ZerOes

by Chuck Wendig

  In the far corner of the room, near the video game machines, sits Shane Graves. His pod sits elsewhere, occasionally throwing him shady glances. That gives Reagan no small thrill. If she could go over there and dump some mashed potatoes down his back, a Coke on his head, she would. Asshole. Bringing up my little girl.

  Across the table, Wade has some printouts that he’s scouring so hard he looks like a man scanning the contract he just signed with the Devil in the hopes of finding some loophole to regain his poor soul. Truth is, she’d fuck Wade if he was into it. Something about him kinda gets her going. Some daddy issue, maybe, that she doesn’t understand. His barrel shape is pleasing to her. Those curly gray hairs coming off his head—c’mon. Soft, silky. She could use them like handles, right?

  But he’s busy. And intellectually she knows he could be her father. Maybe her grandfather.

  Next to her is the string bean—DeAndre. She sidles up closer. He gives her a sideways look. “Heyyyyyy,” she says. “How you doing.”

  “Aw, whoa, hey,” he says. “We are not—you and I are not—no, no, no.”

  “C’mon. You wanna get laid. I wanna get laid.” She blinks. “Black guys usually dig me. White girl. Big ass. Take a whirl with the swirl.”

  He shrugs it off, scoops some peas onto a fork. “Then I’m some kinda freak of nature because I generally like black girls with little asses. Little athletic asses.”

  “Psshh. Thin privilege.”

  “Man, you look however you wanna look. I’m sure some brothers think you’re hella sexy, but I’m a brother who likes a different cut of meat, is all.”

  She scowls. “Women aren’t meat, pal. We’re thinking, feeling creatures.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  She elbows him. “Unless that turns you on. In which case: barbecue me, big boy.”

  “Man, you are crazy.” He laughs, though. She likes making him laugh.

  That’s when Reagan looks over, sees Wade staring at her. Or through her. He’s got this wide-open nowhere stare. Like a lamp without its shade—just bright, empty, glaring. She waves her hand in front of him. “You in there, Earth Man? Are you having some kind of senior moment? Did you shit yourself?” To DeAndre: “I bet he shit himself.”

  Wade says: “Something isn’t right.”

  “The way you’re looking at me sure isn’t.”

  “Chance,” Wade says. Chance looks over, his conversational spell with Aleena broken. “You said—” Suddenly, Wade lowers his voice. “You said it could be an artificial intelligence.”

  “Uhh.” Chance looks around. “I guess. Are we—are we talking about this now?”

  Wade taps the pages in front of him with a finger. “One of the nuclear sites is Mount Tochal. It’s a ski resort in Iran, but there’s an old repurposed military base underneath. IRGC—the Revolutionary Guard. Now, they’re doing uranium enrichment—looks like it might just be for energy, not weapons, but there’s something else there.”

  Aleena looks down at the pages. “This is in Farsi. You read Farsi?”

  “You don’t?” Wade asks.

  “What’s your point?” Reagan needles him, suddenly impatient.

  “There’s a program running behind the scenes here. Something called Verethragna. Operating on a home-cooked OS called Rustam, and working on custom hardware called Surena.”

  Aleena leans forward. “Those are all names from myth, or history. Persian. Surena was a general long ago. Rustam was a mythological hero. He’s sometimes associated with Surena—you know, intellectually, thematically.”

  “And Verethragna?” Wade asks.

  “A god. One of the Yazatas. Some conflate him with Atar, the Divine Fire, who battled the many-headed dragon-demon, Azi Dahaka.”

  Even Reagan feels a chill. “Many-headed dragon-demon. That sounds . . . familiar.”

  Nobody needs to say it: Typhon.

  Wade leans forward: “I think Iran was designing their own AI.”

  “Why would they name it like that?” Chance asks. “More mythological hoo-haw. Another many-headed dragon?”

  Aleena thinks. “They must know about Typhon. Even if only in rumor, or whispers. Verethragna is very clearly their response to this, right?” She hesitates. “This is why we hit them. We were led to this. Typhon is killing her competition.”

  “Their AI was new,” Wade says. “Still early code, by the looks of it.”

  Reagan whistles. “Like strangling a baby in its crib.”

  Wade’s about to say something else, but then, from across the room:

  “Get the . . . get the fuck off of me!”

