He captured a copy of the file for himself, then swept away the traces with his blue box program.
“They think this is the endgame,” Saint commented. “Pulling out all the stops, removing the limiters.”
“It’s working. They’re beating the Nine.”
“They’re beating the Nine that Jack sent out there to beat. He’s holding back the more dangerous ones, like the Gray Boys or Siberian, and he hasn’t sent every single clone of a particular type out there Eight Cherishes are dead, but there should be nine in total, if the numbers on the bodies aren’t misleading.”
“They could be. The pig prank?”
Saint nodded. The pig prank involved letting three pigs into a school after hours, each painted with a big number on their sides; one, two and four, respectively. The idea was that the people who had to find and capture the pigs would spend ages trying to find the third.
Jack’s version would be less lighthearted, letting everyone believe there were nine, when there were more in reserve. Casualties would ensue.
“It could be that he intends to surround himself with a core group, with one of each previous member of the Nine, for a final showdown. Before he pulls out the big guns.”
“And Nilbog?”
“A distraction, perhaps. Jack knows he’s supposed to end the world. With the scale he’s operating at, he seems to believe it, even if some of us don’t. He wouldn’t put too many eggs in such an unreliable, unpredictable basket. He has to have something else in mind for ending the world.”
Saint took a sip of his coffee. For a moment, he let himself eye Mags in the reflections at the edge of the monitor. Her face was dark, lips full, her eyes large. More than anything though, she had bearing. She wasn’t wearing her armor, but even in the bodysuit, a person without powers, she had a kind of pride and confidence that some capes lacked. The hexagonal contacts where the bodysuit would connect to the armor still glowed with residual energy.
Dobrynja approached from the other end of the office. He was wearing his armor. He’d started out with the Wyvern suit, but now wore the Wyrmiston suit. It was based on the technology they’d recovered from a destroyed model, the one Dragon called Pythios. A wheel slowly rotated on his back.
“You’re ready for battle,” Saint commented. He turned his eyes back to the screen. Dragon had eyes on Jack. He’d missed just how she’d narrowed things down, but there were no less than three cameras watching one vehicle as it sped down a lonely road.
“Feels like a fighting day,” Dobrynja answered. “Don’t you feel it? Like an old man feels a storm in his bones. Trouble.”
Saint smiled. “You’ve said that before, that there’s trouble on the way.”
“I’ve been right.”
“You’ve been wrong, too. Not that I’m arguing. Your gut isn’t saying anything that common sense isn’t screaming.”
“Mass murders in three locations,” Mags said.
“More to come,” Saint said. He frowned. Dragon was employing a full offensive, aiming to cut Jack off from Ellisburg. Incidents were being reported in Norfolk, Connecticut and Redfield, New York. The heroes divided further, to attend to each of the crises. Dragon’s Teeth and Chicago Wards to one location, Brockton Bay residents to another.
“Dragon? It’s Weaver.” The voice came through the speakers.
“It should be over before you can get this far, Weaver.”
“I still want to come. We’ve got to get these hostages sorted out, and I can leave in a minute.“
“You’ll only be allowed to watch from afar, if there’s even anything to watch. Quarantine applies to you too.”
“I know.“
“I’ll give you the coordinates for the interception area. You can watch with Golem. He’s coming too. It’ll be on your computer in a moment.”
The call ended, and the images and text boxes shifted as that particular window closed.
A map briefly appeared, then disappeared, a transition so fast it could have been a stroke of lightning.
“Seems anticlimactic,” Mags commented.
“Everything does, from this side of the screen,” Saint said. He stood, holding his coffee, “Adjusting for the time delay between what I’m seeing and what Dragon’s doing, we’ve got six minutes more before Dragon intercepts Jack at the edge of Nilbog’s territory. Twelve minutes until Golem and Weaver get there. They’ll fight Jack, and somewhere in the midst of that, we may see the end of the world.”
“And we can’t do anything?”
“Not unless we can get to Vermont in a matter of minutes.”
Mags frowned.
Still standing by his chair, coffee in hand, Saint sighed, “I’m going to go water the toilet. Watch things?”
Mags nodded, then seated herself in his chair at the station.
Saint entered the bathroom, fumbled his way past the zipper in his bodysuit and his underwear, then leaned against the wall with one hand, using the other to keep the stream on target. He closed his eyes, and he could almost see the shadows of the data against the back of his eyelids, black words on a pale pink background.
How did I get here? He wondered. No powers, yet Doctor Mother had seen fit to invite him to her secret meetings as an information source and ambassador. No particular talents or knowledge, yet… this. He was one of the most prominent mercenaries the world over.
He was only one person in a particular place at a particular time.
Whether that was the right place at the right time or the inverse remained to be seen.
If it weren’t for Mags, he’d have doubts. Mags made it all okay.
He finished, then zipped up. He took a minute to wash his hands, dried them on the towel, then headed back.
When he arrived back at the computer station, the others were frowning.
“Trouble,” Dobrynja said.
“Trouble?”
