Dark Application: ONE (The Dark Application Series Book 1) (2 page)

“Alright,
alright, get me a tampon god dammit,” Luke said.

“That’s
my man!” said Chris as he stepped into the kitchen, where Luke could hear him
shuffling around
, the
refrigerator door opening
and slamming, sending the contents whirling. A beer can flew into his lap,
making him jerk up his knees in defense.

As Luke
sipped his beer on the couch, he kept picturing Amy with that new boyfriend.
The way she looked at him, the way he charmed her. His buzzed head,
clean-shaven face, his Nike jacket, his nice car.
His
tall build and his hard-lined jaw.
And Amy, staring into his eyes
lustily. Why did she have to be such a damn dream girl? Why was she
so attracted to spoiled assholes?

*****

The
bus lurched to a jerking halt and Luke hopped out the door at the corner of
Commerce Loop and Jackson Boulevard. He was on the southeast side of
town, where there were no stores or houses, just huge skeletal, mysteriously
unidentified buildings, rows after rows of them. Some were obviously
warehouses with rolling metal doors and forklifts parked along the alleyways.
Others were just huge vacant-looking buildings with closed-up blinds over
the dark windows and a few random cars here and there in the vast parking lots.
He could see a large office complex ahead with the number 4018 on the
side. Ducking his head against the pouring rain, he jogged toward the
front door.

He
pushed open the door to find himself in a large, warm building with fans
blowing heated air, and a reception table with a woman in military fatigues
talking on the phone. He pulled his hood back and looked around, blinking
as he took in the high white walls, the corridors leading off to the left and
right, and looked for a chair. There was no place to sit or wait.
He stood there until the lady hung up the phone.

“Mr.
Jeffers?” she asked, standing up from the desk.

Luke
blinked a few times. “Uh, yeah, I guess that’s me,” he said.

“My
name is Sergeant Coffield. Follow me, please.”

She
picked up a pile of paperwork and led him down one of the dim corridors to an
office with a long desk filled with computers and printers. A young man
sat at one of the computers, staring intensely at the screen, clicking away at
the mouse. When he saw Luke, he stood up and gave a grandiose smile,
pushing his chair away and reaching out to grab Luke’s hand.

Luke
reached out cautiously and took the guy’s hand. He stared blankly at the
man, who vigorously clasped his hand and jiggled his arm.

“Hi,
you must be Luke! I’m Kevin Dobson. I’m a CIS Grad Student over at
Tech and I’m going to be your training supervisor this semester. Come on
in and sit here at this desk, I have your work station ready to go.”

Kevin
was a twitchy, skinny guy with black straight hair and a beak of a nose.
His collar bone stuck out through his shirt, and Luke noticed that his
arms were unusually skinny. The man looked emaciated. He had a
rough beard and round eyes framed by shaggy unkempt eyebrows.

The
rest of the day was mostly Luke signing and submitting paperwork. There
were several confidentiality agreements, most of which he barely scanned before
signing.
Yeah-yeah, work and don’t talk about it. I live with the
dunce cap crew. No one in my house would understand this shit anyway.

The
beginning of the internship required several training modules which guided Luke
through the basic usage of the programs. He sat there and blinked hard,
trying to keep his eyes open, fighting off drowsiness. Finally, at 3 pm,
he was released and rode the bus back through the slick gray streets to his
house.

The
next day, he thankfully did not have chemistry so he didn’t have to endure Amy
hanging all over her new asshole boyfriend. That was only a twice-a-week
class. Today his only commitment was his internship, which he planned to
get through quickly and so he could leave.

During
the second block of his introductory training module, he walked into the
corridor to get a soda from the vending machine as an excuse to stand up so he
wouldn’t nod off. He was bored. When he sat back down, he looked
over his shoulder at skinny Kevin who sat across the room with his back to
Luke, clicking away at some complex graph thing that Luke swallowed hard just
looking at. Kevin was totally lost in his work. Luke was sure Kevin
had forgotten he was even there.

