‘Jorge’s hooked it to the main servers in the Library. From what he told me, the drive’s first security layer’s still open – we won’t need Cayden to donate again.’ Her eyes told she knew how much of a can of worms that was going to be. She cleared her throat. ‘No idea yet if he’s broken the password, or found anything else in the canister’s design that might help.’
‘Then we’d better see if he needs our help,’ Zipping his clinger up fully, Greg patted at his chest, double-checking the weapons, and picked up the reports in one hand. A bit clumsily, he took Leah’s hand with the other. Her smile said she didn’t mind.
The air outside was fresh, overlain with a thick scent of forest decay. Beneath that smell was something else – a kind of ashy, metallic odour, like the leftovers of a campfire mixed with melted-down batteries. The Geiger counter at Leah’s belt began ticking. Fragrance of the Bomb, Greg reflected darkly. The campus hadn’t been in the direct path of the detonation, its aftershock waves or the initial fallout, but there was still plenty hovering around the Sound, often deposited by storms like last night’s.
Nearly all the old dorm buildings they passed along the way were deserted, boarded up or otherwise closed to the elements. To their left, the athletic fields had been left to grow wild; there were plans to turn them to cropland this year, if enough manpower and tools could be pulled together for the job. Per Council decision, there were only a few dozen people allowed to live full-time in the Sanctuary’s zone, the better to avoid overcrowding, resource exhaustion – and a possible missile strike eliminating the entire community. Smaller outposts of five to twenty had been set up all along the perimeter, from the southern outskirts of Everett to the border of the abandoned Skokomish reservation. They served as lookouts for any trouble out of the clear zones, and entry points for the few smuggling routes they’d been able to establish; Greg and Leah had used one to slip out of the CZ at the start of their mission. Anyone observing the outer edge of the campus would assume the place was still abandoned, or at best being occasionally picked over by looters.
The core area was different. Two heavy machine gun posts were concealed on either side of the walkway, immediately past the freshman dorm – concealed to non-Golem eyes, that was. Greg waved gravely to the clinger-clad gun crews, and received a few like gestures. Passing the Rec centre and the Activities Building – the latter of which served as the Sanctuary’s main armoury, canteen and radio facility – he noted the rooftop snipers and light mortars at each corner. The offices and Comm Building beyond these had also been fortified and converted to temporary housing, additional storage and vantage points.
All the entrance points to Red Square, the main gathering area, were also sandbagged and guarded. Beyond these, the square was a subdued hive of commotion. Two dozen or so Golems in clingers, military overalls or salvaged civilian get-ups moved about in all directions, on all manner of tasks: manhandling supply crates, heading to or from sentry posts, handing out weapons or other necessities, poring over documents or sleeve readouts. All of them moved with dancer-like grace, even when burdened with easily 500 pounds or more of gear or other goods. Though differing widely in skin and hair colour, they all shared the same traits: calm, sculpted features, lithe athletic forms, and cool, collected attitudes.
More sentries paced along the edges of the Library roof, and atop the clock tower and the old lab buildings. There were hardly any vehicles in sight: the number of usable ones they’d recovered or stolen, civilian and military, was still pitifully small, and reserved for patrols or long-distance courier runs between the outposts when the radios were down. Three or four Spectre-plated Humvees – so called because of the radar-invisible plating which also reflected and projected the vehicle’s surroundings – were grouped together near the chemistry section. A half-dozen men and women were tinkering with the engines, and checking the heavy machine gun mounted atop each one.
By contrast, the Library was quiet, almost tomblike. Just a few people were present in the ground-floor computer lab – a few holo-terminals, and two entire walls of servers and memory banks – or moving about in the medical and storage areas that had been established in the second floor offices. Greg and Leah made a beeline for the former, exchanging a few polite greetings and nods along the way.
