Merritt went back to his apartment and made more notes about what he'd found at Carruthers' apartment. He felt extra motivation to go after Carruthers and his associates knowing that Carruthers was some kind of sick perv who got off on underage boys.
And thinking more of the meeting at which he was terminated, Merritt recalled that Fairfax, their supervisor, had been the one reading the ridiculous reasons for his termination and the single letter "F" had been among the parties Carruthers met with on multiple occasions.
Merritt was extra careful with Fairfax. He didn't even follow him in a car. He brought his car to the lot nearest to the NSA's offices and parked it in an out of the way spot. Then he left a window opened toward some woods, put the chronivac under the passenger side and turned himself into a peregrine falcon. He circle over the NSA lot for a half hour, just coasting on the rising thermal air currents from the pavement, till he saw his and Carruthers' supervisor, Fairfax, leave the building.
Merritt the falcon followed Fairfax in his Audi A8 out of the lot and down a circuitous pattern of side streets to one of the wealthiest suburbs around DC. Merritt flew several times around Fairfax's brick faced mansion off a cul de sac at the top of a slight rise with a big expanse of lawn in front of it. Merritt flew to trees on both sides of the house and in the back, landing on the branches nearest to Fairfax's mansion and with his fantastic falcon eyesight gave every window and door a close scrutiny.
Despite the house having a Carrier central air machine on one side of it, there was a window open on the top floor, albeit with a screen on it. The window over the kitchen sink was also open with a screen. Merritt flew up to each of those windows and with a swipe from his sharp talons and then a rip from his beak opened an inch square hole in both screens.
From there, Merritt flew away, luxuriating in his falcon body and glorious flight, zooming along just 15 feet above the pavement at first, noting all the street names that would lead him back to Fairfax's mansion.
Late the next morning, he drove to a strip mall parking lot nearby. He peeled all his clothes off his slender, trackstar body and, after feeling the electromagnetic wave pass through him, seconds later he had the body of a falcon again. He flew out of the car, across a busy thoroughfare, down some side streets and over to that same cul de sac. He flew up to Fairfax's mansion and around it. Circling it, he saw that the window in the kitchen was now closed, but the one on the top floor was still open. Merritt almost formed a grin with his beak.
He landed on the tree branch nearest that window an waited. A minute later, he felt himself shrink, gain four legs and turn into an insect. Merritt was now a housefly. He waited a few moments to adjust his multilensed eyes and then flew for the window. The opening in the screen was just big enough for him. The broken ends of the screen mesh were like re-bar spikes that he just squeezed past.
Once inside, things weren't lit and with his fly antennae, Merritt didn't hear anything. He flew all around the house. It was a sort of older style hard wood accented place with lots of leather seating and wood. There were two bedrooms on the top floor. They looked like maybe they were used by grandchildren. There was a family picture of a younger Fairfax and a brunette wife. The more recent pictures had him beside a blond. His second wife?
Merritt started getting worried. He'd given himself a little more time as a fly this time but he hadn't found the guy's computer. There was an Ipad on a kitchen counter but it was right next to some women's magazines. That must be the wife's. He'd even flown under the door to the basement, down stairs to that level and scouted around. There weren't any suitable chair and laptop or chair and PC setups.
Merritt the housefly flew back up to the ground floor and went down the hall past the bathroom again. It was getting tight now. He would be a fly much longer. He flew under a hardwood door shut and locked and just after he got under it, he felf himself changing. He grew larger, lost his wings, lost a set of legs, his multilensed eyes pulled back and he regained his naked slender, trackstar shape albeit one who was only 12 inches tall now. There was one of those little night light things that plug into an electric outlet with a switch on it. Merritt jumped up from the carpeted floor, swiped at it and turned it on. Now he could sort of see what there was in the room.
He sprinted his naked little self toward a leather swivel chair, jumped and pulled himself up to the seat of it. From there, he climbed onto an arm and climbed onto the desk in front of the chair. Front and center was a keyboard and monitor with a PC tower off to one side.
Merritt turned it on and with a little trick a hacker working for the NSA had taught him, holding certain keys down at the same time, in this case, like playing a game of Twister, by stepping on one and jabbing at another with one hand. The PC fired up and Merritt went to work. To his disgust, he found a lot of the same sick shit on Fairfax's computer that he found on Carruthers', though Fairfax apparently had a taste for underage girls as well as boys.
Fairfax also had, in his calendar, cryptic notations of meetings, many with "C" who Merritt assumed was Carruthers and on the day before Merritt was let go, the only description of the meeting was "Boyscout".
Nearly a half hour into being one foot tall, Merritt heard the automatic garage door opener working and then heard someone march into the house. He heard footsteps down the hall and then a voice at the door to the room he was in. "Oh, fer chrissakes, he left it on."
Keys worked in the lock. Merritt frantically got the computer back to the starting screen and scampered behind the PC tower. This was why he'd chosen to be miniaturized and not full sized at this point. With his hands up against the grate over the fan, Merritt kept his naked little self out of sight. He was there a minute as the 2nd wife, who was not very computer savvy, struggled to simply turn the damn thing off.
"Oh!" Merritt suddenly whimpered.
Two seconds later, he was an insect, he was Merritt the housefly again. As usual, it took him a couple seconds to adjust to his new multilensed eyes but moments later he was flapping his translucent fly wings for all he was worth and got out the door ahead of the second wife.
He heard her snarl, "Eww! An ugly little fly."
Merritt would have shrugged. Yeah? So? But he was making a beeline for the stairs up to the second floor and then to the bedroom with the open window an then out the gap in the screen he'd made as a falcon.
Once outside, Merritt dove to dodge an enterprising blue jay that was coming at him from the right. Then he flew up to a nearby oak tree branch and waited a few minutes. In just a couple of seconds he transformed into a peregrine falcon.
You wanna fight now, blue jay?
Merritt soared back to his car in the strip mall a few miles away and slowed his flight enough to get in the wind of his car. He pressed the return key of the computer with his beak and a few seconds later he was his six foot one, 165 pound self. He pulled his clothes on as fast as he could and immediately started writing notes with the pen and pad he'd left on the driver's seat.
So, not only Carruthers but Fairfax was also hopelessly corrupt and compromised. Is that how all these guys were controlled?