As any
true “geek” with a new toy would do, Luke jumped right into Explore and started
snooping around at the files on the hard drive and a networked server named
DARK
.
He glanced back over his shoulder several times to see if Kevin had
noticed, but Kevin was still totally absorbed. Luke, sitting on the edge
of his seat, began to search for games. A link came up inviting him to
download free, unreleased trial games. He blinked and read the window
again.
Unreleased: trial games. Official user password required.

Luke
suddenly felt a little more awake. He glanced quickly again at Kevin and
back.

“Hey, Kevin.
Can I plug my phone in here to charge?
All I got is this USB plug…”

Kevin
whipped around in his chair, all smiles.
“Oh yeah!
Go ahead, Luke. Hey, I’m going to go grab some coffee, want
something?”

“Oh
no, thanks, I got a Coke,” Luke said, pointing to it.

“Oh,
okay,” Kevin said, awkwardly turning and stumbling out of the room.

Luke
quickly reached in his bag and pulled out his USB cord, plugging it in.
He began scanning through the games: Mathematical ALG, Camelot’s
Quest,
Earth
Odyssey 2035. He went through the
list, syncing everything that caught his eye with his phone.

Then he
tried to access the network server named
DARK
, but it must have been
behind the firewall or something because he couldn’t seem to access it from his
terminal, or even get a login screen requesting credentials. Luke knew
that the building was staffed with programmers working on next generation
programs, games, and applications. Kevin mentioned earlier that they even
did research and development for the government in the same building where they
were working.
I bet that’s where the cool games are,
he thought
,
and Kevin’s terminal wasn’t locked, nor manned, since he left the office
and ran for coffee
. Kevin’s running the show here; he must have access
to that network drive.
Hmmmm
…

Within
seconds, Luke ran over and connected his phone to Kevin’s terminal and quickly
synced it with the
DARK
drive. The sync was complete in less than
two minutes and he disconnected and raced back to his desk. Wow,
Luke’s adrenalin was pumping. He didn’t know, or truly care, what he
downloaded from the
DARK
drive, but he felt like James Bond or some kind
of CIA agent for a minute or two. Self-esteem was definitely something he was missing
in his life these days. Luke finally understood what Chris meant when he
would say, “Sometimes doing something wrong just feels so right!”

Less
than a minute after Luke made it back to his desk and reconnected the USB cord
to his terminal, Kevin stumbled back into the room with a mug of coffee. “How’s
it going in here?” he asked.

“Oh!
Eh, fine. Everything’s great. Just working on these modules,
they’re a little intense,” said Luke as he giggled under his breath.

“Yes
they are dense. Wait until you get into grad school, everything is like
that. It’s like they are trying to get your brain to explode,” Kevin said
with a chuckle.

Luke
fake-laughed and turned back to his station. Soon, the sync at his
terminal was complete, his battery was charged, and he had some new games and
apps to try out when he got home. Plus he wanted to check out what he
downloaded from Kevin’s terminal connection to that
DARK
server.

At 3
pm, Luke grabbed his faded backpack and headed out the front door, passing the lady
in the military uniform at the front desk.

“Goodbye
now Mr. Jeffers,” she said, staring intently at him. He tried to remember
if she had always stared at him that way, or if she knew that he had just
illegally downloaded stuff off the main server. He smiled, strained and
false, then stepped out the door into the cold and gloomy afternoon.

*****

Luke
might have enjoyed the chemistry lecture if not for Amy and Dickhead. Professor
Jones was a funny old bald man, and the lectures were engaging. He tried
hard to bury himself in the lesson material, but out of the corner of his eye
he could see Amy’s profile and hear her whispering.

