Stealth Power

by Vikki Kestell

  The nanomites had obeyed my voice commands in two recent instances: They had uploaded my files and burned the hard drive, and they’d unlocked and started a car for me.

  I blinked. Oh, yeah—and on my last trip to the tunnels, they cut through chain link fence and fried a snake, probably saving my life.

  I hadn’t asked them to, but they’d acted on my behalf anyway.

  “Huh.”

  Um, and they unlocked the door to the drug house so that I could escape the fire I set.

  Most recently they’d written two messages to me on the wall. The notes were “for-sure” progress—actual communication in response to questions! I felt a tiny spurt of hope flicker and push against the low-grade depression clinging to me.

  What else would the nanomites do for me? What else could they do? And why the shift in their behavior?

  I might not understand the why, but I needed the nanomites and their cooperation. I needed them if I—if we—were to do more than survive, if I were to keep ahead of the melancholy that dogged me and tried to suck me down. If even a slim chance existed that we might rescue Dr. Bickel.

  Well, first, I needed the mites to locate him.

  I wanted to liberate my old friend, yes, but Dr. Bickel was also the key to my many other problems. He was my sole hope of getting the nanomites out of me so I could reclaim my life.

  Cushing won’t want me once the mites have left me. She will stop pursuing me and leave me alone once they are gone.

  It was a lie I could almost convince myself to believe.

  Maybe the why regarding the shift in the mites’ behavior didn’t matter if they continued to do what I asked? I’d have to figure out the “what else could they do” part as we went along.

  I strolled through the Walmart not far from the intersection of Carlisle and Candelaria. It wasn’t my regular store, but it had the same layout as the one I was accustomed to—except reversed. Flipped. Everything opposite of what I was used to. Having shopped Walmart with the nanomites in the middle of the night many times, I felt comfortable, almost relaxed, roaming the store’s rows and aisles. I passed maybe five late-night customers on my way to the back of the store, but I felt confident that I could manage to keep out of their way.

  In the hardware department, I pulled a heavy-duty extension cord from the shelf and stuffed it into one of the bags hung gunslinger style across my shoulders. I’d cut, hand-stitched, and otherwise jury-rigged a lone pillowcase I’d found in the safe house into two temporary shopping bags. They weren’t perfect, but they would work for now.

  Then I wandered into the electronics department and found a single clerk on duty and two young men perusing music and videos.

  Or were they only browsing?

  One guy cut his eyes toward the clerk while the other stuffed a few items down his pants. They feigned looking at CDs a bit longer, then headed for the exit.

  Punks!

  I was angry with them—until I remembered that I had “borrowed” a neighbor’s car myself.

  Well, I’ll leave gas money in the glove box, I decided.

  Then I sneered at my excuse. Yeah, because that totally makes “borrowing” a car without permission all right.

  Shut up.

  I found the prepaid, no-plan phones first—behind a locked glass door in plain sight of the cashier. A sign read, “Ask Associate to Open Case.”

  Uh, not likely.

  I placed my palm on the glass and then grimaced.

  You do know that glass is the perfect medium for leaving fingerprints, right?

  I took my hand off the glass and used the hem of my shirt to smear the glass. With my hand inside my shirt, I again laid my palm on the glass.

  “Nano.” I paused a beat. “Unlock this door.”

  I waited—but not for long.

  Warmth. Faint blue light. Click. Lock open.

  I slid two phones from the case and shoved them into the bags under my shirt. I started to close the sliding glass door. Changed my mind. Grabbed a third phone—just in case. Closed the sliding glass door.

  “Nano. Lock the case.”

  Done.

  Wow. They are getting faster.

  Girls Wear was across the aisle from the electronics department. I crossed over, faced a carousel of dresses, and pulled one phone out of my bag so I could examine it. Leery of security cameras around the store, I pushed the dresses apart and held the phone between garments while I studied the plastic packaging.

  Uh-oh.

