by Jacob Gowans
As soon as he’d gathered up the second batch, his com rang. He’d left it on his bed when getting changed for the ceremony. Dropping his armload, he hurried over and grabbed it. The caller ID said Commander Byron.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Sammy.” The voice did not belong to the commander (who very rarely called him Sammy), nor any other member of command as far as Sammy could tell. It was a low voice, but not terribly low, and not menacing, either. It reminded Sammy more of his father’s voice when he was on the phone with his mother: soft and patient.
“Who is this?”
“Are you alone?” the man asked. “It is imperative that you are alone at this moment.”
“Yeah, I am.” The voice had a powerful quality to it, which made Sammy feel compelled to listen and obey. Its persuasiveness reminded him of Byron. “Who is this?”
“I need you to listen to what I’m saying, please. If you follow my instructions perfectly, I can enable you to commandeer a stealth cruiser on the top of your building. You will need to do this in order to come to where I am currently located. Is this understood?”
“Yes—wait!” Again Sammy caught himself wanting to agree before thinking his decision through. “Who is this? Why do I—”
“Please, Sammy. I will explain everything. I wish for you to come to Orlando and meet me.”
“Who are you? Why do you want to meet me?”
“Look in your screen. I am sending you a live video feed.”
Sammy’s holo-screen appeared. It took his eyes a moment to focus. He saw Katie Carpenter dressed in the uniform of the Thirteens, but she wasn’t staring at the camera. She was staring at three hostages bound on the cement floor of a large underground garage. Two of them looked into the camera while the third hostage’s head was covered by a cloth sack. A sedan and a long black limousine were behind them. Sammy looked closely at the two hostages whose faces he could see.
Why do they look—? My parents. Those are my parents.
Instantly logic kicked in. “This is fake. Those are holograms. That’s a lie!”
“It’s not a lie, Sammy.”
Katie ripped the tape off the mouth of Sammy’s father. “Don’t listen to them, Sammy! Don’t listen to a word—” Then the tape went back on. Sammy could not mistake the sound of his own father’s voice.
“I think you wish to hear your mother as well?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“Sammy, turn off your com now!” his mother screamed.
Katie retaped his mother’s mouth and fired her gun into Sammy’s mother’s leg.
The tape muffled his mother’s screams as Sammy’s mouth hung open, a cry caught in his throat as he watched blood pour from the wound. His mother’s blood from his mother’s own leg. How? I don’t believe it. It has to be fake. It has to be. He didn’t see how it could be anything else, but the emotions he felt—rage, terror, and utter confusion—were very real. “How can—how? I don’t know. Who are you?”
The camera moved from Katie and Sammy’s parents to the man holding the camera. He had long black hair and wore it in braids. His skin was dark, but not black. He wore very large glasses and smiled in a friendly way at Sammy, showing off a sliver of whitish teeth. Most importantly, Sammy knew him.
“Mr. Nemosio?”
“Hello again, Sammy. It’s been . . . what? Over two years?”
Sammy knew this man because they had been neighbors in Johannesburg for several months. Right up until his parents had died and Sammy had been placed in a foster home. He’d borrowed a lawn mower from him. It was as if his entire world had been flipped in a manner of minutes, and all he could do was hang on to his sanity.
“Sammy, I faked your parents’ deaths. They’re here. They’ve been here for the last several months. I will explain everything to you. But if you want to see them, you’ll have to do as I say with perfect execution. Are you ready to agree, or do I need Katie to shoot your mother again? Perhaps somewhere more vital this time.”
The camera moved back to Katie, who was now bandaging up Sammy’s mother’s leg. Blood dripped steadily from the wound and soaked the bandages. His mom’s head rested on his dad’s chest while he whispered soothing words to her. How many times had Sammy seen his father do that for his mother? Their mannerisms which Sammy remembered so well were too perfect to be fabricated from someone’s imagination.
“I can’t. I don’t believe you.” He remembered the scent of his parents’ blood in their house in Johannesburg. He remembered stepping through the pools of it, leaving tracks. Their deaths hadn’t been faked. The details were too vivid. He knew what he knew. “I’m hanging up.”
“There’s one more thing you should see,” Mr. Nemosio told him. He nodded to Katie.
Katie pulled the cloth sack off the third hostage. This person Sammy also recognized right away. It was Stripe.
He wasn’t wearing his normal suit, nor did he have his glasses on. His face hadn’t melted from the creams the way Sammy had always pictured it. He looked healthy, but terrified. Seeing the fear in his tormentor’s eyes gave Sammy no small amount of pleasure.
This can’t be real. But it looked real. He had no idea what to think anymore.
“It’s real,” Nemosio said as though he could read Sammy’s mind. Then he lowered his voice. “Come meet me. I will give you your parents. And more importantly, I will give him to you.”
The decision seemed recklessly dumb, but something in the man’s voice compelled Sammy to agree. Katie and Stripe in the same place. If they really were there, he might have the opportunity to do what he’d been preparing himself for since May. All his hard work in the sims these last three months would pay off.
Tonight I will kill them. The choice, though foolish and dangerous, became rather simple.
“Okay,” Sammy said, “I’ll do it.”