Once
upon a time, Amy had sat and whispered to Luke in class. Yeah, it was
over ten years ago in middle school, back before Amy joined the gang of
Savannah Byrne, but Luke still remembered those days of sitting with her in
social studies, giggling at the fat teacher, gossiping about who raised their
hand to answer the question like a big dork. Back then, Luke was still
taller than most of the girls. His voice hadn’t yet become the squeaky,
half mouse, half frog, that it would freshman year of high school, and stay
that way until junior year. Amy had short hair back then, nothing
compared to the beautiful mid-length flowing burst of black silk ringlets it
was now. But it had been pretty even then, and Luke had been secretly in
love with her since; he still dreamt about her playful shoves in the hallway,
her long sideways glances and her elbows stabbing him in the side when he made
her laugh. Back then, it didn’t matter that Amy’s mom was African or that
Luke’s mom was divorced and on welfare, because no one paid attention to that
stuff in middle school. It wasn’t until high school that Luke realized
that he was a loser. In middle school, Luke had been the lucky one whose
mom didn’t make him wear braces. Now, in college, he realized that his
mom couldn’t afford to get him braces. If he had known then what he knew
now, how differently his view of the world would have
been.

The
new boyfriend obviously had been an unlucky kid who’d had to wear braces
because his teeth were white and perfect, like movie star teeth. He wore
baggy Reebok sweats that showed cut hip muscles and never wore long sleeves,
except hoody sweaters in the rain. He was sporting his rugby team cap and
always had some kind of bruise or injury to show off from the latest game he
won.
Rugby is not like football
, he would brag.
There
aren’t any fouls in rugby.
You just whoop everyone’s ass until you
win.

Luke
ground his teeth and worked his hands into fists every time Blockhead started
to talk. He would put his head down in his book and pretend to read,
letting his blonde bangs fall over his face to hide his anger and jealousy,
especially when Amy laughed at one of his idiotic jokes.

Professor
Jones handed out review papers. “Chapter one review and lecture exam
Friday, folks,” he announced. “You’ll have forty minutes, and there will
be four questions on each of the three main topics we’ve covered so far,
totaling twelve questions. I prefer to have several smaller exams, rather
than two brain-splitting ones, so be ready for a test at any time in this
class.”

Luke
inwardly groaned. He was not ready for this at all. He had barely
been able to think during class, let alone interpret anything the teacher said.
He tucked the review paper into his backpack and leapt through the door
just before anyone else got there. He shouldered his bag and stalked down
the dark hall. Classes were just letting out, the small brightly lit
classroom windows shining yellow squares onto the darkened concrete corridor
floor as Luke marched by. His heart was pounding. His shoulders were
hunched, and he could feel rage and self-pity rising in the pit of his stomach.

When
he approached the metal double-doors, he barreled through and a gust of chilly
wet wind slammed the door behind him again. He was crossing the path and
reaching for his bike when he felt his phone
vibrate
in his pocket.

Puzzled,
he dropped his bag and reached for his cell. The screen was blank, but it
vibrated again. He pressed the answer key and said, “Hello?”

But
there was no response. He looked at the screen again, pushing the end key
over and over.

“Damn
you phone, please don’t die on me again, I can’t afford this shit!” he said.

Just
then, a black square appeared on the screen.
Dark Application,
it
said underneath the square icon that contained a blue glowing light in the
shape of the capital letter “D” centered in the square. The logo filled
the suddenly lit screen.
Loading, please wait.

His
first assumption was that when he had synced his phone to the computers and
network drive at work, he may have jacked up the hard drive on his phone
somehow. He turned the volume on, wondering why it was on vibrate.
Oddly, when he changed the ringer settings, he found that the phone had
been on silent. Had the phone actually vibrated or did he imagine that?
He never set his phone on vibrate. In bewilderment, he realized that
he usually turned his phone off during class. Had the new mobile
application made his phone turn on automatically?
Great
, he
thought.
Just what I need, my phone turning on in
the middle of a test.

He
tossed the phone in his backpack as it began to rain again.
I’ll deal
with it when I get home.
But on the bike ride home, Luke felt oddly
charged, like the wind and the rain hadn’t touched him. His temperature
had risen, making him sweat under his thin sweater. He could feel his
temperature continue to rise as he pedaled, pressing forward faster and faster,
each pump of his feet building an odd sense of power in his muscles and blood.
He became aware that his jaw had clenched and his fists were gripping the
handlebars tightly. He felt fighting mad, agitated and hot.