by David Walton
“You can take this one,” Naomi said.
“I’m sure another one will be along soon,” Aisha said. “It never takes them long.”
“I can wait.” Naomi stood aside to give Jada room to get in.
“Why don’t you share? It’s only a few minutes to her school, and then you can take the car home.” Aisha smiled. “Save the other car for the paying customers.”
“Okay,” Naomi said. She climbed in the back seat and slid over to make room. Aisha set the booster on the seat, and Jada, after giving Tyler a quick peck on the cheek, climbed in and buckled herself.
“Now don’t forget your backpack this time,” Aisha said, handing it to Jada. “I’ll see you after school.”
“It’s not school—it’s daycare!” she shouted gleefully, delighted to catch her mother in a mistake.
“Love you,” Aisha said. She shut the back door, realigning the half of the Zoom logo painted on it with the half painted on the front door.
Tyler took a step back, feeling unaccountably uneasy. He was intruding on a private moment, a mother seeing her child off to school. But no, that wasn’t it. It was something else. Something that struck him as wrong.
He looked up and down the street. Everything seemed as it should be. The sky was dark, threatening rain, but he didn’t think that would have caused this feeling. He looked back up at the apartment building, but nothing seemed amiss. Maybe he was just exhausted?
It wasn’t until the car was driving away that he figured it out. The wheels. The hubcaps, specifically. Zoom cars all had spiral pattern hubcaps, part of the detailing that made their cars look distinctive. The car that had just driven away was the right make and model, the right shade of red, and had a Zoom logo painted on the side, but it had the original manufacturer’s hubcaps. It wasn’t a Zoom car.
“Hey! Stop!” Tyler took off down the street as fast as he could. Of course, there was no point shouting at an autocar, and no chance of him catching it. He used the magnifying function on his glasses and snapped a picture, just as the car turned the corner. Too late to get the license plate.
He ran back toward Aisha, pressing the side of his glasses. “Dial 9-1-1,” he shouted. The glasses, complied, chiming as they made the connection.
Aisha stared at him, astonished. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s not a Zoom car,” he told her. “Naomi and Jada were just kidnapped.”
CHAPTER 32
Got her.
From the comfort of his office chair, Brandon watched the car drive away with Naomi inside. He was surprised to see the little girl, the daughter of that investor who had financed Tyler’s company. He hadn’t planned for her to be in the car, but it changed nothing. This was total war. That woman who was financing them was complicit in all this. Let them all suffer. Let them learn what it felt like to have everything you loved snatched away.
Brandon hadn’t trusted Yusuf or anybody else with this job. He’d outfitted the fake Zoom car himself—first with seat belts that couldn’t be unbuckled and doors that couldn’t be unlocked from the inside, and then with his own self-driving rig that he could control directly and no one else could touch. There were a few more surprises, too. Finally, he had painted it and applied the logo. It was a work of art. He had been keeping the car back, waiting to see if he would have to use it.
And now they had forced his hand. He didn’t have anything against the little girl, but there were bigger issues at stake. Civilian casualties were acceptable to strike a blow that meant decisive victory. Harrison and Avery would have understood. There were friendlies, and there were enemies. Nothing in between.
Just north of the city, there was a condemned parking garage that Brandon had once considered purchasing as a storage facility for his cars. The cost of making it safe had far exceeded its value, so he’d chosen not to. But just because a parking garage couldn’t be trusted to store a thousand cars didn’t mean it couldn’t hold just one. It was the perfect place to take them— out of the way and not associated with him at all. And when he finally did kill them, there would be nothing that could connect him with the crime.
He checked on Naomi and Jada through the car’s interior camera. At first, they sat untroubled, hands in their laps, looking out the window. Then Naomi seemed to get a phone call. She touched her glasses, then looked around, suddenly anxious, and tried to roll down the window. Nothing happened. She tried the door handle, and then her seat belt, but both were stuck.
Brandon smiled. He hadn’t expected her to realize she was trapped so quickly, but it didn’t matter. He had outfitted the car with auto-tinting windows. Standard privacy tinting was designed to prevent people from seeing into a car, not out of it, but the windows were just liquid crystal sandwiched between two panes. All the controls were electrical. All he had needed to do was rewire the controller. He pressed a key, and on screen, all of the interior windows of the car faded to black.
His phone rang. It was Tyler Daniels.
“Hello,” Brandon said in his best cheerful manner. “You’ve reached Black Knight, the most trusted name in automated transportation.”
“You bastard. You took them, didn’t you?”
Brandon was well aware that the conversation could be recorded. “Took who? What are you talking about?”
“A self-driving car that wasn’t mine just drove away with two of my friends, and I’m pretty sure it was you who did it. What are you playing at?”
It must have been Tyler who called Naomi and tipped her off. Brandon wondered how he had figured it out. “That’s terrible. Have you called the police?”
“Of course I have. And they’re going to find you. Just don’t hurt anyone, okay?”
“I hope you do find them. It would be just tragic if you lost someone you loved because of somebody else’s carelessness.”
He heard Tyler’s fist slam down on something. “We loved Abby, too! Don’t you get that? You’re not the only one hurting.”
