"Freaking out," Ceci said succinctly. "So am I. Did you see those poor people jumping?"

"Yeah," Dar said. "It's horrible. I was on the phone with Kerry when the second plane hit." She glanced up as Alastair approached one hand over the mouthpiece of his cell phone. "Did you get Bob?"

"No," her boss said. "But John Carmichael just got through to me and he says they think there's more." His face was set and grim. "We need to start getting our people under cover."

"Right." Dar turned back to the phone.

"I heard," Ceci said. "Dar, please be careful. You're the only child I have and believe me, there aren't going to be any more."

The moment of macabre humor set her back a step, but Dar smiled anyway. "You guys be careful too. Glad none of us is anywhere near New York," she said. "I'll call back in a while. Stay put, that condo's built like a bunker."

"So your father said. Talk to you later, Dar." Ceci hung up.

Dar closed her phone, and looked up as John approached his face ashen. "What a way to ruin a lunch. Huh?"

"Is there anything we can do?" John asked. "We've already sent word to our people in upper Manhattan to get out of town, but I know you probably have a much bigger presence there."

"We do," Dar said. "I need net access. Can I get it here?" She looked over at Alastair. "I'm going to activate global meeting place."

"Absolutely, just come with me." John led her out of the room and through a wide oak door. They went into a smaller room, with several desks positioned around its edges. John indicated one of them. "There, and give me a minute and I'll get a line run."

Dar put her briefcase down and got her laptop out, sitting it on the desk and opening the top. She started it booting, while she removed her power plug and added the adapter that would allow it to connect to the UK power strip fastened neatly to one desk leg.

It was all mechanical. Her mind was going seventeen ways to Sunday in every possible direction, a brain cell overload that wasn't really helped when John flipped on the television in the corner on his way back over with an Ethernet cable.

She sat down and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly.

John glanced at the screen, shaking his head. "Here you go." He handed over the end of the cable. "You have an office in one of those?"

Dar plugged the cable in and waited for her logon screen. "No," she said. "I had a three week long screaming argument with the New York office when I refused to rent space there, and put them in Rockefeller Center instead."

"Bet they're thanking you now," John remarked.

"Bet they are," Dar said. "But we have probably two dozen clients in the towers and a lot more in that area."

"Ah."

Alastair entered the room. "There you are," He said. "I can't reach anyone in the Northeast. Damn cell system says all lines are busy."

"I bet." Dar entered her password and watched her desktop appear. She triggered the VPN tunnel to the office, and watched as the authentication system ran its routine.

Alastair perched on the edge of the desk, watching the television. John sat down in a nearby chair, doing the same.

After a moment, Sir Melthon entered, his face grave. "McLean, how about you and your lot moving here until this is sorted out. We've got space, and better facilities than the damn hotel." He glanced at Dar. "Who knows where this mess is going to end."

Alastair looked at Dar, who nodded. "Sounds good. Thanks, Sir Melthon," he said quietly. "We've got things there."

"Right. I'll send a man over for them." The magnate left, all his air of country squire completely vanished. "Things can spread. We're closing the gates."

Dar felt a headache coming on. She rested her chin on her fist as her work desktop appeared, and there, in the corner, a violently blinking box.

Global Meeting has been initiated. Please sign in immediately. "Someone beat me to it." Dar logged in. "Damn I hoped we'd never have to use this," she said, as Alastair came around the corner and sat down in a chair next to her. "Here we go."

"Here we go," Alastair murmured. "Damn it."

KERRY SHOULDERED OPEN the door to her father's inner office, flipping the overhead light on and scanning the walls as she crossed the carpet over to the wooden desk. Her mind was so packed with dealing with the situation she felt no emotional charge on entering, focusing intently on finding a connection instead.

No wall jacks. She went to the desk and dropped her laptop on it, pulling the chair back and dropping to her knees to investigate the space underneath. Seeing nothing, she frowned, and started to get up again. "Guess it's the cell card. Damn."