“Good decision. As I said, there is a cruiser on the rooftop waiting for you. You will have to pilot it, but I will give you auto-nav coordinates and a flight plan code. All you have to do is get there without being seen and without contacting anyone. You will leave your com on until takeoff so I can know you have carried out my orders. I will know if you try to make any calls after our connection is terminated. If you do make any attempt, our agreement is over, and I will send you the heads of your mother and father. I think we have a deal?”
It’s too dangerous to go alone. You need backup!
Someone will see my walking by the cafeteria. Someone will follow.
You don’t know that!
I HAVE to risk it. I have to finish what I started with Stripe and Katie.
Sammy watched his mother and father shake their heads at him, pleading with their eyes that he not accept Mr. Nemosio. “Yes. Deal.”
“Very well. I will talk you through it. Go upstairs now. Do not be noticed. Remember that I can see you.”
Sammy walked up the stairs to the third floor. As he walked by the door to the cafeteria, he was very tempted to turn his head and look inside to see if someone spotted him. All he could do, however, was slow his pace ever so slightly and hope.
At the door to the fourth floor, he again slowed as he pushed it open. Someone was behind him. He didn’t know who it was, but he put his hand behind his back and gestured to whomever it was to follow as he continued up the steps. Somehow the door from the fifth floor to the rooftop was unlocked. All the way up the stairs he climbed until he reached the roof. The wind blew hard that night, causing a lot of hissing in his microphone. Sammy was grateful for that because about ten steps toward the stealth cruiser, which was indeed waiting for him, he heard the roof door open a second time. He quickened his pace and got in the cruiser, wasting no time to start the engines.
“Perfectly executed. Now takeoff and enter these GPS coordinates into the auto-nav.” Sammy memorized the number and lifted the cruiser off the ground. “Follow the yellow brick road and you’ll find more instructions waiting for you upon landing. See you soon.”
The transmission ended. Sammy didn’t dare make a call to Byron or anyone else. He knew it was likely that Mr. Nemosio had been telling the truth about monitoring his com. Instead, he settled the cruiser back on the roof where every Beta had gathered to watch Sammy take off in the cruiser.
As soon as Sammy touched down, Jeffie opened the door. “What in the heck are you doing?”
“Is this part of the party?” Kobe asked. “Because I don’t know if I’m brave enough to fly to Barcelona or something like that.”
“I can’t explain,” Sammy said. “I don’t have time, but I have to go. I don’t want to go alone, so whoever wants to come with me, I’m going to Orlando.”
“That’s a bit farther than Barcelona,” Kaden said.
“I don’t have time to joke!” Sammy yelled. “Either get in or stay behind, but something serious is going down, and I could use the help!”
Jeffie climbed into the copilot’s chair without further discussion. Brickert got in next, followed by Natalia, Strawberry, and Kawai. Kobe and Kaden were right behind. Rosa and Miguel got in. Then Li and Levu and Ludwig and Parley. Antonio took about five seconds to mull the decision over, but he finally got in with Hefani. When all was said and done, every Beta—with the exception of Brillianté, Asaki, Gabriel, and the three other new Betas—were inside the cruiser and ready for departure.
Sammy wasted no time. He restarted the engines and set the memorized code back into the computer’s system. By default, stealth cruiser’s computers deleted old GPS coordinates. Mr. Nemosio must have known this and believed Sammy incapable of memorizing the numbers. Without the coordinates, Sammy would not have known where to go.
“Buckle up, everyone,” he said.
“Are you kidding?” Kobe asked. “There are not sixteen safety belts in this thing.”
“Double up with a girl,” Kaden said. “Now, Sammy, tell us what’s going on.”
* * * * *
“How long is it going to take us to completely overhaul our networks?” Byron asked the team of researchers. They were still crammed into Khani’s office which now, after several hours of tedious work, felt stuffy and smelled of bad body odor. It was beyond late into the night, and he found it difficult to keep from yawning every two or three minutes.
“We have contingency plans in place for this very type of thing, Commander,” Khani said. “Start to finish, one week. We all agree that this needs to start tomorrow. Of course—” she stopped speaking as though she’d caught herself. “Never mind.”
“No, what does ‘of course’ mean?”
“This entire operation will be meaningless if there’s another mole with as much access as Commander Wrobel had. Are you sure you’ve rooted out all the bad apples?”
“How can I be?”
Khani stared at the commander for several seconds with her eyebrows raised and her lips pursed. Her expression made him feel stupid, something many Tensais had a tendency to do.
“If we implement your plans tomorrow,” Byron said, “and I make sure you have all the resources you need, can we be sure that this tunnel thing is solved?”
“We’ll be taking major steps forward to ensure that this level of infiltration can’t happen again.”
Another member of Khani’s team spoke up. “We’re lucky that damage didn’t spread farther upward. A few of the areas hit pose a major crisis. But most of the infected areas are completely inconsequential. I mean,” he grabbed his holo-tablet and read, “the NWGMC? What was the CAG thinking? There’s a good chance the people on their side didn’t even know how to fully use their own tools properly.”
“What did they access at the NWGMC?” Byron asked.
“Practically . . . almost nothing.”
