September 6, 2000 (3 P.M.)

"What!" Joe demanded of Connor. "What do you mean...? What happened?"

"She's all right, Joe," Connor said. "Really, she's just shaken up. She managed to get away before they hurt her, but you'd better get back here as soon as you can. She wants you."

"Tell her I'll be there in ten minutes," Joe said, his voice quivery.

He said good-bye to Frank, promising to be back the next day and drove, almost not seeing where he was going, back to the BU campus. He drove straight to Eldridge Hall, where his sister lived on-campus. He pushed his way through a small crowd gathered around his sister in the lobby of the Hall. Connor sat on a couch in the lobby, with Mandy sitting on his lap, looking shaken. As soon as Mandy saw Joe, however, she flew out of Connor's lap and into her twin's arms with the force of a MAC truck. Joe managed to keep his balance and to keep a grip on his sister as well and he held her close while she cried into his chest.

Joe looked up at Connor, feeling slightly guilty that Mandy had abandoned him so fast but Connor looked merely resigned, if unhappy about the attack itself. Mandy sniffled some more but finally backed away and wiped her eyes with Joe's handkerchief and then took him back over to Connor and sat down beside her boyfriend.

"What happened, Mandy?" Joe asked, finally. "Did you see who attacked you? Did they say anything?"

Mandy took several deep breaths to calm herself and a tighter grip onto Connor's hand before she answered.

"It was a tall man," Mandy said. "He was wearing a mask and dark sunglasses so I couldn't even see the color of his eyes. He grabbed me when I came out of my English class, when I was walking by the boy's bathroom in Murphy. He dragged me in and... and..."

Mandy stopped and took another deep breath, forcing herself to go into what those who weren't Hardys called the 'Hardy Mask.' An unreal calm came over her features and she relaxed back against Connor.

"He told me... he told me that it's just the beginning," she whispered. "That we... that we will leave Bayport University or... or he's going to kill all of us. That we're too nosy for our own good. That we're not worthy to attend this school. He said the next time he saw me on campus, he wouldn't just drag me into a bathroom and scare me, he would do to me what he did to Frank or worse... he'd mess up my face."

A slow red burned its way up Joe's face as he listened to his sister. He'd managed to push the rage down most of the day but hearing about his sister's attack made it all worse. Someone was after them and Mandy hadn't done anything!

Joe forced himself to calm. He looked out at the many faces still gathered around him and then back at his sister. Finally, he stood and lifted her to her feet and motioned for Connor to follow him. He wanted out of this crowd. He led Mandy to her dorm room and they went inside to sit on her bed.

"I think you should go home," Joe told her, finally. "Whoever's after us means business, Mandy, I don't want you to get hurt."

"I am not dropping out of school!" Mandy retorted. "I was scared, but I'm not leaving school, Joe, I'm not! Frank's my brother too. If you think I'm just going to sit around so you macho boys can figure out what happened, think again."

Joe glared at her then sighed. "I don't want anything else to happen to you, Mandy. Isn't what happened to Frank bad enough?"

"Yes, it's bad," Mandy agreed. "But I'm not leaving school. We're going to find the people who did this to Frank and who attacked you and me and we're going to make sure that they can't do it again. Joe, this is my fight too. I don't always get involved when you and Frank are mystery-hopping but I am getting involved on this one."

Joe sighed then nodded, reluctantly. He couldn't fight his sister on this, he knew just how she felt. And while he didn't want anything to happen to her, he didn't know that he could find Frank's attacker on his own, or with just the help of Connor and Chet and Vanessa. Mandy knew as much about detective work as Frank and Joe, even if she seemed to not pay attention sometimes.

"If you stay," he said, slowly. "You're going to have to agree to not ever be alone. We'll all take turns walking you to your classes and to the dorm and places like that. I don't want to make another attack easy on whoever's behind this."

"'K," Mandy said, slowly, a frown on her face. "I think... well, all right, never mind, I'll agree to that."

"Joe," Connor interrupted. "Do you still think this is about whatever Frank saw in Professor Tylange's note?"

Joe shrugged. "I don't know, but it's as good a place to start as any."

But it didn't all match-up, not the way that Joe wanted it to. He had no idea how Frank's having a brief glimpse of a computer module of some kind had anything to do with an attack on him and his sister. It was like trying to fit together pieces of different puzzles and those pieces kept changing shape all the time so they never fit together from one moment to the next. He sighed as he finally stood and said,

"Is there somewhere you can go while Connor and I are at football practice, Mandy?"

