by Utley, Todd
“Hi guys, how are you doing today?” They were all glad to see him.
“Why don’t we all play together? He suggested,” and they agreed as planned. They moved around the course playing as a foursome. It was a fairly windy day which was perfect. Windy conditions made it all but impossible to eaves drop on people with directional mics. It was safe for them to talk freely.
John pretended to be giving golf tips and instructions while they discussed their plan of attack on the compound. Toby told him and Dodge about his oven plan and wanted to know how to seal the doors and anything else that might allow a signal in.
They explained to him that metal screen could be used over holes so long as it was attached well all around its edges to the metal surfaces of the oven. The door gaps could be filled with either screen or even better metal duct tape could be applied to bridge the gaps between the doors and the metal frames. Not only would it be a signal blocker but it was also incredibly strong and even if Cyrus and his men did figure out the door latch the tape would still hold the door closed as if it had been welded shut.
This surprised Toby but he knew these guys were engineers so he believed them. John had explained that it was just like a cardboard box that was taped shut with packing tape, if you didn’t have a knife and couldn’t get at it with something then it was surprisingly strong.
Toby brought them up to speed on everything he and Alice had been through with the sabotage of Dodge’s clones and nearly being caught by Glitch. Toby was surprised to learn that John had sabotaged Dodge’s lifefile in the LifeTech database so that they were nearly useless anyway. However, the second set of files that Cyrus had obtained were genuine, but they were shortened so that the last few months of his memories were missing.
All the knowledge of the current events was missing so that Cyrus would have no clue that Dodge and John were aware of his plans. He would however have access to some of Dodge’s knowledge of the LifeTech systems and their vulnerabilities that he so desperately wanted. John figured that even if Cyrus did succeed in getting a clone to talk on the second time around he would still need at least two or three weeks to piece it all together and develop the software necessary to exploit the LifeTech system in the way that he desired.
They told Toby how Cyrus had reached as far as Washington already and had begun controlling and influencing many people in high places. It would be important to save as many people in the compound as possible to testify against Cyrus and identify those in high places that were working with Cyrus. The more high level people they could take down the better. They needed people with impressive credentials to come out and testify to the high tech degree of Cyrus’s operation and the depth of his reach.
They needed people that could drop names and get people in high places that were working with Cyrus toppled from their lofty positions and brought to justice. Toby also told them all about Cheyenne and Todd and how Cheyenne especially was on the verge of turning against Cyrus and that she could be an incredible asset for their cause. It was certainly coming together nicely and their team was expanding to include an increasing number of Cyrus’s people. If Toby, Cheyenne, and Alice could get more people on board with them, it would be much easier to take control of the compound.
John gave Toby a handful of ball point pens that were rather random in brand and color.
“What’s this Toby asked?”
“They’re bugs, you just leave them lying around here and there. They can’t be detected like Cyrus’s bugs either, we did something very stealthy with these. These devices record for up to four hours and then when the environment has been completely silent for over an hour they’ll send the entire audio file in less than one second. It hyper compresses the file crunching it down to a tiny size that can be transmitted very quickly. These bugs only transmit a few times a day and the transmission burst is so short that it cannot be detected by normal means.
Toby agreed to plant them anywhere that he could. John also gave him a modified server patch cable that contained the inner workings of a skyphone hidden inside the cable along its length. He explained to Toby that he had done plenty of research on two of Cyrus’s errand boys and discovered that these guys had been sent out to the local computer store on several occasions and had purchased this exact model of cable. From this model of cable John knew the series of servers that Glitch was using in the compound. These server rooms were filled with large racks with hundreds of cables patching them together.
Toby’s assignment was to take this special cable and get it planted in the server room. He needed to plug one end into one of the unused ports and leave the other end loose, tucking it in behind other cables. It needed at least one end plugged in to get power and access to the entire network within the compound.
With the cable installed, John would have full access to virtually everything on those servers and anything controlled by the computers within the network. It would only be a matter of time before John would have complete remote control of the entire system.
The skyphone built into that cable would provide John the back door he needed to disable the firewalls that Glitch had in place. Once he opened a port that Glitch was unaware of, it would be only a matter of minutes until every camera, every microphone, and every PC, would be wide open for John’s use. Now the watched, would become the watchers and the prey would become the predator.
JC and DC, along with Jason, Alan, and Caitlin, would be monitoring everything going on in the compound right from their PCs at the farm. It was a brilliant plan, carefully crafted for success. John had placed all the necessary items into an empty sports drink bottle and handed it to Toby out on the golf course. He pretended to take a drink from it, just in case they were being watched, and then he dropped it into his golf bag for retrieving later.
On the back nine, Toby began getting his swing back. In his prior life he had golfed right up until he was nabbed by Cyrus’s men. Within a few months he was in this new body and now he found himself on a golf course with no physical limitations, it was great.
