Brain Jack

by Brian Falkner

  “Get back to the workstation,” Dodge said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Kiwi was just walking in as Sam returned to his own desk and was looking around, aware that something was going on.

  “What just happened in here?” he asked.

  “Swamp Witch,” Sam said. “Some kind of seizure, or stroke, or something.”

  What else could he say, really? What else did he know for sure?

  “Oh.” Kiwi looked shocked and unsure what to say. He put on his headset and plugged in. After a moment, he said, as if it was somehow important, “Vienna’s on her way.”

  When Dodge sat down at his desk, there was an edge to his jawline. He pulled his neuro-headset down over his biohazard tattoo and looked at Sam with narrowed eyes.

  “What are you doing?” Sam asked.

  “I’m going after them,” he said. “Right now. Are you with me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that whoever messed with Swamp Witch cannot have blasted their way into this room, through all our security, without leaving traces.”

  “Dodge.” Sam looked down and spoke quietly. “I don’t think it’s safe. Don’t ask me how, but I think the neuro-headsets have something to do with it.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Dodge agreed, “and I’m just as sure that it’s the only way we’re going to be able to keep up with these guys. Now I’m going after them. Are you with me or not?”

  “What if they do to you what they did to Swamp Witch?” Sam blurted.

  “They won’t,” Dodge said darkly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you are going to protect me, wingman.”

  Sam stared at him for a moment, then strapped on his headset. “Hit it,” he said.

  They started in the swamp, breaching security with callous disregard for protocol. They swept through the interior network with their scanners blazing, illuminating every nook and cranny of the structure. Sam ran his scopes at full power, checking and rechecking Dodge’s system every few fractions of a second.

  “Code fragments,” Dodge’s voice said inside Sam’s head. “Chewed up and spat out. Same stuff we saw after the terrorists attacked us. Same stuff we saw in Chicago.”

  “Why leave it lying around?” Sam asked. “Why not wipe up the traces?”

  “I don’t know,” Dodge said. “Am I still clean?”

  “As a whistle,” Sam said.

  “I want to check out the firewalls,” Dodge said. “Try and find out how they got in. Stay with me.”

  “No problem,” Sam said.

  The firewalls were solid. No holes, no tunnels, not even a small data leak.

  “So they disabled part of the security and enabled it again when they left?” Sam suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” Dodge said. “These aren’t toys, and they’re overlapping protective fields so that you’d have to crack two firewalls simultaneously. Impossible unless you had a tunnel like the terrorists used, one that has been filled in and welded shut.”

  “How, then?”

  “I don’t know,” Dodge said. “Maybe they just passed through the firewalls, like ghosts passing through a solid wall.”

  “You’re not suggesting ghosts?” Sam almost laughed.

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” Dodge said. “It’s possible, theoretically, to bypass any software on any system, if you’re able to program on the fly in machine code.”

  “Theoretically,” Sam said, running a security check on Dodge’s CPU cycles. “But a few days ago, you were saying it was impossible to program in real time. Nobody could write low-level machine code on the fly.”

  “Which is why we’ve never considered it before,” Dodge agreed. “But what if somebody could? Some genius. Some freak.”

  “Still not possible,” Sam said. “Machine code is different from machine to machine. The CPUs in the routers use different addressing and bit-and-byte order from the firewalls, and they are different from the servers. You’d have to be coding them all simultaneously.”

  “If you’re free tomorrow, my grandma needs an egg-sucking lesson,” Dodge said. “Let’s head out of the building; I am going to release some search spiders and hunt for more of that chewed code. See if the phantom has left a trail.”

  “Dodge, think this through,” Sam said. “The phantom wipes out the terrorists. So the phantom is on our side, right?”

  “You’d guess so, wouldn’t you,” Dodge said.

  “Then someone wipes out the spammers and the gamers.”

  “Did the world a favor.”

  “Then someone wipes out Swamp Witch,” Sam said carefully.

