Philips rubbed her face, her exhaustion starting to catch up with her. “Just thousands of data points with no meaningful association.”
Ross turned to her. “Not if I could relate this data with something I knew the Daemon did. Then we’d have a better idea what we’re looking at.” He kept his gaze upon her.
“And did you?”
He turned back to the screen and started tapping at the keyboard again. “The spammer massacre. It was still going on at the time of this intercept. Fifty-two spammers were killed in the region covered by this dataset. Eight killings occurred in the relevant time range. I had Merritt get me the addresses from those eight individual case files, and I keyed them into a GIS program to obtain the approximate GPS coordinates of each address. Then I searched this intercepted data set for close matches.”
She smiled slightly at him.
“I found a match.” He tapped a key, and an aerial photograph of a suburban business park filled his screen. A close series of waypoints intersected in the center of the building, then parted. The longer set continued down through the building, concentrating its activity in one area.
“Merritt got me in touch with the building’s architect. They sent me an AutoCAD file of the floor plates. I aligned that blueprint with the GPS grid. Bear in mind: three men were murdered here at the same time period covered by this GPS intercept. I marked the rough location where the bodies were found on this floor plan. Look at this, Nat.”
He brought a detailed floor plan up onto the screen. The GPS waypoints tracked down the hall, then entered a suite labeled 1010and tracked to the site where each body was found, retraced steps back to two of the bodies, then exited down the hall.
Philips felt a tingle run down her spine. “My God. This is the Daemon’s command system.”
“I think it’s more than that. This type of coordinate tracking system seemed familiar. Look…” Ross swiveled his chair to reach for a nearby workstation, nudging past her. He brought up a different 3-D floor plan in vector lines. “This is a game map for CyberStorm’s Over the Rhine.I’m viewing this level in their map-editing tool, Anvil.Matthew Sobol wrote big parts of this program.” Ross pointed at the screen. “See these dots? Those are sprites-bots, computer-controlled characters that react to players. These tracking lines indicate the coordinates those bots will follow in response to an event elsewhere in the system.”
She leaned in to look closely at the screen. “It’s just like the GPS dots.”
“Exactly. In essence Sobol is using the GPS system to convert the Earth into one big game map. We’re all in his game now.”
Philips stared at the screen, still trying to decide whether this discovery was good or bad news. “It took the most powerful computer on Earth nearly a month to crack the encryption on this block of data, and the encryption changes every few minutes. We can’t jam all the transmissions because the Daemon uses commercial spectrums.” She turned to him. “How do we use this information, Jon?”
“By deducing the existence of certain things. For example, there must be some way for Daemon operatives to interact with this presentation layer. If my theory holds, then the Daemon must have created equipment that permits its operatives to ‘see’ into this extra-dimensional space so they can use it.”
Philips nodded. “That could be why we’ve been unable to track Factions in the real world-because they’re communicating with each other through this virtual space.” She pondered the ramifications of this. “This could be a major breakthrough.”
He shrugged. “We still need to prove the theory.”
“But this is testable. We’ll go through the captured equipment inventory.”
“The devices we’re looking for will most likely have biometric security-fingerprint scanners, things like that. If we can hack our way into one of these objects, we should be able to see into the Daemon’s dimension. And that will be the first step in infiltrating it.”
She stared at him for a few moments. “Excellent work. I’m impressed.”
“I didn’t think it was possible to impress you, Doctor.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
Ross glanced at the wreckage of the room. “I didn’t mean for you to come back to this. I just heard about Sebeck an hour ago. I guess I snapped.” He started picking up the papers strewn all over the place.
She moved to help him. “It’s my fault. You’ve been cooped up in here for months. I’m trying to get them to loosen the restrictions.”
They grabbed for the same toppled fanfold printout and stopped just short of knocking heads. Their faces were only inches apart, motionless in a sudden, uncomfortable silence.
Their gaze held for several more moments while Philips’s heart raced. She suddenly pulled back and stood up. “I need to check my e-mail.” She grabbed her blazer from the chair back, not bothering to roll down her sleeves as she pulled it on hurriedly. She grabbed her overnight bag.
Ross watched her. “You don’t need to-”
“I’m a federal officer, Jon. You’re a felon under my authority-a foreign national of dubious origin. Identity unknown.” She faced him from across the table. “It’s impossible. My responsibilities make it impossible.”
“If I made you uncomfortable, I apologize. It won’t happen again.”
She took a deep breath, then looked at him with a softer expression. “No…you didn’t make me uncomfortable. But…”
He nodded solemnly. “I understand.” He paused. “I just hope there’s some part of you they don’t own.”
She bristled. “I chooseto serve my country.” She turned to leave again. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
She stopped and turned to stare at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re not so difficult to decipher, Doctor.”
” Really?Well, let’s hear it…”
“Okay. Child prodigy-head and shoulders above everyone around you-never quite fit in. Your classmates were always far older than you, and so you never acquired the social skills that develop the strong bonds of friendship. You live an isolated existence defined by your ultra-top-secret work. Work that you will never be able to share with anyone-not even your coworkers.”
