No Room for Error: A Lexi Carmichael Mystery, Book Seven Page 6

  Chapter Ten

  Slash was right. I didn’t die. I even ate most of what was on my plate. Once I figured out how to use the chopsticks and use the proper amount of soy sauce on the food, I discovered I actually liked sushi. I was going to forgo the wasabi, possibly for the rest of my life, but I would definitely eat sushi again. I only had to go to the bathroom six times after all the liquid I’d drank, but I enjoyed the meal and, as always, the company.

  After I paid for dinner and Slash left a really big tip, we headed back to my place. I shrugged out of my coat and then peered over my shoulder at Slash. He stood in the doorway and didn’t remove his jacket.

  I stared at him with a question in my eyes. “Aren’t you staying?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  I considered the question, what it meant and where it was coming from. He’d been staying at my place on and off for the past several weeks and he knew he didn’t need to ask. There was something else going on.

  “Yes, I want you to stay, Slash. Have I given you any reason to doubt that?”

  He abruptly crossed the room, his hands cupping my face. His mouth covered mine with surprising possessiveness, his hands sliding down my arms and moving around to my lower back, pulling me against him.

  “No, you haven’t,” he murmured against my lips. “It’s just... I don’t want to go. I’m tired of being alone.”

  “You’re not alone. Slash? What’s wrong?” I sensed there was a deeper current to this conversation I wasn’t getting. But unless he’d talk to me, I didn’t know what I could do to help him.

  I closed my eyes and waited. His body was warm against mine. My hands touched his shoulders, biceps, and finally rested on his hips. I realized his body—all of the hard angles, planes and curves—was completely familiar to me now. I could feel the steady beat of his heart against my mine. He was struggling with something, but what was it? Would he tell me?

  He lifted his mouth from mine and brushed his lips over my hair. “Never mind. Let’s go to bed.”

  “If that’s what you want.” I tried not to sound disappointed. When he was ready, he’d talk to me. I hoped.

  “You’re what I want,” he said softly. He kept an arm around me as we walked toward the bedroom and added, “You’re what I’ve always wanted.”

  * * *

  Slash and I were up early to head to the ComQuest lab on the outskirts of Baltimore. We planned to leave at seven o’clock. I’d told him where I had to report and he insisted on driving me. It was out of his way, but he wouldn’t let me argue, so I agreed.

  After a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and coffee, I grabbed my purse. “Give me a sec to find the address to ComQuest’s laboratory.”

  “I don’t need it. I already know where it’s located.”

  “You do?”

  “I do. Everyone knows where the fabs are.”

  I frowned, puzzled. “Fabs? Don’t you mean labs?”

  “No, I mean fabs. That’s what they call the factories that create microchips. There are only five fabs in the United States. ComQuest has one of them. Those in the business know the location of each of the fabs, much like NASA geeks know the location of the launch sites.”

  “How come you know all this?”

  “I may have a peripheral interest.”

  “Really? Are you going to tell me more about it?”

  “Ah, cara, I adore you. You might be the only woman in the world whose eyes light up at the thought of hearing about my interest in a fab. Of course I’ll tell you. I don’t know what you’ll be doing there, but I suspect you’re going to have to brush up on your microchip knowledge.”

  “I know,” I grumbled. “Microchip and circuit design is not my strength.” I was more than a tiny bit embarrassed he’d uncovered a major weakness in my tech knowledge.

  He grinned. “Looks like you’re going to get a crash lesson.”

  “Yep.” Truthfully, I was looking forward to it. While my first love was hacking and cybersecurity, the thought of branching out and learning something new about technology excited me, especially if my teachers would be the Zimmerman twins. He must have sensed my excitement, because when we stopped at a red light, he leaned over and gave me a lingering kiss.

  “Don’t get so caught up in circuits and chips you forget about me.”

  “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I’m sure the microchip won’t kiss nearly as well as you.”

  He smiled as we pulled up to a guardhouse. Slash rolled down the window and I passed my driver’s license to the security guard. The guard checked an electronic tablet for my name and then nodded.

  “Lexi Carmichael. You’re on the list, so you’re cleared to enter. I’m sorry, but your driver won’t be able to accompany you through the gate. He’s not cleared. I’ll call a ride for you, so please exit the vehicle and wait here.”

  I slid my purse over my shoulder. “Looks like I have to dismiss my driver. Thanks for the ride. I’ll catch a ride home with Elvis and Xavier. Can I leave my bag in your car?”

  “Of course. I’ll bring it over later. Hopefully we can catch dinner together.”

  “Great.”

  After Slash disappeared from view, I turned and looked at the ComQuest building. It was impressive—sleek, modern and rectangular, shaped in a long L with specially curved windows. There was a large parking lot. Even though it was only about seven-thirty in the morning, the lot was full.

  “Lot of early risers,” I observed to the guard.

  “The building is in operation 24/7.”

  Before I could comment further, another security guard in a golf cart pulled up to the guardhouse. He hopped out, took my driver’s license from the other guard and examined it and then me closely. They were not messing around with security.

