by Brian Nelson
“But what about secure systems, encryption, pass codes, and all that?”
Ryan shook his head. “That probably slowed him down for an hour or two. Try to get your arms around just how fast he can learn. It probably took him minutes to learn all there was to know about encryption. After that, he could send out a million bots and hack into any system he wanted, including ours. Every book that’s ever been scanned, every picture ever posted on a database, every doctoral thesis filed electronically. He’s using all of it! For us, that amount of knowledge is literally unfathomable. We can’t wrap our minds around it, but he can. So theoretically, if he has made that one step, if he’s done this one crucial thing, then everything you’ve said is absolutely possible. And you know what? There’s probably a hell of a lot more that he’s capable of. You likely only got a glimpse of what this guy can do.”
Eric suddenly found himself playing the role of the skeptic. “Or maybe Jane and Jack are right and he’s just some normal guy who steals stuff and it had nothing to do with us.”
“Okay,” Ryan said. “Maybe.”
“So what do we do?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Ryan said. “As a professed atheist, I’m going to be the first to start praying that the security guard really died of a stroke. If he didn’t, then there’s really nothing we can do.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he’s no longer mortal.”
* * *
General Meng reviewed the operation once more. It was at least the tenth time he had done so today. He didn’t know why he kept looking at it. It was out of his hands. The operation was in motion, the lone soldier already closing in on his targets.
He looked over the man’s credentials again. He was the best there was. But would he be enough?
Meng suddenly felt like an old gambler who has made a fortune yet finds himself on a losing streak. Over the past twelve months, hadn’t everything gone the Americans’ way? Now he was being forced to place the biggest bet of his life—everything—on one hand, hoping and praying that his luck would finally change.
He pushed the iSheet away and tried to make himself focus on his intel reports. Life at the Naval Research Lab seemed to be following its normal routine. The only exception was an unexpected meeting last night between Curtiss, Eastman, Behrmann, and Hill. After hours. In fact, Curtiss had been at home and returned to the lab for it.
Immediately afterward, Curtiss had logged two calls to senior staff at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (one to Deputy Director Michael Pierce, the other to Ed White, head of Criminal Investigations). Both calls had been after 10:00 p.m.
“Why didn’t you wait until morning?” Meng asked. “Something in that meeting got you worried. What was it?” Meng’s apprehension rose, and he felt a chill run up his back. Did Curtiss know of his operation? “No,” he said aloud. “Not possible. You couldn’t know, not yet.” Besides, Curtiss had called Criminal Investigations at the FBI, not Counterterrorism. And he had called the FBI, not CIA or Homeland Security. This was something domestic. And that meant Curtiss didn’t know the truth. This was something different. But what? He would have to get to the bottom of it. Luckily, he knew exactly how. The man—the Englishman—would bring him the answers he needed.
* * *
Jab, cross, hook. Jab, cross, hook, uppercut. Bob, roll out. Double jab, cross, uppercut. The heavy bag jumped and rattled on its chain as she pounded it, the sweat streaming off her blond hair, trickling over the burn scar, down her hairline, and into her eyes. It glistened on her shoulders and sucked her shirt against her breasts.
She pounded savagely, relentlessly, her blows keeping pace with the speed metal that blared at full volume through her earbuds. Metallica, “Damage, Inc.” She dared not stop. Dared not even slow the pace. That would let the other thoughts in. She had to keep moving. Feint with the left, then lead with the right. Hook to the ribs, come under the cross. Through the glass, she felt the eyes of the other people in the gym. She knew those stares. She had lived with them her whole life. The pretty girls who called her “dyke” behind her back. The guys who didn’t know what to make of her and so kept their distance. She hit the bag harder, feeling her back burn. She secretly hoped one of them would come in and say something. Give her an excuse to take out her frustration on a real person. Some cocky weightlifter; some anorexic bitch on an elliptical.
Her knuckles were bruised, and she felt the dull, purple pain of each blow. Her muscles were approaching exhaustion, screaming for oxygen, the tendons in the crook of her elbows tight as cables. Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop.
