SINdrome

by J. T. Nicholas

  “The Potato Farm is drawing about half again as much power as it should be,” the former Toy said. “Something is going on there. Something way outside the specs of the other facilities we hacked. But that’s all we could find.”

  I sighed. I’d been around Silas and LaSorte long enough to know that if they couldn’t find something on the ’net it meant one of two things: the thing didn’t exist, or it wasn’t connected to any part of any network. “It’s a black box,” I said.

  Silas and LaSorte nodded while Al’awwal, Tia, and the cops looked at me with confusion. “It’s not connected to the ’net,” I clarified.

  “No way they can do… Well, any fucking thing without computers,” Fortier snorted.

  “They have computers, asshole,” I said. “And networks and servers and the whole shebang. They’re just not connected to any outside network. And if they need to use the ’net for something, I’m sure they can take a stroll upstairs, do what they have to do, save it to physical media, and then return to their work.”

  Thompson actually shuddered, and everyone else looked more than a little uncomfortable. The thought of being disconnected from the omnipresent ’net, even for the course of a workday, was…daunting. It was like a power outage or stepping back in time. And while some might romanticize the notion, or even practice a level of ’net-free living, most people loved the connectivity of modern life.

  Silas broke the silence. “They are certain to have electronic and physical security in whatever this lab is. But we cannot access it from offsite. LaSorte and I will have to go with you when you go inside.”

  “Do we even know where inside is?” Hernandez asked. “I get that it’s logical for this place to be here, but we can’t logic it into existence. And what are we going to do? Wander around the secure Walton Biogenics facility while we try to find a secret door down into a top-secret and, if they are making killer synthetics down there, highly illegal lab?” She snorted. “I knew this might be a one-way trip, but I need to know we’ve got at least some chance of getting home again. I’ve got a daughter to think of.”

  Hernandez was right. I wanted this to work—needed it to. Millions would die if we were wrong. But if there was zero chance, if we were throwing our lives away in a futile gesture that no one would ever know about… Even if I might have been willing, I couldn’t throw Hernandez into that grinder. Or Tia. I glanced over at her. She was frowning. Contemplating the problem, or having second thoughts?

  “We still have work to do,” Silas admitted. “Walton Biogenics may have set up a black box, but I do not think for a moment that they did the construction themselves. Somewhere, someone was hired. Records were kept. Plans filed. We have hours yet before we near our destination. LaSorte and I will find how to access the Potato Farm. And once we’re inside, we can deal with any electronic security.” He said it with confidence, and I had to believe him. He’d taken over the network at Larkin’s workplace with such ease, and that had been without LaSorte riding shotgun. Silas gave us a smile that had nothing to do with happiness. “The rest will be up to the trigger pullers, as Mr. Campbell calls you.”

  “So, I guess we better figure out how we’re going to get in, take down an army of synthetic soldiers, and get back out again,” I agreed.

  * * * *

  We’d been turning the problem over for hours, with not a lot to show for it but short tempers and long odds. “We don’t know enough,” Thompson said, slapping his massive palm down onto the table to emphasize the point. The table rattled like a mouthful of loose teeth under the weight of the blow. “Sorry,” he muttered, a blush blossoming on his cheeks. It made him seem even younger. “But I don’t know how we make a plan when we don’t even know how to get in the front door. Or if there is one.”

  “There is!”

  It was LaSorte, his voice equal parts triumph and tiredness. All eyes went to the synthetic, who had pulled a folding chair up close to the plastic wall separating the rest of us from Silas so the two could converse. “There fucking is!” he reiterated. That widened more than one eye, since the amicable synthetic rarely swore. “We found it.”

  I looked over at Silas. “Want to explain? LaSorte seems a little excited.”

  Silas offered up a rare smile of his own. “With due cause, Detective,” he said, slipping back into old habits. “With due cause.” He flicked his screen and my own—and those of everyone else in the RV excepting LaSorte—chimed.

