What the hell? Where was his science team?
Heart still pounding and lungs heaving, he walked straight to the bank of monitors to see what was happening inside the BRIG.
“Oh no,” he said with a gasp, staring at a live feed of Cyril and Malcolm both standing entranced in front of a brilliantly glowing, hovering orb. Déjà vu washed over him, and so did a wave of panic. Behind the two scientists, Harris stood completely kitted up for battle and holding an M4 in a relaxed carry across his chest. He didn’t appear to be hypnotized like Malcolm and Cyril, but his posture and mannerism were different from before. Most disturbing, he was permitting this to happen—possibly even standing guard over the proceedings to ensure it happened.
What the hell?
Unger had the 1800-to-midnight watch. Harris wasn’t even supposed to be here. Legend ran out of the control room and headed toward the BRIG. When he got there, he saw a massive blood smear that led across the hall and disappeared under a closed door labeled JANITORIAL SUPPLIES. Legend opened the door and was greeted by Unger’s corpse seated against the back wall of the closet—eyes open, mouth agape, blood running from a bullet hole in his forehead. Legend slammed the door and spun around to face the BRIG. The blast door and the personnel door were both shut, but the “Unlocked” LED indicator for the personnel door was illuminated. He pressed the lock button, but nothing happened. He pressed it again and still nothing happened.
Shit!
As much as he needed to get Malcolm and Cyril away from that thing, the number one priority was to keep it contained. He sprinted back to the control room and frantically looked for the door controls. After a beat, he found them on the control panel and pressed the lock button for the personnel door, but the “Unlocked” indicator stayed green. A string of curses replete with every variation of the f-word poured from his lips. This was a jailbreak, and it was up to him to stop it. To confront Harris, however, he’d need to be armed. Even then, he didn’t like his chances. He needed backup. He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket. Time to get his boss, General Troy, involved. Before he finished dialing, the lights went out, and his mobile phone was suddenly a brick in his hand.
The electromagnetic pulse was a precursor event—a preliminary strike by the orb to disable the facility, take down comms, and thereby pave the way for its escape. Whatever the hell this thing was, he couldn’t let it escape. He couldn’t let it take Malcolm and Cyril as hostages. He felt his way in the dark to the control-room door. Confronting Harris unarmed was a death sentence, but what choice did he have? Unless . . . unless he could get to the lobby and find the night watchman before Harris did. The night guard carried a sidearm; Legend needed that sidearm.
He depressed the door lever and quietly opened the door. The corridor beyond was pitch-black; not even the emergency lighting was on. He ducked into a low crouch, and carefully and quietly he crept into the corridor. To his left, the direction of the BRIG, he heard a noise. Then a white beam of light cut the blackness, and Legend deduced, from the height and movement of the beam, that this was a gun light clipped to the Picatinny rail of Harris’s weapon. Harris and his hostages would be in the corridor any second. Legend had a hard choice to make: option one, make a break for the stairwell and try to get to the lobby without being shot in the back, or option two, crouch and wait for Harris to walk past and ambush the operator from behind. The problem with option two was, What if the orb took control of his mind and put him in a trance? Harris wasn’t the danger. The orb was the danger. As soon as this thought registered, the decision was made: he took off down the pitch-black hallway. Running in the dark, he tried to remember how far the stairwell was from the BRIG control room. Thirty feet, he estimated, on the left side of the corridor. His footfalls echoed loudly on the concrete. Too loudly. In his peripheral vision, he registered a change in the light. Harris was in the corridor now.
On instinct alone, Legend crouched and dove into a headfirst slide. Almost simultaneously, a deafening volley erupted as machine-gun fire ripped down the corridor. Bullets ricocheted off the walls and ceiling, zipping past him overhead. Harris’s first volley had missed, but when the rogue operator’s light found him—and it would find him—Legend would be cut to ribbons.
He had one chance. From his stomach, he pushed up and got his feet underneath himself. He launched forward, a sprinter out of the starting blocks, with all the strength and power of his finely tuned and powerfully built body.