A lone, black-haired man sat at the nearest terminal, poring over line after line of data on the screen before him. The canister sat to his left, opened, the thumb drive plugged into the console. His features were tanned and swarthy, pointing to the Central American ancestry his file indicated, and to a lifetime in the field in every climate imaginable. Jorge had been among the most talented engineering and technical experts in the Project pre-Turmoil, and the foremost in both fields among all others in their mutual ‘class’. Now he was the primary logistics man for the Sanctuary, and, like Greg and Leah, a member of the five-person governing Council.
Typing a last command, Jorge grumbled and stood up, disconnecting the drive and sliding it into a belt pouch. Stretching, he turned around, facing the two of them. His eyes, heavily shadowed and lined, lit up. ‘Ah, Greg!’ He stuck out a hand. ‘You doing okay?’ His voice was relaxed yet concerned.
‘Closest to it since we left, anyway,’ Greg replied, shaking hands. ‘Sorry I wasn’t able to drop by the Library when I arrived; we had to take care of our guests, and—’
Jorge waved his words away. ‘No need for excuses. Anybody could see you were wiped out.’ His smile was brilliantly white. ‘After three near-miss deaths, plus a plane crash, anyone would want a little quiet time.’
‘True.’ Greg frowned. ‘With the way things are right now, though, I doubt we’ll have any of that for a while.’
Jorge nodded, all business once more. ‘We’ve set the prisoners up in the Comm Building, in one of the side rooms. Guards outside all the entrances, and your friend by their door. None of the outlying posts’ve reported sighting any more choppers, or drones of any kind. Nothing coming by ground or sea, either, according to Overwatch. There was a blip on the radar around eight last night, not far east of Rainier, but that disappeared almost as soon as we spotted it. Nothing else’s been seen from any likely approach in that area.’
‘What about the patrol we left behind?’ Leah asked. ‘Any sign this blip might’ve been a search craft?’
‘I scanned the area where you left them through Overwatch, just a few minutes ago. The fallout and cloud cover were still a problem, but the satellites responded fine, now that the program’s fully inserted.’ Jorge’s features turned grave. ‘No sign of the patrol, except for the two choppers – they’d been torched, it looks like. A pro job, too. Maybe someone managed to pick them up while the storm and the fallout left us temporarily blind, but there’s no indication that the blip came anywhere near the site, if it was in fact S&R. Megan and her team headed out at 0500 on a general perimeter run, and will sweep the area again, if the fallout permits. She’ll report in the second she’s done.’
‘Where’s Hiroshi on all this?’ Greg asked in turn. He hadn’t been present to greet Greg and Leah’s party, but that wasn’t unusual. Being leader, he seemed to believe it was essential to be everywhere at once, and so was often gone from the Sanctuary except for scheduled meetings.
‘He’s finishing a sweep on Kitsap, between Bremerton and Belfair,’ Jorge answered. ‘I spoke to him before coming here – he said he was coming back via Case Inlet. Should be here by eight at the latest; probably closer to seven-thirty, depending on the fallout and his pace.’
One of Greg’s eyebrows rose. ‘Why Bremerton? We swept that place for anything usable practically the first day after we got here, mostly around the old shipyard. Wasn’t much left after the Bomb’s tsunami, and even less after everything else: the fallout, refugees and Navy demolition crews.’
‘I said the same thing. He said he’d had some vague memory of there being a stockpile of material in the area. How he remembered, I have no idea.’ Jorge frowned, more confused than displeased. ‘He
also mentioned picking up traces of a possible energy source, somewhere not far away. No real clues about its nature; only that it wasn’t obviously nuclear, and that it seemed to get stronger as he moved further east. But the more he moved towards the Sound, the higher the radcount climbed, so—’
Greg nodded, understanding. ‘He say whether he was able to mark where he first detected it? Or maybe guess the location?’
