by Tarah Benner
The walls of Tripp’s office are made of auto-frosting glass. I can hear the rumble of low voices inside the room and see the blurred outlines of people moving behind the walls.
Standing outside is a buff-looking blond dressed in black slacks and a bulletproof vest. He gives me a look as if to say “don’t even think about it,” but I charge toward him anyway.
My aim was to slide under the guard’s arm and get through the door before he could stop me, but instead I collide with his tree trunk–arm, and he scoots me back as if he’s shooing a kitten.
“Tripp!” I yell, keeping enough distance that the guard doesn’t perceive a threat. “Tripp!”
The voices on the other side of the door fall silent, and I see a figure moving behind the glass. A second later, the door swings open, and Tripp’s face appears over the buff guard’s shoulder.
“Maggie?”
“They’re everywhere,” I breathe, still cringing at the pain in my lung.
“Who’s everywhere?”
“The bots,” I huff. “They’re switching departments. They’re talking to each other. I went to the infirmary, and one dressed like a doctor tried to kill me!”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” says Tripp, stepping around the huge hulking guy in the doorway. “’Scuse me, Zebulon.”
“My name’s Josh,” the guard rumbles.
Tripp ignores him and keeps his eyes fixed on me. “Who tried to kill you?”
“One of the humanoids,” says Jonah, elbowing past the guard to join in the conversation. “One of your bots posed as a doctor and tried to murder Maggie in the infirmary.”
Tripp scowls at Jonah and addresses me. “What were you doing in the infirmary?”
“I popped a rib out,” I say. “It doesn’t matter. The point is that the bots are communicating and changing positions so they can fly under the radar.”
“You popped a rib out?”
I grit my teeth and try to ignore the stabbing pain in my side. Tripp seems to be grasping all the wrong details, and it’s starting to annoy me.
“Did you talk to Ziva?” I ask.
“No. Not yet,” he says, lowering his voice. “As a matter of fact . . . I got an adorable investigator of my own.”
I glance behind Tripp to a dark-skinned man sitting opposite his desk. The man is dressed in a standard black government suit and looks as though Tripp has fried his last nerve.
“Your rib still out?” Tripp asks.
“What? Yeah. I mean, the bot didn’t fix it.”
“Let me help.”
I let out a huff of exasperation that just causes me more pain. “That’s okay.”
But Tripp strides back to his desktop and wakes the device, and the image of Porter’s face appears.
“Porter, get me Dr. Kline.”
This, it seems, is too much for Jonah. He storms into the office after Tripp, slamming the door shut behind him.
“What the hell are you doing?” he yells. “What the fuck is going on around here?”
“Excuse me?” says Tripp.
“Your company’s robots are slaughtering people all over this station. I told you to initiate a lockdown before people start waking up . . . Why are you still screwing around?”
“I’m not screwing around,” Tripp snaps. “I already put out a call for everyone to stay in their suites. I’ve instructed First Lieutenant Greaves to brief essential personnel on the bot situation and keep danger zones off limits until we can safely deactivate the bots. I would have talked to Ziva already if these guys weren’t —”
“Safely deactivate the bots?” Jonah repeats, his voice trembling with rage. “Those bots slaughtered six of my men!”
“I realize that,” says Tripp, speaking in a slow, calm voice that Jonah seems to find infuriating.
“They walked into an ambush because Greaves doesn’t know the first thing about the bots or leading a company!”
“Yes, Sergeant,” says Tripp, a tremor of anger breaking through his calm demeanor. “I am handling that as well. As far as the bots, I am well aware of what is going on out there.”
“Clearly not,” says Jonah. “Greaves’s idiocy got good men killed. Your idiocy almost got Maggie killed.”
“My idiocy?”
“Your lack of action put good people in je —”
But Tripp just keeps talking over Jonah as though he never spoke. “Just because I choose to solve problems with my brain instead of solving them like a caveman . . .”
