party this amazing since high school. But what shocked him more than the fun he was having, on Halloween, no less, was that he’d thrown the party.
From geek to Mr. Popular. It had only taken John twenty-six years to achieve success. No thanks to his mind-numbing, middle-class parents or loser nerd friends.
John had vision. Intelligence. The drive to get somewhere.
“Yo, John, any more of the good stuff around?” one of his friends slurred from the couch, clinging to a half-empty bottle of mescal.
The other friend stumbled over a blowup doll dressed in black lace underwear someone had brought to the party.
“Her” appearance had earlier encouraged hysterical laughter among the guests.
Too bad none of the real women had stayed behind for some extra fun.
They’d left, along with everyone else, moving to the next place on the list in their Halloween party crawl.
He’d join them shortly. Just as soon as he could get Joe and Mike to leave with him.
The night hadn’t been a total loss in the love department though.
Earlier, one of the girls, hoping to get closer to John’s obvious success, had been pretty free with her favors.
He smiled at the memory. He had no influence to find her a better position in the company, but Megan didn’t know that.
John was a brain, not a corporate exec. He worked his wiles in software engineering, in tech and code.
And man, did it pay. He had serious money and an enviable role in one of the most forward-thinking, wealthy, successful tech firms in the country.
Raleway Tech, headed by the amazing Nelson Rupert, looked ready to surpass Google and Apple in profit and was leading the way in technology, especially with the new inroads to Artificial Intelligence.
Everyone knew AI was the future. But Mr. Rupert, for all that the dude was old, had real vision. A way to use AI to make even more money for the company and do great things for the world.
As part of Mr. Rupert’s inner think tank, John fought hard for his place, constantly providing solutions to problems the others never saw coming.
At the thought, he stared beyond the huge mess everyone had left behind in his seven-figure beachfront condo at the sea, proud of this place, a mark of success his parents had never even dreamed of achieving, stuck as they’d been in Tacoma in a low-income house behind an average high school full of underachievers.
The storm-tossed ocean outside mocked him, full of raging waves and tempting conquest.
“Hey guys, I’ll be right back.”
One of his friends mumbled something in response. Behind him, he heard laughter and the sound of something crashing as he entered his study, but he didn’t care. He’d replace whatever they broke, because John had money now. Big money.
He smiled as he checked the security feeds he regularly kept under watch at Raleway Tech.
Only to see something that shouldn’t be there.
He sat at his desk and typed a few commands, his mouth going dry as he watched a stream of encrypted schematics being downloaded from his desktop, a thing that should have been impossible. When he tried to alert security at Raleway HQ, his calls didn’t go through. Neither did his texts or emails.
Frantic to get help, he called the number he’d been told to use only in case of emergency.
“Someone’s stealing files. Big Fish. The server’s been infiltrated, and I’m not sure how.”
John paused, waiting for a response, not surprised when the blistering answer froze him in fear for the future of his job. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
He disconnected. Rose. Tripped, feeling dizzy. Too many pills, too much booze.
But he had to get to Raleway Tech. He’d be fine to drive. The fear of his crumbling future would wipe away his drug-induced state.
He was struggling to get a clean shirt over his head, his arms in the armholes as he reentered the living room. Hell, his guests had really trashed his place. There was food and garbage everywhere.
“Joe, Mike, I…”
John blinked, unable to understand what he was seeing.
A masked clown wearing a black and white jumper with stripes and polka dots, big black shoes adorned with white pompoms on the ends, and a demonic mask made to look like a possessed clown, stared back at him.
To top off the outfit, a jaunty little black hat was affixed to the top of the stringy wig capping that cadaverous, pasty mask. The clown’s eyes looked completely black. He cocked his head, studying John in silence.
On the couch, John’s friends lay passive, their heads back.
Foam bubbled at Mike’s mouth.
Joe lurched and vomited upwards, spraying himself in a rain of puke then choking on it.
No one moved to help him.
Shocked out of his stupor, John took a step in his direction.
The clown raised a hand and shook a finger at him.
“But, but… Are my friends okay?”
The clown gave a deep, goofy laugh. “I’ll take care of them for you, little buddy.” The sheer size of the clown—his wide shoulders and massive height—worried John more than a little.
Especially when the clown didn’t move. John needed to pass him to get out the door.
“I have to head in to work.”
Joe had stopped flailing. Mike didn’t move. Sleeping, right? Yes, of course. Sleeping it off. Sure. John couldn’t take his gaze from Mike’s blank stare at the ceiling.
The clown clapped. “It’s Halloween! Celebrate the scary season with me and your friends. It’ll be so much fun.”
John stumbled to the door, trying to focus on what his boss would do if someone stole their prototype, for which John was solely responsible.
He stopped a foot from the clown, who still hadn’t moved. “Seriously. I can’t see your eyes. Is it the drugs clouding me, or are they covered in black—”
The clown jabbed a needle into his neck and plunged something cold into him.
The bastard laughed. “That’ll make you feel super good, little buddy.”
“Not your…” John staggered, the pain mixing with a euphoria from all the other substances he’d ingested over the course of the night.
“Not even midnight yet, and the party’s over. What a bummer.” The clown sighed and dragged John to sit next to Mike.
John knew he had something to do. A place to go. Problems with his friends.
But the little fish that appeared before his eyes turned into a big fish. They swam together deeper and deeper into the ocean.
He heard the clown in the background giggling, gurgling, cursing him to hell with all the demons. The maniacal laugh turned horrifying. John would have screamed except his stomach rebelled. Acid burned his throat.
He choked, unable to breathe. The vodka from earlier came back to haunt him.
Fitting, he guessed, for Halloween.
The pain didn’t stop as he continued to swirl down the ocean’s drain. Right into hell.
The clown watched. So much decadence and money wasted on incompetence.
He pulled out his phone, dialed a number, and in his normal voice said, “It’s done.”
No one answered. No one had to.
The call ended. He placed a few more special pills on the table to help the police reach the correct conclusion. Studied the scene, satisfied.
A trip into John’s office showed data on his monitor that shouldn’t be there. Not that he knew what the data meant exactly, only that it didn’t belong at a Halloween party full of overdosing scumbags.
After pouring alcohol over the computer and shorting it, he let the small fire catch before putting it out with one of John’s T-shirts. For good measure, he then put the desktop in the shower stall and saturated the interior of the tower before drying it and placing it back under the desk.
That done, he exited the condo the same way he’d entered, freely through the front door.
On his way to the lobby, he scared several fellow passengers in the elevator by being still and quiet, while many others praised him for his costume.
Once on the ground floor, he offered a wave to those having a blast in the lobby, dancing and celebrating the spooky season.
A short walk through the parking lot led to his nondescript car. He started it up and left. No muss, no fuss. Once safely away, he discarded his clown mask for a ball cap and tugged his clown suit to his waist. Just another commuter driving around the city on this most special of evenings.
It was The Night of the Witches, after all. Samhain. The Day of the Dead.
He vanished like the ghost he’d always been.