Evangeline prepared herself to intercept his attack when she noticed his legs dip and saw his this thigh muscles flex. Without warning, the agent froze like a statue. Jack thought it looked like a freeze-frame image on a display. The stillness of his dark form was eerie. Evangeline believed it was a rouse to lull them into lowering their defenses. Instead, she prepared herself for a surprise attack.
Jack watched, as the agent seemed to be fighting for control over his own body. It appeared trapped in a skin of iron. Then his body relaxed and he stood upright in a casual posture. He took one-step backward, and removed the hood from his head to reveal the beautiful white face and dark, blue eyes of an Angel. The drastic change in behavior shocked the others in the room. They had expected an attack. Evangeline still did not trust the situation enough to lower her defensive stance. She watched the agent with suspicion. The angel tilted his head, observed the startled looks on their faces, and then turned his attention to Jack.
“Hello, Jack.” He said. “This is Gideon. I apologize for the unconventional method for communication, but I was unable to discover a less invasive means to contact you.” Jack stood and stared at the Angel with disbelief. Evangeline looked between Jack and the agent, befuddled at the surprising turn of events. She wondered if it could be true.
“Who’s Gideon?” She whispered as she tried to make eye contact with Jack out of the corner of her eye.
Jack started to answer, but the agent interrupted and looked over to Evangeline. “I am Gideon. I am an AI developed by Jack. I was tasked to infiltrate outside networks to discover your location when you were abducted. I was unable to track either of you once you were a certain distance outside of the LTZ. It wasn’t until I infiltrated the Cathedral’s security systems that I discovered a telemetrically operated system in this area.”
Jack and Evangeline looked over at Matthew and Elizabeth. Matthew had a look of amusement, while Elizabeth was still staring at the agent with suspicion. “These are not the first bodies we’ve worked through.” He said shrugging his shoulders.
Evangeline was about to protest, but Gideon cut her off. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Doctor Chapel. But, a General James Reynolds knows you are here.” He said looking into the Chapel’s faces. “He is personally commanding the Leviathan, the carrier that is on its way to destroy this facility.”
Jack took a step forward and put his hands on the agent’s shoulders. “I’m very proud of you, Gideon.” He said with an amazed smile on his face. “You’ve exceeded all of my expectations. Thank you for saving us.”
Gideon’s expression remained unchanged. “You are welcome, Jack. You’ve made it abundantly clear that your highest priority is the safety of your family. I was simply fulfilling the parameters of my programming.” Jack beamed at his creation’s words. Simple, but profound.
Evangeline pulled Jack by the arm and turned him around. “Is he serious?” She asked gesturing to the Angel in black that stood close to her husband. “About being your AI and the attack? Is it true?” She worried that the sudden stay of execution and news of the coming assault could have been a charade.
Her disbelief squashed Jack’s grin of triumph. He cleared his throat like a boy caught with a dangerous science experiment. “Well…” He stammered. “I did create him, yes. And, yes… if he says there’s an attack coming, I believe him.”
She looked up into his face and saw his sincerity. He had never lied to her and he was not the type of man to exaggerate or make light of a serious situation. His confidence in Gideon was enough for her.
Evangeline stepped around Jack and faced the agent. “How soon until they get here?” She asked.
Gideon stared for a moment, the focused back onto Evangeline. “I’m estimating they will launch the first wave of assault craft in the next thirty minutes.” He replied. “This facility is currently unaware of the approaching carrier.”
Evangeline spun around, looked into her husband’s eyes for a moment, and then focused her attention on her parents. “You’ve got to get out of here.” She begged. Tears started to well up in her eyes. “Pack up your gear and get out of here. Find somewhere new to hide.” She was one the verge of another emotional breakdown. “I can’t lose you again.”
Elizabeth stepped forward and placed her hands on the sides of Evangeline’s helmet. “There’s simply not enough time to dismantle our stasis tanks and transport them to safety.” She said with infinite tenderness. Her heart swelled with anguish over their lost years together. She was touched by her daughters love even after the years she spent hurting. Matthew had joined their little circle and put his arms around both of the women in a loving embrace.
Evangeline brushed the tears from her eyes and wrapped her arms around the Angels that embraced her. She closed her eyes and sighed. A wave of resignation spilled over her heart. She thought about letting the inevitable come. She took some comfort in the idea that if she had to die, then at least she would die surrounded by the most important people in her life.
Jack sensed Evangeline’s acceptance of defeat and joined the embrace. She smiled and tilted her head back into Jack’s chest when he felt his warm body surround her own. She felt at home, safe and protected. Death would have been welcomed without fear or regret.
She thought about Kevin and Felicia. She was grateful for their sacrifice to reunite her with her parents. With a deep, soothing breath, she wished they did not have to go to the motor pool.
Then it struck her like an electric shock. Her body jolted at the energy behind the idea. The plan formulated in her mind as the pieces coalesced from the scattered bits of data in her subconscious. She pulled away from her parents but held onto their hands.