  Reagan looks around. It’s Dipesh. He looks unshorn, unshowered, like he hasn’t slept since there was a Bush in the White House. One of the hacks—his pod’s own babysitter, a pasty, no-necked, meathead ginger named Calum—is dragging him into the cafeteria. Calum is saying: “You’re gonna sit. And you’re gonna eat.”

  That’s when the shit hits the fan.

  Miranda steps in front, thrusting one of her long Virginia Slim fingers in Calum’s face, shrieking at him to let Dipesh go—and for a second, he does. Reagan doesn’t know if it’s an accident—if Dipesh just slips his grip as the guard is distracted, or if it’s intentional, but it doesn’t matter. Because soon as Calum turns away Dipesh grabs an empty chair and brings it clumsily against the guard’s head.

  Calum drops, clipping his chin on a table. Trays bounce and food spatters. Dipesh almost falls, too, and the chair drops out of his hand and bounces away. Dipesh screams: “You can’t make us do it anymore. We’re not your hired killers.” He shrieks those last two words so loudly it makes Reagan’s throat hurt. “They didn’t deserve what happened to them. Why did you make us do that?”

  And then he yells one question that quiets the whole room: “What is Typhon?”

  The resultant silence and shock on everyone’s faces tells Reagan what she needs to know: everyone here has glimpsed Typhon. They don’t understand it. They may not want to get close to it. But they’ve all gotten a taste.

  A foot stabs upward, catches Dipesh in the middle. Calum launches himself onto the hacker, grabbing him and flinging him down on the floor. What little hair the guard has ringing his balding head is mussed. He stands there for a second, looking around, seeing if anybody else is coming at him. They’re not. So he starts kicking Dipesh. A hard boot to the side. Once. Twice. A third time.

  Reagan sees it start to happen. She sees Chance and Aleena stand up. Hero Boy and White Hat Girl. They wanna step in. Save the oppressed. They’ll ruin everything.

  Aleena starts to step forward with Chance following her lead, and Reagan hurries around the table—almost losing her footing and going ass-over-eyebrows in the process—in order to step in front of them.

  “Move,” Chance growls.

  “Reagan, now isn’t the time—”

  Reagan hisses: “You got that right. Now isn’t the time. We are—” They start to step past her and she plants her hands on their chests. She chatters her words so fast she’s not even sure they can understand her. “We are supremely well positioned to do something about this place. We’re close to the end. But we can’t fix this if we’re all in the drink.”

  Chance starts to step forward again. “She’s right,” Aleena says. Words Reagan never really expected her to say. “We can save him, or we can shut this whole place down. We need to think about the—”

  DeAndre is suddenly there. “Guys. Guys.”

  Chance’s eyes go wide. Reagan follows his stare. Aleena’s words trail off and she looks, too.

  It’s Wade. While Reagan was pinning these two to the corkboard, Wade went off half-cocked. He’s already across the room.

  Reagan calls after him but it’s too late. The old man taps Calum on the shoulder. Soon as the guard turns around, Wade pistons a fist right into his nose. The man’s head snaps back and he cups his face even as blood starts to stream past his fingers. Wade shouts: “You goddamn bully. Come here—” He
grabs Calum again and hauls his fist back again.

  Taser prongs clip into his side. Metzger hurries in, Taser in hand. Wade stiffens. Howls like a mournful hound. Then drops.

  Roach and Chen come racing in. From the other direction, Ashbaugh approaches from Metzger’s six. Reagan sees her pod’s tension. They wanna jump in like each of them is wearing Wonder Woman Underoos. Once again she has to herd the sheep. “Wade’ll be in the Dep,” she says. “We go to the pod. Now! While they’re distracted. C’mon, c’mon.” She reaches her arms out, trying to urge them toward the door. To her great surprise, they go.

  Now, she thinks, the real work begins.

  CHAPTER 33

  The Fine Art of Bullshit

  THE LODGE, COMMUNAL POD

  The pod door hisses open, thanks to Aleena’s Floydphone. They stole the digital keys to this place from Shane (all those USB keys and hacker phones give them free range), so it’s time to use them. They hurry inside, then she closes the door and reengages the locks. They wait for Reagan, who was hurrying back to their cabin to grab Shane’s laptop.

  Aleena checks the time. Reagan is taking too long. What if they catch her? They’ll throw her in the Dep, too. Take the laptop away. Fear crawls into Aleena’s stomach, curling in on itself like a rattlesnake.