  The phone had an anti-theft tag attached to it—an electronic security device that would trigger an alarm when I walked out the door.

  Well, of course it does, dimwit.

  “So, no self-pay register,” I mumbled to myself. “Better and better.”

  Lots of questions caromed around inside: Could the nanomites remove or deactivate the tags? But then what? Could I ring the phones up at a self-checkout register?

  Or I should just walk out without paying for them?

  I sighed and thrust the decision aside, delaying what I felt was my inevitable descent into a life of crime.

  “Nano.”

  How to phrase this?

  I touched the anti-theft tag. “Nano, this package has an electronic device attached to it. My finger is on it. Deactivate the device so that it doesn’t trigger the alarm at the store exit.”

  A spate of chirping ensued, but it lasted mere seconds before a stream of mites swarmed out my fingertips, were gone a few seconds, and returned to me.

  I wasn’t convinced that the tag was deactivated, but I didn’t have a way to test it—except to walk out the door. I pulled the second phone from my bag and went through the same process. Ditto for the third.

  Then I went in search of a laptop. Not the best selection in the world, but I wasn’t complaining—any one of them would do. The display models were chained to the countertop, but the boxed computers, just as the phones had been, were stored under the counters behind locked doors.

  Same routine: “Nano. Unlock this door.”

  Routine? Yes; I guess I was getting used to telling them what to do, and they were getting faster at doing it. Apparently, they were learning, too, starting to guess what I would ask them next.

  Predictive logic, Dr. Bickel had called it.

  I pulled the model I’d decided on from the shelf. As soon as I touched it, the nanomites swarmed onto it and—I presumed—deactivated the anti-theft tags.

  “Nano. Thank you,” I told them.

  Silence.

  Right. Because social niceties were probably irrelevant to them.

  I headed for the front of the store and the self-checkout registers. I had to wait until the area was clear before I touched the self-service screen and obeyed the prompt: “Scan your first item, please.”

  I scanned one of the phones. A message appeared on the register’s screen: “Security device attached. This item must be paid for in the Electronics Department.”

  Drat.

  The scanner might not be able to discern if the tags were active or not, but the bar code generated the same result: I could not pay for the electronics I needed at a self-service register.

  I paced the area in front of the scanner, an inexorable decision looming closer and my own twerpy version of Hamlet’s soliloquy racing around in my head:

  To steal or not to steal? That is the question.

  Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

  The slings and arrows of outrageous conscience

  Or to take arms against a sea of adverse circumstances

  “Not to mention a sea of Cushing’s stormtroopers,” I grumbled.

  I don’t think many people my age are tormented by my brand of über, steroid-driven scruples. Then again, not many were raised by a surrogate mom whose moral compass was superglued on True North, whose worldview was black-black or white-white and ne’er the twain shall meet, let alone mix. Nor are many people saddled with an identical twin sister who is the very antithesis of principle,
and whom, I am convinced, does not possess a conscience to be pricked or wounded—a sister I had vowed I would never emulate.

  At the word “conscience,” my mind shifted a couple of stanzas ahead in Hamlet’s lament.

  . . . The dread of something after death,

  the undiscovered country,

  from whose bourn no traveler returns,

  puzzles the will,

  and makes us rather bear those ills we have

  than fly to others that we know not of?

  Thus conscience does make cowards of us all

  Thanks again to Aunt Lu for depositing a healthy dread of death and hell into my impressionable young psyche. She had made me more afraid of breaking her code of conduct than I was of Cushing.

  Yeah, so I have a conscience, and that makes me a coward, I fretted, but I’m being pursued. Hunted. Doesn’t that count for something? Doesn’t it make my choices understandable?

  Cushing certainly has no conscience about what she’s doing, I reminded my personal Jiminy Cricket. Why do I have to play by different rules? I need this stuff to survive!

  As I held my internal debate, Zander’s face made another appearance, and his expression, saddened by my moral quibbles, added weight on the coward’s side.

