Black Brick – Chapter Thirty Four

Dan Decker Books

This week’s episode features Chapter Thirty Four of Black Brick. Here is an excerpt from the show:

I turned up the volume on the television when I saw Peck’s face. He’d managed to strike an appropriate balance between mourning and confidence. He had just come from the funeral of Ronan Wright who—as I had suspected—had died in the explosion at Diggon tower.

Bruce Andrews. Jason Kurt, Lisa, and their parents. Lane Vargo. Ronan Wright.

Thor and Peck had a lot to answer for.

Peck had played the media magnificently. There had been a camera recording when I killed Larry and Beltran. The heavily edited footage had been seen by millions and, of course, didn’t come with audio. That would have caused too many questions.

“Mr. Peck,” the anchorwoman said. “Congratulations on your new promotion. How does it feel to go from being a college professor to the CEO of one of the largest and most influential corporations?”

“Well, as you can imagine,” Peck said, “it’s been quite a change. But I don’t want to talk about that today. There has been a lot of death and tragedy. My company has been the target of numerous terrorist attacks. I’d like to take this opportunity to announce a new partnership between Diggon and the federal government. We’re creating a citizen watch program called Spectrum.”

“And just what will Spectrum do?” the anchorwoman asked.

Peck help up his phone. “It’s an app that people can voluntarily run on their phone, tablet, or computer. The app will monitor what is going on around the user and report a live stream of data back to our servers. When alarming events take place, we’ve developed technology that will recognize what is happening so that local and federal authorities can be alerted.”

“I understand there is a unique feature to catch the person behind all these attacks on Diggon,” the reporter said. “Care to comment?”

“Yes,” Peck said. “We have programmed a special alert for Sam Chever. Or Jake Ramsey. Or whatever name he’s going by these days. Our system is designed to alert authorities the moment his face or voice pops up on the system.”