"Sam and I are going to see Frank," Mandy said. "We'll be fine. I promise we'll stay there until your practice is done."

"I still want everyone to meet in the snack bar later. If someone gets there early, get the corner booth. Wait for it if you have to. That's the most private one," Joe continued.

 

One pounding football practice later, Joe and Connor went back to their dorm to shower and change clothes. They walked quickly to the snack bar in the Student Union to meet up with the other people from their group and to discuss what everyone had found out on the case so far.

Joe slid into the open seat beside Vanessa and leaned over to give her a warm kiss. He really liked kissing her; her lips were always so warm and soft. He sighed as she draped her arm through his and then he turned his attention to the rest of the group.

"All right," Joe began. "Let's start with what we know so far. So far, Frank was put in the hospital and blinded by a strange powder that was blown into his face from an equally strange device. I made some phone calls earlier to the police department and Con told me that it was a compression device inside the cylinder. It was very sophisticated; it had a sensor device that picked up on when someone was close to it, that's how it knew to blast away. Con also told me, from what they have found out so far, that the thing was very expensive and not easy to make. Third, the powder is still unknown, but our resident chemistry guru hopefully has some more information on that."

"I have some, but I don't know how helpful it is," Connor said. "I had Doctor Rich help me with the tests that I did and we both agree that its molecular compound is rather strange. I'm chemistry major and I don't even understand all of what he said. The best we can figure out is that it's not only a poison but it's something that doctors call a contact poison. Sort of like poison ivy, where you just have to touch it to be harmed by it, only worse. So, first of all, that's how Frank was blinded. It acted as a sort of corrosive agent that had an adverse effect on his eyes. And second, it also works when inhaled, rather than ingested. Doctor Rich is fairly sure that's how come it caused the respiratory problems. You sniff it, it gets into your lungs, expands and cuts off your ability to take in air. Doctor Rich is going to do some more work on it, and see if he can't get a little more information than that."

Connor paused, looking distinctly uncomfortable about something. Mandy touched his shoulder, encouraging him.

"He... he also told me that if this works like he thinks it does, if it's as bad as he says..." Connor's voice trailed off for a moment and he swallowed. They were all looking at him now, knowing something was wrong and Connor sighed. "He said there may be no way to easily clean it out of Frank's lungs. We tried a couple of tests on it when I was still in the lab and it seems that nothing safe will break it down so that it'll clear out."

Connor paused so long that Joe began to get a terrible suspicion, one that was going to make him explode if anyone actually voiced it. Joe had to know, however. He had to know, exactly, what Connor was saying.

"What does that mean?" Mandy asked in a small voice as she held onto Connor more tightly than before. "What are you saying, Connor? Frank's going to be all right, isn't he?"

Connor shook his head and sighed.

"Doctor Rich doesn't think that Frank is going to be off the respirator anytime soon. If they try to take that intubation tube out of him too soon, it will... it could... kill him."

Everyone seemed to freeze in place, no one able or daring to move, all of them now looking at Joe. Mandy reached across the table to take her brother's hand but neither of them said anything. The rage that had been building up within Joe, the rage he had thought sure would explode out of him like water from a hydrant had suddenly died away. He felt, more than anything else, completely numb, and incapable of anymore feeling.

Vanessa hugged Joe close, wrapping both of her arms around him to help comfort him. Mandy's free arm wound around Samantha, who sat in the middle, a stunned expression on her face. She and Frank had been dating barely a year, having met the first day of college the year before. Samantha often took what came her way with great fortitude, showing a will and backbone of steel when it came down to it. Today, she looked like someone had punched her in the stomach and couldn't breathe. Chet hugged her from the other side, holding tight to her for a moment until she let out a startled cry.

"Sam," Mandy said, softly as she reached around to hug her friend. "Sam, he'll be all right. We have to believe that now. He'll be all right. He's a fighter, he won't let this beat him."

"We don't know that for sure," Sam whispered. "We don't know if he'll ever see anything again, we don't know if he'll ever talk to us again. They may as well have killed him if he's left like this for the rest of his life. You know it's driving him batty. He can't talk, can't even see us but we can still see how he feels about it."