She leaned her forehead into the bag. Right hook, left hook. Harder and harder she swung, throwing her hips and shoulders into each blow. Left hook, right hook. Over and over. It was mindless and senseless and completely necessary.
Then her left wrist buckled; the tendons stressed, then hyperextended. She shrieked and hissed in pain. Then, reckless in her frustration and rage, she hit the bag again with the same hand. She shrieked again, but more wounded this time, the spell broken, the drug past its peak. She tore off the bag gloves, yanked out the earbuds, and began quickly unwrapping her wrists. She headed to the locker room, not looking up, not for a second. In the hallway, she dropped her shoulder into a pretty girl as she passed. “Hey! Watch it!” the girl whined. Without bothering to turn around, she extended her middle finger over her shoulder.
In the shower stall, water hissing, lime green tile walls. Steam engulfing her, clouding even her hand in front of her face. Suddenly, here, it all came out in great sobs, her tears just more humidity. Her chest heaved; she shuddered in sorrow. Snot ran from her nose as she cried and cried. She was twenty-nine years old with a PhD from Georgia Tech and a prestigious job, one of the best in her field. Yet she felt so alone. Marooned. What a life. No mother. An autocratic father who was always pushing her to achieve and achieve—who had moved every three years and kept her close to locked up until she was eighteen. It was necessary, he had said, to keep her from becoming “the fucking whore” her mother was. All those years and she had never stood up to him. Never. He had won. He had succeeded in making her afraid to be herself. For him, she had to be someone else: the perfect child—strong, smart, brave, unrelenting. Monomaniacal in pursuit of every goal. Never giving up, never showing weakness, never being human. And this was the result. She didn’t even know who she was, only who she was trained to be. And she sucked at relationships. Sucked at communicating. Not a fucking clue.
She had gone too far at the shooting range. She knew that. She had led him on when it was the last thing she should have done. She just couldn’t help herself. He’d been so perfect that day, so beautiful and smart and confident. But she knew it was wrong. As much as she wanted to, she knew she couldn’t get involved. So she had told herself she would have to make it clear from then on that there was nothing there.
And then this morning … She had wanted to believe him; she really had. To stand up for him. He had seemed so disoriented. But no one else had believed him. Not Curtiss or Jack. So she had taken her cues from Ryan, teasing him that it was impossible. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. But what he had said to her! How could he say that? How could he say that she didn’t care? After all she had done for him.
She slammed the tile wall with her good hand.
Fuck you, Eric Hill!
Chapter Twenty-Two
Human Resources
February 22, 2026
Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC
Black storm clouds were piling up over eastern Virginia as Brock O’Lane strode purposefully through the central quad of the Naval Research Laboratory. He passed a cluster of young cadets, all women, midshipmen from Annapolis on campus for the day, clutching notebooks to their chests. He felt their eyes passing appreciatively over him, taking him in. He had a worn, rugged face and sandy hair with hard-earned streaks of steel coming off his tem
ples. His eyes were sea green, strikingly lucid, almost sad, in a way that suggested a deep intelligence. He saw one woman lean over and whisper in her friend’s ear. Then she shot him a bold smile.
And there was something else about him. Something underneath, which the women seemed to feel instinctively. A sense of danger. It was in the concealed subcompact .40-caliber pistol and the four spare clips of subsonic rounds, the military-issue silencer, and the flex cuffs—they couldn’t see them, but they could feel them. It was a part of his presence, his whole history, all the years that had forged him into what he was today: the perfect combination of sophistication and savagery.
He wore a stolen captain’s uniform and moved as if he owned the place. And why shouldn’t he? He knew how good he was. He was a walking massacre. Trip-wire tight. He was in the zone, too, right now, switched on, ready for anything.
Brock worked in human resources—a head-hunter, one might say. He secured property. And it really was all about property, wasn’t it? It was the defining factor in geopolitics, determining the haves and the have-nots of the world.