  “And you think it’s the phantom doing it all?” Dodge said. “But why help us fight the terrorists, then attack us? Whose side is the phantom really on?”

  “Its own,” Sam said. “Maybe it has its own reasons for taking out the terrorists. As for Swamp Witch, maybe she just went digging a little too deep and stumbled onto something she wasn’t supposed to. Maybe the phantom was just protecting itself. Protecting its identity.”

  Dodge nodded. “First, delete all the incriminating evidence in her computer. Then delete all the incriminating evidence in her brain.”

  “The phantom is probably watching us right now,” Sam said.

  “Probably.”

  “That’s what you want,” Sam realized. “You want to be attacked! You’re poking a stick into the hornet’s nest, trying to stir up some trouble.”

  “And when it comes, we’ll be able to see where it’s coming from,” Dodge said.

  “You’re relying on me to protect you!” Sam said with horror.

  “Isn’t that what you get paid for?”

  “Dodge, the phantom swatted Swamp Witch like a fly. It’s too risky.”

  “No,” Dodge said. “I’m going now, while the trail is still hot, and—” He broke off, staring at his screen.

  “What have you got?” Sam asked.

  “Returns from the spiders. That chewed-looking code. They’re finding it all over the place.”

  “How could that be?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe the phantom is hiding in the machine code, trolling along the lower levels of the Internet like some big-arsed shark cruising around the ocean. But when it breaks surface, that’s where it’s leaving the crushed remains of the code. Maybe if we analyze the pattern of code fragment sites, we can find the source, track its location.”

  “This is nuts,” Sam said. “Let’s at least wait until Vienna gets in. She and Kiwi can help me cover your backside while you go do your bait-dangling thing.”

  “I’m not going to let this trail get cold.”

  “Dodge, I’m serious. It’s not just the Internet firewalls the phantom is breaking through; it’s getting through neuro-firewalls as well. Into your brain!”

  Dodge shook his head, concentrating on his center screen.

  “No way. I’m getting out of here,” Sam said, reaching for his headset. “Seriously, the phantom probably knows what we’re thinking right now. It knows we’re after it and—”

  A million bolts of lightning flashed behind his eyes. A searing pain ripped at his temples. A spasm of pain pulsed through his arms, which jerked wildly, flicking the headset from his scalp. It clattered onto the floor by his chair.

  “Get your headset off, now!” Sam shrieked, turning to Dodge.

  Dodge’s eyes were white, turned upward in his skull. His hands were claws, gripping the arms of his chair, and the tendons in his neck strained as his head thrust backward. His mouth opened in a cruel, demonic grin, and he began to scream.

  WISDOM

  28 | TYLER

  Cuthbertson, the watch officer, met Tyler at the door. “It’s a full team scramble.”

  “What’s the alert?” Tyler asked.

  “Something going on in the main control center,” Cuthbertson said.

  Tyler strapped on his weapons kit and crossed to the operations computer.


  “ ‘Arthur Philip Dodgerson and Sam Robert Wilson,’ ” he read off the screen. “Dodge and Sam. No way. I’ve known Dodge for years.”

  “I don’t know what they’ve been up to,” Cuthbertson said, “but Jaggard wants us to bring them in, and to do it now.”

  “Okay. Where is the team?” Tyler asked.

  “Already assembling in the Go Room.”

  “Good. Let’s take these guys down now and worry about what they’ve been up to later. Lock down their keycards so they can’t get out.”

  Tyler picked his neuro-headset up off his desk and pulled it firmly down over his head, squashing his hair.

  This doesn’t make any sense, he thought. He plugged his neuro-headset into the waistband receptor unit and switched it on, immediately immersing himself in the flurry of questions and messages flying back and forth from his team.

  “This is Tyler,” he communicated. “I want a team of four. Sergeant Hutchens, you pick three others. We go in two minutes.”

  There were confirmations from the team.

  Surely not Dodge? The other kid is new and maybe hiding something, but not Dodge. No way.