"We're going to help him. Somehow," Joe said, softly. "Mandy's right, Samantha, he's a fighter. We may have to help him with that fight, but he's going to beat this. He has to."

Samantha nodded, still numb, still looking lost, but she allowed herself to be comforted. Joe blinked several times and the numb feeling faded again, enough to allow him to think more clearly.

"All right," he said in a hoarse voice. "'Nessa?"

Vanessa swallowed before she began her part of what she had been working on.

"I said earlier that I was running up to six searches, three here, three at my mom's. This afternoon, after the initial search was finished, I had my mother narrow the search down to search for three different parameters. The first was anything still in planning, preferably from this year. The second was anything within a fifteen-mile radius of Bayport. The third was anything that might be undergoing litigation that would warrant a legal case and the expertise of Professor Tylange."

"I saw Professor Tylange," Samantha commented. "He does do outside cases."

"That helps," Vanessa said as she pulled a set of papers out of her backpack and laid them out on the table in front of her. "Here's what we have so far, Joe. We managed to narrow this down to forty-five different cases on the computer and from there, I narrowed it down to twelve by crossing off cases that are in appeal or more than six months old. I figure anything older than that is not what we're searching for. And I narrowed it down to five for anything dealing with things like video cards, sound cards, and any add-ons besides modems. I left one modem on the sheet because, well... you'll just have to read it."

She handed the sheets over to Joe and copies she made to everyone else. She had the modem section high-lighted and Joe read through it quickly and he gave a startled exclamation.

"Isn't this illegal?" he demanded. "I do understand what this is right? The MP2G Digital Fax Modem? It's set to be able to deliver 2G of information over a digital modem line and, even worse than that, it's got a security breaker on it? How in the world do they even get this approved?"

"It hasn't been, it's got a huge black mark against it because of that. The Supreme Court is hearing cases for and against it in about ten days. The company that puts it out is located here in Bayport. They claim that the security breaker isn't a security breaker at all, they say it's a device that adds security on the end of the user, so that nobody can break into their computer and download something nasty, like a computer virus."

Vanessa motioned to another section of the pages where she had a diagram of the modem in question. She pointed to the chip that she was talking about and then looked back up at Joe.

"The problem is," Vanessa said. "Is that Frank is the only one who saw this. There's no way he can tell us, now, if this is what he saw or if it was something else."

Joe frowned and started cursing under his breath. He was not happy at all. What else could go wrong in this case? What other strikes would they have against them? He growled at the pages in front of him and then stacked them to one side to bury his head in his arms. He felt hands on his back, probably his girlfriend and his sister. He appreciated their gestures but they couldn't possibly understand how he really felt. Nobody could, no matter what they said.

"Joe," Connor broke the silence and Joe forced himself to look up. "Are you sure we're looking at the right thing? How does this tie into the attack on Mandy. Or the one on you? It's not like either of you were close enough to see that page. And it's one thing for them to go after Frank for what he saw, it's another to want to frighten you all off campus."

"I just don't know," Joe admitted with a sigh. "I don't know, Connor. I wish I did. I'm not the brains of the outfit, remember? Frank is and he's not here! I can only go by instinct and try to work my way through slower. I'm not getting anything so I'm grasping at the first thing that comes along. And until I know different, this is how we have to do it."

Connor nodded and leaned back. Joe regarded him for a moment, then shrugged and looked back down at Vanessa's papers again. He was studying them, still, listening to Mandy, Chet and Samantha talking softly among themselves, listening to Vanessa shuffling the papers that she held and Connor drumming his fingers on the table. He jumped when he heard a ringing cell phone and it was only after another ring he realized it was his own.

"Hello?" he said after he flipped his phone open.

"Is this Joe Hardy?" a voice asked him.

Joe paused and looked up, then said, slowly, "Yes."

"Take your sister and get off campus, Hardy. This is your last warning," the voice told him, gruffly.

"Who is this?" Joe yelled into the phone. "Who are you? When I catch you..."

"This is your last warning," the voice said again. "Get off campus, Joe Hardy."

There was an obvious pause.

"Or die."

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. I've only borrowed them to play with for a while but I promise to return them whenever I've finished with them.  (I make no promises as to condition, that's entirely up to them).  I promise, I'm only writing for fun and I'm not making a single dime off of this (unless you count personal fulfillment).