“That does not answer my question. What did they access?”
The man snorted as though the question wasn’t worth his time. “Just one medical record. That’s it. It’s completely asinine! This was the one that made the news a few weeks ago. Our cyber detectors even picked up on it. It doesn’t make sense to go after medical records. Highly protected, but strategically worthless from a military perspective.”
“Whose record was it?”
The guy shrugged. “How should I know?”
“Find out.”
The man typed on his tablet for several seconds, occasionally stopping to flip his greasy red hair out of his eyes. Byron checked his watch. 0200. I am getting too old for these late nights. He couldn’t leave because General Wu had ordered him to stay at the TRC until the situation was fully resolved.
“Samuel Berhane, Jr.” The words struck like a gong.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, sir. Take a look.”
“Why wasn’t Psion Command notified that the medical records of one of its members had been breached weeks ago?”
This time Khani answered. “The rootkit hid the specific files accessed. When we investigated this back when it happened, all we saw was an unauthorized request into the system. We had no idea any files had been breached.”
The idea that the CAG had seen Sammy’s full medical records unnerved the commander. It meant more unanswered questions. Before he had a chance to ask them, an alarm came from Khani’s desk. All heads turned toward the sound.
“They’re trying to use the tunnel!” Khani announced in an ecstatic tone. “This will be our first test to see if our software works correctly.”
Her team gathered around the computer as if they were watching the last minutes of a very important chess match. All Byron saw flashing across the screens was meaningless data and code.
“He’s in! That’s assuming, of course, that the person or persons we’re dealing with is male. He’s accessing communications codes. Start the program, Francis!”
Francis, the same red-haired man who’d been speaking minutes before, began typing furiously. “Launched.”
A second alarm sounded.
“Another tunnel access point found. This one’s also in communication codes. Plug it!”
“I’m on it.”
“Is it working?” Byron asked.
“First tunnel has now breached our database for personnel communicators. He’s looking up someone’s com number.”
“Whose?” Byron asked.
Khani swore. “Second tunnel accessing our stealth tech radar dishes. Where are you, Francis?”
“I’m plugging it!”
Three more alarms went off. Khani shrieked and pointed to three of her techies. “Get to work!”
Byron watched them scurry feverishly to their computers.
Five more alarms rang next. Khani forgot what she was doing as she stared at her screens. What followed was among the more profound and eloquent streams of curses Byron had ever heard. “They’re not supposed to have that access!”
“What is going on, Khani?” Byron demanded.
“They’re in—they’re in our defense systems. PLUG THE HOLES!”
The alarm started again, beeping more times in rapid succession than Byron could count. Khani reached around the back of her giant computer and ripped out the connection to her speakers. Francis typed so quickly it was almost comical, stopping only to wipe sweat off his forehead or flip his red hair. “They’ve punched ten . . . twenty. . . . ” He swore, too, now. “I don’t know how many holes!”
“Keep shutting them down,” Khani urged.
“I can’t keep up! Every time I plug a hole, five more show up.”
“What are they targeting?” Byron asked.
“EVERYTHING!” Francis yelled. “Jamming all our signals, blinding our radars. They’ve disabled our land to air missiles. And they’ve disguised everything with the rootkit. To anyone else, it looks like our systems are perfectly normal.”
“Call General Wu on all emergency channels,” Byron ordered his com. Nothing happened. He repeated the order. Again, nothing. “Call Albert on all emergency channels.”
The response was the same.
He turned to Khani and grabbed her shou
lders. “Reboot the system. The whole thing.”
Khani stared at the commander blankly. “I—I—I don’t know how this could happen.”
“Now is not the time to wonder! Reboot it!”
She turned to Francis and gave the order. She and Byron leaned over his shoulders to watch. Francis’ fingers flew with practiced precision over his keyboard. “It’s—it’s not—I can’t get in.”
“Try the back door.”
Byron willed the computer to work for Francis.
“No access!” he answered.
Khani ripped the holo-tablet from his hands and tried it herself. She swore at the screen. “How can they do this? I helped design that!”
“Keep working on it!” Byron told Khani and her team as he stood and headed for the door. “Do not give up!”
“Where are you going?” Khani asked.
“To sound the alarms the old-fashioned way.”
23.
Flight
Sunday September 1, 2086
Because of the time zone changes between Reykjavik and Orlando, it was Sunday again. The clock on the cruiser’s console read 2345.The auto-nav told Sammy they were over halfway to their destination. As far as he could tell, everyone in the cruiser had fallen asleep except he and Jeffie.
The group of friends had spent the first hour of the flight talking about what to do. Their options were limited. No one’s com worked now, not even Sammy’s. The communication systems on the ship were dead. Sammy couldn’t understand how all this was possible. Everything still seemed like a bad dream come to life. His mom and dad possibly alive? Katie Carpenter holding them hostage with Stripe? He refused to let himself get too worked up over the possibilities. When Sammy had told his friends about what he’d seen, no one seemed to know what to say. The consensus, however, was that if there was any chance his parents might be alive, Sammy had to check it out. Their agreement did not alleviate him of his guilt because he hadn’t told them his true suspicions or motivations.