I cringe and glance up at Jonah, who looks as though he’s about to explode. Clearly he and Tripp haven’t finished their testosterone battle, but we don’t have time for this.
Luckily, they’re interrupted by a knock at the door, and Tripp hustles over to answer. When he pulls it open, there’s a man standing next to the guard who looks like the ultimate dad type: thinning gray hair, golf-course tan, and a wide, sweaty forehead. He’s dressed in khaki pants and a loose-fitting polo and has the skinniest man legs I have ever seen.
“Thanks for coming,” says Tripp brightly.
“Any time.”
“Maggie,” says Tripp. “This is Dr. Kline. Dr. Kline, Maggie.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Dr. Kline is my in-house chiropractor,” says Tripp.
“You keep a chiropractor on staff?” Jonah mutters.
“It can be stressful, being me,” says Tripp. “I need frequent adjustments.”
“I can think of one thing that needs adjusting . . .”
Tripp pretends not to hear him. “He is a miracle worker, Dr. Kline . . . Gotten me back to a hundred percent on numerous occasions.”
“I think you’re giving me too much credit,” says Dr. Kline in typical dad fashion.
“I could never,” says Tripp, sounding completely serious. “My friend Maggie here has a dislocated rib. I told her you could get her feeling as good as new.”
“I’ll certainly do my best,” says Dr. Kline, meeting my gaze with a twinkle. “Which side is it?”
“My left.”
“And it hurts when you breathe?”
“Mhmm,” I mumble, cringing when Dr. Kline puts his fingers between my ribs. “Here?”
I nod.
“Lie on your back, please,” he says, indicating Tripp’s overlarge desk.
I glance from Jonah to the suit to Tripp and Dr. Kline. This is by far the most awkward meeting I have ever been a part of, but I just want it to be over.
I go to Tripp’s desk and lie down, and Dr. Kline comes over to adjust me. He draws an arm over my chest and loops the other around his neck. I catch Tripp’s eye and shoot him a “What the hell?” sort of look as Dr. Kline reaches behind my back.
The government guy next to Tripp’s desk looks as though he’s had enough, but then I feel a jolt of pressure and a tug, followed by immense relief.
“Wow,” I sigh, sitting up and breathing deeply to make sure I’m not imagining things. My ribs are still sore where Buford kicked me, but I can breathe without excruciating pain.
“Thank you,” I stammer, not knowing what else to say.
“My pleasure,” says Dr. Kline.
“Really . . . Thank you,” says Tripp, showing the doctor out.
Jonah doesn’t say anything, but I know he’s annoyed that Tripp managed to produce a chiropractor in the midst of robot Armageddon.
As soon as the door closes behind him, the tension inside the office seems to magnify.
“What about the bots?” I ask, hopping off Tripp’s desk. “There has to be a way to track them.”
“The bot that attacked you is the same model that killed Brett Callaghan?” asks the suit who was interrogating Tripp.
“Apparently,” says Tripp, looking unsettled. “And, unfortunately, no. Their tracking capabilities have been disabled, and my team has not been able to override the hacker’s settings.”
Suddenly, Tripp’s desktop dings. He moves around to answer the call, and the reverse image of Ping’s face appears. “Wha
t is it?”
“Maggie and Jonah with you?” Ping asks breathlessly, and Tripp turns up the volume so we can all hear what Ping has to say.
“They’re right here,” says Tripp, eyeing Jonah with clear annoyance.
“Oh, good! I’ve been trying to ping your Optix, but the network —”
“We’ve been having some issues,” Tripp admits.
“Good news, sarge.”
“What is it, Ping?” asks Jonah.
“Well, two pieces of good news, one piece of bad news.”
“Okay . . .”
“The bad news is that Buford — or whoever’s helping him — locked the bots’ remote access.”
“We knew that already,” says Jonah.
“I know, I know. But I’m just saying that they covered their bases. I can’t track them, I can’t change their setting, and I can’t shut them down.”