  There seemed to be something wrong with the headset, and he repositioned it slightly on his head. There was a buzzing, low and annoying, inside his head, as if a blowfly had flitted in one ear and was trying to find a way out.

  He checked the connection at the receptor unit, but it was firm. The buzzing continued, a tickling at the base of his brain. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and after a moment it faded.

  He checked the position of his headset again and retrieved his sidearm from the equipment locker.

  What had he been thinking about?

  Dodge and Sam, of course. Sam had looked shifty from the start, he remembered. And several times he had caught him accessing unauthorized information.

  Why hadn’t he remembered that before? The memory was vivid, with the clarity and focus of a dream you had just woken up from.

  And Dodge. He had always had his suspicions about Dodge, with his bald head and tattoos. He was too anti-authority. He could not be trusted.

  Tyler checked his weapon and headed for the Go Room.

  29 | JAGGARD

  John Jaggard stared at the alert message on the screen in front of him. A seize-and-detain notice for Dodge and Sam. What was that about?

  According to the screen, he was the one who had given the order. But he hadn’t. Unless he was going mad. It had been a mad kind of an afternoon, but he’d know if he had given an order like that!

  He’d remember something like that.

  According to the notes on the action command, Dodge and Sam were implicated in the attack on Swamp Witch. But they hadn’t been involved as far as he knew.

  He would have remembered something like that too.

  The terrorists were back. That was the only solution that made sense. They were back, and they were using the system, his system, to issue fake orders.

  A flashing alert on his computer screen warned him of an incoming message. Urgent. A neuro-communication. He grappled with the headset, still not used to the technology.

  He plugged it in and waited for the message.

  And then he remembered everything.

  30 | ESCAPE

  Sam launched himself off his chair, his arm stretched out in front of him. His fingertips caught the thick black cable that extended from the base of Dodge’s skull, wrenching it sideways.

  Dodge’s head snapped to the side. The screaming became a strangulated gurgle as his windpipe choked. There was a cracking sound from the plug in the receptor unit, and the casing fractured, pulling it from the receptor socket.

  The horrible strangled screaming sound stopped.

  Sam hit the ground at an angle, and there was a crack from his shoulder and a twist of pain that ran from his neck to his rib cage.

  Dodge’s head snapped back, then lolled forward onto his chest.

  Sam got back to his feet, ignoring the pain that shot through his body, and lifted Dodge’s head with his hand.

  “Dodge!” he shouted.

  Dodge’s eyes moved toward Sam, but he said nothing.

  His eyes were dull but not vacant like Swamp Witch’s had been.

  That was a good thing, wasn’t it?

  “What the hell did you do that for?”

  Sam looked up. It was Kiwi’s voice. He had risen to his feet and was staring.

  Around the room, everybody was staring, their faces pale.

  “It wasn’t me, it was—” Sam broke off.

  Kiwi was still wearing his neuro-headset. If he told Kiwi the truth, then Kiwi might become a target.

  “Take off your headset,” Sam ordered. “Now.”

  Kiwi raised an eyebrow and said, “Why? And what have you done to Dodge?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Sam pleaded. “It was … a headset malfunction. Get yours off—now. The same thing happened to Swamp Witch earlier.”

  Kiwi’s other eyebrow rose in an expression of shock, and he reached for his temples. He grasped the headset, and that’s where his hands stayed. His eyes suddenly shifted up and to the left as if remembering something. His shocked expression eased.

  “Kiwi!” Sam shouted.

  Kiwi looked back at him. “It was you all along, wasn’t it?”

  “No, Kiwi, it’s—”

  “All these attacks and weird stuff, it all happened after you arrived.”

  “Kiwi, listen to me—take off your neuro-headset!”

  Kiwi stuck out a hand, pointing a finger at Sam like a schoolboy telling on his classmate. “It was him all along!” he shouted to the room. “Sam’s the one doing all this.”

  “Kiwi!”

  “I saw you coming out of the swamp just before Swamp Witch started screaming.” He looked confused for a second, then said, “That’s right, I saw you. I remember, I saw you.”