  “Okay, Ms. Carmichael,” he said, handing me my license. “Get in. You’re expected.”

  “Thanks.” I climbed into the golf cart and we sped toward an entrance. He pulled up to the front and indicated I should get out.

  “Go straight through this door. They’re inside waiting for you.” I wasn’t sure who they were, but I went through a revolving glass door and was immediately greeted by three more armed security guards. All three had their hands hovering over their weapons.

  Jeez.

  “Can I help you?” one of them asked me in a gruff voice.

  Hadn’t the guard who just brought me already called ahead? “Um, I’m Lexi Carmichael. I have an appointment. I’m here to meet with Elvis and Xavier Zimmerman.”

  The big one in front motioned me to follow him to a receptionist, who sat behind a big marble desk.

  “This is Lexi Carmichael,” the guard explained. “She’s here to see the Zimmermans.”

  The receptionist smiled at me. “Driver’s license, please.”

  What the heck? I dug out my license, again. I wasn’t sure what the point of this check, recheck, and reconfirmation was, but it was bordering on paranoia. Apparently no one was taking any chances that I had somehow morphed from Lexi Carmichael into someone else in the time it had taken me to go through the revolving door.

  The receptionist studied my license, then me. He, like all of the guards, was dressed in a security uniform with a badge and patch that read Markmaster Security. Apparently he was satisfied with what he saw, because he scanned my license and printed out a badge with the picture of my driver’s license on it.

  “We’ll hold your license here until you check out,” he said.

  Since I could hardly argue with him about it, I nodded.

  “Please follow me this way, ma’am,” one of the smaller guards said. We walked through a lovely lobby with a soft rust-colored carpet, two glass coffee tables and plush armchairs. Modern art decorated the walls. It looked more like a hotel lobby than the waitin
g area for a microchip factory...fab.

  I followed him down a hallway where we had to stop twice and pass through two glass doors with a biometric reader. It didn’t escape my notice that there were security cameras mounted along the wall at every door, tracking our progress. After the second door, the hallway veered sharply to the left and we started down what appeared to be a corridor of offices. At the third door to the right, the guard abruptly stopped. He rapped three times and I heard a familiar voice. “Come in.”

  The guard opened the door and motioned for me to enter, closing the door behind me. Elvis sat behind a desk, typing something on a laptop.

  “Hey, Lexi. Give me a sec, okay?” he said without looking up.

  “Okay.”

  While he was busy I took a moment to look around. I counted seven laptops, including the one he was typing on, and two desktop machines, all of which were whirring away at some kind of calculations. I took a couple of steps around the office, looking at the various displays on the monitors.

  Elvis finished typing and stood. “Glad you’re here. Let’s get started.”

  That’s what I liked best about the twins. No extraneous chitchat or niceties. No offer of coffee or water. No asking me how I was feeling or what I thought about the weather. Just straight to the important stuff, which was exactly the way I liked it.

  “Sure. Where’s Xavier?”

  “He’s already suited up and in the lab.”

  “You mean the fab.”

  “No, I mean the lab. There is a lab in the fab, just in case you were wondering.”

  “I was wondering. Thanks for clearing that up.”

  He handed me a badge and told me to hang it around my neck. He already had one, but I hadn’t seen it because he’d tucked it beneath his T-shirt. He pulled it out as we went back into the corridor and continued along the hallway.

  “Can I say I’m surprised you’ve been working on this invention?” I said as Elvis stopped at yet another glass door and pressed his palm print to it after typing in a code. “I never knew you had an interest in microchip design.”

  “I didn’t really. Not at first, anyway. And it’s not a microchip design. Not exactly. We were misleading in the meeting with Finn. It’s a security issue. Our invention is actually a solution to keep the chip from overheating. Xavier and I hit a brick wall about a year ago with some computations we were doing during our programming. We couldn’t get the speed we needed with the chips that are out there. The problem was we needed the speed, but the higher we stacked the microchips, the hotter they got. We had a series of meltdowns until it brought our work to a screeching halt. I wanted to tell you about it, but proprietary information and all that.”

  “I understand. So just like that, you started studying microchip design?”

  “More or less. It was pretty simple. If we wanted to continue our work, we had to solve this problem. So we turned our attention to doing just that. ComQuest supported the effort from the beginning, mostly because they already had a few scientists working on a similar project here at the fab, but they hadn’t made much progress. Still, it was useful to have them available to us because they’ve been a great source of information as Xavier and I determined the best way to address the problem.”

  “Lucky you. So, what did you guys come up with?”

  He smiled. “Can’t wait to show you.”

  I couldn’t wait to see it either. Whatever it was going to be, I had a feeling it was going to be spectacular because that’s how the twins rolled when it came to technology.

  Elvis stopped at another door and this time keyed in a code and endured an eye scan. When the door opened, he ushered me through first.

  We walked into a lab that held unusual-looking microscopes and more computers. Through a glass window, I saw someone dressed head to foot in what looked like a white biohazard suit with a little plastic visor where the eyes were located.