  I stood there, waffling, for five minutes, before I growled in frustration and sprinted for the exit. I jetted past the bakery and deli and was within steps of the door when a knife shot through my palm.

  “Yeeoow!” I flung my hand side to side, trying to shake fiery darts from my palm.

  The head of a woman browsing the produce section swiveled toward me. I ignored her concerned and confused gape as I rubbed my palm against my leg to numb the pain. My fruitless efforts were accompanied by soft chittering.

  “Stupid, stupid Nano,” I mumbled.

  Abrupt quiet.

  I huffed and started toward Electronics, but I was outright disgusted.

  I was disgusted with the nanomites and all the grief they’d caused me.

  I was disgusted with Dr. Bickel for creating an artificial intelligence that, ostensibly, possessed more moral fiber than I did.

  And I was disgusted with myself.

  When I arrived at Electronics, I folded my arms and considered the clerk behind the counter. I studied the register, noted the clerk’s employee number. Came up with an idea.

  It was worth a try, anyway.

  Sure a lot of trouble just to be “ethical,” isn’t it? some cynical voice scoffed.

  “Shut it!”

  The clerk lifted his head and stared, but I was already crossing the aisle to the Girls Wear register. I found a store phone hanging behind the fitting room attendant’s counter, and put my hand on it.

  “Nano.”

  I already knew the mites could invade an electronic system and hijack its functionality. I knew they were capable of following complex instructions, too—but would they? Right then, I almost wanted to see them stymied.

  Stupid bugs! Moral high ground be hanged.

  “Nano. Use the store’s PA system to call Employee 157 to the front of the store.”

  Their expectant silence was replaced by a low chittering that lasted thirty seconds or so and was followed by the usual warmth flowing down my arm and out my hand.

  A minute later, I heard a mechanical voice intone over the speakers, “Employee 157. Report to the front of the store. Employee 157.”

  How do they do that?

  I saw our Electronics Department clerk fiddle with his register and pull out his key, locking it down. I jogged toward the register as the clerk fast-walked away.

  Behind the counter, I placed my hand on the register and spoke. “Nano. Use Employee 157’s account to activate this register. Scan and ring up the items in my bag and provide a total for a cash payment.”

  The level of nanomite activity went into overdrive for many seconds—and I saw the display on the register begin to move, to add prices, calculate tax, and come up with a total.

  The register drawer popped opened with a ding.

  I won’t kid you—I was amazed.

  I yanked a stack of twenty dollar bills from one of my bags and peeled off thirty-six of them.

  “Nano. I am paying with $720 in cash. Enter that amount.”

  The numbers appeared on the display about the same time as I spied the clerk hustling toward me. I stuffed the cash into the right slot in the drawer, counted out the correct change, slammed the drawer closed, and stepped out from behind the counter as the breathless and red-faced clerk arrived.

  I moved back and dumped the change in my bag, wondering if he’d notice anything awry.

  The guy glanced around his work area and then, reassured that all was as it should be, pulled his cellphone from the rear pocket of his khakis and pressed buttons.

  He cursed under his breath as the call went through. “Hey, it’s me. You won’t believe what just happened. Yeah, at work. I got chewed out for leaving my department—even though I was called to the front of the store over the PA system! I know, right?”

  I didn’t hear anything further. I shot down an aisle and out the front door toward “my” vehicle. For a second I couldn’t remember what kind of car I’d driven—but then I recalled where I’d parked it. I hustled to it and put a hand on the trunk lid.

  “Nano. Open the trunk.”

  Click.

  I piled the phones, extension cord, and laptop inside and closed the trunk in under ten seconds.

  I stood there in the parking lot, breathing hard, my heart hammering. I was both relieved and elated. As soon as my pulse slowed, I pointed my feet toward the front entrance a second time.

  I sighed with hungry anticipation. “Now for some groceries. This is the easy part.”