  But then the door hisses open and Reagan hurries in, laptop hidden under her shirt. She whips it out, sits down, hides it on her lap under her desk, snaps her fingers. “Let’s loop it,” she hoots.

  They all sit down, make it look like they’re working. And 3, 2, 1—

  Loop on. Cameras off.

  It’s a clumsy patch—the video Aleena’s looping isn’t even from today. It’s from yesterday, when they were wearing different clothes, so hopefully whoever is watching ends up distracted by whatever the hell is going on in the cafeteria. Aleena just hopes it isn’t Hollis. He wasn’t there—they didn’t see him in the cafeteria at all, actually—and though he’s not too sharp on the technological side of things, he still always seems to be ahead of the other hacks.

  But there’s no time to worry about that. She claps her hands. “All right. We need leverage and we need it today. We need to find Typhon. Kick over every log. Flip over every stone.”

  She tells them each what they’re going to do.

  Chance needs to start making calls. Ring up all the companies they pen-tested. Find anything that connects one company to all the others. They find a common thread, they can pull on it, maybe find Typhon.

  Reagan will scour Shane’s laptop. Start putting together an escape plan. Pick up where he left off—he was obviously trying to get out, so follow his lead.

  DeAndre and Aleena share the same job: while Chance calls the companies, they go back to the well and start hacking into them again. Look for connections internally—inside the systems themselves. She’s on the tech-heavy companies: Infinitest, Glassboat, Centinal. He’ll tackle the tech-adjacent companies: the German geothermal company, Arcus, ConGen.

  As Aleena works she keeps an ear tilted toward Chance. She tells herself she needs to check his work, in case she needs to steer him along a little. She can hear him feeling the margins with every phone call. Trying to find a way in. He’s striking out, every time. She can hear the frustration in his voice. She’s about to get up, maybe coach him a little, give him a script.

  But then: He’s on the line with Centinal. The medical tech supply company. “Hey,” he says. “Betty? Hi! How are you today?” Pause. “Me, yeah, I’m good, thanks. Listen, I need to check on a purchase. Purchase order number? Ahh, hell, hold on.” He points at Aleena, mouths to her: I need a purchase order number.

  She looks to the computer then back to him in a panic, and shrugs.

  He clears his throat. “It’s, ahhh, PO number 564 . . . 987.” He gives her a shrug back. “That’s not a valid PO? Uhhh. Damn. Damn.” He bites his lip. He taps his thumb against the keyboard, agitated. “All right, dang, there’s been a screw-up on my end and—you know what? It’s not your problem. Hey, lemme ask you, though: your accent sounds familiar. You from North Carolina?” He laughs and nods. “See? I thought so. Wait, wait, lemme guess. Gastonia? Outside Charlotte?” Another laugh. “Shelby! Whoo-boy, I was close, though, huh? You ever been to Red Bridges BBQ? What am I saying, of course you have.” He claps his hands and now he sounds like he’s really into it. “What? You prefer the chicken? It is good, but you better be careful—people will TP your house you say that too loud.” Pause. “Huh? What’s that? You’ll look up the PO for me? Ma’am, I gotta tell ya, you may have just saved my can. Who am I with . . . ? Uhhh.” He gives Aleena a panicked stare.

  Aleena remembers cracking Centinal. CMG had a big client—someone she didn’t expect. Who was it? Ah. Right!

  Aleena grabs a marker, writes on the whiteboard:

  DOT

  Chance’s eyes go wide and he says: “Uhh, I’m with Dot?”

  Damnit! She hiss-whispers at him: “Not dot. Dee-Oh-Tee!”

  “Haha, yeah,” Chance says into the phone. “Right, right, Department of Transportation, that’s right. Uh-huh. Okay, okay—”

  On the whiteboard, Aleena scribbles:

  ASK THEM FOR EMAIL ASSOC W/ ACCT

  “Hey—what e-mail address you guys have on file for us? Uh-huh. Edna-period-Burns at dee-oh-tee dot gov. Got it. Thanks, Betty. You are a peach. Maybe one day I’ll see you at Red Bridges. Uh-huh. All right. See you.”

  He ends the call.

  Reagan speaks up: “Edna? Sounds like Etna.”

  DeAndre, typing fast, asks, half distracted: “So?”

  “Zeus threw a fucking mountain on top of Typhon. The mountain was Mount Etna.”