‘East and north, by several degrees. That pointed him towards Bainbridge Island – and Seattle, of course. He got as far as the outskirts of Gorst, before the count edged into the upper levels.’ The confused frown grew. ‘Strangest thing of all, from what he hinted, it didn’t appear to be an aboveground source. Closest he could come to a location was somewhere northeast of Navy Yard City, before he had to pack it in. He went on to say he didn’t believe it constituted a near or serious threat, but given your return, and the hunters right behind you, he suggested we increase our alert stance. I’ve already devoted a portion of Overwatch for constant monitoring of the area – all frequencies, all levels – and sent warnings to our post in Belfair.’
‘Fine. When he gets back – and once we’ve dealt with the situation here – we’ll talk about further measures, maybe an exploration party.’ Greg looked around the room. ‘Meantime, let’s keep our attention mainly on the south and east approaches. Whether somebody put that patrol back in circulation, or airlifted them out under the storm’s cover, they’re probably looking to establish a base camp within striking range, and soon.’
Jorge and Leah both nodded. Squaring his shoulders, the engineer motioned to a nearby door, behind the main reception desk. Taking the hint, Greg and Leah followed him through it, to a small office and break room. Once the door was closed and locked, Jorge reached to his belt. Holding out the thumb drive in one palm, he lowered his voice. ‘Now – what do you suggest, as to our next move?’
‘We need an idea of what’s on that.’ Leah pointed to the canister. ‘We only had vague ideas about it, and its possible contents, before we set out – just that it contained files from the Project, maybe even a backup of its core data. Classified by any standards, and certainly somewhere up in low orbit in this case. Cayden was enough to get us past the first layer of security – something we’ll need to get into later with him, I can tell – but the second one we couldn’t break, not with the equipment we had. Whoever’s after it is pulling out all the stops. Drones, Rangers – and those guys in brown, with abilities and weapons only we were supposed to have, and a few things we didn’t. There’s no way D.C. or whatever agency’s working the strings would waste all that on trying to recover just any encrypted files.’
‘Still encrypted, too.’ Jorge’s hand closed over the drive. ‘I got to work as soon as you handed it over last night. It isn’t only password protected – there’s a type of firewall that I’ve never seen before, shielding the password algorithms. I tried using some custom-made virus programs to breach it, and the code just spat them back out. Worse than that; I had to crash the console each time to keep the viruses from infecting our network. Any security program can be made that blocks intrusions, but this one corrupted my attempts, and turned them on me.’
The other man stared at his closed fist in frustrated bewilderment. ‘It was like the code was partially sentient, in some way. Like an AI, but with far more capabilities than any of the pre-Turmoil versions. That’s the only explanation that comes to mind – but it’s absurd. No AI – and that’s what it would have to be – has ever been made that could fit on something this small. There’ve been theories, of course, but—’ He trailed off, turning the drive between his fingers.
Greg broke the silence. ‘Putting all this aside, we have two men from Outside sitting under guard here – one soldier, and one likely spook. Either of them could shed light on who’s after this drive, and what those things were in Chicago and Monticello. So we need to get them talking, before we make any more attempts to breach – and possibly lose – the drive.’
‘What do you mean, things?’ Jorge asked. ‘You mean the spec ops team Leah mentioned?’
‘They were sweepers, or amped-up agents. Leah smashed one of them with a car after we got off the train, when whatever trank he used on us wore off. Inside of ten seconds, he started healing up almost the exact same way ARC does. Cayden and I slashed two of them almost to shreds in Minnesota – and they were up and moving as we took off. Only thing that appeared to work was a headshot, through the temple or back of the head; shots to the body or anywhere else just pissed them off.’
Jorge went rigid. ‘You… you think they were Golems?’
‘Not from what I saw. They had the same regeneration ability – but it was faster, and a lot less neat. Plus, they had old, deep scars on their necks and hands – serious surgery, at a guess. None of us ever had those, not even after the worst training periods, or post-mission recovery and operations. Plus they all sported the same equipment. Short swords, those trank pistols, silver glasses. None of it was anything like what we carried.’
‘I may have an answer on that last – maybe.’ Jorge beckoned them to another terminal. The frames Leah had picked up rested atop a mini-scanner, beside the keyboard. One lens had a jagged edge where a tiny section was missing; the other was cracked all the way across. A thin wire ran from the terminal to a tiny port in the frame, above the cracked lens.