  I had to restrain my enthusiasm a bit because I wanted to eat everything I laid eyes on. But even after I’d paid for and hauled two sets of foodstuffs to the car, I had to come back for personal items—and all that stuff took two trips, too.

  I shoved toothbrush, tooth paste, floss, mouthwash, brush, comb, face cream, shampoo, shower curtain and hooks, shower cap, towels, washcloths, bathmat, dish soap, laundry detergent and softener, and a simple selection of clothes, including a lightweight hoody, into the trunk of my “borrowed” car.

  Clean underwear.

  Yay me.

  I returned the car to its owner an hour later. Before that, I’d driven it up the alley behind my house and emptied the trunk, piling all the stuff on the other side of the block wall—discreetly, of course. Then I’d driven the short distance to the car’s home, left it at the curb where I’d found it (a twenty in the glovebox), and walked back.

  I stood on the back porch, scanning for prying eyes before I unlocked the door. It took five trips to haul everything inside the unlighted house, and I felt a lot better when I was finished. I surveilled the neighboring houses once more before I closed and locked the back door.

  As I unpacked and put food away, I realized how famished I was. I opened a can of soup. While it heated and I watched the numbers on the microwave’s old-school display flip over, I gobbled up two pieces of fruit and chugged a bottle of juice. When the microwave dinged, I pulled the hot soup out and wolfed it down with some crumbled crackers.

  Afterward, I wanted to get straight to work, but my poor body was having none of it. Instead, with my tummy warm and full, the exhaustion of the last days overcame my resolve. I cut open the packaging around the three phones and put them on to charge, and plugged in the new extension cord. With the cord grasped in my hand, I collapsed into the bed.

  I’ll get busy first thing in the morning, I told myself as I drifted away, and maybe the nanomites will find Dr. Bickel!

  ***

  Imogene Cushing picked up the phone on its second ring. “Yes?”

  The mechanical voice on the other end said only four words: “Secure phone call requested.”

  Cushing put down her phone and marched from her office and down the hall. “Mrs. Barela, I wil
l be in the SCIF.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Cushing crossed the parking lot that surrounded the MEMS and AMEMS labs, followed a sidewalk some distance, and entered another building. A guard at the security checkpoint scrutinized her credentials. When he allowed her to pass, she walked down a hallway. At the end of the hall she swiped her clearance badge to activate the security features on a heavy door. She entered her personal code to complete the sequence. The lock on the door snapped open. She entered, closed the door behind her, and manually engaged another lock that switched on a red light in the hallway above the door, signaling that the SCIF was in use.

  The “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility” was built to stringent government requirements and was swept daily for listening devices. Anyone who attempted to enter the SCIF passed through meticulous screening to verify the individual’s identity and proper clearance level. These measures ensured that the room was a safe and secure location for classified conversations.

  The room housed a single computer terminal. The terminal was “air gapped,” that is, hard-wired to a dedicated government network but physically isolated from all other networks, secure or unsecure. No wireless signal could penetrate the walls of the SCIF, nor did the SCIF’s computer possess Wi-Fi capability. Access to the hard-wired, classified network was granted only through rigorous login procedures.

  The SCIF also contained a single phone line hardwired to a secure and encrypted phone network.

  Cushing picked up the secure phone and dialed a number she knew by memory. When the two scrambled lines synced, the party on the other end greeted her.

  “Good morning, General Cushing. Thank you for calling.”

  “What is it, Colonel?”

  She listened, her expression growing angrier by the moment. “What do you mean, ‘Bickel sent an email’? How? How could he have done that? I ordered that he be allowed no computer access!”

  She listened, and shouted into the receiver. “A guard’s smart phone? Who gave the guards permission to carry personal phones?”

  As the voice on the other end of the line continued to speak, Cushing tapped a pencil tip on the surface next to the phone. Harder and harder. Until the fine point snapped. “They were playing cards with the prisoner?”