  “And Burns could be a connection, too,” Aleena says. “Wikipedia says Typhon’s name comes from the Greek word meaning to smoke—or to burn.”

  “Got it!” DeAndre says. “I ran a search on all the companies—that address pings in all of them. I haven’t pulled anything up yet, but in just this list I see purchase orders, contacts, e-mails—Edna Burns has been awfully active with these businesses, man.”

  “DOT,” Aleena says. “Federal DOT in D.C. Typhon is there. Makes sense.”

  “Wait,” Reagan says, waving her hands in the air. She’s staring down at Shane’s laptop, her round face bathed in the glow. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what the slippery fuck. Shane knew. He knows. He’s on the same trail.”

  They gather around. She spins the laptop, shows them the screen. On it: an exploded file folder, plus Evernote pages, showing him trying to hack the DOT servers in D.C. Aleena leans forward. “He tore it apart.”

  “And,” DeAndre says, “didn’t find a damn thing.”

  Chance comes up. “Guess Ivo Shandor isn’t the legend he thinks he is.”

  “But it means he was doing more than just looking for an escape,” Reagan says. “I think he was pulling the same shit we’re trying to pull right now.”

  DeAndre: “Then we better do it first.”

  Aleena turns around. Chance is standing there. He gives her an awkward smile. “I do okay?” he asks. A sincere question by the sound of it, not bait.

  She hugs him, impulsively. “You did awesome.”

  Reagan, from the sidelines, mutters, “That’ll do, pig.”

  Aleena lets go of Chance, gives her the finger.

  “So,” Chance says. “If Shane didn’t find anything at the DOT—couldn’t that mean there wasn’t anything there? The e-mail address must be fake.”

  Aleena hmms. “It’s all he had to go on, I guess.” She sighs. “It’s all we have to go on, too. They delivered stuff to the DOT address, right?”

  “Hold up,” DeAndre says. “Man, listen. We’re thinking like the government. We gotta be thinking like hackers.” He spins around on his chair. “I knew this guy, right, he’d order shit online using people’s stolen cards, but you usually gotta go through all this extra bullshit to change the delivery address. So he’d just have it sent right to the home, to the billing address, right? It was
easier for him to hack FedEx or whatever and have them deliver it to some drop-off spot where he’d be waiting. Eventually easy turned to lazy and he started having shit delivered right to his apartment, so they busted his ass.”

  Chance snaps his fingers. “Someone is rerouting the deliveries.”

  DeAndre nods.

  Chance grabs DeAndre’s head in a headlock, gives him a noogie. “You are amazing, dude. Seriously amazing.”

  “You love me,” DeAndre says. “I’m irresistible, I know it.”

  Aleena’s already bored with their bro-flavored love-fest, so as they’re speaking, she’s pushing DeAndre aside and sitting in front of his computer to mine the data he’s already pulled up. She finds what she needs: a delivery from Unterirdisch Elektrizitätssystem GmbH—in this case, a two-ton geothermal heat pump. She snaps her fingers, points to the screen. “Check this out. It flies from Hamburg, lands at Dulles. Gets on a truck—”

  “Big damn truck,” Chance says.

  “—and goes, sits in a warehouse for a couple days, then goes out for delivery to the DOT. But here’s the tricky bit: it doesn’t stop there. It’s a line item on the delivery list, but it isn’t the final destination. It goes—” She pulls up Google Maps, types in an address. “Here.” She flips the map over to satellite view.

  DeAndre leans in. “The absolute ass-end epicenter-of-nowhere, West Virginia.”

  “That’s a farm,” Chance says. “And that’s the barn. Silo right there. Squint hard enough, you can even make out a hay wagon.”

  Aleena checks the address. “They’ve got Internet service there. Through satellite.”

  Reagan spins her chair over. “That means there’s a computer. Or a network. Probably a router. Ping it till it squeals.”

  And with a few more keystrokes . . . There. A single system. Aleena does a quick scan of it. It’s nothing fancy. They all see what she’s seeing: it’s an off-brand, maybe home-built PC. Runs on Microsoft Windows, of all things. Midrange, baked-in graphics and memory. Only thing that stands out is a top-shelf SSD—a solid state hard drive doesn’t have to spin up like older drives, so it moves like lightning. But even that isn’t totally strange—if someone wanted to splurge on something when building a box like this, an SSD wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.