by Brandt Legg
Just then, Sliske hit the right combination of buttons, and a mouse, caught between walls, was fried in a blue flash of electrocution.
“The mice are suited up,” the Chairman said gravely. “An indication we weren’t ready.”
“Mice aren’t men,” Sliske said.
“Maybe so,” the Chairman said, thinking that if his head of security, Franco Madden, were in the meeting, he’d be quoting the first line of Steinbeck’s classic, Of Mice and Men. But he was glad Franco wasn’t there, because the quirky enforcer was needed elsewhere—namely wherever Chase was hiding. “Chase Malone could stop our storm,” the Chairman said bitterly.
“Franco has that under control,” Sliske assured him, checking his watch. “Within a few hours, Chase will no longer be a problem.”
The Chairman nodded. Franco Madden might be odd, but he was efficient. “And our competition?”
“Competition?” Sliske asked with a sly smile, as if the Chairman joked.” We’ve got twenty-two suited up. Twenty-two CHIPS already out in the world. Our competition has already lost.”
Twenty-Three
Chase looked at the bloody scene as if disconnected from his body. Bob and Dave, dead! Three Chinese would-be-assassins, dead! It could not be real.
It was only a minute or two ago . . .
He had to get far away from there. While trying to avoid blood and bodies, Chase instinctively headed toward the door to the hall.
“No!” Twag yelled, grabbing Chase and pulling him back toward the adjoining suite. “MSS coming now!”
“We need the police,” he said, confused.
“No, police can’t help. No time!” Twag saw that Rong Lo was not among the dead. The MSS agent was likely lurking in the hall.
“Why is the MSS—”
“The MSS not operate in such a brazen manner. Assault rifles, guns blazing in foreign hotel suite,” Twag said. “Those men are Chinese mafia operating in Vancouver. Rong Lo hire them!”
“Who?”
“Later. You come now!”
Chase reluctantly followed, still unsure if Twag was a savior, or part of a clever conspiracy to get Wen.
Once inside the adjoining room, Twag shut the door to the other suite and peeked into the hall. His suspicions were instantly confirmed when he saw Rong Lo getting off the elevator with two more hired guns.
“Why would the MSS send so many people for just me?” Chase whispered as they crouched near the door. Then he realized they must’ve thought Wen would be there.
“Rong Lo just got off the elevator. He’s the real MSS. He’s after Wen. Rong Lo a very bad man.”
“How do we escape?” Chase asked, trying to digest the dire news.
“We get to the stairs. We go out this door in three seconds. Then go left. I count, you follow.”
Chase gave a bewildered look.
“Stairs, door, left,” Twag repeated while staring into Chase’s eyes. “Rong Lo in your room now,” Twag said in hushed urgency. “Three, two, go!”
To Chase, it felt like being on a roller coaster with the cars starting to drop on the first big hill before he could get the safety restraint on. He followed Twag from the room, desperately trying to piece it all together. As they ran down the hall, Chase realized he was involuntarily holding his breath and he tried to make himself breathe.
Once in the stairwell, Twag started heading to an upper floor.
“Why aren’t we going down?” Chase asked from behind, still gasping.
Without slowing, Twag responded. “They think we go down, so we go up.”
Chase understood the logic, but wondered what they were going to do once they got to the top. He seemed to recall there were only thirty-eight floors.
Chase didn’t have long to wait. Two flights up, Twag opened the door.
“Come on,” Twag said, after checking to see if the way was clear. They dashed through the hall back to the elevators. Twag guessed right, the elevator that Rong Lo had used opened and was empty. Chase followed his companion onto the car, but as soon as he pushed the button for the lobby, Twag jumped out again and Chase barely made it off before the doors closed.
Chase, confused again, followed Twag as they ran down the hall. They crashed into an elderly couple, knocking their luggage over. Chase shouted an apology as they sprinted past. After covering the full length of the hotel, they darted into another staircase at the other end. This time they did descend, but only five flights. They bolted back through the stairwell door, now three floors below where the massacre had taken place, running down the corridor, dodging yet another guest, and around the corner, until Twag suddenly stopped at a door. He took out a card from his pocket and slid it in the brass slot on the handle, thereby deactivating the lock. They entered, Twag frantically scanned the room, then quickly secured the door.
“Is this your room?” Chase asked, worried they could be traced.
“No.”
“Then how did you get in?
“This is what I do.”
“How did you know no one would be in here?”
“I did not.”
“What do we do now?”
“Wait.”
“For what?”
“The police will be here soon. Too many gunshots. Rong Lo cannot stay.”
“What was all that with the elevator?”
“To confuse him. Make sure he does not know which way we go.”
“They’re going to know that Bob and Dave were my guys, that they work for my company,” he said, realizing he and BE were about to be front page news at the worst possible time.
“You don’t know MSS,” Twag said. “Rong Lo will cut off their hands, rip out their teeth. Make it very hard to identify those bodies.”
Chase tried not to imagine that happening, but gagged and nearly vomited at the thought of it.
“They will put the pieces in the trash bag and take it with them,” Twag continued, in spite of Chase’s obvious discomfort. “He very bad man. Very, very dangerous. And he want to kill you.”