Halfway up, she paused, suddenly aware of a soft humming sound. She thought it was her laptop, but as she moved away from the back of the desk it got softer instead of louder. She looked around the top of the desk, but saw nothing mechanical.

Puzzled, she got back down on the floor and turned over to lay flat on her back, inching forward so she could look between the desk and the wall to see if perhaps that was where either the elusive sound or the equally elusive connection might be.

There wasn't much space, but she managed to get an eye into position to look up and she immediately blinked at a box with blinking lights and a familiar logo. "Huh." Kerry reached up and freed an Ethernet cable already connected and coiled neatly, and brought it back with her as she wriggled back into the light.

She got to her knees and plugged the end of the cable into her laptop, hoping she wasn't about to expose her equipment to anything. "For someone who said they didn't trust technology..." She got up and pulled the rolling chair back over, seating herself in it and starting to log in. "Pretty strange to find a router nailed to the back of your desk."

The door swung open and Angie appeared. "There you are." She approached with a nervous expression on her face. "Oh my god, Kerry. They threw me and Mike out of mom's office." She looked around. "Is it okay to turn the TV on? You look so weird in here."

Mike burst in. "Stupid assholes."

Kerry glanced up from typing in her password. She found her brain completely unable to process this multiplicity of inputs and went back to the screen instead.

Mike went over and put the TV on, then dropped into the leather couch against one wall. "These people suck," he said. "Freaking government secrets. The big secret is the government has no clue what's going on."

"Mike." Angie sat down and twisted her hands. "This is really serious."

Kerry checked the IP settings her laptop had received, and then started up her secure VPN session to the office. It wasn't completely safe. She really didn't know whose router that was, or who controlled it, but the line in the back was an Internet circuit and she didn't have a lot of other options.

She hoped her Dar designed firewall was up to snuff.

"See?" Mike said, pointing at the screen. "No one's sure what's going on, look at those news guys."

"Give them a break, Mike." Kerry started up her profile and watched as her desktop appeared. "There are planes crashing into skyscrapers; that doesn't happen every day." The background of her profile was a picture of the sunset from their cabin, and for a split second, the familiar sight made her feel better.

Only for a split second. She signed into her management console as she got a barrage of network popups, the little boxes multiplying like hamsters across one side of her screen.

"Oh!"

Kerry glanced up, to see a fresh plume of smoke issuing from one of the towers, and then a ground shot of people running amidst showering debris. She jerked her attention back to her screen and ignored the popups, calling up the administrator access that allowed her control of their various systems and processes.

Selecting the Global Meeting place application, she activated it, clicking three times on the "Are you really sure?" warning boxes then sending it on its way.

Simple act, complex program. Kerry then turned and selected Mark's box from the popups. "Hey."

Poqueto Boss!

Kerry smiled grimly. I just triggered the disaster plan. You better assemble your team in the conference room and get the situation stuff on the screens.

Gotcha.

For a moment, Kerry just watched the disaster program assemble itself on her screen, opening up tabbed layers that broke the company down into regions and offices, placing a barebones chat area in the background, and presenting her with a box asking for her corporate identification, location, status, and role in the process.

"Kerry Stuart, Saugatuck Michigan, safe, moderator." Kerry muttered, as she answered the questions.

"What was that, Ker?" Angie asked. "They shut the airports down. Isn't that like locking the barn after the horse left?"

"What if there are more planes out there?" Mike asked.

"Oh no," Angie gasped.

Kerry's cell phone and PDA beeped. She opened her phone first, seeing an SMS message on the screen that echoed the request on her desktop. She then checked her PDA, and found a copy of it there. "Okay," she said. "So we know the SMS and email alerts are working."

A soft crackle alerted her in the background, and she reached into her briefcase for a small headset in a back pocket she'd never had to use before. She settled the buds in her ears, clipped the microphone on her shirt collar and plugged it in.

Already, information was flowing across the screen. She could see the senior management dashboard, icons lighting as their scattered main offices logged in to the system. A box opened, with Mariana's icon flashing, the system reporting her status on the header bar and very different from the normal net pops. Hey. Kerry typed in the box.