Page 14 of Wild Oblivion

"I want my IT guys to look at him," the sheriff said, “Just in case there was a hack.”

"Sure thing. Whatever you say." Jared's nervous eyes glanced around. "If you don't need me anymore, I'd like to get the hell out of here.”

We cut him loose, and Jared hustled away, disappearing into the crowd.

“How do you want to proceed?” I asked the sheriff.

“Manually.” He looked at Hartman. “You feel comfortable with that process?”

“Not really.” Hartman paused. “Wild seems to have a better understanding of the device than anyone else.”

I gave him the side eye.

“I’m just saying…”

After an exhale, I said, “I’ll do it.”

"You sure about that?" the sheriff asked.

I smiled and said in a sardonic voice, "What's the worst thing that could happen?”

8

Ididn’t bother with protective clothing. What was the point? I couldn’t do the fine work while wearing bulky gloves. The big suit wasn’t maneuverable in a small space like the underside of a table. Besides, it was a sweatbox. I’d rather take my chances and just go out with a bang.

Don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of living to do, and I intended to do it.

I sprayed a fine mist of liquid nitrogen over the device from a distance, gradually adding more and more layers, drawing closer and closer until the device looked like a UFO that had crash-landed in Antarctica and been buried under the ice.

So far, no boom.

I’m not going to lie, my heart rate might have been a little elevated. Sweat sprouted on my brow.

Jack hovered nearby, not about to let me tackle this alone.

With a portable digital fluoroscope, I was able to get a glimpse of the internals. The C-arm flanked the device and fed real-time images to a tablet. A pulsed solid-state cutting laser would allow me to pierce the outer shell. It had pinpoint accuracy.

I lined everything up and took a deep breath.

Just as I was about to press the button and fire the small laser, Jack said, “Are you sure you want to do that?”

I gave him an annoyed look. “Yes.”

“You’re sure that’s the lead?”

“I’m not sure of anything.”

“Well, you know, measure twice, cut once.”

I studied the image on the tablet and made sure I was lined up correctly.Again.

I was about to press the button…

“You know,” Jack interrupted. “If this thing goes boom, I just want to say…”

We were like brothers. It didn’t need to be said.

“It’s not going to go boom,” I replied, trying to convince myself.