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Part 3-2: Hunch
I focused on the curt, orderly voice of Shelia Crownsford. She was the sheriff department’s dispatcher, and in the past few days we’d all gotten to know her in a weird, detached sort of way. Right now, she was sending an additional unit to the scene of a domestic disturbance call. In the background, steady behind the fuzz and crackle of the radio communications, a thumping metronome tapped a slow beat. About one thud every four seconds.
I noticed Fergus searching my face. He looked back to the game as I tried to stealth a tiny head shake.
Nothing about the call seemed out of place. Officers sounded bored, routine. The metronome slowed, and the issue wrapped up. The radio chatter died off, peppered with occasional check-ins and a touch of off-topic conversation. Sort of unprofessional, I thought, but this was a fairly tiny town. And maybe it was allowed. This was the first police department I’d ever eavesdropped on.
I kept the headphone in. As much as Deluxe wanted to relax, I couldn’t find any reason to let our guard down. Listening to the police was the best way we could think to try and detect any evil activity from Eden, and I was sure its next attack would be a sneaky one—our adversary knew that we could hurt it, that I could visit its worlds and cause trouble.
The metronome noises were part of Deluxe’s custom software. They signaled the frequency of a certain rogue wifi signal. The same strange network that led us to the abandoned John B. Zachary Business Center continued to transmit from the place. Shortly after mine and Persi’s adventure inside the clock, Deluxe started scanning for this telltale sign, and had found traces of it right away. She said it was not nearly as active as the first time she’d discovered it, let alone as frenzied as it was when Eden used it in the park to mess with our control over the routers.
But it was still there. Still alive.
So we’d visited the building again and helped her install a beacon of sorts—it could reliably pick up the clock’s weird vibes and help power her app. In the dead air of the radio, the bump and thud of the metronome pulsed like a heartbeat. Faster meant more frequent signal pulses, which we assumed to mean Eden was exerting more energy, somewhere. But not even Deluxe had the resources to keep constant tabs on a town’s worth of routers, hence the eavesdropping.
“Shah mat,” said Deluxe, flicking over Dack’s king.
“You win again,” he said, eyes bolted to her.
“Our turn?” asked Persi.
The players shuffled seats as I nibbled on an eclair. In the bustle, Dack caught my eye and I formed a brief thumbs up around my pastry. Deluxe ran them through some of her special rules as they arranged the pieces. I saw it all, but was the thudding getting faster? I kept my face stone still, and willed my left hand to remain motionless as well. It wanted to drift up and press the earbud deeper.
Yes, it was a touch faster. A thud every… I counted… three, maybe two and a half seconds now. Silence on the radio. Persi made a move, Fergus rolled some dice. Dack cheered him on. I smiled in their general direction. Thup! one two, thup! one two, thup!
The radio crackled. Sheila’s voice: “Unit twelve, unit twelve, what’s your twenty?”
A moment later, the reply: “Ay, copy Sheil, we’re moving south along Tennesbury, passing marker, ah… 415.”
“Ten-four, twelve. Call from the Walkerby’s place again, campers or hikers causing a disturbance.”
“Kids?”
“Sounds like. Loud noises, lights, maybe fireworks.”
“Copy, we’ll check it out.”
My gut prickled and knitted. I didn’t know who the Walkerbys were, but I knew Tennesbury was a long, wooded, windy road that eventually merged with an interstate. That, plus campers and hikers meant rural. Rural meant less technology and fewer wifi routers—both were things that seemed to hinder or slow Eden down.
I wondered if I should say something. Fergus and Persi stared at the board, while Deluxe put her head on Dack’s shoulder. Harold, the cafe owner, came by and refilled our teapot.
“You kids’ll have to teach me what the golly you’ve got mixed up here,” he said, eying the table. “How many sides on them funny dice?”
“Twenty,” chorused Dack and Fergus.
“Twenty! S’pose that’s easier’n rolling three normal ones, say?”
Harold stuck around and Dack began explaining the rules to him, so I decided to wait until the gathering was over before getting anyone worked up over my hunch. If I was right, we mightn’t have the chance to do something like this again for a while.
Or, mused a dark corner of my brain, ever again.
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