  Like Pavlovian dogs, we all checked the message. It was a series of blueprints. No, not blueprints, or at least not the computer-designed building layouts that I thought of when I thought of blueprints. These appeared to have been hand drawn, with cursive notations written in. I had to squint and really concentrate—cursive hadn’t been taught for a long time and might as well have been kanji for all the sense it made to most people. Growing up with academic parents had all sorts of unexpected benefits.

  “What are we looking at?” Tia asked. “And what’s the funny writing? Is that Cyrillic?”

  Hernandez and Al chuckled, but the others looked equally confused. “No, Ms. Morita,” Silas supplied. “The writing is in cursive, a popular technique used before the omnipresence of keypads. Think of it as the precursor to swipe-typing and you will not be far off. As for the documents themselves, they are an architect’s plans for a large lab and synthetic growth facility, complete, you will notice, with several biohazard labs.” Areas on the map began to receive color-coded overlays.

  “Nice,” Thompson said.

  “How the hell, and where the hell, did you find this?” was Fortier’s contribution.

  “In the archived documents of an old estate sale, Detective Fortier,” Silas said.

  I shook my head. “Estate sale?”

  “The path was convoluted,” Silas admitted. “But we tracked down the architecture firm that Walton Biogenics had used to design several of their farms.” His mouth twisted with distaste as he said the word.

  “There was nothing on their servers,” LaSorte interjected. Then he paused. “Well, okay. There was lots of stuff on their servers, but no plans for any secret bases.”

  “There were not,” Silas agreed, throwing LaSorte an exasperated look. “So, we started hunting down the architects themselves.”

  Hernandez snorted. “And let me guess. You found that several of them had died under mysterious circumstances. Sounds just like our friends at Walton.”

  “Correct, Detective. Well, except for the ‘mysterious’ part. They all died of perfectly explainable, natural causes. Like heart attacks. Including the twenty-six-year-old marathoner.” He gave another slim smile. “Which is where we eventually found the plans.”

  “Huh?” Fortier asked, not following. Not that I could blame him. I was only sort of with them.

  “The marathoner was one of the architects for the Potato Farm,” LaSorte chortled. “He must’ve kept plans. Was probably proud of the work or whatever. But when Walton offed him, those plans must have been part of his effects.”

  “Oh-kay,” Fortier said, drawing out the word.

  Tia let out a tiny laugh, almost a giggle, of her own. “And documents that don’t contain any protected personal information get digitized and monetized when people die. It’s part of the estate. Which means that Walton just shot themselves in the foot.”

  Fortier was still looking lost, and Thompson’s face was screwed up into a mask of confusion. Well, they were new to the revolution, and until recently hadn’t been thinking of Walton as the bad guys. “If Walton hadn’t had the architects killed, odds are the plans would have never found their way into a computer,” I said. “Meaning that in trying to cover up their little science experiment by killing off the people who designed it, they actually opened the door to us.” I shrugged. “Well, metaphorically speaking. We’re still going to have to kick down some doors.”

  “But now we know exactly wher
e those doors are, Detective,” Silas said. He did something on his screen, and the view on mine, and presumably the others’, shifted and zoomed. “There are three entry points within the confines of the main building.”

  “No doubt heavily guarded,” Thompson said.

  The screen moved again. “And one that is significantly outside the main building.”

  The screen showed a spot in the middle, I shit you not, of a literal potato field. Okay, not in the middle of it. It appeared to be at the back entrance to a farmhouse. Silas tapped a few more buttons, and the image wireframed out and several overlays appeared. It was hard to make out, but it looked like there was what one would assume to be an old-style set of external cellar or storm shelter doors that instead led to a long tunnel. The tunnel traveled for almost two miles, before merging with the diagram of the Potato Farm.

  “It’s a bolt hole,” I said.

  “Correct, Jason,” Silas agreed. “Or so we believe.”

  “What’s a bolt hole?” Tia asked.

  “Escape route,” Hernandez said. “Probably for the corporate bigwigs to vamos if the police came knocking on their door.”

  “A back door out,” I agreed. “Which means it’s also a way in.”