  “I was never in the swamp before.…”

  On one of the overhead security monitors, a movement caught Sam’s eye. Special Agent Tyler, followed by four of his soldiers, was running across the atrium from their offices on the other side. There could be only one place they were heading.

  He looked back at Kiwi. There was a glazed look in his eyes, and when Sam looked at Socks, on the other side, the same look was there.

  Around the circular room, people were fixing him with accusatory stares. Every one of them wore a neuro-headset.

  “Can you hear me, Dodge?” Sam said, holding Dodge’s chin and shaking his head slightly. Dodge said nothing, but his eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed. He had at least heard the question.

  “We’ve got to get out of here now,” Sam said. “Can you walk?”

  Dodge didn’t reply. Sam put his arms under Dodge’s shoulders and began to lift, but as he did so, Dodge stood up under his own steam.

  “Okay, come on,” Sam cried, and started to run toward the doors. Below, in the atrium, the soldiers disappeared from sight as they entered the stairwell up to the control center.

  He glanced back. Dodge was standing motionless, right where Sam had left him.

  “Come on, Dodge!” Sam shouted.

  Dodge didn’t move.

  Sam ran back and put Dodge’s arm around his shoulders, trying to drag him toward the door. There was no need. As soon as he started walking, Dodge started walking, too, as if someone had pressed a switch.

  Sam steered him toward the double doors. Just as they got there, Kiwi stepped in front of them. His neuro-headset was still in place, but the cable hung loose, idly swinging below his thighs.

  “Kiwi, thank God,” Sam cried. “Now give me a hand with Dodge.”

  “I know what you did,” Kiwi spat, barring their way. “And I know who you are. You’re going nowhere.”

  Sam looked at Kiwi’s glazed eyes. Somehow Kiwi had been got at. Fed false information, directly into his brain. Sam said, “It’s not true, Kiwi. Whatever you think you know, it never happened.”

  “I kn
ow what I saw,” Kiwi said, unmoving.

  “Oh, crap,” Sam said, and without warning, he pushed Dodge right at Kiwi. Kiwi stumbled backward under the weight of him, and Sam slid his keycard through the reader.

  Nothing happened. The door remained locked.

  “Crap!” Sam said again. They had shut off his keycard. Dodge’s, too, no doubt.

  Kiwi was struggling to push Dodge off him, and Sam saw his keycard on a long, curly wire attached to his belt.

  Sam shoved Dodge forward again, sending both Dodge and Kiwi crashing against the wall, then grabbed the keycard and wrenched. The keycard, curly wire still attached, came away in his hand.

  Desperately, he swiped it through the reader, and the doors opened.

  He could hear running bootsteps.

  He pulled Dodge off Kiwi and thrust him through the doors, like some oversized puppet.

  A hand pulled on his shoulder, and he swung around instinctively, his fist connecting with Kiwi’s face.

  Kiwi jolted backward, blood spurting from his nose.

  Sam ran through the doors and grabbed hold of Dodge. Like an automaton, Dodge had walked across to the far side of the corridor and simply stopped, waiting for the next command to execute.

  Tyler ran across the atrium at the head of his men.

  “Hurry it up,” he shouted, and sprinted for the stairway. He took the steps two at a time.

  There was a small landing between each floor, which made four flights of stairs in all, but he was barely sweating when he reached the top.

  He snapped his keycard off his belt and flicked it at the reader in a casual, cool gesture, like a cardsharp spinning a card from the deck.

  The keycard caught the edge of the reader and flipped out of his hand into the stairwell below.

  “Keycard, now.” Tyler raised his hand and snapped his fingers. There was a brief pause; then a card was thrust into his hand.

  The bootsteps were on the landing at the top of the stairwell now. Behind Sam, the doors to the control center started to close automatically.

  He turned Dodge in the opposite direction and steered him around the corner at the end of the passageway just as the stairwell door opened.