Neural Web

by Dima Zales

  The wound must be bad, because he sinks onto the couch, clutching at his face to stop the bleeding.

  “I can’t reach either of them,” I say. Mentally, I’m examining the bunker schematics to figure out where Dr. Jarvis sleeps. Jarvis is a brilliant surgeon, and I’m glad I tasked him with bringing his whole team plus equipment. “Obviously, their being incommunicado has something to do with Gogi’s attack.”

  “I’m sorry. The drug I gave him…” Dominic tightens his left fist, and I get the feeling that he’s as tempted as I to try to rip the information out of Gogi’s unconscious body. “He’s going to be out for a few hours.”

  “We don’t have that long.” I head over to Jarvis’s room on unsteady legs. “We need information now.”

  There’s a moan from where Muhomor stirs. Through the camera mic, I hear him say confusedly, “What? How? Who? Why?”

  “Joe, Ada, and Alan are missing,” I tell him in the fastest Zik I’m capable of. “Gogi seems to be a traitor.”

  As I speak to him, I storm into the doctor’s bedroom and flick on the lights. Despite the gunfire, Dr. Jarvis and his wife are still sleeping. They either have the Do Not Disturb app on, or they overdosed on Ambien. I doubt it’s because the walls in this bunker are as heavy and soundproof as the marketing people claimed when we were buying the place.

  Breaching all etiquette, I approach the good doctor and slap him across the face.

  His eyes pop open, his hand flying up to cradle his cheek as he sits up. “What’s going on?” He looks as though he’s about to have a heart attack, which I hope he doesn’t, as he’s our only surgeon.

  I rip the covers from his bed, not caring that I’m also exposing his wife. “We need medical help. Get up. I’ll go gather the rest of your team.”

  I repeat a version of this rude awakening several times, and when I’ve woken the last nurse, I find Dr. Jarvis and a few colleagues setting up a sterile environment in the big open space.

  Dominic is already being prepped.

  “They’re going to be fine,” the doctor says when he sees me.

  “Is there a way to wake Gogi from his state?” I ask. “I know drug addicts get Narcan to come out of an overdose. Is there something similar here?” I do a quick online search via Brainocytes. “Perhaps Flumazenil?”

  “Dr. Blantor?” Dr. Jarvis says to a thin man on his left who, according to face recognition, is an anesthesiologist.

  “Nothing that we have here,” says Dr. Blantor. “Plus—”

  “I got some information,” Mitya tells me telepathically. “Join me in VR.”

  I thank the doctors and take a seat next to where a nurse is applying a bandage to Muhomor’s head. “Are you well enough to join VR?”

  “Already there,” he says through his swollen lip.

  The nurse begins to examine me as I switch my full attention to VR. The well-lit illusionary conference room is such a contrast to the bunker that it takes me a moment to mentally adjust—proof I’m still groggy from near suffocation.

  Mitya has prepared several screens for us. The biggest shows our private jet in the nearby New Jersey airport.

  Mitya’s expression is extremely subdued, and I fear the worst as I ask, “What did you find out?”

  Mitya looks from me to Muhomor. “You best see for yourself. I’ve always warned you about him.”

  The screen shows Joe marching purposefully up the plane stairs, a gun in his hand.

  Eugene, one of Joe’s most trusted bodyguards and who’s tasked with protecting Ada, greets his boss with a smile.

  The smile instantly drops when Joe raises his gun, pointing at the man’s chest.

  “Boss,” Eugene says, “what—”

  Joe presses the trigger.

  He then steps over the dead man without a hint of emotion and stalks into the plane.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In horrified silence, we watch Joe execute two more of his men—they run out to learn what the shooting is about, see their boss, ask a question, and get slaughtered. Following the same basic formula, a couple more people die inside the baggage compartment, then two more on the ramp that leads into the fuselage. After that, Joe stalks into the passenger compartment and puts another couple of bullets into his remaining people there.

  The enormity of this betrayal doesn’t compute in my enhanced brain. Nor does Joe’s behavior. Why kill his men when most of them are loyal to him and him alone?