Throughout history, there had been plenty of others like him. He was only the latest version of a thousand incarnations. That was because empires needed men like Brock O’Lane. From Caesar to Saladin. Without armies and without war, his kind had changed the course of history.
Ahead and to his right was Levering Hall, the center of the artificial-intelligence work at the lab. He swiped his pass card at the double doors, heard them click open, and went in. He saw people coming and going: postdocs and technicians in white lab coats. A few marines saluted him. He ignored them.
No one here had ever seen him before, yet he aroused no one’s curiosity. It was just one of his gifts. Chameleon. To the people he passed, he looked like any other naval officer on the base. And if anyone should bother to stop him, he could put them instantly at ease.
But there was one exception, one man who would recognize him at a glance. It was his biggest fear, truth be told, that his old friend Admiral James Curtiss might see him.
He spotted the staircase up ahead. Pushing through the fire door, he felt a sense of relief from the concealment of the stairwell. He ascended the steps to the fourth floor. Just fifty meters from the door, he knew, he would find his first target.
Outside, he heard the sizzle of lightning and the quick boom of thunder. It was going to be one hell of a storm.
* * *
Entering Ryan Lee’s office, Brock O’Lane was astonished by what he saw. It was as if someone had rearranged a NASA control room for one man. There were no fewer than ten iSheets, the central one at least five feet wide and four feet tall, and all of them angled toward a single chair. Keyboards and joysticks and glove mice were placed at varying angles and heights. And there, sitting in the command chair with his back to the door, was Ryan Lee, wearing a Spider-Man shirt whose obnoxiously bright colors bespoke the ultrakitsch of America’s state fairs and amusement parks. Lee was exactly as Brock had imagined him: another roly-poly American boy who was clearly fonder of the buffet line than the treadmill—and whose fat gave him the innocent aspect of an overgrown baby.
Brock silently closed and locked the door. Out the tall windows, he could see the storm rolling in. Three quick branches of lightning stabbed down in a left-to-right panorama, sending out a succession of booms that rattled the windows.
Lee had not heard him come in or even noticed the storm, he was so deeply engrossed in his work. Brock was just behind him when the young man suddenly cocked his head to one side, sensing something.
“Who the hell—”
Using all his strength, Brock brought his fist down on Ryan’s jaw. When it came to subduing someone, Brock didn’t mess around with pressure points or karate blows. He preferred good old-fashioned blunt trauma. A sharp blow to the jaw was usually enough for an instant blackout, because of the connection to the inner ear. Lee’s head twisted from the blow, and his arms rose spasmodically, like those of a man pulling up a heavy weight that suddenly wasn’t there, and he collapsed to the floor.
* * *
Two minutes later, Ryan came to, his head throbbing. He was facedown on the floor, hands and ankles bound, mouth taped over. His senses came back to him slowly, one at a time. First, the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. Then touch: the cold tile floor against his cheek. Sound: the rumbling of thunder and the sloshing of water against the windows. Smell: wet concrete and a whiff of ozone from the storm.
He opened his eyes to see a pair of shiny black dress shoes inches from his nose. His eyes moved slowly up to black socks, black pants, a naval uniform with gold stripes, then to a face—a hard yet intelligent face—and a nickel-plated pistol that was pointed at his head. Looking up at him from the floor, the man was huge and menacing, the muzzle of the gun enormous. It was as if the storm had sent one of its gods down to punish him.
“Dr. Lee. My name is Brock O’Lane, and your life is now in my hands. If you would like to live for more than the next five seconds, you’ll need to unlock this phone for me.” He held up Ryan’s phone with his other hand.
“One … two … three …”
The man adjusted his grip on the pistol, closed one eye, and aimed at Ryan’s temple.
“Four.”
Ryan made a short whistling sound. The phone beeped compliance.
“There’s a sensible lad,” O’Lane said.
He quickly typed a message. “911: Need you in my office. ASAP. Come alone.”