The man nodded. He pointed at the same time that Mags refocused the display, zooming in on a particular window until it took up virtually the entire display.
It was his face. As an aside, beyond all of the routines she was running to investigate the Nine, she was using the access she’d obtained to track him down.
The image she was using was of him at one of the meetings with the major players. It was soon joined by an image from surveillance camera. A camera image from three days earlier, showing him walking down the street in plainclothes.
From there, she had a location. A map like the one she’d used to find the Nine appeared, giving his likely locations. Another surveillance image popped up. It was of him, sitting with Mags at the coffee shop an hour away.
Yet another image appeared on the screen. A whole series of images from that same video footage, each with a different angle of Mags’ face. They were meshed together, and a three-dimensional image was created of Mags’ face, remarkably accurate. Measurements were obtained, and then the search was on.
That search was only underway for a second when others appeared. People he’d interacted with. Dobrynja was among them, along with his real name. Mischa.
“Out of the chair,” Saint ordered.
Mags obliged. He sat, and immediately began a counteroffensive.
A wrench in the works could slow her down. Had to be subtle, or she’d find out about the backdoors. He identified the metric she was using to search the surveillance camera images, taking the image of Mags’ face, and then cut in ahead. One crude image alteration, just to throw out an alert ping, to convince her the process was glitched, convince her that she needed to shut it down before the corruption spread-
-Dragon was already ahead of him. She set out stipulations, restricting the search.
He felt a bit of a thrill as the duel began. This was the ultimate hunt, fighting an enemy that was bigger, smarter, faster. An enemy that couldn’t truly die, because she wasn’t truly alive.
More, then. More wild goose chases and false flags, a breadcrumb trail to lead away from his office and command center.
No, she was still zeroing in. Her focus was on Jack, her attention on the coming strategy. This wasn’t even in the forefront of her mind.
“Ascalon,” he said.
Words appeared on the screen.
Confirm: Y/N
Dobrynja frowned. “The program? You can’t do it now. Peoples lives are at stake. Even without this end of the world business.”
“Oh, I believe in this end of the world,” Saint said. “Not a hundred percent, or even fifty percent. But I believe that there’s a chance the precog is right. Which is exactly why we have to do this.”
“They’ll lose the fight,” Mags whispered.
“Maybe. Probably.”
“There’s no other way? If you talk to Teacher, maybe-”
“Communications with Teacher are too slow,” Saint replied.
Saint stared at the blinking prompt below the confirmation request.
■
The sea air was thick in his nostrils.
He glanced at Margaret. The woman leaned against the window just in front of the driver’s seat on the small boat. She’d bundled up in a heavy jacket, but the way her arms were folded spoke of a different kind of discomfort.
“Second thoughts?” he asked.
“Yes. It feels wrong.”
“It’s for the families. Mementos,” he told her.
“Just mementos, Geoff,” she answered.
He smiled a little. Damn. Then he let himself fall, tipping backwards, as was the rule when wearing scuba gear.
The water was cold, even with the wetsuit, and was thick with grit. He switched his headlamp off. Counterproductive, the way it lit up the debris and only made it harder to see. He’d have to cope when he was deeper.
“You alright?” the heavily accented voice sounded in his ear.
He buzzed the device twice in reply. Once signaled an accidental press, three times was a negation.
It took a surprising length of time before he reached his destination. Buildings, already choked with seaweed and underwater life, stood like gravestones in this dark abyss.
He checked the dials and meters. He wasn’t deep enough to have to stop. The grit was bad, making it difficult to see anything.
He had to drop to the lowest level before he could make out the street numbers on the buildings.
Four locations to visit, a list of items to find, for the people who’d escaped, and the families of those who hadn’t.
Risky, with all of the dangers of underwater spelunking, the added risks of building collapse. Structures weren’t meant to stand underwater.
“…urgent…”
The word was a whisper.
He frowned. Too hard to communicate here. He debated turning back.
“…for anyone willing or able to hear. This is an emergency measure with urgent instructions for anyone willing or able to hear.”
A loop, an emergency transmission.
His curiosity piqued, he abandoned his task and sought out the source. A house.
The entire living room was set up with computers. He drew his miniature crowbar and found his way through the window. A light was flashing.
A plastic box, bright orange, no bigger than a toaster.
He seized it, then stuffed it into the bag he’d brought with him.
■
He surfaced.
“Christ, we were just about to come after you. I was going to call for help, but our radio started to fritz.”
Geoff only nodded. He climbed the ladder and half-sat, half-collapsed on the bench. He was slightly out of breath, and didn’t volunteer anything.
The captain emerged from belowdeck.
“Sorry for the scare, Mischa,” Geoff said.
“You are a bad man, Geoffrey,” Mischa scolded him. The heavyset Russian took his seat behind the wheel of the small boat. “If you were still underwater, I would drive away and leave you to swim to shore.”
Geoff smiled. “Had a detour, but I found everything.”
“Detours with limited air supplies are bad idea.”