Twenty-Four
Wen had a long journey ahead, and now dressed in more casual khaki pants, a white blouse, leather jacket, and light hiking boots, was trying to blend in. With twenty-five percent of British Columbia’s population being of Asian ethnic origin, no one gave her a second glance. After she mailed the padded envelope of flash drives from the Port Hardy post office, Wen pulled over into a wooded area, parked the car rented under one of many aliases, grabbed her bag, and hiked into the trees.
About a quarter of a mile in, she found a suitable spot—a tall, dead tree near a small clearing. Wen added a special attachment to her QSZ-92 semi-automatic pistol, took one last look around, aimed above the highest branches, and fired. The object hit about four feet shy of the top, but she was confident it would be enough. Wen checked in all directions again to make sure the gunshot’s sound, although suppressed by a silencer, had not brought out any hikers or otherwise curious people.
With one special phone reserved for this operation, she quickly inserted a fresh SIM card, waited for it to reacquire, keyed in a series of numbers, and then paced in a circle at the base of the tree, hoping it would work. The nano-transmitter she’d launched above the canopy was needed to boost the signal to a very special satellite. She was attempting to connect with “the Ghost Dragon,” a 2100-class communications satellite. Ironically, its software, as well as the transmitter she was using to try to reach it, had originally been developed by the US National Security Agency.
Once Chinese spies got hold of the advanced technology, a team developed the power even further and made it considerably more sophisticated. The project had been entrusted to a secret subsidiary of one of China’s leading tech companies that worked exclusively for the communist government.
Wen tried to enjoy the sound of the abundant birds on the island. She inhaled deeply, the salty breeze reminding her of tears she’d cried when Chase had left China, and again after her sister’s recent death. With each pass
ing second, she worked to relax, but remained ever vigilant. While waiting for the link to lock, Wen imagined how nice it would be to one day settle on a quaint little island with Chase. Yet she knew that would never happen. Even if they managed to stay alive through all the chaos about to erupt in the world, there would always be people after them. Staying in one place, let alone leading a normal life, could never be possible.
Suddenly, the screen on her phone came to life with a rapid series of coded exchanges between her device and the server she was connecting with via the Ghost Dragon. It took eight minutes, ten-point-one seconds for the data to download through her phone, across the jump cable, and onto quad-stacked 256gb 18nm chips—a terabyte of explosive information contained in a package smaller than the tip of her pinky. As she watched the seconds counting down on her screen, she knew she’d have to cut the link before it reached nine minutes twenty-nine seconds, or both the NSA and the MSS would be able to see the access. Wen definitely didn’t want the Americans after her yet—that would come soon enough. The MSS was already close enough. However, she still needed to risk an upload. Watching the timer, she willed it to go faster in order to begin uploading.
Finally, she tapped the screen to initiate her end. Because of the lag between Earth and space, protocol demanded completion of at least fifteen seconds before the nine twenty-nine dead stop hit. It was going to be close.
Back in Seattle, TruNeural CEO, Irvin Sliske, weighed the daily summary of the twenty-two suited up. Progress had been amazing. His assistant, a slim Japanese man in his forties with a small “s” shaped scar on his cheek, asked the question. “Did the Chairman approve?”
“It is my decision,” Sliske said.
The assistant nodded, knowing that meant ‘not exactly,’ but also knowing there would be no point to press. “The results are exceptional. At every stage, the CHIPS are performing flawlessly.”
“That’s why we’re going to the next level,” Sliske said, still scanning data and missing the horrified expression on his assistant’s face.
“When?”
“Tomorrow,” Sliske replied, not looking up to gauge the man’s response. He considered him an inferior in numerous ways. Soon, Sliske thought, everyone will be my inferior.
The assistant barely contained an audible gasp. “My God.”
Sliske scoffed. “Technology is our God!”
The assistant wished he’d had others there to help defuse this. Perhaps the GlobeTec Board of Directors. “But why so fast? The risks . . . ”
“Complications. Competition,” Sliske said, as if the two words each contained the weight of a paragraph.
The assistant knew by “complications” his boss referred to the top executives at Balance Engineering, especially Chase Malone. And by “competition” he was referring to a cabal of Chinese firms. He considered his words carefully, because Sliske would take his opinion into account as long as it was laden with facts. “We need more data—”
“The health issues are only a short-term problem,” Sliske interrupted. “Can you imagine upgrading yourself, your memory, your body’s operating system?”
“The time isn’t for the health risks,” the assistant said quickly, knowing his boss didn’t care about losing dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of lives in his quest to create a new world. “It’s the limitation metric. They require a minimum of fifty-thousand cycle hours before the processors can be synched. If the calibrations are off—”
“I know. We’ll be facing massive corrupt systems and malfunctions.”
“Malfunctions that . . . out-of-control CHIPs could do incalculable damage. The developers don’t even know how this works. Once deep learning takes over, it teaches itself how to do what it was set up to do. We can’t even begin to—”
“The calibrations aren’t off,” Sliske said, as if he’d tested them himself—which he had not. “We have the best minds, the best AI, and the CHIPs are perfect.”