  If Joe is with the bad guys, I’m well and truly screwed. After years of training in the dojo, I haven’t beaten my cousin once during sparring. He still shoots better than I at the range, still lifts more weight at the gym. Simply put, Joe is the deadliest person I’ve ever encountered, and the idea of him as my foe is terrifying—especially since I don’t know if I’m capable of hurting a relative. Yet I have no doubt that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me.

  A new fear overrides all my concerns when he begins searching through the seats.

  He’s looking for Ada.

  He discovers her sleeping on the massage-capable couch that was the selling point of this plane. She must have the Do Not Disturb app on as usual, because the bright lights after landing would’ve awakened her long before the gunfire. Before we developed DND, she made me tape up every LED light in our bedroom with black masking tape. If we survive, we should tweak the stupid app to allow life-threatening sounds and sights to come through.

  Target acquired, Joe leaps for my wife, pulling out a syringe on the way. Her peaceful expression doesn’t change. The only sign of what he’s done is her complete lack of response when he throws her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

  In the real world, my nails dig into the base of my palms as my hands clench into too-tight fists.

  “I’m sorry, dude,” Mitya says as though from the distance. “That was only a part of it. Do you want to see more?”

  I nod, because I don’t trust myself to speak for the moment.

  He plays a clip of Joe sneak-attacking the guards he took with him to the airport, and then he shows me a current video feed of the guards’ bodies still lying in the bunker parking lot.

  Then he plays the clip I’m dreading the most.

  “Thanks so much for taking me with you, Uncle Joe,” Alan says as the two of them exit the bunker. “Why did Dad not want to come with us?”

  Alan’s back is to Joe, so he doesn’t see the syringe headed for his flesh. A second later, my son’s tiny body slumps, and Joe catches him and places him on the ground.

  Overwhelmed with emotion, I jump to my feet in VR and run up to the virtual window. Using my command of the VR design, I turn my reflection in the window into a shadow of Joe and proceed to punch it with all my strength. I’m not sure who I’m angrier at: myself for not preventing this disaster, or my cousin for being the tool my enemies used. My knuckles meet the bulletproof glass again and again, and I welcome the virtual pain.

  Mitya puts his hand on my shoulder. “At least he left Alan behind when he was shooting the other guards.”

  I can’t fall apart now, for Alan and Ada’s sake. I launch the BraveChill app, which subdues my angst enough to halt my tantrum.

  “You need to keep your cool,” Mitya messages me privately. “We need your leadership to get through this.”

  He walks back to the table and swipes his hand along the glass. The surface turns into another screen that shows Joe carrying Alan into the car.

  “I can’t believe this.” Muhomor spits on the table, aiming for the image of Joe. “We never should’ve put that psycho in charge of security.”

  “Where are they?” I demand of no one in particular. “We ought to be able to follow the car or limo or whatever Joe drove.”

  “I have no idea where they are,” Mitya says, his eyes downcast. “Joe must’ve switched cars multiple times, and he must’ve started with that manual-drive clunker of his that has no tracking technology of any kind.”

  “Did you check the satellites?” Muhomor asks.
“Traffic cameras? Dashboard cams?”

  “You’re welcome to check my work,” Mitya replies testily. “Obviously I wouldn’t tell Mike that I have no idea where they are before I had exhausted all options.”

  Muhomor doesn’t answer with anything snide, which tells me he’s doing research of his own. Figuring three enhanced brains are better than two, I try my best to follow Joe’s trail but quickly discover that Mitya is right. Five minutes or so after the kidnapping, the trail goes completely cold—and it’s been hours now, so he could be anywhere within an enormous radius. After futile attempts to reach Alan and Ada via every app we have, I admit defeat and crank up the BraveChill app to its maximum setting to keep from falling apart.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” I say both in VR and out loud as BraveChill begins to clear my judgment. “Joe is among the richest people in the world. No one could pay him enough to be willing to do this.”

  Mitya and Muhomor look at me worriedly. The same thought must’ve crossed both of their enhanced minds.