  “Wave to Xavier,” Elvis said.

  I held up a hand and waved. Xavier waved back.

  Elvis motioned to two more white suits hanging along one wall. “We have to suit up and go in. You okay with that?”

  “Of course.”

  Elvis handed me one of the suits and showed me how to climb in. He helped me zip up and added the gloves before suiting up himself.

  I waddled toward him feeling like something between a storm trooper and a giant marshmallow.

  “This is seriously ace,” I said.

  He reached to the side of my head and pushed something. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.” He sounded like he was speaking through a tunnel. I figured it was similar to how astronauts must feel talking to each other.

  “Man, this is great, Elvis. I can’t wait to see what you’ve done.”

  He grinned and gave me a thumbs-up with his glove.

  He punched in a code on a keypad near a door and when it slid open, we walked into a chilly room. The suits were insulated in part to protect us from the cold temperatures required to keep the chips cool.

  We walked over to Xavier, who was looking at something through a totally funky microscope. I’d never seen anything like it.

  Xavier gave me a high five. “Hey, Lexi. Welcome to our humble abode.”

  I looked around at all of the million-dollar equipment. “Wow. Hardly humble.”

  “Yeah, I guess not.”

  “Is it ready?” Elvis asked his brother.

  Xavier stepped aside. “All yours.”

  “Take a look at it, Lexi,” Elvis said, taking my elbow and guiding me to the microscope. “Tell me what you see.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “You’ll know when you see it.”

  It wasn’t easy pressing my eye against the plastic to get a look, but after a couple of tries a microchip came into view.

  I studied it for a moment. “Okay, what are those odd lines? I thought you guys had developed a pad to attach to the microchip to keep it from overheating. But it looks like you did something right on the microchip.”

  “We didn’t create a pad, Lexi. We just said that in the meeting because the fewer people who know what’s truly here, the better. Only a few people at the very top of ComQuest and a couple of their scientists actually know what we’ve created.”

  “Okay, you win. The anticipation is killing me. Tell me already.”

  I felt a weird tingle in my stomach, as if I were teetering on the edge of a vast cliff, waiting to hear something so amazing, so earth-shattering, I would fall and never be the same.

  “Brace yourself.”

  “Braced. Look, if you guys didn’t create a pad to cool the chip, what did you create?”

  Although there was no way anyone could have heard us, Elvis lowered his voice and spoke in a hushed tone.

  “Microfluid.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Whatever I’d been expecting to hear, that wasn’t it. I stared at him for a full minute as my brain processed and discarded all possible theories until I came up empty.

  “Huh?” I finally said. “What’s that?”

  Elvis tapped the microscope. “Microfluid is tiny liquid droplets that will cool the chip. It’s designed to flow through specially carved mini-canals built right on top of the chip.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “How could that possibly work? How does it cool them? Water would just run through the canals and off the top chip if they were stacked.”

  “It won’t if there are gaps.”

  “But there are no gaps between the capacitors on a microchip.”

  “There are if you stack the chips.”

  I still wasn’t getting it. “How?”

  “This way. Look again, Lexi.” Xavier nudged me toward the microscope again. “Let me change the view
.”

  He made some adjustments to the slide and I bent over the lenspiece again.

  “See?”

  This time I did. I lifted my head, looking at Elvis in wonder. “Wait—what? 3-D stacking? Okay, I totally didn’t see that coming. But it makes sense and it’s really, really clever.”

  Elvis shook his head. “No, not so clever. 3-D stacking is not the new part. It’s been around for a year or two. The real revolution is adding the canals and the microfluid to the stack. Our unique cooling system will work only in this format.”

  I looked again into the microscope. “How on earth did you come up with this configuration? I see where you’re going with this. Once the capacitors are stacked in 3-D, the gaps will occur naturally. But the cooling fluid is totally out there. How did you reduce the liquid to such a microscopic level that it will run through the canals?”

  “Very carefully.”

  “I bet. And how did you stop the fluid from interfering with the electrical connectivity of the chips? How and where is the heat transferred? How much liquid do you have to add, and at what intervals, to keep the chips from burning up?”

  A million more questions threatened to tumble out, but Elvis grinned and held up a hand.

  “All in good time, Lexi. I promise you. First, what you need to know is that the system works. It really works. The most important test for us is whether it can be mass-produced. Otherwise, we have a great design without practical application.”

  I took another look at the chip and then looked between Elvis and Xavier. “I don’t know what to say, you guys. You do realize the significance of this invention if the production works on a mass scale—the impact it could have on the entire world, right?”

  “Yes.” Elvis spoke simply, without arrogance or superiority, to which he and Xavier were certainly entitled.

  Elvis leaned back against the counter, and a flash of pain crossed his face. I pulled out stools for both him and Xavier, motioning for them to sit. Neither of them had fully recovered yet. They sat as best they could in the biohazard suits.

  I preferred to pace. I could barely process the magnitude of what they’d done for the future of technology and how close we had all come to losing one half of that genius.