“You are going out?” her mother called from her bedroom where she was watching TV. “At this hour?”

“Over to Doug’s, Mom. I need to talk to him.”

“It can’t wait until tomorrow?”

No. It couldn’t. She needed Doug now.

“You think this is wise?” Mom went on. “Outside bad storm is coming.”

“I’ll be OK.” Nadia pulled an umbrella from the closet by the door, then slipped back to her mother’s room. “I shouldn’t be too long.”

She pecked her on the cheek and hurried down to the street. Thunder rumbled as she hit the sidewalk but the pavement was still dry. Across the street lay St. Vartan’s Park, the tiny patch of green where she used to play when she was a child.

She walked down to First Avenue and caught a cab.

This actually might work out better than if Doug had come over for dinner, she thought after giving the driver Doug’s address in DUMBO.

She wouldn’t have been able to discuss Dr. Monnet’s involvement with Berzerk in front of Mom. This way they’d have a chance to talk in private.

She smiled as another thought sent a warm tingle through her. And privacy meant they’d be able to engage in another form of communication…

11

“Aw, no!” Doug said as his monitor went dead along with everything else electric in his apartment. Luckily he’d just finished a save or he’d have lost all the new code he’d just written for his tracking software. Still, he’d probably lost a whole screen’s worth. Times like this he wished he’d invested in a BUPS unit.

He blinked in the sudden darkness; then a lightning flash strobed through the room, followed by a rumble of thunder. He’d been so wrapped up in his programming—he entered something like a Zen state when he worked like this—that he’d lost all track of time and surroundings.

“Damn,” he muttered. “A storm.”

He pushed away and went to the window. A cool breeze laden with the promise of rain washed over him. Another brighter flash of lightning with a louder thunderclap close on its tail. This was shaping up to be a biggie. Then he noticed that windows across the street were still lit up. How come they had power and he didn’t? As a matter of fact, he couldn’t remember the last time a storm had knocked out his power.

He picked up the phone to call Nadj but it was dead. Power and phone? How the hell had that happened? He wondered if Nadj had been calling him. Well, he always had the cell phone…

Doug straightened as he heard the fire escape rattle. The wind picking up? Shouldn’t be anybody out there. He went to the bedroom to see.

The window was wide open, just as he’d left it, the curtains billowing in the breeze. He stuck his head outside and checked upward—his apartment was on the top floor, so only the short length of ‘scape to the roof lay above him. No one visible up there. And no one down. Probably the wind; a good gust would rattle the railings every so often. Far to his right, across the river, a brightly speckled sliver of Lower Manhattan was visible between two buildings.