“What if we can buy you some time?” She asked.
Jack’s head perked up as her understood what she meant. “Who’s we?” He asked.
Matthew could see the direction her thoughts led and began to protest. “Sweetheart...” He said with a sigh. “We have only a few TRTV’s. We mainly use those for moving large pieces of equipment and supplies, and there are only about a half dozen sentry mounts around the perimeter. It’s not nearly enough to hold off a heavy carrier long enough for us to get away.”
The look on his face was of resignation and love as he looked between his wife and daughter.
Jack stepped away from the circle and chewed on his lip. He was looking at Gideon’s agent body with a level of concentration that Evangeline had never seen before.
“What if we had more time?” He mused to himself. He folded his arms across his chest and started to pace back and forth, gesturing with his hands and muttering indistinct phrases. He stopped in place and started drumming his hands on the outside of his pockets when his body jolted as if stung by an electric shock.
Rubbing his hand on the outside of his pocket, he felt the outline of his neural interface. He turned and looked at Evangeline with an elated grin on his face.
“I’ve got an idea!”
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Sergeant Oliver Cross’s tank opened on automatic when something severed his connection to the agent. He disconnected from the interface and climbed out of the tank to find half a dozen support staff scurrying around the control consoles. There was a frantic tension about them as they flew around the room.
“What happened?” He barked at the room. “Why did I lose my connection?” Campbell entered the scene from his office at almost the same moment that Cross came out of his tank.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” He said with a hint of menace. Campbell walked toward Cross who dripped all over the grating that surrounded his tank. “What happened since your last orders were received?” Campbell asked, staring down the older man.
Cross sensed that Campbell wished his verbal orders to remain discrete. His eyes darted around the room to see who might be watching their exchange. All the technicians scurried around the room, intent with determining the root cause for the unwanted disruption.
He took a half step t
oward Campbell and lowered his voice to ensure they would not be overheard. “Sir…” He said clenching his fists. “I don’t know what happened! After our last briefing, I immediately reconnected with the agent. I waited for two hours, as ordered, but there were no signs of the assault so I entered the room with the targets. I was about to strike when I lost my connection to the agent. I assumed it was a problem with the transmission penetrating so deep underground, sir!”
Campbell showed no emotional reaction to Cross’s report. He gave him a quick nod. Cross, still standing in the white body suit, dripped beside the tank and glared at Campbell’s back as he moved away.
Campbell walked up to the group of technicians at the main control console. They were all talking and moving around each other like a small swarm of bees. “Give me a report!” He ordered loud enough to get their attention all at once. The flurry ceased as all eyes turned to him. Each one of them wondered who was going to be held accountable for the disaster that occurred at a crucial time during the mission.
Lance Dobson, a middle-aged man with light brown hair and green eyes, stood up from the main console. He looked around at his peers, who all looked right back at him. A few of the technicians took a half step away to distance themselves from the chaos and responsibility. He shifted his weight and cleared his throat. “There was an interruption between the operative and the agent.” He said, swallowing hard. “We’ve been unable to determine the cause, as of yet, but we’re confident we’ll have an explanation in the next fifteen minutes.”
Campbell pulled a chronometer out of his vest pocket and held it in his hand. He hefted it, feeling the mass and density of it as if he was weighing it against his options. He then glanced at the large display in the center of the room. On it there was a countdown indicating the time until Reynolds assault force engaged the target coordinates.
The timer indicated the attack would begin in less than thirty minutes. He looked back down at his chronometer. “You have five minutes.” He snipped. “Get me some answers!” Campbell walked away from the crowd and returned to his office.
The frenzy among the group went into overdrive. They checked streams of data, physical connections from the cords and wires to the console and tank. One tech even checked the water inside the tank in the vain hope that a saline imbalance had caused the interruption.
After their deadline had expired, Campbell returned from his office and walked straight up to Dobson. “What do you know?” He asked with an air of expectancy.
Dobson could not look Campbell in the eye, but he could not turn away either. He held his breath for a moment, hoping an inspired idea would pop into his head from the lack of oxygen to his brain, but he had nothing. Nothing Dobson could say would explain the malfunction.
“I’m sorry, sir.” He shuffled the papers in his hands as he muttered his pathetic apology. “We’ve performed every diagnostic we can think of. We simply have no explanation for the problem.” He let out his breath in a defeated sigh. Campbell was about to speak when one of the other techs cleared his throat. Campbell spun around in search of the interruption.
“Ahem.” He cleared his throat again. “Sir? I have a theory.” The young technician, recruited right out of the Academy of Sciences, did not look old enough to be among more experienced technicians, but Campbell knew him well. His name was Chris Connors, and he was a brilliant software architect. Campbell remembered seeing his aptitude test scores and had hand-selected him to be recruited to the program.
“What is it, Connors?” Campbell asked.
Everyone in the room stared in amazement at Connors’ audacity. He was the youngest member of the team, had only been out of the academy for a few months, and already had the nerve to call attention to himself with claims of a theory that the other, more experienced members of the team would have already discounted.