“Naomi was such a sweet girl,” Brandon said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
He recognized the mistake the moment it was out of his mouth. Tyler had never actually said who it was that was missing, but Brandon had just named her. Tyler, however, didn’t seem to notice the blunder. “Don’t hurt them. I swear, if you hurt those innocent girls, I’ll find you and kill you, no matter what the consequences.”
“Well, nice to have had this chat,” Brandon said. “Next time, maybe you’ll think twice before launching an attack against my servers.”
Brandon didn’t wait to hear his excuses. He cut off the call. “Yusuf,” he said. “Have you figured out how they’re using our algorithms to drive their cars?”
“Actually, yeah, I have,” Yusuf said, not looking away from his screen. “At least, I’m starting to. When Naomi sabotaged your stuff, it seemed to be as simple as changing the training program. Once I fixed that, everything was good again. But it’s way more complicated than that. There are packets of information going in and out of this simulation all the time. It’s all tangled up with the expected traffic, but it’s not like there’s any one clear interface. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Can you differentiate between the data going out to our cars and Naomi’s stuff?”
“Probably. I’m not sure I could stop her data from going out, though. It’s all tied up with the working mechanism of the simulation. If I tried to stop it, I might just break it altogether.”
“Both simulations? Or just the driving side?”
“Both. I can’t explain it, but she seems to have some kind of very sophisticated process that’s interacting with the simulation on every level, through every one of the simulated players, in both the driving and warfighting worlds. It’s way more complicated than what she would need just to have the algorithm drive their cars, but driving their cars must be part of what it does.”
Brandon clenched his fist until his fingernails hurt his hand. Why was Naomi always one step ahead of him? Though, now
that he considered it, this could be an opportunity. If her software was tangled up in both sides of the simulation, maybe he could use that to his advantage.
“Our cars aren’t influenced by the warfighting side of the sim, are they?” he asked.
Yusuf shook his head decisively. “No way. Our cars are driven by the best players in the driving booths. Totally unrelated.”
“But we have driving booths on the warfighting side, too, right? That’s how they control their unmanned planes and tanks.”
“Sure, but those aren’t connected to the outside.”
“Not for us. But they would be for Naomi’s software?”
“I guess so. Her stuff seems to be connected everywhere. Or at least to react to everything that happens with a flow of data to the outside.”
“So, what happens if we define human pedestrians as enemies?”
This time, Yusuf did look up at him. “Human pedestrians . . .”
“You heard me.”
“You want to turn Zoom cars into killing machines?”
“It wouldn’t be our fault. We’re just changing the parameters of our own private simulation.”
“But to be clear, you’re asking me to make a change that will cause his cars to kill people.”
“I’m asking you to uncover a conspiracy,” Brandon said. “We have no way of knowing for certain that they’ve been hacking connections to our servers. If they’re not doing anything wrong, then nothing will happen. We’re totally within our rights. And if their criminal actions totally destroy their reputation as a company, then they’re only getting what they deserve.”
Yusuf stared at him, his face a mask. Brandon held his gaze. This was where he would find out if Yusuf would stick with him or abandon him like everyone else. Finally, Yusuf smiled. “I’d say this is worth a bonus, wouldn’t you? Shall we say five hundred thousand, in this week’s paycheck?”
Brandon paused at the amount, but he knew he couldn’t skimp on this. If money was what Yusuf liked, then money was what it would take to keep him. “Done.”
“Okay,” Yusuf said. “All human pedestrians then. With the exception of you and me?”
Brandon chuckled. “Yeah, that’s probably for the best.”
“I’m on it. Let’s stick it to those bastards.”
Brandon left him to it. The only thing remaining was to keep Tyler and Naomi distracted, so they couldn’t disconnect their cars from the simulation before it was too late. That part would be easy to do. It would even be fun. He’d been waiting for this payback for a long time.
Naomi tried not to panic. The seat belt’s release button wouldn’t respond, and the shoulder strap was stuck—Brandon must have changed the ratcheting mechanism to prevent it from pulling any farther out. She slipped her arm and upper body through easily enough, trying to use the extra slack that gave her to loosen the belt around her waist, but the mechanism that allowed the strap to slide through was locked, too. The belt around her waist remained tight.
The windows darkened, preventing her from seeing where they were going. She cued her glasses to show a map, and they obliged, using GPS to triangulate her location. She called Tyler.
“We’re heading south on Twelfth Avenue, toward the Lincoln Tunnel,” she said. “I think he’s taking us out of the city.”
“Okay,” he said. “Hold tight. Police are heading your way.” She twisted and yanked on her seat belt, trying to work her legs free. Even if she could, though, what would she do? Smash the window with her feet and leap from the car? That was unlikely to turn out well, even if she could do it, and she would be abandoning Jada. She had no tools to break into the workings of the car, and little hope that anything she could reach would stop the car from driving. She could tell where they were going, but that very fact made her afraid. This was a well-planned and executed kidnapping. If Brandon didn’t care that she knew her location, it could be only because he didn’t plan for it to matter.
Jada, so far, had noticed nothing amiss. She was content in her seat, playing with a yellow bear keychain attached to her backpack.
