Jeremiah nodded. Brent was right about one thing—he did need some answers. He needed to know what happened to his mother. He needed to know if he was going crazy, if the Meld was messing with his mind. And if there was anything in Pike’s files about Scott’s illness, he thought, Brent might be more inclined to believe this whole thing wasn’t what it appeared to be.

“Okay,” he said at last. “Do we need to put panty hose over our faces or something? Because I’m afraid I’m fresh out.”

Ten minutes later, after having inched their way down the hallway, creeping along against the walls, Jeremiah stood nervously behind Brent in the dim light of Pike’s empty office. Brent had been typing feverishly on Pike’s keyboard without any apparent success.

“Hurry up,” Jeremiah whispered.

“It’s going to take a bit of time. Calm down.”

“I am calm.”

“Then shut up and let me do this.”

“What is it you’re doing?” Jeremiah asked. “Trying to guess his password? How are you even going to do that?”

Brent turned to him with an expression of slight annoyance. “You’ve been watching too many bad spy movies,” he said. “I worked in the IT department, remember? I never changed my access codes. But I have to cover my tracks here, delete the time stamp on my actions. I can get in no problem if you’ll stop breathing on my neck.”

Jeremiah stayed where he was but turned his head a little and strained to listen for anyone coming down the hallway.

“Got it,” Brent said after another few minutes. “I’m in.”

Jeremiah peered over Brent’s shoulder and scanned the file names that appeared on the screen. He saw several with his own name attached, probably notes on his physical exams, he figured, and an entire folder devoted to “low-fat food options.”

“This one looks promising,” Brent said, pointing to a folder on the monitor. “Department of Defense Correspondence: Confidential.”

“Department of Defense?” Jeremiah said. “What the hell is Pike’s involvement with that?”

“I told you,” Brent said, “there are some powerful people involved behind the scenes. He’s probably making regular reports to someone. It doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

“Open it. Let’s see what’s in there.”

Brent clicked on the icon to no avail and looked back at Jeremiah in annoyance. “You just assume something like this wouldn’t be protected with a password? For the Department of Defense? Really?”

Jeremiah grunted. “Now what do we do? Do you have that password, too?”

“No,” Brent said, “but I bet I can find it.”

He rooted around on a shelf just above Pike’s monitor until he found a thin red notebook and started riffling through the pages.

“IT got tired of the execs always locking themselves out of their own files,” he said. “So we developed this very high-tech system for them. Nice to know they’re still using it.”

He began systematically trying each password from the notebook and, in under a minute, he had access to the file.