  “It’ll still be guarded,” Fortier noted. “They’re not gonna be dumb enough to leave the back door unlocked.”

  I nodded while Al said, “I bet the actual farm is a front. Probably a guard house of some sort.” He thought about it for a moment. “Probably also means that the Potato Farm moniker started from someone in the know.”

  “Which means we’re almost certainly at the right place,” Thompson said.

  “Which means we have a chance,” Hernandez agreed.

  “Yes,” Silas said. He started to say something else, but another round of coughing took him. Once again, we were all quiet, with little we could do but watch the pale-skinned man suffer. Finally, he just waved a hand at us as he retreated, still choking and gasping, deeper into the chamber. Tia was on her feet in an instant, moving to the plastic, damn near pressing her face into it as she peered through, making sure that Silas hadn’t collapsed. There hadn’t been a way to make an airlock or the equivalent, so if she had to go in, it meant that Al and LaSorte were going to have to put on gas masks, and keep them on for the rest of the journey.

  We all stared at each other helplessly for a long moment, and I saw Al twitching in the direction of the bag that held the gas masks. But then Tia turned back. “You guys keep talking. It looks like he’s recovering. I don’t see any sign of blood. It should be okay.”

  “Relatively speaking,” Al’awwal muttered, and the rest of us could only nod.

  “So,” I said, trying to get things back on track, “we’ve got a target. We’ve got a way in. There’s going to be physical security.” I looked at Fortier and Thompson. Thought about it. Included Hernandez in my gaze. “We’re not going to be able to dick around with whoever is there. Up until this point, we’ve tried to keep things as bloodless as possible, but that’s about to change. There’s no chances to surrender, no arrests. No warnings. You’re not cops anymore. You’re soldiers. Soldiers shoot to kill. Got it?”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” Fortier said with a mocking, half-assed salute.

  “I’m fucking serious, Fortier,” I growled. “I can’t have this going to shit because someone hesitates.”

  “We’re good,” Thompson said softly. “Hernandez explained the situation. We knew what we were in for from the start.” He offered a boyish grin. “Okay, the synthetic soldiers were a new twist, but still.”

  “Me, too,” Hernandez said. “Not how I want to do it,” she admitted. “But I understand the need.” She looked uncomfortable. “I’ll be okay with security, hermano,” she said. “Just like the bully boys in the sewers. But if we run into unarmed civilians…” She trailed off and I nodded my understanding.

  “Understood,” I agreed. “If it comes to that, I’ll do the dirty work. God willing, it won’t come to that.” She nodded.

  Silas had returned to the plastic wall, looking wan and shaky. I noticed a few flecks of either spittle or vomit at the corners of his lips and looked closer while trying to hide what I was doing. Definitely not red. Not blood, then. I wasn’t sure how far along in the sickness Silas really was, but until he started coughing blood, we at least had a chance.

  “Okay,” I continued. “Tia, we’ll need you for this, too. Have a seat.” She complied without comment, her mind clearly still working the problem of the illness. “We’re going to have to break up into multiple teams,” I began. It was going to be a long planning session, and time was slipping through our fingers. We’d only get one shot, and I was determined we’d make it count.

  Chapter 18

  “I’ve got two hostiles on the southeast corner of the building.”

  The whispered voice, Thompson, came through the earpiece of the tactical headset I wore. Thompson had informed us that one of the reasons he’d made the Special Response Team so quickly after joining the NLPD had been because he was, in his own humble opinion, a world-class marksman. It was a legacy learned hunting deer and wild hog, but he was a qualified sniper. He’d also brought a pair of his preferred long guns with him. They weren’t quite the precision, match-grade rifles that were used by the NLPD, but there was a limit to how much equipment Hernandez, Thompson, and Fortier were able to sneak out. Thirty-thousand-dollar rifles were a bit out of their league. Still, we’d all been duly impressed by the bolt action thirty-ought-six with its night-vision and thermographic-enabled scope. He’d brought a spotting scope along as well, which Tia was currently running. She’d protested not being able to go in with the “ninja squad” as she called it, until Thompson had convinced her how important the second man—or woman—was in a sniper team. He wasn’t just blowing smoke, either. An untrained spotter was better than no spotter at all.