Jorge picked up the glasses, balancing them in his palm. ‘These were easier to figure out, compared to the drive or the pistol – though I might have something on the second, too, with some time. You remember those ‘smartglasses’ that were all the rage for a short time, back in the late ’20s?’ When Greg and Leah nodded, he went on. ‘Well, even the most advanced versions on the market were bulky and difficult to use under the best circumstances. They were supposed to do everything: email, phone or text conversations, record video, take pictures, play music, and handle any number of activities on the old Internet. Instead, they were so constantly hit with bugs and other software problems – and lawsuits, mostly after accidents that happened when people tried using them in cars, or almost anywhere else – that the companies behind them all but stopped production. They went back to making smaller versions of all the devices they’d slapped onto the glasses: Cameras, phones, everything.’
‘But the “smartglass” didn’t flame out completely?’ Leah asked.
‘Right. My searching’s been limited – we don’t have a lot of files from that period, and the NeoNet is still mostly closed off, per our decision.’ He set the glasses back on the scanner. ‘But I dug for a little while and found a couple of old Pentagon memos that mentioned this.’
He typed away at the keyboard. A new window opened, showing an image of an intact pair of silver glasses. ‘I haven’t yet been able to find the exact manufacturer. The only hint is a passage mentioning “an independent contractor, anonymous for security reasons”. Typical cover for the Pentagon’s covert research operations – or something else, maybe.’
Greg and Leah exchanged looks. Staring away in thought for a moment, Jorge missed this. Returning to his spiel, he said, ‘The official name is Multi-platform Communications and Scanning Device. The nickname, which took a little more digging, is AllSpec – for “all specifications”, or “all spectacles”.’
Jorge pressed a key. The image began rotating, allowing every angle of the glasses to be seen. ‘Multi-spectrum camera in each hinge, similar in make to the ones in our clingers. Continuous wi-fi connection, hardened against hacking or disruption; that’s disabled now, from the damage and my own work. A hint of what might have been a commercial GPS tracer; the circuitry for it, if that’s what it was, was shot to hell a while ago, so there’s no risk of a signal to anyone else. Hands-free text, video, audio and Internet commands. Vibration speakers in the temple tips; microphone in the bridge, also vibration-sensitive.’ He pressed another key, freezing the image. ‘In short: the ideal, casual communication device. At least from the perspective of whoever de
signed it.’
‘We might have some idea who that is,’ Greg said grimly. At Jorge’s confused look, he elaborated: ‘We knew that Advent Tech was behind the designs for our clingers, at the start of the Project. They cut ties with the Doc long before we came around, but I doubt they just closed up shop.’
Jorge frowned. ‘You think they’re behind this work?’ He studied the image. ‘I don’t see how. Everything I found on Advent before you started out – it all said they’d downsized drastically. Cutting staff, closing facilities, to the point they were doing more consulting than manufacturing. I don’t see how they could have built this, without all that.’
‘They wouldn’t need to,’ Leah put in. ‘Something as vital as the Project, nothing gets thrown away.’ She looked to Greg. ‘Cayden mentioned Advent backing out not too far into the Project, and going to work on “other pipe dreams”.’ She pointed to the glasses.
Greg let out a long, slow breath. ‘If it was, then it’s a safe bet the rest of the gear we saw on those brown-coat types was designed by them, too. Which means—’
‘This isn’t a simple manhunt,’ Jorge finished. His expression was the darkest either of the other two had ever seen. ‘Whoever’s turning the wheels behind the chase for you, they had – or still have – access to Project materials, and the tech spawned or inspired by it. The blades, these glasses – even the ARC. And they’re not just after the canister, whatever it contains. They’re looking to track down everyone the Project turned out.’
The three of them stared at each other, and the glasses. Greg found his voice first. ‘We need to get the Council together, now. I’ll tell Cayden to meet us at the Longhouse.’
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