PS: There was something else in the Gen-A-Tec computer that was encrypted-a short line that I'm doing myself. (I need my workout, too.) I'll let you know if it turns into anything juicy. In the meantime…

I remain the one and only. MASTER OF THE GAME

ATTACH

After he sent the e-mail, Roland went back to work decoding the short line of code he had found in the Gen-A-Tec database. Like his buddy Zimmy, Roland thought that breaking code was a wonderful mind game. He had been working for a half hour and already had three letters. He wrote them on a paper cocktail napkin on his bedside table, then looked down at the letters once again, wondering what they might stand for:

OCT

He was just starting the cracking sequence on the fourth.

OCT. October, maybe? But why would Gen-A-Tec go to all the trouble of decoding the name of a month? Probably because it wasn't a month. It was something else. Then his program beeped and he quickly had the next letter, 0.

OCTO

October: the tenth month. Ten maybe? He wrote it down. October? Octogeneric? Octopod? Keep going, he thought. He was already over halfway through deciphering it and started running sequences on the next two symbols.

The windowless van had been parked outside the new Fairview Hotel for almost ten minutes when Ranger Captain Dave "Hi-Ho" Silver returned. He was dressed in a black business suit, and he immediately began stripping off his tie as soon as he got back inside the vehicle that was loaded with video and sound monitors.

"I think Valdez must be psychic," Captain Silver said. They have security cameras on all the floors… in boxes. We could disable the one on his floor, or maybe throw the hotel video system into temporary phase jitter, but it's not gonna be covert and will take too much time, so I'm gonna put a DU down."

The entire response-retrieval team looked at the heavy metal cage on the floor of the van. They couldn't see the DU but they could smell it and hear it breathing.

"Pan," Captain Silver said. "It's time."

Pan is sitting in the box, his Geega thoughts coming slowly at first. Most times Pan uses only his strange language of the dark place. His memories of a shadowed past are verdant, humid, and atmospheric. Murderous urges are at times just below the surface, more powerful than even the Geega's commands. He has to fight to keep these urges under control, to do what the alpha Geega wants. The murderous impulse is natural to him, like tasting blood, or eating meat, or the savage instinct of the kill. Hunting and killing are deep inside Pan, although shadowed and obscured. The other things the Geegas want him to do are much harder. Geegas feed him and tell him things. They make him run, and kill, and work with their fire-sticks. Geegas are alpha and Pan knows he has to obey them. Sometimes he presents himself to the main Geega, turning around, raising his privates, offering himself to be fucked. But the alpha Geega never accepts Pan's presentation. Pan then lowers his head to the alpha Geega's feet, placing his soft pink lips in the sand, humbling himself. But the alpha Geega just says his strange speaking words that Pan has to struggle to understand. Then Pan turns back and sits, waiting to be told what he must do. They are the leaders. He is nothing. He is alive only at their pleasure. On his arm is the machine to make the Geega talk. He looks down at it and finds the symbols on the keyboard. He punches in two syllables and waits. An electronic voice emits from his vest:

"Pan go?" It says with metallic Geega precision.

"Thirty stories up," the alpha Geega answers.

Pan cocks his head and tries to listen, tries to do the Geega talk… so hard for him, but he can do it. Pan looks down at the thing on his arm with all the buttons and little symbols that he has practiced on for hours. It does the Geega talk for him, but he has to concentrate for a minute to decide how to make the right talk. Pan pushes several buttons and waits while the strange Geega voice comes out of the heavy vest that he wears, with its lightbox screen and cold metal straps.

"Thirty what?" the mechanical voice on his vest asks, while Pan jumps up and down in pleasure. This is good talk. This is the right Geega talk.

The alpha Geega, Dave, looks into the cage, opens the door and lets Pan out. He leads Pan to the front seat of the van. It is dark outside.

Night… the word coming to Pan in Geega talk, which sometimes happens now.

"Up there, Pan," Dave points. "Thirty floors up," he says, pointing at a high place on the huge building across the street. Then Dave takes out a picture of a strange-looking Geega and shows it to Pan.

"This is our enemy," Dave says.

Pan takes the picture in his gray-white fingers. The Geega enemy looks skinny and small. "I'll direct you from here," Dave says. "Pan, you must fetch the lightbox! You must kill this Geega!" Dave points to the headset around Pan's neck: "Dave will talk over the radio and get Pan to the right spot," he says. "It's on this corner." The alpha Geega points at a spot on the side of the building. Dave looks right at Pan. Pan immediately drops his head, turns around, and presents. It is forbidden to look into the alpha's eyes, so Pan offers his privates in a show of respect.

"Not now, Pan. Do you understand where to go?" Dave says as he opens the door of the van.

Pan pushes a button on his talk machine. The mechanical voice responds. "Yes."

Dave puts the leather gloves with the suction pads on Pan's four hands and buckles them on tight.

"I'll be watching from here, so keep the camera on," the alpha Geega instructs as he taps the little glass eye on the front of Pan's metal vest. "Now go. Fetch. Kill."

Pan is out of the vehicle, moving fast, his speed and strength on full display now. He reaches the glass building then starts up the side, going faster and faster. He climbs up the rounded glass, all four hands gripping the walls with the suction pads the Geegas designed for wall walking. Pan glimpses the inside of rooms as he scales the glass tower.

"Further right," Dave's voice is loud in Pan's ear. Pan has to stop to remember… right… right is the machine side, so he reaches over, secures his suctioned tentacle on the window, then walks sideways across the glass to the next set of windows on the tower. Again he hears the alpha Geega speaking through the earpiece:

"Okay, stop. That's far enough. Now, up, Pan, up." So Pan climbs higher, walking right up the side of the glass structure, pausing once to look down, hanging in that moment by only one extender… dangerous but secure. He looks down and sees the lights of the city. Again he has a shadow memory. He is somewhere else for that instant, lost in darkness, a lifetime away, his primal thoughts suddenly of warmth and sharing-shadows that sometimes hit him at moments like this. Suddenly, he wants to ride through space and time on the long, green, fertile arcs against dark shadows. He doesn't really know what any of this is, or why he cares, or where he came from; he just knows these are shadow feelings from some other lifetime, and they haunt him.

"Up, Pan, up." Dave, the alpha Geega commands, so Pan keeps climbing until, finally, Dave says, "Stop!"

Pan obeys. He looks in at the room where he is hanging. He sees nothing but Geega things and a light coming from a second room.

"Go, Pan. Fetch the lightbox. Kill!" And now Pan finds the edge of the window. With his strong, bony, gloved fingers, he hooks his hands under the frame and pulls. Pan is powerful, with more strength than ten Geegas. He once pulled many Geegas across a field. Although he is smaller than a Geega, he has very special muscles.