He reached the stairwell door as the shooter’s light swept across his position. His fingers found the handle, his thumb the latch-release button. He pressed and pulled and dove. Bullets raked the wall, the doorframe, and the door slab, and one of them found its mark. The bullet grazed his right flank, clipping the slab of muscle just below and behind the V of his armpit as he came crashing on the concrete landing at the bottom of the steps. A stripe of fire lit up his back while stingers flared in his left knee and right wrist from the hard landing. Gritting his teeth, he clambered to his feet. Fear, duty, and adrenaline fueled his ascent; despite the dark, he managed to climb the stairs quickly and without taking a nasty fall.
When he reached the main-level landing, he felt along the wall until he found the door. As he pushed the rocker bar to exit, he heard the latch for the door at the bottom of the stairwell click. He slipped out the door just as light flooded the stairwell below. His mind raced, trying to think of some way to block the door or bind the latch, but fire-escape doors pushed open from the inside, which made blocking it a near-impossible task. He turned and ran in the direction of the lobby. By now he could feel the warm rivulets running down his back and the wetness spreading across his shirt.
He reached around with his left hand and felt the wound as he ran. A graze that would require stitches to close, but nothing life-threatening. The locus and level of pain told him that both bone and muscle had been left unmolested beneath. His throbbing knee was affecting his speed more than the bullet wound. As he closed on the lobby, he saw the glow of a flashlight and heard voices—or at least a voice. He entered at a full sprint, taking the front-desk guard by surprise. The flashlight beam was in his face a beat later, followed by a nervous apology.
“Sorry about that, Major Tyree,” the night watchman said, lowering the beam. “You took me by surprise.”
Legend’s gaze ticked from the guard’s face to his right hip. “I need your sidearm.”
“Excuse me?” the night watchman said.
“We have a security breach and a potential hostage situation. I need your sidearm. Right now.” The young guard hesitated a moment, then unholstered his weapon and handed it over. Legend glanced at the weapon: Glock 21—.45 caliber with a thirteen-round magazine. “I also need your radio and that extra mag.”
“But, sir—”
“Now!” he barked.
“Yes, sir,” the guard said and did as he was told.
“Now get behind that wall over there and stay there,” Legend ordered, already making his way back to the hallway he’d just come from. Back pressed against the lobby’s rear wall, he inched toward the corner leading to the hallway.
They should be here already, he thought, but he didn’t see the beam of Harris’s tactical light. He didn’t hear footsteps or movement. Now that he was armed, the prospect of engaging Harris took on a new and different significance. Harris was not the enemy. Cyril and Malcolm were also not the enemy. If they were helping the orb, it was not by volition; it was not of their own free will. At best they were operating under some hypnotic trance; at worst the orb had taken control of their minds.
I can’t just shoot them, even if they’re shooting at me.
“Fuck,” he muttered, paralyzed with tactical indecision. Even if he aimed to wound, there was still the possibility he could inflict a mortal injury inadvertently. He was a good shot with a pistol but not a world-class marksman by any stretch of the imagination.
“What’s the radio call sign for the gate guard?” he hollered at the watchman.
“Whiskey Gate,” the watchman called back.
He keyed the radio. “Whiskey Gate, this is Major Tyree. Do you copy?”
“Major, this is Whiskey Gate. I copy you, Lima Charlie.”
“We have a situation here: a site-wide blackout, a security breach, and a possible hostage situation. No traffic is permitted to leave this facility. Do you understand?”
“Understood, Major.”
“Do you have active security deterrents at the gate?”
“Yes, sir, I have a retractable Sentinel wedge barrier, but it is optimized to prevent inbound traffic access.”
“Raise it anyway.”
“Roger that, sir.”
“Do you have a working mobile phone?”
“Yes.”
“All phones and comms are down in the building except for radios. Listen very carefully. I’m going to give you a number to call—”
“Major, I have vehicle headlights coming my way from the facility,” the gate guard interrupted.
“Does this facility have underground parking?” he shouted at the night watchman.