Jonah frowns. “So what’s the good news?”
“The good news is that I might have some dirt on Buford that would prove Maggie’s telling the truth.”
“You do?”
“Yep. Well, I don’t know yet. But if he hacked her Optix to spy on her, I’ll have proof of that soon.”
Hearing those words, my heart seems to lighten tenfold. I don’t know why not being believed was bothering me so much, but it was. And if we can get Buford locked up, we might have a chance against the bots.
“What’s the other good news?” asks Jonah.
Ping looks confused. “Huh?”
“You said you had two pieces of good news.”
“Oh yeah!”
We all wait with bated breath: me, Jonah, Tripp — even the FBI guy.
Ping grins, and I know it’s gotta be good. “I might have another way to stop the bots.”
8
Jonah
As soon as I end the call with Ping, Maggie and I take off for Sector C. My body is spent, but it keeps on going.
I don’t know how long I’ve been awake, but I’m used to functioning on very little sleep. It’s nothing compared to my time in the army. After the sleep deprivation I survived in China and Russia, my body can handle just about anything.
We reach the long stretch of hallway leading to the control room, and when we round the corner, Ping flags us down from a janitorial closet. Maggie and I exchange bemused looks before ducking inside to join him.
Maggie closes the door and flips on a light, illuminating Ping’s excited face. He’s kneeling among the mops and brooms and holding a familiar white box.
“You have got to be kidding,” I say.
“Nope!” Ping flips the lid off the box, and I see two devices I’d hoped never to see again — the SPIDERs.
The last time I saw one of those things, I was training Maggie in hand-to-hand combat. Little did I know that Buford was using the SPIDER to siphon off my neural data.
I look from the devices to Ping’s ecstatic face. “Those things are what got us into this mess.”
“When you were the instructor brain,” Ping clarifies, practically quivering with excitement. “But we don’t need any of your neural data.”
“Then whose —”
A triumphant look spreads slowly across his face, and I realize he might be onto something. “Buford’s?”
Ping nods slowly. Maggie still looks confused.
“Buford’s?” she repeats.
“Buford was an awarded marksman in the air force,” Ping clarifies. “Before he joined the Space Force. Some of the bots that were involved in the attacks had the ability to fire rifles. Don’t you think that Buford would have programmed them using his own motor memory data?”
There’s a long pause as Maggie and I chew this over. I still don’t know exactly where Ping is headed with this, and neither apparently does she.
“But how could that help us stop the bots?”
Ping flashes a knowing grin. “The Space Force requires officers to create a unique passcode for their access within the organization. You can’t use birthdays, anniversaries — anything like that. Every passcode is vetted by our AI hacker program to make sure it’s nothing someone else would be able to guess.”
Maggie is still drawing a blank. “So?”
“So there are only so many meaningless numbers a person can remember!” says Ping. “There’s a good chance that Buford used the same passcode to lock the bots’ controls as he did for the Space Force. If he did record his own motor sequences with the SPIDER, he would have had to access the armory.”
“The armory?” says Maggie.
“To check out a weapon for the shooting range,” I explain.
Maggie gives him a blank look, and Ping throws out his arms as though we should be able to connect the dots. “He would have had to punch in his code at the armory — probably while he was wearing the SPIDER!”
Suddenly, I understand Ping’s plan. To remember a numeric passcode that has no intrinsic meaning usually requires tapping into a person’s muscle memory. If Buford recorded his passcode while he was wearing the SPIDER, we might be able to find that passcode and use it to unlock the bots.
“But the SPIDER data . . . It’s hosted in the Space Force’s private servers,” I say.
“Only after you upload it,” says Ping. “It’s Space Force policy to park your data before you return a piece of equipment like this, but Buford never returned it.”
“Then where did you get it?” I ask.
Ping raises a guilty eyebrow, but I can tell he’s secretly proud. “I lifted it from his room. And I got his desktop. If he used it to spy on Maggie, we’ll have all the proof we need.”
