Read Online The Fugitive by Pittacus Lore - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Pittacus Lore
Ads: Link
guessing weighs a ton. I open up the refrigerator in the kitchen out of curiosity and see that it’s stocked with essentials: milk, water, and even a few steaks. The pantry’s got a bunch of food in it too. Everything looks fresh.
Thanks, GUARD, for making sure I don’t starve.
I check out a few of the bedrooms, but there’s nothing really interesting until I stop in front of a quilt hanging at the end of a hallway near the back of the house. There’s a note on it that says “Look behind me.”
Huh?
I pull back the quilt and find a solid sheet of metal that’s got a little rectangle of reddish-colored glass on the right side where a doorknob or handle might normally be. It looks just like the little fingerprint scanner on my netbook.
“No way,” I murmur as I raise my thumb to the little port.
There’s a beeping noise, and the glass lights up green. The door starts clicking loudly, and I take a few steps back, concerned about what I’m going to find on the other side.
After a few seconds, the thick metal door swings open a bit, and I push it in farther as I enter the room. I immediately see about a dozen computer monitors covering one of the walls. Each of them is streaming footage from the areas in and around the house. There must be cameras located all over the grounds.
So much for laughing at the lack of security.
There’s a sleek-looking computer set up at a desk opposite the other monitors. A couple of burner phones sit beside it. I turn one on and find that GUARD’snumber is already programmed into it, then pocket the burner.
“What the hell is . . . ,” I say as I take everything in. But then I turn around and never finish the question.
The wall behind me is lined with shelves. There are several handguns, rifles, and knives sitting on them, along with a few things that I assume are weapons but don’t immediately recognize. In the center is a folder with something written on it in black marker. I pick it up.
I hope you’re ready for war.
-G
CHAPTER NINE
I SETTLE IN .
Well, as much as I can in a house where I feel completely out of place.
I clean up the gash on my arm using a first aid kit I find in one of the bathrooms. The butterfly bandages don’t seem like they’re doing a great job of keeping the wound closed, so I try to figure out another way of dealing with it. After spending, like, an hour looking up advice on the internet, I dig through a bunch of drawers in the house until I find a tube of superglue, and then put a layer of the stuff over the graze. It feels weird as hell, but it’s the best I can do. As badass as I’ve been recently, I don’t think I have it in me to do my own stitches. Needles were never my thing.
Then, I get straight to work.
Whatever personal business GUARD was dealing with must be taken care of, because he’s almost alwaysonline now. I get Purdy’s computer hooked up to the big desktop in the back room, and GUARD uses his hacking skills to try to salvage any files that might be hidden on the hard drive, like the MogPro files that disappeared when the thing first shut down. He uploads basically everything from my computers to some secure cloud server. We start to build up evidence of what’s going on behind the scenes. We read files about the specifications of Mog weaponry that have obviously been written for human users—proof we need to show the Mogs and FBI are working together. I take some screen grabs and upload them to TWAU under the title “Uncovered: FBI Training Manual for Mog Weapons.” There’s also a ton of transcripts that could take months to sort through, many of which have speakers who are noted using initials only.
The scariest thing I find repeated references to are upcoming “peace talks” with leaders from around the world. Could the Mogs be preparing to expose themselves and give Earth an ultimatum? Or have they already gotten to enough world leaders that they’re relying on the humans to do that for them?
While
Thanks, GUARD, for making sure I don’t starve.
I check out a few of the bedrooms, but there’s nothing really interesting until I stop in front of a quilt hanging at the end of a hallway near the back of the house. There’s a note on it that says “Look behind me.”
Huh?
I pull back the quilt and find a solid sheet of metal that’s got a little rectangle of reddish-colored glass on the right side where a doorknob or handle might normally be. It looks just like the little fingerprint scanner on my netbook.
“No way,” I murmur as I raise my thumb to the little port.
There’s a beeping noise, and the glass lights up green. The door starts clicking loudly, and I take a few steps back, concerned about what I’m going to find on the other side.
After a few seconds, the thick metal door swings open a bit, and I push it in farther as I enter the room. I immediately see about a dozen computer monitors covering one of the walls. Each of them is streaming footage from the areas in and around the house. There must be cameras located all over the grounds.
So much for laughing at the lack of security.
There’s a sleek-looking computer set up at a desk opposite the other monitors. A couple of burner phones sit beside it. I turn one on and find that GUARD’snumber is already programmed into it, then pocket the burner.
“What the hell is . . . ,” I say as I take everything in. But then I turn around and never finish the question.
The wall behind me is lined with shelves. There are several handguns, rifles, and knives sitting on them, along with a few things that I assume are weapons but don’t immediately recognize. In the center is a folder with something written on it in black marker. I pick it up.
I hope you’re ready for war.
-G
CHAPTER NINE
I SETTLE IN .
Well, as much as I can in a house where I feel completely out of place.
I clean up the gash on my arm using a first aid kit I find in one of the bathrooms. The butterfly bandages don’t seem like they’re doing a great job of keeping the wound closed, so I try to figure out another way of dealing with it. After spending, like, an hour looking up advice on the internet, I dig through a bunch of drawers in the house until I find a tube of superglue, and then put a layer of the stuff over the graze. It feels weird as hell, but it’s the best I can do. As badass as I’ve been recently, I don’t think I have it in me to do my own stitches. Needles were never my thing.
Then, I get straight to work.
Whatever personal business GUARD was dealing with must be taken care of, because he’s almost alwaysonline now. I get Purdy’s computer hooked up to the big desktop in the back room, and GUARD uses his hacking skills to try to salvage any files that might be hidden on the hard drive, like the MogPro files that disappeared when the thing first shut down. He uploads basically everything from my computers to some secure cloud server. We start to build up evidence of what’s going on behind the scenes. We read files about the specifications of Mog weaponry that have obviously been written for human users—proof we need to show the Mogs and FBI are working together. I take some screen grabs and upload them to TWAU under the title “Uncovered: FBI Training Manual for Mog Weapons.” There’s also a ton of transcripts that could take months to sort through, many of which have speakers who are noted using initials only.
The scariest thing I find repeated references to are upcoming “peace talks” with leaders from around the world. Could the Mogs be preparing to expose themselves and give Earth an ultimatum? Or have they already gotten to enough world leaders that they’re relying on the humans to do that for them?
While
Similar Books