“Yes, sir, for full-time employees and company vehicles,” the watchman said.
“Is it accessible from the basement?”
“Yes.”
“Shit!”
His radio crackled. “Major, this is Whiskey Gate. The vehicle is picking up speed and gone off-road. They must have seen the security barrier. I think they’re going to ram the chain-link. I’m going to try to take out their tires.”
“Negative, Whiskey, do not engage,” Legend barked into the radio as he ran to the front of the lobby and looked out a window at the front gate.
Staccato cracks echoed in the distance as Legend watched alternating muzzle flares between the vehicle and the guard as they traded fire.
“Whiskey, stand down and take cover,” Legend ordered over the radio, but no reply came. He ran outside for a better look just in time to see the guard get shot and fall to the ground. The van then abruptly changed course back toward the gate. A beat later, a shadow jumped out of the passenger-side door, disappeared into the guard shack, and then ran back into the van as the security barrier retracted.
“Fuuuuuck,” Legend growled as he watched the van’s twin red taillights disappear down the access road.
“What just happened, Major?” the night watchman asked, stepping up beside him.
Legend exhaled with defeat and said, “Even if you had the security clearance to know the truth, you wouldn’t believe me.”
CHAPTER 23
Scouting Position outside Western Dynamics
Culpeper, Virginia
Dean Ninemeyer was losing patience.
He’d been waiting all day for Malcolm to leave the facility so he could follow the little worm home and squeeze him for more information. Something significant had happened this morning, and he was itching to know what it was. He’d followed Major Tyree to Culpeper Regional Hospital this morning and shadowed him without detection. The expedition had paid dividends. Tyree’s visit to the hospital indicated he was running the project, and the three people rushed by ambulance to the hospital were team members working with him. Ninemeyer had collected their names and had the “back office” run queries. The results had been tremendously informative: Major Beth Fischer had a PhD in virology from Harvard and was the Army’s head of biosecurity at Fort Detrick, Ryan Harris was a former Delta operator with TS/SCI clearance who now worked as a contractor for Ground Branch, and Patrick Dixon was a USAMRIID laboratory technician and previous AIT-SMART team leader. Their qualifications and field-operations experience meant that together they addressed both physical security and biosecurity concerns, which told Ninemeyer this trio had been the welcome party—sent in to determine if the thing they’d found was a biological threat. Apparently it was, because they’d all arrived at the hospital in semicatatonic states. From snippets of conversations and a covert glance at Dixon’s chart, Ninemeyer deduced that they’d all experienced grand mal seizures. As far as Ninemeyer knew, and he knew quite a lot on the topic, there was no weapon technology on earth that could do to people what had been done to these three.
Is it possible that after all these years of hoaxes and conspiracy theories, the Army has finally gone and found alien technology?
He wasn’t sure what this development meant for his predicament with his number-one customer—the Red Client. Recently, his liaison for the Red Client had expressed dissatisfaction with his performance. Apparently he was no longer delivering information of a caliber that was acceptable, and they were demanding that he up his game or risk being terminated. The meaning had not been lost in translation. If he could somehow pillage this newly discovered technology from DARPA, then he would definitely regain their favor.
The Red Client had a hard-on for anything DARPA was throwing resources at, which was why he’d recruited Malcolm Madden in the first place. The Red Client did not like doing the early-stage heavy lifting, preferring instead to pillage adolescent technology and then set their vast army of engineers, programmers, and scientists to work understanding, modifying, improving, and implementing the technology. Early-stage development was slow, expensive, and had a high failure rate. In the race for world domination, from both a strategic and economic perspective, skipping this stage offered a tremendous cost-savings and speed advantage. So long as intellectual property could be bought, hacked, or stolen, the Red Client’s defense-industrial complex could be optimized for mid- to late-stage implementation. And so long as the academic, corporate, and military institutions of the United States and Europe allowed their rank and file to be subject to exploitation, the Red Client could continue to operate as the world’s largest late-stage, black-market technology aggregator.