His assistant, knowing Sliske had already made up his mind, thought there was a chance that the CEO was correct. RAI was incredible, but pairing that to an implantable node was the danger, and he’d worked in technology long enough to know that the first generation is never perfect. If these CHIPs were anything less than flawless, then . . .
The assistant nodded and quietly walked out of the office. Not until he was alone in the elevator did he shout, “Daijobu!” in his native Japanese, which translated to a sarcastic, “It’s okay, nothing to worry about!”
Twenty-Five
Twag and Chase had been in the hotel room on the twenty-seventh floor for less than two minutes when the electronic door lock clicked.
“Get down!” Twag hissed.
Chase’s instincts and frayed nerves kicked in and he dropped at the same instant the door flew open and a bullet whizzed past. The glass coffee table, less than five inches away from his face, exploded as he rolled behind a heavy chair.
Rong Lo and two men stormed into the room, taking positions in the doorway to the bathroom and a small closet alcove, filled with someone’s clothes.
Twag returned fire, taking down one of the men. The second man came out shooting, but Twag had already moved. Chase tossed a lamp at the attacker, who twisted and fired. The mistake cost him, as Twag’s bullet ripped into his neck. Before the body hit the floor, Rong Lo pulled the door shut, apparently fleeing into the hall.
Chase got up cautiously, yelling, “How did they find us?”
“Don’t know.”
“But they’re gone?” Chase said hopefully.
“No,” Twag said. “That was Rong Lo. He’ll come back through the adjoining room. Maybe with more guns.”
“Why?”
“Because we did that. They think we do it again.” Twag headed for the door to the hall. “Come quick.”
Chase wasn’t sure he still wanted to follow Twag, but he heard noise on the other side of the adjoining room door, as if it were being forced open, so he darted after his protector. Once in the hall, they sprinted back to the stairs.
Inside the stairwell, Twag told Chase to go first.
“Why?”
“Because I need to shoot Rong Lo. Unless you’re good with a gun,” Twag said, holding out one of the weapons he’d pulled off a dead shooter.
Chase shook his head and started leaping down the steps three at a time. “Where to at the bottom?” Chase yelled back.
“If we make it that far,” Twag shouted, “get into the lobby. MSS won’t shoot you in the lobby.”
“Can I count on that?” Chase asked, not even realizing it was out loud.
Twag didn’t bother answering.
At each landing, Chase managed to jump four steps. He couldn’t understand why he was running for his life. His recent fears had been about GlobeTec trying to kill him, and instead he was being hunted by a sinister foreign intelligence agency. Why? Just because I’m trying to help my old girlfriend defect? There must be something more.
“Why are they trying to kill me?” he shouted behind him, taking the steps at a perilous speed.
“Ask Wen Sung.”
Chase almost tripped down the next batch of steps. Will I ever see Wen again? he wondered.
The banging thud of the door opening several flights above them brought a sudden resurgence of fear. As Chase pushed himself even faster and harder down the steps, he listened, trying to determine how many were after them. He couldn’t tell, but mentally calculated that he and Twag had almost a floor and a half lead. He’d seen on the last landing they were on the seventeenth floor. His legs felt like burning mush. Somehow, he kept moving faster and faster, like hot water pouring down the stairs.
As he flew past the ninth floor, the sickening sound of a silencer echoed through the stairwell. In the same moment, he heard a bullet ricocheting off metal and concrete. Then another, followed by the worst sound of all, Twag crying out and stumbling.
“Twag, are you okay?” Chase yelled back.
“Yes,” he moaned. “Don’t
stop. Get to lobby.”
Chase wanted to go back and help him, and was about to turn, but Twag yelled again, “Go! Go!”
Twag’s gun burst off several shots, buying Chase the seconds needed to make it into the lobby. The last thing he heard before pushing through the final door was yelling in Mandarin. From his time in China, he recognized several words that left him no doubt there would be more agents waiting outside.
Suddenly in the flowing ambiance of the lobby, as if landing in a foreign world, he didn’t know what to do. Even though music was invisibly playing, everyone looked like a killer. Without thinking, he found himself standing in front of the concierge asking for a car to take him to the airport. In all his terrified confusion, he was certain of one thing: Vancouver was no longer safe.
Was anywhere?
Tess took a call from the Operational Officer in charge of the IT-Squads.
“Edmonton is still empty,” he reported. “Target may not even be there anymore.”
Tess had considered pulling the team out of the Alberta city and sending them to Vancouver, where she’d been alerted there were players present, but enough of the movements over the past three days lead her to believe that eventually Edmonton would come into play. And if that was the case, she needed to locate a man known as an Astronaut, even though he had nothing to do with NASA.
“Keep them there,” she said. “Our last knowledge shows he is in Edmonton.”
“That information is four years old.”
“I don’t need reminding. If he’d gone somewhere else, we’d have picked up a ping somewhere.” She tugged on a turquoise earring in her left ear, as if getting information from a far off place.
“Maybe not with this one. Even among the other so-called Astronauts, he’s revered.”
“All the more reason we need his location,” she said impatiently. “Now find him.”
Twenty-Six