  The fact that it kept her away from the shooting, at least for the opening act, was just a fringe benefit.

  We’d split into four teams. Thompson and Tia were hanging back in an overwatch position. It was their job to spot the bad guys and, if the shit hit the fan, provide some precision covering fire. It would have been nice to have Thompson put his skills to use and thin the herd for us, but no matter how much of a tack-driver his thirty-ought-six was, it spoke with authority. If he started popping melons, the bad guys would know we were here with plenty of time to let the other bad guys know we were coming. At that point, the entire operation would pretty much be tits up.

  The second team was made up of me and Al’awwal. I would have preferred Hernandez, but there was no way in hell I was putting Fortier and a synthetic together. Particularly a synthetic like Al, who I was pretty sure would be willing to put a bullet in Fortier if he slipped into old habits.

  So, it was me and Al, low-crawling through the snow. There weren’t a lot of things that could make me miss sand and hardpan, but trying to push yourself through a fallow field covered in at least six inches of snow using only your knees and elbows was one of them.

  At least I was properly kitted out, for the first time in what felt like forever. Tactical gray digicam utilities gloves, boots, balaclava. Plate carrier and MOLLE webbing with all the trimmings. An honest-to-god forty-five back on my hip and a sweet little German subgun, complete with silencer, in my hands. If it wasn’t for the whole fate of the world hanging in the balance thing, I might even have been having fun.

  We were sweeping around the left side of the long driveway that led through the fields and up to the farmhouse while the third team, Fortier and Hernandez, made their way up the right side. The final team consisted of LaSorte and Silas. They were hanging back with the sniper element until we cleared out any enemy shooters. LaSorte had an array of equipment with him, and had said something about sniffing for wireless. I trusted him to deal with that. The only advantage of the empty rolling fields was th
at there wasn’t anything vertical on which to mount a camera. Until we got close to the house, surveillance was going to be limited to the standard issue Mark 1 human eyeball.

  “One of the hostiles is mobile. Moving down the driveway. Might be the start of a standard patrol.”

  “Dammit,” I whispered. We’d started well away from the driveway, but there was no way to crawl through the snow-covered fields without leaving tracks. The moon was about half full, and its pale luminescence cast enough light across the snow-shrouded fields that it was possible our trail would be spotted. Then I keyed my mic. “If it looks like he notices the tracks, we’re going to have to take him down.”

  “I’ve got our end,” Fortier’s voice came back. He and I were kitted out pretty much the same, meaning we were both carrying silenced submachine guns. Hernandez had made sure that the rounds were subsonic. They didn’t carry as much muzzle velocity as supersonic rounds, but the silencers were far more effective. Still not like the vids, but quiet enough that the sound of the subgun’s action would probably be louder than the sound of the bullet.

  “Roger that,” I whispered back. “I’m on it from our side.”

  “Eyes on,” Thompson said.

  I shrugged out of my pack and moved it around until it was positioned before me. Then I proned myself out in the snow, ignoring the cold that was creeping through the insulated fatigues. I rested the barrel of my subgun on the pack, using it for a shooting rest. Then I flicked on the holographic sight. The green reticule appeared in the glass panel of the sight and I started scanning the driveway. The same moonlight that could betray us gave us good visibility, and I saw a form moving away from the house. We’d begun our approach about fifty yards from the roadway. I was set up for close combat and the scope was zeroed at twenty-five yards. I wasn’t sniper qualified, but I was a fair distance shooter and understood the difference between line of sight and ballistic arc. Most people would think the farther out the shot, the higher you needed to aim, accounting for the effect of gravity on the round. They were right, to a point. But bullets were designed to leave the barrel on a slight upward line, meaning that a round actually crossed a weapon’s zero twice, following a natural ballistic arc.