Connors looked into the faces of each team member for any sign of support, but received none. He again cleared his throat and ventured forward with his proposal. “Sir, I think we’re dealing with a hacker.”
Each of his colleagues around the group rejected his theory out of hand with groans and hisses. Campbell, however, knew that since no one else had even offered a possible explanation that Connors idea was worth hearing out.
“Continue.” Campbell said with a glare to the others. His response gave Connors the courage to press on and explain his reasoning.
He took a deep breath. “We can find no physical problem with any piece of hardware between the operative and the agent.” He said gesturing to Cross, now standing in a robe next to the group. “The operative claims that he did not intentionally sever the connection, and we can find no faults with the internal network or operating system. I propose that the problem is from a source outside our control, which is why I believe we’re dealing with a hacker who has been able to penetrate our network and is causing these problems.” He finished speaking and stood there, holding onto his tablet like a security blanket.
Campbell stared into Connors eyes for a moment. He mulled over his theory to find a flaw in his reasoning. He found none, just as he expected.
“I agree.” He blurted. “Work on a solution around your theory.” He glanced up at the timer on the main display. “You have less than two minutes to regain control of the agent; otherwise it may fall into the hands of the Dissidents. Get to work!” He said to the room at large.
The whole team of technicians walked away from the tank and its various consoles and returned to their individual workstations. Connors took the lead in assigning half of the group the task to find an invasive program, and then tasked the other half with finding a solution to terminate its connection.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
While standing in the Dissident lab discussing the logistics of Jack’s idea to help the Chapels escape Reynolds’ attack, Gideon became aware of the efforts taking place in Campbell’s control room override his programming in the agent’s body.
“Excuse me, Jack,” he interrupted. “But the agent’s technical staff are about to discover my program. I believe they will succeed in disrupting my interface with the agent. I recommend restraining this body in the event I am unable to maintain control.” Gideon piloted the agent to a chair and sat down. Jack and Evangeline grabbed tubes and wires from the desks and benches nearby and bound him by the hands and feet.
“Gideon?” Jack mused. “Can you download yourself into the agent’s internal system?” Gideon again stared into space, computing the possibility of Jack’s request.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” he replied, shaking his head. “The storage capacity of the internal drive is insufficient to contain my entire program.” Jack stood up and walked around the room, mumbling to himself and searching for something.
“Can you return to the home network?” Jack asked, “Leave the body the way you came?”
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Gideon replied a shake of his head, “That would be impossible. Once the technicians began searching for an invasive program, the security around the network increased. I no longer have the capacity to evacuate the Cathedral network.”
Jack’s shoulders fell. “If only there was a portable hard drive with sufficient capacity down here,” he muttered. “There has to be something…” he trailed off as he meandered about the lab, rummaging through boxes and sifting through shelves like a child searching for a hidden cache of candy.
As Jack hunted high and low for memory storage devices, Evangeline turned in the direction of her parents. They had been packing small pieces of equipment into crates while Jack and Evangeline had discussed Jack’s plan to provide the time needed for the Dissidents to escape. She stepped forward toward them.
“Do you have anything here that we can use to download Gideon?” she asked, with a hopeless pleading in her eyes. Jack’s projects were important to him. Besides, Gideon had stopped the agent from killing them all when they had been at the Agents’ utter mercy. Matthew stopped packing, looked at Elizabeth, and then turned to Evangeline
.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he replied. “Our data storage is extremely limited.” His eyes were full of sincere disappointment at being unable to help his daughter. Jack continued rifling through pieces of equipment, showing each one to Elizabeth in the hopes that one of them was not crucial to their work of creating a cure for the ravaging dermatitis.
Bound in the chair, Gideon chimed in. “The assault force will be in range in the next forty-five minutes. May I make a suggestion?” The entire group stopped what they were doing and turned to listen to Gideon.
“The Leviathan is in range of both Olympus and your location. I can upload myself to the carrier, which will put me in range of your neural interface.” He turned his head to look at Jack. “I can provide you with their battle plans to facilitate the success of your escape.”
“Do it!” Jack replied. A moment later the agent’s head drooped and its body went limp in the chair. Matthew walked behind the listless figure and removed the metal plate from the back of his neck. Jack and Evangeline watched in curiosity as Matthew held up the plate. They could all see the hair-like filaments retracting inward.
“This is how the operator interfaces with the agent,” he said, turning the agent’s chair around, showing them the empty ports behind his neck. “This interface collar is how we are able to have these bodies and interact with the world.” Matthew returned to his wife’s side at a workbench and placed the extracted interface inside a small box in one of the drawers.
Evangeline thought of Gideon’s forty-five minute warning of the Leviathan’s arrival. She knew it was time for her to leave her parents and join the handful of Dissident pilots assembling in the hangar. She turned to her parents, running into their arms and hugging them with all her strength. She willed their perfect Angel bodies to remember how much she still loved them in spite of all that had happened.
Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) Page 40