  “Maybe someone had something on him worthy of blackmail?” Muhomor suggests. “Or another kind of leverage?”

  Mitya nods. “We all have seen him kill people. Maybe someone has a murder on tape?”

  The image of Joe killing my biological father strobes in the forefront of my memory, and I again feel like I’m about to lose my shit—BraveChill notwithstanding.

  “Joe would sooner go to jail than do this,” I say when I regain my speech. “Besides, Kadvosky and the rest of our lawyers would state the video is fake and make short work of it. Joe knows that.”

  “Maybe they have someone he cares about?” Muhomor sounds even less certain than before. “‘Bring us Alan and Ada or else we kill X.’”

  “Who would be X?” I try to get my breathing to even out. “If he cares about anyone, it would be us, his family. The people Joe took are the very people someone would need to kidnap to get him to cooperate—assuming Joe didn’t preemptively kill the conspirators.”

  “Maybe someone poisoned Alan and Ada and told Joe he needs to bring them to some location for a cure.” Muhomor bites the nail on his right index finger. “Or maybe they implanted a bomb into Joe’s neck and told him it would go off unless he does as he’s told.”

  “Dude.” Mitya gives the hacker a baleful stare. “Do you think Mike wants to hear dumb theories like that?”

  “It’s okay,” I manage to say. “No idea is a bad idea. The poison theory doesn’t work, though. Joe would get us involved; he wouldn’t kill his people. Plus, Gogi’s actions don’t fit.”

  “Mike’s right,” Mitya says. “Same logic, or lack of it, can be applied to Gogi.” He puts a recording of Gogi’s attack on the screens. “He’s not as well off as Joe, but Gogi still has enough shares in Human++ to be too rich to be bought. He loves you like a brother.”

  “He’s loyal to Joe, though,” Muhomor says. “So maybe it’s just one puzzle instead of two?”

  “He’s not that loyal to Joe,” I reply confidently, though internally I’m less convinced than I sound. Would Gogi hurt me for Joe? I’ve never had to ponder such a question before, and now that I do, I’m not sure what the answer is.

  “What Gogi did makes no sense at all.” Mitya stares at the part of the recording where Gogi’s hands are around my throat. “If I can think of some crazy reason for Joe to take Alan and Ada someplace, I simply can’t imagine why Gogi would want to kill you—”

  An earlier idea re-forms in my mind, and everything falls into place.

  “Guys,” I say triumphantly. “I think I know what’s going on.”

  “You do?” my friends ask in unison.

  “Yes.” Either this epiphany or the BraveChill app finally allow my heart to stop racing like a kid with ADHD. “Gogi wouldn’t betray his friends. Joe is even less likely to betray his family. The logical conclusion is that they did not betray us.”

  “So you think Joe took Ada and Alan for a fun ride?” Muhomor asks derisively. “And Gogi nearly killed us for kicks?”

  “No. But they didn’t willingly betray us,” I say. “Someone hacked their Brainocytes. Someone is controlling Gogi and Joe like puppets.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Mitya and Muhomor stare at me, their avatar jaws threatening to perform an unrealistic VR animation of falling to the floor.

  “No,” Muhomor says. “AROS security can’t just be hacked willy-nilly like that.”

  “No, Mike’s right.” Mitya looks somber. “That theory fits all the facts. I even considered it briefly, but dismissed it when we learned that all the people attacking us had the official Human++ Brainocytes—which you, Muhomor, claimed to be unhackable.”

  “I said Tema was unhackable.” Muhomor makes his usual shades disappear, revealing uncharacteristically worried eyes. “I only ever said that it was improbable that someone besides me could find a flaw in AROS security. And any flaws I discovered, I patched up.”

  We look at each other. That’s not what he said—in fact, his certainty was why I didn’t consider this possibility from the very beginning—but now is not the time to debate semantics.

  “The improbable happened,” I state flatly. Since I’m in control of my emotions for the time being, I try to capitalize on it and move our investigation as far along as possible. “Someone took away your self-proclaimed best hacker title, Muhomor. You were beaten at your own game. Live with it. This isn’t about your ego anymore. We have to figure out who did this and how.”