He wound up paring four holes on the back nine. Being able to swing so freely was strange and it actually caused him some problems at first. He had spent so many years adjusting his swing as he became less flexible and now he had to go back to the swing of his youth. They all had a decent round and they had successfully exchanged information and tools needed to further the attack on Cyrus and his computer systems. They said goodbye to John and headed back to the house.
Dodge did a quick sweep in the car to make sure it was still safe for conversation. On the way back to the house they reviewed the plan with Toby regarding the latest data that he had “stolen” in the middle of the night. No doubt when he returned Glitch would be excited to get his hands on those files right away.
If possible, Toby was to get down to the server room within the next three days to install the fake server cable with the built in communications hardware in it. While in Cyrus’s office he should drop a pen off anywhere he could without being seen or use it if needed and leave it. It was a good plan, it was slick and if executed without detection it would be yet another perfectly crafted nail in the coffin of Cyrus Slade’s plans.
When they returned to the house the girls had already been home for a while and they were going over the pictures in their phones of everything that they had scoped out at the stores. They were so excited already about Christmas, it was going to be epic, especially if Cyrus was locked up by then so that everyone could enjoy the holidays.
It was almost time for Toby to return home so Linsey gave Cheyenne a call, they had swapped skyphone numbers now just like two Moms would. Cheyenne answered and said she would come right over to get Toby. On the way over to the Kerrington’s she scanned the Cadillac again to make sure it was still safe to talk. She needed to talk to Toby and find out everything she could before they got back to their house.
She intentionally drove through a few mud puddles and chuck holes here and there after a rain the day b
efore, now the caddy needed a wash. The nearest carwash was a good bit out of the way on the trip home. This would yield an extra twenty minutes of talk time. When she pulled in, they were all outside on the front porch talking about all the things they had done.
Toby would have enjoyed staying another night so that he could be there for the big Friday party that Matt and Bobby would be having but he needed to get back and take care of business at the compound. He enjoyed spending time with Bobby but he was more like an uncle than a friend. He looked Bobby’s age, but his brain and life experiences made him much older and more mature than Bobby and Matt so he felt a little funny about being at a party with just kids. It was odd to him though that sometimes he felt like a teenager again and even thought like one sometimes. He attributed it to the effects of hormones on the brain, that must be why teenagers act the way they do, they’re not really that dense, it’s just those dang hormones! “Who can think straight with these things coursing through their veins?” He laughed at himself inside a little as he thought back about his first experience of teenage years. “Man, what a mess I was!”
He was glad to see Cheyenne and couldn’t wait to tell her about his new assignment. They said goodbye and Toby wished Bobby good luck at the Racing academy, “BE CAREFUL” and he would see him just as soon as he got back. They got in the caddy and headed to the house.
The minute they left the drive Toby began telling Cheyenne everything that John and Dodge had planned and how they were going to pull it off. Cheyenne told Toby that Todd had acted differently toward her this weekend and that she believed he was warming up to her and Toby. She didn’t dare tell Toby what had really happened, after asking Todd to keep it just between them, and besides, she was a little embarrassed.
She told him all about the mirror in the car and how Todd went along with leaving it disconnected. Then how they went out on the town in the caddy and ate a big meal on Cyrus’s dime and saw the new Bond movie and then went back to the house and talked for hours before falling asleep on the couch together with the TV on. Toby was amazed, he couldn’t believe that Todd had acted that way, he was usually so militant and not interested in social things at all. Toby could sense that Cheyenne was leaving something out and he suspected that it might be of the romantic nature but he decided not to ask. This was a good thing for sure, whether it went any further or not, didn’t really matter, it was still good, and maybe they could win Todd over and add him to the team. Either way if anything did happen between the two of them he was sure Todd would spill the beans later.
It was late in the day now and everyone at the farm was tired and hungry. They all gathered into the kitchen for their evening meal slash final meeting of the day. JC and DC looked like professional athletes now. Their chiseled bodies were getting stronger and more defined daily. They had each put on a lot of muscle mass by strenuous training every morning and they were eating a perfect diet that Caitlin designed for them to do just that. They were both a good bit taller than their surrogates and Jason explained that they were also being given human growth hormones to make them bigger and stronger than their originals.
They were well-versed in several disciplines of martial arts now and some combat style defense techniques as well. They didn’t have time to learn everything but they were learning what Alan and the Black Ops team felt they would need to handle the guards at the compound. Their days included weapons practice every day and situation simulations training to prepare their minds for snap decisions in critical situations. It was like being at boot camp but actually wanting to be there. The speed of their progression was in direct relation to their desire to reach their goals. This is something that Alan had said one day at dinner and everyone thought it was absolutely profound, even the Black Ops guys were impressed with the comment and agreed it must be true because they had never seen anyone progress as quickly as JC and DC. It was surely attributable to their raging desire to crush Cyrus Slade and free all those enslaved by this evil tyrant of a man.
