Everyone else was looking at their phones, so I did too, and what I saw was a text from one of the R&D crew saying, “OMG is that the ATTO on Channel 5?” And for a second I didn’t even catch the reference. I thought he was referring to some internal top-secret communications channel. It took a minute to realize he was talking about the local television network news station.
Meanwhile there’s all kinds of confusion and consternation from others in the room, everyone shouting into their phones with their fingers plugged into the other ear, Gráinne looking around with kind of a wild desperate expression. “Dr. Blevins, can that thing stream live television?” I asked, nodding at his computer.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “You’re the sysadmin.”
“Point taken,” I said. “Let’s all trot downstairs to my workstation and I’ll pull up the stream.” And before any orders could be issued to the contrary I ducked out the door and headed down the stairs. Frankly I didn’t care whether they followed me or not, but when I reached my cubicle and looked back over my shoulder I saw them all traipsing along behind me, on their phones or whatever, and all around the whole office was in pandemonium. I sat down and plucked the flash drive out of my workstation and slipped it into the little cargo pocket down on the calf section of my tactical pants, and then cleared my screen and brought up the live news feed from the local network TV station.
And what we were seeing was the front of a Walmart, and the caption on the screen said it was in Lexington, Massachusetts. The same store where Magnus had hightailed it to a few weeks ago, before he’d coerced Constance Billy into Sending him back to Viking Paradise or wherever.
The entire front of the store—the glass entryway where they keep the shopping carts—had been punched in by a huge impact, all the windows destroyed.
Embedded in the middle of all that destruction we could see the rear of a tractor-trailer rig that had obviously just been driven straight into the front of the building at high speed, and come to rest just inside the store. Looked like it had obliterated some checkout lanes en route.
The rig was a common type seen around port facilities: a steel shipping container resting on the bed of a trailer. The shipping container was green, with rust spots.
We had all seen it before.
It was the ATTO.
Before I could ask the question, Major Sloane—who’d been on the phone—looked up at Blevins and said, “Confirmed. We lost contact with it immediately after it left the facility. Obviously, it was hijacked.”
“Police radio transmissions report several large naked Caucasian males have emerged from the shipping container and are taking hostages,” said the TV reporter.
Gráinne was the first to put it together. “Magnus!” she hissed, and then let fly with a torrent of rage in what I assumed was Gaelic. She’s always been pretty emotional, but I’d never seen her just completely lose it before. She’d have torn Magnus apart with her fingernails if he’d been in the room.
“Major Sloane,” Blevins said, “get the EFOT squads and everything else you have to that Walmart immediately.”
Everyone split up. I trotted downstairs and walked out the front door and around the corner. And then I ran like a motherfucker. I just had a feeling it would be for the best.
So that was the moment I went from being a geek with the coolest job a recent CS grad from MIT could ever in a thousand years hope to find . . . to being a renegade. A serious renegade. Anonymous has got nothing on me.
That’s how we ended up here at the Odas’ place. I’m not even sure how Frank himself got back here. I mean, there’s an argument we should just GTF out of here and try to disappear, but (1) disappearing is hard and (2) we can’t just ditch the Odas and (3) we haven’t violated any laws and so there’s no reason the Cambridge PD should give a crap one way or the other.
Rebecca is (natch) making us some tea. I’m not sure when she will relax her jaw muscles enough to ever open her mouth again, but that doesn’t mean she wants to throw us out.
We’re sort of expecting Blevins will be sending someone to assassinate us, at least figuratively, very soon. Which is why I wanted to get this whole story written and uploaded.
Journal Entry of
Rebecca East-Oda
FRIDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING
Temperature 38F, and never mind about the rest of it.
Extraordinary development: Tristan, Erszebet, and Mortimer have taken up residence in the basement and we presume Frank is no longer an employee of DODO, but it’s all rather disordered at the moment. The local news is airing the most remarkable story about a raid at the Lexington Walmart. Mel is stuck in 1851 London, thanks to the machinations of Gráinne. Tristan and Frank immediately preoccupied with sorting out how to build a homemade ODEC in the basement so that if Mel can find a KCW, she will have a safe re-entry point to the modern day (although since she wouldn’t know we had it, how would she know to be Sent there? Never mind. Better than taking no action.). Frank suggested shanghaiing one of the new ATTOs, toward which he has a wounded proprietary pride—ATTO #1 seems to be embedded in the aforementioned Walmart with naked berserkers pouring out of it, but three others have been constructed and six more are nearly complete. Mortimer is trying to set up a secure mini-intranet in our basement, as he has a flash drive called GRIMNIR with an enormous amount of ODIN material on it and he wants to upload it someplace stable so that it can’t fall out of one of the pockets of his ludicrous trousers. The cats have disappeared in the chaos.
THE LAY OF WALMART
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE (CONTD.): Part 2, written in ballpoint pen on printer paper, was found in the ruins of a Walmart in suburban Boston, Massachusetts, following a bloody siege by persons described in media reports as a gang of methamphetamine addicts connected with the Russian mafia.
PART 2
Ingibj?rg and those of her ilk
Sent me and Magnus to more ditapps
Than memory can contain. Twenty and two
Were the reckless recruits, all renowned warriors.
On Sverevík’s shore they stood, steaming,
Ready for the recital. Tales from Tóki,
Told many times, from Magnus’s memories.
Mead he served to the men, full horns.
Looming from a longship’s proud prow, he spoke.
“The ship we sail today, fighting the Fatlanders
Is but a box, oarless, ordinary. ATTO they name it.
To it Ingibj?rg Sends me. It’s on a great cart.
“Vikings love to shove ships
Up onto the shores of realms ready for ruin.
Just so, I’ll attack with the ATTO
The glass gates of the Walmart
“Like a dagger, driving deep, not stopping
Till the blue-vested guard, the till-keepers,
Towers of trifles, the cart crushes,
Ramming, reaming out of its way.
“Furious Ingibj?rg, future-fearing,
By then will have Sent Storolf.” Magnus’s sword
Swung round toward he of that name,
Grizzled but great-framed, giant-killer.
Storolf recited: “Inside of the ATTO are
Oddments, weird wares, dangerous distractions.
I ignore them. Brace my body on the bulkhead.
Ride through the ruin of the glass gates.
“Silence is my signal to dart to the door.
From it I face east down a wide way.