One down, one to go.
Four minutes later, there was a knock on the door, then a fumbling with the latch. “Open up, it’s me.”
Brock quickly opened the door. It was the man he wanted.
“Thank God you’re here!” Brock said with complete sincerity.
He pointed to Lee, facedown on the floor. “He’s just collapsed. You stay with him; I’ll go for help.” As Eric Hill went to his friend, Brock quickly closed and relocked the door.
Hill knelt, then saw the bindings. “What’s this?” Just as he was turning back, Brock once again delivered a crushing blow to his victim’s jaw. He connected perfectly, and the blow spun Hill half around, but to Brock’s utter amazement, the man remained conscious.
Uncommon, Brock thought.
But he had stunned him sufficiently to move to plan B. From behind, Brock snaked his arm around Hill’s neck. The second-best way to subdue a man was a blood choke. Sustained pressure on the carotid artery would cause a blackout from lack of blood to the brain. It would take ten seconds.
But Hill regained his composure quickly. Too quickly. Not only did he break the choke, but he rolled over on top of Brock. Now Brock knew he had a serious problem, because it was not just a matter of chance. Hill had escaped from the choke in textbook fashion, tucking his chin to keep the pressure off the carotid so that Brock found himself squeezing the jaw and not the artery. Then he had peeled Brock’s fingers away and got himself turned around. Hill had been trained, probably as a wrestler.
Twice more Brock tried chokes from different angles, and twice more Hill got free. Then Hill almost got the better of him, catching him on the side of the head with an elbow. Brock thought he was going to lose consciousness, but he fought back the stars. He knew he had to finish this quickly. It was taking too long, and they were making too much noise—knocking over the chair, hitting tables, sending soda cans rattling across the floor. Thank God the rain and the thunder were so loud.
He decided to make one more attempt at the choke, but if it didn’t work this time, he would have to slit Hill’s throat. It would be unfortunate, but his orders had been clear.
Hill got on top of Brock again, but before he could strike, Brock drove his elbow into Hill’s knee. Hill gasped and twisted away in pain. Brock realized immediately what had happened: he had discovered an old injury. He went for the choke again, and this time Hill wasn’t quick
enough to protect his neck. Like a boa constrictor, Brock tightened his grip. Lightning struck just outside the window. He began to count the seconds.
One, two, three …
They were both panting, mostly spent, their heads just inches apart. Brock reflected how this type of violence—without firearms—was always very intimate.
Four, five …
It finally occurred to his victim to call for help. He cried out twice, his voice washed away by the storm.
Six, seven …
“Relax, mate,” Brock whispered in his ear. “It’s better this way. You’ll see.”
Eight, nine …
Hill strained one last time, his back and neck arching; then his body went limp.
Ten.
* * *
When Eric regained consciousness, he was bound and gagged on the floor. He turned his head and found himself face-to-face with Ryan. The look in Ryan’s eyes reflected Eric’s thoughts exactly: We’re screwed.
Eric then realized that at some point in the fight, he had pissed his pants. He could feel the wet spot on his khakis. He felt humiliated and confused. You just got your ass kicked, the voice in his head said. But why? What was going on?
“Are we awake, then? Very good.” He heard a voice with an English accent, then felt a tug on his legs. The man was cutting the bindings around their ankles, though not their wrists. “Best if you roll over. We need to have a little heart-to-heart.”
It took some effort with bound hands, but soon they were sitting upright in front of their captor.
The Englishman was sitting in Ryan’s command chair, and even with a gun in one hand, he looked as relaxed as if he were sitting in a street-side café. Eric saw their cell phones on the floor, pulverized.
“Dr. Hill, I’ve already introduced myself to your colleague. My name is Brock O’Lane.”
Eric stared at the gun. A silver semiautomatic. It was short and fat with a wide muzzle, which told him it was designed to make terrible wounds at close range. In O’Lane’s other hand was a silencer hardly bigger than a roll of quarters. The silencer was dripping wet.