At those words, I feel my jaw hit the floor. Ping was inside Buford’s private quarters. Ping — suck-up brown-noser Ping — broke the Space Force honor code and stole from an officer’s quarters.
“You think his data’s still on the SPIDER?” I ask, feeling a whole new level of respect for Ping.
He shrugs. “It makes sense. Would you have time to follow protocol if you were busy planning a robot war?”
Maggie and I exchange a look. It’s worth a shot.
Feeling a familiar tingle of unease, I pull the creepy device out of the box. The copper shell feels cool to the touch, and I shudder at the memory of all the little legs digging into my scalp to record my neural activity.
I was right to feel uneasy about it. The device is as invasive as it gets, and in Buford’s hands, it became a tool for destruction.
“Wait!” says Maggie, stopping me before I put the device back on. “Shouldn’t I —”
“Yeah,” says Ping quickly, jerking his head toward Maggie. “Hand it over. We can’t risk that thing extracting even more of your data. You tryin’ to kill us?”
I hesitate. Putting it on myself is bad enough. But handing it over to Maggie seems worse. I don’t want it invading her mind, either.
But I ignore the odd feelings of protectiveness rising up inside me and hand it over. I can’t explain why I don’t want her to put it on, so I don’t.
Maggie takes a deep breath and lifts the hair off the back of her neck. I drag the copper shell up the base of her scalp, watching as it flattens all the little blond hairs. A slight prickle of heat surges through my shoulders as my fingers brush the skin along the back of her neck, but I ignore it.
I press the tiny button on the underside of the SPIDER, and I see an alien blue light go on. Twelve metal nodes lift and separate, moving of their own accord.
Maggie straightens her spine as the SPIDER’s tentacles spread out and begin to mine for a soft bit of flesh. Maggie drops her hair over the device like a curtain, but I can tell that she’s uncomfortable.
“Anything?” Ping asks, watching Maggie with fascination and envy.
“It doesn’t work like that,” I mutter. “She needs to try logging in.”
“Right!” says Ping, springing into action. He bursts out of the closet, and we follow him to the control room.
It’s dark inside, apart from the glow of the scree
n. Ping sits down, cracks his knuckles, and pulls up a page with six blinking blue lines.
Ping offers Maggie the stool, and she takes a seat, staring at the screen with a look of helplessness. We wait.
Then, suddenly, I hear a loud crash outside the room. Maggie jumps, and my heart flies into overdrive.
“What was that?” Ping whispers.
But I’m already bursting back into the hall, rifle poised to bludgeon a bot.
The hallway appears to be deserted, but I can still hear banging coming from the door at the end. The sound is deafening — and insistent — as though someone is taking a battering ram to the door.
“Maggie! Code!” I yell over my shoulder. Blood is rushing in my ears, and the thump of my own pounding heart deadens the sound of metal on metal.
“Maggie!”
There is nowhere else to go — that door is our only escape.
“I’m thinking!”
“Don’t think! Just try!”
Another loud bang! reverberates down the hallway, and I see the door shudder on its hinges.
It’s definitely a bot. No human has that kind of strength. The door is steel plated — designed to withstand an enormous amount of force.
The door trembles as the banging becomes more insistent, and I take an automatic step back.
A second later, the door bursts apart with a horrendous screech. Pieces of the ruined door fly back and ricochet off the adjacent wall, and I raise an arm to cover my face.
Standing on the other side is a tall figure with dark black hair and golden skin. It’s not a man, but it doesn’t seem like a bot either. I know the thing is filled with titanium and plastic, but its face looks so human that I’m momentarily fooled.
Two more humanoids emerge from the dust. One is young and blond — another man. The other looks like a woman and has legs for days. They’re all dressed as Elderon personnel: white slacks for the men and a white dress for the woman.
I stagger back around the corner and hear Maggie’s and Ping’s frantic voices.
“Don’t overthink it.”
“I’m trying!”