  “Well.” Mitya gets up and begins pacing around the table. “We know how it could’ve been done with someone without Brainocytes already in place. Does that help?”

  The topic is uncomfortable for us all. Though Brainocytes have generally been a force for the betterment of the world, like any technology, they’re not without their demons. Monstrous people have created their own perverted versions of Brainocytes to turn people into zombie-like slaves. Whenever we hear about such efforts, we do our best to destroy the organizations responsible. Thus far, this has happened six times in Africa, twice in Eastern Europe, and once in the Middle East. We abhor this situation and don’t shy away from the methods necessary to combat it, from legal action to Joe’s ruthlessness and Muhomor’s hacking.

  The organizations caught doing this don’t even exist as mentions on old internet pages anymore. Still, we know that it’s simply impossible to locate and deal with every instance of this atrocity. Our best defense is to spread legitimate Brainocytes throughout the human population. Until now, having Human++ Brainocytes has been the best protection against getting your brain hacked.

  Muhomor must be thinking along the same lines. “Gogi and Joe have Brainocytes already,” he says. “That makes this a completely different problem for the hacker.”

  I drum my fingers on the table and try to calm my thoughts again. “If you were the hacker behind this, how would you go about it?”

  Muhomor’s forehead creases, and his shades return to his nose. “Assuming this is really what you say it is, then there must be a vulnerability in one of AROS’s core apps.”

  Yet again BraveChill fails, and a knot forms in my stomach. Muhomor is right. For reasons of security, certain modes of Brainocyte operation, particularly the sending of data to neurons outside the visual and auditory regions of the brain, are locked to all apps except those built by us. Users have the option of overriding this for themselves, but everyone knows it’s not safe to do so—especially people who work for Human++ like Joe and Gogi.

  I take in a deep breath. “As unlikely as it sounds, let’s assume it is a core app. For example, say it’s the video player. What would you do then?”

  “That’s very farfetched,” Muhomor says. “The video player is probably the most secure app.”

  “Humor us.” Mitya stops pacing and slumps back into a chair. “Say the video player app had an exploit.”

  “Well, I’d have to write a virus to take advantage of whatever the imaginary weakness is,” Muhomor
says. “Then spread it. Somehow.”

  “Wouldn’t you need to get a special video on another company’s server?” I ask. “I imagine Netflix and their ilk wouldn’t want someone using them to spread a virus like this. Bad PR.”

  “I’d hack into Netflix,” Muhomor says dismissively. “Or I’d use social engineering to work with employees already at the company.” He looks so excited at this roleplaying that I feel like reaching over and giving him a smack. “Alternatively, I’d put together a new video streaming service that I completely control and create a video that could potentially be used as a vector of attack—”

  “There’s a problem with all this.” Mitya folds his arms across his chest. “This attack was targeted to Joe and Gogi. A virus that takes advantage of something like video streaming would get inside the heads of everyone who watched the video.”

  “You’re right. Targeting the virus would be extremely difficult.” Muhomor rubs his thin chin thoughtfully. “It’s not impossible, though. You could give every user a virus that would lie dormant, then activate special instructions only for people in proximity to some location or—”

  “I really hope that’s not what’s happening,” Mitya says. “That would mean every Human++ customer has a vulnerability in their heads… that most of the world carries this exploit ready for abuse.”

  “They seemed to be laser-precise with Gogi and Joe.” I’m trying not to freak out with dread for the Brainocyte users of the world—a group that includes everyone I know, including myself. “If this is a proximity-based virus, why not turn all our guards against us? Or better yet, enslave us and make us commit suicide? Or enslave Alan and Ada and make them kidnap themselves?”

  The reminder of Ada and Alan’s status increases my already elevated heartbeat, both in VR and on the couch where the nurse is checking me for damage. Despite the luminous speed of this VR conversation, I still feel enormous guilt because I’m talking instead of acting. At the same time, I have no idea what action I can take until we figure out this mess.