The Red Client recognized that artificial intelligence was the twenty-first century’s A-bomb, and the race was on to develop the first machine “super intelligence.” The first nation-state to birth it would become the only superpower, leaving the rest of the world swirling, choking, and drowning in its wake.
Malcolm Madden was the Babe Ruth of Ninemeyer’s lineup. So far Ninemeyer had not forced Madden to sell any secrets from the SyNAPSE project. He knew that once he gave the Red Client a taste of this golden honey, they would push him for results faster than he could possibly deliver. It had taken discipline not to shoot himself in the foot on SyNAPSE, but apparently he’d shot himself in the other foot in the process. Irony’s a bitch that way. He’d always assumed he would know when the time was right to light his brightest candle. Maybe that time was now. But if he burned up Madden on this opportunity, he wouldn’t be able to use him later when SyNAPSE was ready for prime time. On the other hand, this technology might eclipse SyNAPSE altogether and be an even bigger win for him. Either way was a gamble. The question on his mind now was this: Which AI secrets would ultimately prove to be more lucrative for him to broker, those derived from alien intelligence or artificial intelligence?
Gunfire echoed in the distance, shaking him from his thoughts.
He climbed out of his Tahoe, shut the door, and listened. More gunfire . . . an M4 and a pistol . . . a half mile away, he estimated. It was coming from somewhere across the road, somewhere on the Westfield Dynamics grounds. His heart rate picked up, and his senses sharpened as adrenaline flooded his system. Something was happening. Headlights appeared on the access road, closing fast.
He jumped into the Tahoe, started the engine, but kept the headlights off. A white van came into view, tearing down the access road toward the intersection at James Madison Highway. The van turned east with squealing tires and sped out of sight.
He’d been at this game long enough to recognize a getaway; the question was, What had been stolen? His money was on the object itself. He pulled out of his observation blind, turned east on James Madison Highway, and punched the accelerator. As he passed Windmere’s Autobody & Collision Repair, he looked at the parking lot and saw the silver Ford Explorer parked once again amon
g the other damaged vehicles awaiting repair.
In the distance, the van’s twin red taillights were already dwindling. He glanced at the speedometer and saw he was doing eighty, so he pressed the gas pedal and accelerated to one hundred miles per hour. Ahead, the van braked to navigate a sweeping turn. Ninemeyer braked hard on his approach, barely managing to keep the Tahoe on the road. He was finally beginning to make up ground because the van was forced to take bends slower than he could. A beat later, his closure rate began to increase dramatically.
No brake lights . . . The van’s coasting.
He took his right foot completely off the accelerator and moved it to hover over the brake pedal. Shit’s about to happen, he told himself. Get ready. No sooner had he finished the thought than the right rear cargo door of the van swung open. Ninemeyer reacted immediately, braking hard and swerving left as a figure in a combat kneel let loose with an assault rifle. The first volley strafed the right side of the Tahoe’s windshield and shredded the passenger seat, barely missing Ninemeyer. He swerved back to the right, timing the maneuver with the shooter’s next volley, which went wide left, but just barely as rounds clipped the A-pillar and rearview mirror. With enough speed gone that he wouldn’t roll the SUV, he executed a full 180, spinning the Tahoe counterclockwise. As he did, bullets riddled the entire passenger side from fender to fender. He heard and then felt the front right tire blow out, then the rear right tire. With the tailgate now facing the van, Ninemeyer ducked low in his seat. A beat later, a single round smashed through the tailgate window and punched a hole through the driver-seat headrest.
Contorting himself, Ninemeyer pulled the Walther from the holster under the seat. Still crouched, he reached up and pulled the column shifter into reverse, activating the Tahoe’s rearview camera system. He saw the van’s taillights growing dimmer until they disappeared into the night. He opened the driver-side door and got out. Sighting over his pistol, he walked the perimeter of his vehicle, scanning all directions, double-checking he was alone . . . Only then did he slip his weapon into the waistband of his pants at the small of his back. He walked to the passenger side and confirmed that, yes, both tires were blown.
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