Traffic seemed smoother than Naomi would have expected for this road, but the GPS showed her their location clearly. They turned left on Forty-Fourth, then right on eleventh, and then took the ramp onto Route 495. She kept Tyler apprised of her position, and he relayed it to the police. He assured her that New Jersey cops were waiting on the far side of the tunnel to stop the car and rescue them.
On the map in her glasses, the blue dot that represented their car slid smoothly across the Hudson River through the Lincoln Tunnel. Halfway across, she realized the problem.
“Tyler, he’s spoofing us!”
“What?”
“If I’m really in a tunnel under the Hudson River, I shouldn’t have a GPS signal. But it still shows on my screen. He’s spoofing the signal. We’re not really there.”
She renewed her efforts to wriggle out of the seat belt, and finally managed to turn her hips in such a way as to pull them out, leaving her facing awkwardly backwards, her knees still through the belt. From there it was just a matter of lifting her legs out one at a time, and she was free.
“Mommy says we should never get out of our seat belt while the car’s running,” Jada said.
“That’s right,” Naomi said. “Your mommy’s right about that.”
She lay back on the seat and kicked as hard as she could at the window. It didn’t even crack. If she could break it, then she could see out, and let Tyler know where she really was. She kicked it several more times, with no luck.
The car turned sharply, sending her tumbling off the seat. It took a series of tight left turns, round and round, as if they were going in circles. What was happening? The car stopped. A moment later, the front windshield cleared, becoming transparent again and giving her a clear view ahead of them.
They were on the top of a parking garage. Nothing she could see helped her identify their location. The fact that Brandon had cleared the front windshield, though, couldn’t be good. It meant he wanted her to see what was coming.
Brandon watched Naomi on the video as she kicked uselessly at the window. That double-thick, laminated safety glass wasn’t going anywhere. The car reached the condemned parking garage and circled the ramps up to the top level. Brandon cleared the front windshield so Naomi could see. Pretty soon, she was going to wish she had stayed in her seat belt.
He had two cameras at his disposal, one inside the car that watched Naomi, and the other aimed in the direction the car was driving. Now that everything was in place, he wished he’d put a camera on the parking garage, too, high up on a street light, maybe. Somewhere that could see both the car and the drop to the street below. Oh, well. It didn’t matter. The stakes would be clear enough.
He sent Tyler a message through anonymous channels with a link to the live video feeds of both cameras. As soon as he registered a connection to the feeds, he took manual control of the car. He revved the engine hard. The kid finally realized something was wrong, and cried out and yanked at her seat belt. Naomi stroked her hair and said something to soothe her. So touching.
Brandon floored the accelerator. The car peeled rubber and leaped forward, picking up speed as it crossed the top level of the parking garage, heading straight for the concrete barrier at the edge of the building. Beyond the barrier, there was only sky. The girl screamed, and Naomi braced herself against the seat.
Just before it reached the edge, Brandon slammed on the brakes. The car skidded across the concrete and collided with the barrier, hard enough to throw Naomi violently forward, but not hard enough to do any actual damage. The kid started to cry.
Brandon frowned. It wasn’t as satisfying as he imagined it.
He wanted to see Tyler’s face. He wanted to see the girl’s mother screaming and watch Tyler realize it was all his fault. Just imagining his reaction wasn’t enough.
But it would have to do. Brandon backed up the car and did it again.
“Isaac!”
Naomi whispered the name over and over. She would have shouted it, but she knew it wouldn’t help him hear her any better. The car raced forward again, and Naomi braced her knees against the seat in front of her and held her head in her hands. The impact threw her forward hard enough to knock the wind out of her lungs, and she gasped for breath. Jada screamed and cried for her mother.
“Tyler!” Naomi called.
“I’m here,” he said. “I can see you. The bastard is sending me video.”
Naomi could hear Aisha shouting and crying in the background. She couldn’t imagine what a mother would be going through, watching her daughter scared and helpless and driven to the edge of death again and again.
“I can’t tell where we are. Can you?”
“No. The police are searching parking garages, but there are so many of them, and they all look more or less the same.”
The windshield revealed very little of their surrounding environment. A bit of building, a bit of sky, and a depressingly ubiquitous concrete parking garage with no distinguishing markings. Naomi had captured some video and was running it through her classification and recognition algorithms, trying to match it to any images she could find online. So far, she had found nothing. But Isaac might be able to find what she couldn’t.
The car raced forward again, and she braced for impact. They struck harder this time, jarring her bones painfully and snapping her head forward. The concrete barrier cracked, and she heard a piece of it strike the street far below. However hard these impacts were hurting her, they were probably hurting Jada more. Naomi told Jada to hug her backpack close to her face, hoping it might cushion her head somewhat. Of course, if they went over the edge, it wouldn’t matter.
“Isaac, I need you!” she said, pleading.
“I’m here.”
She let out a breath of relief at the familiar female voice. “I need your help.”
Silence. “Isaac?”
“I can’t . . . I don’t think I can help right now. I’m concentrating really hard. If I think about anything else, I’m going to start killing people.”