This last comment made her fold her arms impatiently.
“Ah, your work-it’s too important to risk intimacy. But isn’t it closer to the truth that you intimidate men? Your intellect scares the hell out of them, doesn’t it? Humor me: what’s the cube root of 393,447?”
“All right, I got your point.”
“Can’t do it?”
“Seventy-three-point-two-seven-six.”
“There we go. How many of your relationships failed because you couldn’t hide your intelligence?”
“That’s enough.”
“You don’t scare me, Nat.”
She stared at him for several moments. “If you only knew what I’ve gone through to protect you. You can’t assume it doesn’t matter to me. I can’t protect you if you don’t trust me. What is your real name? Who areyou?”
Ross seriously contemplated this. He stared at the tabletop. He looked truly torn. After nearly a minute he finally stood and started gathering papers again. “Sorry about the mess.”
“Goddamn you.” She moved for the door.
He looked up, watching her leave. “I was twelve when they came for my father.”
Philips stopped again.
“I remember my mother screaming downstairs. I ran out just as they put my father in a car. Our family driver held me back. My dad looked up at me from the backseat. And you know what he did? He winked at me, and he smiled.”
Ross paused for a moment, savoring the memory. “I miss him so much, Nat. He went willingly in exchange for our lives. I try every day to be the man he’d have wanted me to be. The man he would have been proud to call his son.” He looked up at Philips. “If there is anyone on this earth I want to share my name wit
h, it’s you. But I will never trust a government, Nat. They’ll use my identity to get at the people I care about. And I won’t put you in the position of having to choose between your future and me. We both know it will come to that. And I don’t have a future.”
Philips stood motionless for several moments. “Please don’t think I was trying to-”
He waved it away. “I know.”
After a few moments she turned and for the third time headed for the door. “Good night, Mr. Ross.”
“Good night, Dr. Philips.”
Philips didn’t look back until she’d closed the door behind her.
Chapter 41:// The New Social Contract
A bleak dawn radiated over a tract home lost in the grid of a lower-class subdivision. Inside, a Nigerian immigrant stood guard in front of a stark steel door tagged with graffiti and patches of peeling gray paint.
He had the lean, wiry frame of someone raised on significantly less caloric intake than the average American. His skin was almost literally black, and he attentively watched a grainy security monitor focused on the street outside. He was attentive in the way that only a recent immigrant from an impoverished land can be. Grateful to be in Texas, America.
He considered for a moment the money he was earning-what it meant to his extended family back in subSaharan Africa. He kept calculating and recalculating how long it would take him to save enough money to also bring his sons to America.
A stubby AK-47 variant with a folding stock hung from a strap on his shoulder, its fore grip wrapped in duct tape. It was his job to identify people seeking entry to the cutting house. He took his job very seriously.
The sounds of people talking and shouting echoed from rooms deeper inside the building. A smattering of tribal languages. The place was bustling with activity. Just another day in the heroin trade. He despised drugs, but economic realities were economic realities.
He noticed the security monitor flicker for a moment. After that, the image skipped vertically. He frowned at it and played with the vertical-hold dial. In a moment the image stabilized, and he nodded in satisfaction.
Then the steel door exploded, sending redhot metal fragments into his stomach and throwing him down the hall.
A dozen armed men in black full-body armor and ballistic helmets issued through the opening, shouting, “POLICE! FREEZE!”
The initials DEA were stenciled in bold white letters on their breastplates. Shouting filled the back of the house. They were entering back there as well.
“POLICE! FREEZE!”
More shouting. The steel bars were ripped from a picture window by cables linked to trailer hitches. DEA agents jumped through the empty frame, rushing forward shouting, “THIS IS THE POLICE! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS!”
A dozen half-naked men and women scattered, screaming and running to flush bags of heroin stacked on tables in a bedroom.
One of the dealers rolled out into an interior hallway with a pump twelve-gauge shotgun. He turned just in time to see the iridescent faceplate of a body-armored DEA agent blocking his exit. The dealer cut loose, blasting the agent into the narrow closet door at the end of the hallway.
Women started screaming.
The dealer pumped another shell into the chamber. “Ya’ll some badass motherfucker now, huh?”
He leveled the gun and blasted the nearby door frame as another DEA agent leaned out. The wood frame and a chunk of drywall disintegrated.
But the first agent he shot was getting up.
The dealer chambered another round and blasted the man again, sending him back into the closet door.
Click-clack. He blasted him again.
Click-clack. Then again.
He watched in amazement as the agent struggled back to his feet. The dealer raced to find shotgun shells in his pockets. The DEA agent leveled a multibarreled pistol at him.
Braaappp!
The dealer looked down at his white T-shirt. A rapidly expanding bloodstain swept across it. He crumpled to the floor, shotgun over his knees.
The other men in the house threw down their weapons as the agents barked commands at them to get on their knees with their hands over their heads.
Another set of agents moved among them with plastic hand ties, lashing hands behind backs.