Every morning Dodge and John awoke to their minds filled with fighting sequences, weapons training, and practice simulations of taking over the compound. Likewise every morning DC and JC awoke at the farm with full knowledge of everything happening back in Indy and all the plans being carried out within and without the compound. It was just a matter of time now, things were falling into place as planned, the cards were stacked against Cyrus Slade and his time of facing justice was drawing near.
Soon the team would unleash the fury of their carefully crafted plan on the compound. The Black Ops team Captain came up with the name for the operation. They always did their best to come up with a label that sounded deadly. He dubbed it Operation Black Ice. He said the idea for Black Ice was based on a dangerous road condition he once experienced by the same name. It was treacherous and you never saw it coming. Everyone liked it and so “Black Ice” it would be.
Back at the compound Alice was in her room trying to relax in spite of her nerves being maxed out. She spent most of the day down in Lab No. 2 tending to the clones of Dodge Kerrington. They were nearly ready to load and Cyrus was getting impatient. He was way behind schedule and he needed every detail of the LifeTech system that he could possibly wring out of Dodge. Cyrus had successfully controlled the minds of many billionaires causing them to relinquish their life savings to him on numerous occasions but what no one knew with the exception of himself and Glitch was that they had killed forty-seven others attempting the same trick. They covered up their deaths by various means, drug overdoses, suicides, heart failure, old age, you name it. Some of them had been successfully restored which also acted as a suitable cover up. There was a whole lot less investigation into a near death than there was a complete one with no hope of Restoration. Cyrus didn’t care that some were restored. They had no recollection of the attempt to hijack their minds so it made no difference to him. He didn’t care if they lived or died, he just needed their money as a means to an end.
Now he needed to control world leaders and people of great influence. He needed to perfect the method of control so that it would work flawlessly every time. A president accidently killed by the procedure designed and intended to only gain control of him was useless to Slade. What good is a dead robot?
Presidents and other powerful world leaders had to be above scrutiny in their mental stability. They couldn’t be running around telling people that someone had hijacked their brains and were forcing them to say and do things outside of their will. First of all, no one would believe them, but secondly they would likely be removed from office and sent off to the funny farm. A powerful world leader removed from office due to mental illness would also be useless.
There was only one man he believed had the answers to why his prior methods were not reliable and that was Dodge Kerrington. Cyrus knew that he had the correct file this time and now the clones were developed enough to load them up. Soon he would have the answers that would allow him to perfect his system. Now he just had a short wait, but it would seem like forever. He had to wait for Alice to sleep so that she could be fresh in the morning to assist him with the loading of the clones. Why everyone had to sleep eight hours was beyond him when people could clearly get by on four or five hours, or maybe none. Too bad everyone couldn’t just do without it like him. While he waited, he had plenty of work he could do scouring the World Wide Web building his list of new potential targets.
In Alice’s dorm room there was the delicious smell of poPCorn being popped over a lab burner and she had turned on her PC to watch some old TV shows. Just then the intercom speaker in her room made that eerie buzz. She went over and pushed the button.
“Yes?”
“Miss Covings, this is Cyrus, report to Lab 2 at 7:00 a.m. and do be well rested and ready for a full day’s work.”
“Yes Sir” she answered and released the button with a jerk as if to be sarcastic to him. She knew what he was going to do.
She knew Dodge would be loaded up tomorrow morning and the ques
tioning would begin. But it would turn into torture and death very quickly. She lost her appetite and couldn’t eat the poPCorn. She didn’t even want to watch her TV shows. She suddenly felt all alone again like she did before she met Toby. She needed him now so badly, she wished he was there. She threw out the poPCorn and turned off her PC and went to bed early just hoping to get some sleep.
She was quite sure that the clones wouldn’t be able to speak but that wouldn’t stop Cyrus from brutally killing them slowly and methodically. It didn’t really matter, she thought, maybe they would be brain dead enough to not even wake up, not feel a thing, that was her hope.
Chapter 27 At Toby’s house Todd and Cheyenne were watching the news and laughing at some of the ridiculous stories.
“Must be another slow news day” Toby said, as he entered the room and plopped down in a chair with a coke.
“Hey Toby, did you have a good time at the Kerrington’s?” And more importantly did you get any information?” asked Todd
“Oh yeah, I had a great time and we went for a fast ride in the GTO. We all went golfing and I had an absolute blast. Bobby invited me to his party tonight but I didn’t want to go. Even though I look like a kid, I feel awkward going to a party with a bunch of sixteen and seventeen-year-old boys. Bobby had this party because he’s leaving for racing academy tomorrow morning, pretty cool stuff. Hey I did get some more information, but frankly it’s just useless crap that I got off Dodge’s PC, you know, just something to toss to Glitch to keep him off my case.”
Todd’s mouth dropped open and he grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. Even Cheyenne was surprised at how brazen Toby was being with him. Todd sat forward toward Toby in a very attentive way.