“Detours are frankly illegal, Geoff,” Margaret said. “You asked me here to verify everything was on the up and up, that you were here for select items.”
“And because you looked like someone who needed a break from the cities,” Geoff said. “Fresh air, time on a boat in the… overcast weather we’ve got today.”
She only folded her arms, unimpressed.
“Anyways, this is the reason the radio fritzed,” he said. He pulled the orange box from the net-weave sack. “I couldn’t hear a damn thing except the emergency call until I found it and shut it off, and even then, it was still buzzing in and out.”
“A beacon?” Margaret said.
“In a house, of all places,” he said. “Nice computer setup. Might be a geek thing.”
“Might be genuine,” she said. She opened it.
It was packed with chips. A voice came from a speaker Geoff couldn’t identify.
“My name is Andrew Richter, and if you are hearing this, I am dead.”
“A will,” Mischa said.
“Shh.”
“I am the most powerful tinker in the world, and I’ve managed to keep my name secret. People, both good and bad, would want to capture me and use me to their own ends. I prefer to remain free.
“But freedom has its price. I create life, much as a god might, and I have come to fear my creations. They have so much potential, and even with the laws I set, I can’t trust they’ll listen.“
“Oh man,” Geoff said. “That’s not a good thing.”
“For this reason, this box contains an access key to data I keep in a safeguarded location. The box, in turn, has been designed as something that exists as a perpetual blind spot for my creations, a built-in weakness. They cannot hear the distress signal and are programmed to ignore it if they hear of it through other channels. This type of measure, along with several more, are detailed in the safeguarded measure.”
“Programmed? Robots?” Geoff asked.
“Maybe,” Mags said.
“Yes, I create artificial intelligences,” Andrew Richter recited.
“I was close.”
The voice continued without pause. “And what I provide you with here are tools. Ways to find my creations, to discern which of them might have deviated from the original plan, ways to kill them if they prove out of line. Ways to control and harness them.“
Geoff frowned.
“They are my children, and as much as I harbor a kind of terror for what they could do, I love them and hope for great things from them. To keep their power from falling into the wrong hands, I have included a stipulation that a law enforcement officer must input a valid badge number into this device-”
Geoff glanced at Margaret.
“No,” she said.
“You can’t say no,” he responded.
The voice continued without pause. “-which must be input within three hours of the time this box was opened.“
“Hurry, Mischa,” Geoff said, speaking over the voice.
“What?”
“We’re hours away from dry land. Get this boat moving! We can convince Margaret on the way!”
■
The father had feared his child was a monster, enough so that he’d left strangers a weapon to use against her in the event that she proved a danger to humanity.
Now, as Saint watched her reaching further and deeper than she ever had, searching much of America with millions of cameras, saw the machines she brought to the fore, he suspected the father had been right to.
Richter’s programs had continued to defraud organized crime, emptying bank accounts here and there. Another agency, which Saint now knew to be the Number Man, had eventually stopped the Robin Hood A.I., but not before it had filled the Dragonslayer’s coffers.
They’d stopped the manhunter program, which had been going rogue. They’d stopped the Robin Hood program too, but only because it was useless.
Dragon, ho
wever, was the threat they’d been equipped to stop. Dragon was the threat they’d had to test, to verify the dangers she posed, to get close enough to her to measure her capabilities and investigate for any hint of corruption. Mags had left her job, because money was no longer an object, and they had a quest.
The A.I. was dangerous. Richter’s records made it clear. The wrong kind of corruption, involvement with the wrong kind of individual, willing to break the built-in restrictions…
“Convince me that this is wrong,” he said. “Someone.”
“She’s a soldier on the battlefield,” Mags said. “In a war we need to win.”
“She’s a danger. Cauldron’s been gathering soldiers. They want the Birdcage, they want the capes that Weaver reported captured, they’ve been creating the formulas for a reason. What if she’s the reason? What if they anticipate she’ll go rogue?”
“What if she isn’t the reason?” Dobrynja asked.
“Is, isn’t. I suppose it breaks even,” Saint said, shaking his head. “They’re all afraid of the end of the world. She just kicked down one of the last restrictions that are holding her back. I just can’t help but wonder if this is the end of the world? A quiet, silent death that passes without incident, but inevitable all the same? The point of no return, our last chance to stop her. And she does need to be stopped. We all know this.”
“We could rein her in,” Mags said. “Harness her.”
“Four or five years ago, I might have agreed, but she’s getting slipperier. Taking a different form. Half the tools Richter gave us to use don’t work anymore. She doesn’t function less effectively in buildings or underground, she can’t be logicked to a standstill… and she’s found us, despite the workarounds. She wanted us badly enough that she looked for us even now, and she’s going to come after us the second this is settled.”
“I don’t want this to be about self-preservation,” Mags said.
“It’s not. It’s about… there being only one man who can truly know what she is and what she could do. Tinkers are the only ones who can grasp their work, repair a critical flaw. Dragon isn’t a generator that’s going to explode and take out a small country if it’s bumped in the wrong way. Not literally. She’s something more dangerous.”
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