But the majority of the DEA agents were still thundering through the house, overturning the drug tables and pushing aside the stacks of money-frantically searching for something. The agents never said a word to each other; instead, they moved as if they were a single entity, searching methodically from behind their mirrored helmet faceplates.
They came up from the basement, in from the garage, down from the attic, and rifled through every closet. They tore open the kitchen cabinets and aimed weapon-mounted tactical lights inside. It was there they discovered two terrified black boys-about seven years old-hiding beneath the sink. They dragged them out screaming.
The search abruptly stopped. Agents gathered around the boys, who clutched each other and stared in fear up at the mirrored faceplates staring back down at them. They were more than mirrored-they had the complex iridescence of mother-of-pearl. Their appearance changed as the men turned.
Still without speaking, the agents pried the boys apart, holding their arms back. One agent knelt down and extended a fingerprint-capture pad toward one boy. He forced open the boy’s hand and pressed the kid’s thumb against the pad-then checked a display reading. A pause, then he repeated the process with the second boy-once again consulting a display.
The agent nodded and pointed to the second boy.
The other agents zipped hand ties on the first boy and tossed him, crying, in with the rest of the prisoners. The second boy they held on to, and the group of agents parted to reveal a tall, broad-shouldered officer, also in black body armor with a mirrored faceplate. He strode forward.
The boy, already scared, now cowered in fear, tears streaming down his face.
The big agent grabbed him under the shoulders, plucking him up off the floor. The boy struggled, but the man’s viselike grip was unshakeable. They walked out the shattered front door of the house and into the street-where a black Chevy Suburban pulled up to meet them. The side door opened, and the big agent pushed the boy inside-following close on his heels. The door thumped shut behind them as the remaining DEA agents poured out of the house, climbing into their black vans.
Inside the Suburban, the boy curled up on the opposite end of the bench seat. The large DEA agent sat on the far end, staring from behind his mirrored helmet at the terrified boy as an agent in the front seat drove, beyond a tinted glass partition.
The big agent brought his hands to his helmet, released twin catches, then twisted, removing it.
Charles Mosely wiped sweat from his face, placed his helmet on the bench seat behind him, and turned again to face the child.
The boy now had a look of utter terror on his face, and he curled up harder against the armrest, covering his head as though he was about to be beaten.
Mosely made a cryptic gesture with his right hand, causing the white DEAletters on his chest plate to slowly fade away. He looked back up at the child. “You remember me, Raymond?”
The boy robotically nodded his head, visibly trembling.
Mosely’s hard face softened. He leaned closer. “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”
The boy didn’t relax one bit.
“I’m sober now.”
The boy had his face buried in the seat cushion.
Mosely looked down. Complex emotions knotted his face. “I came up here to say I’m sorry. For all I did-and for all I didn’t do.” He was lost for a moment, but then his resolve returned. “I heard your momma died a couple years back.”
When he looked up, Mosely noticed one of the boy’s eyes peering out from under his arm, watching him.
“I thought about you all the time in prison-about your mom dyin’. You all alone.”
The boy stared with his one exposed eye, unflinching.
&n
bsp; Mosely sat back again. “You weren’t easy to find. You ran off from that foster home. Can’t say I blame you. Bad people. I met ‘em. But I had real good private detectives searching for you. The best.” He looked Ray straight in his one exposed eye. “I’m sorry.”
Mosely ripped the Velcro straps securing his armored gloves and pulled them off, one by one. He placed the gloves in the back and extended his hand toward his son. “You got a hand for your old man? You want to shake on a new start?”
The boy curled up tighter.
Mosely lowered his hand. “Well, I guess I got it coming, don’t I?” Mosely watched the frightened boy. Resigned to this, Mosely started removing the plates of body armor as the Chevy Suburban climbed the interstate entrance ramp.
*
An hour later, Ray still hadn’t shown his face. Mosely still sat watching him as the landscape sped past. He realized no amount of talking would erase his son’s earliest memories. To him, Charles Mosely was a ruthless, violent man-a man everyone feared. A man with no concern for the family he abandoned and occasionally terrorized.
A voice came in over the intercom. “We’re here, sir.”
Mosely turned to see a massive wrought iron gate with ivy-strewn walls to either side. A plaque on the nearby wall bore the words “Holmewood Academy” in oxidized bronze letters.
Mosely nudged Ray gently and pointed. “Look at that.”
Despite his fear, Ray’s curiosity got the best of him, and he raised his head to look around warily.
They were moving through the large gates, which had swung open to receive them. Inside, wide athletic fields and Gothic stone buildings lay on either side of the winding drive.
Mosely watched his son’s reaction closely. He could tell the grounds were like nothing Ray had ever seen. The boy’s iron grip on the seat back eased, and he moved toward the window.
Mosely tried to stifle a slight smile, and he turned toward his own window.
Soon, the Suburban arrived at the huge front door of the main building. Mosely got out and looked up. Gothic turrets rose several stories above him. A young Asian woman, a black woman, and a gray-haired white man stood at the front door, apparently waiting for them. They were dressed impeccably in navy blue suits with a coat of arms sewn over the chest pocket.
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