Genius--The Revolution

by Leopoldo Gout

  22.2

  We crept around the exterior of the bunker carefully.

  I was shocked at the absence of any visible alarm systems. I’ve prided myself on being able to make out even the smallest of camera and sensor systems. I couldn’t see any on the bunker, but I was sure they were there. The edges were seamless, as though the place were designed to be a sculpture placed in a garden.

  “This building is so remote,” Tunde whispered. “Perhaps Kiran never thought to install protection for it?”

  “Doesn’t sound like Kiran,” I said.

  We passed by several windows, and I peeked into the rooms. Nothing much to look at besides drab colors and modern furniture, but I was wrong about the security. Sure enough, the place looked like a bank vault. I saw tiny corner-mounted cameras, motion sensors, and microwave sensors.

  “Damn,” I said to the boys. “Exterior’s light on tech, but inside, it’s insane.”

  “So what’s our play?” Rex asked.

  “We find a room we can break into,” I said.

  We made our way to a glass sliding door on the north side of the bunker. Looking inside, we could see a reading room with carefully organized shelves lining the walls and low, modernist furniture. The room was empty and the lights were off. I did not see any visible cameras or motion detectors.

  I tried the handle on the sliding door. It was locked.

  “Well, at least he’s locking the doors,” I said.

  I pulled my lock pick from my pants pocket and picked the lock. But just before I opened the door, I saw it: A thermal infrared sensor was positioned on the ceiling of the room. It would have 360-degree coverage, and there was no way to dodge it once we were past the glass.

  Unless …

  I turned back to Tunde. “Can you help me make a blanket of leaves?”

  “What?” Tunde looked shocked.

  “Nothing fancy,” I said. “We need to weave together leaves. The biggest we can find. Just enough to cover me as I go into this room.”

  Being in a South American forest gave us some significant advantages. For one, there were dozens of types of large leaves readily available. Within a few minutes, we’d gathered together enough leaves—some as large as my head—to make a sort of blanket by weaving them stem to stem. It wasn’t perfect, and if anyone had seen me drape it over myself, I’d have been instantly committed.

  But I figured it would work.

  “What exactly does this do?” Rex asked.

  “The infrared sensor can’t see through the leaves,” I said. “If I can sneak in, cross the room, then hit the power, I can shut it down and we can move inside.”

  I slid open the door and then crept into the room under the leaf blanket. It was slow going; I couldn’t move too quickly in case the blanket unraveled. Also, I didn’t want any of my skin to be exposed and set off the sensor. My heart was pounding in my ears as I practically crawled across the floor. The muscles in my legs and neck ached. But it worked. I was able to cross the room into a nearby hallway.

  There, I found an outlet I was able to pry from the wall using my lock pick. Once I had it free, I was able to short the power to the room. The thermal infrared sensor flickered once and then went dull.

  I threw off the leaf blanket and motioned to the boys.

  They crossed the room wearing big grins.

  “Never seen that before,” Rex whispered.

  We were in a narrow hallway. In the distance, we could hear voices over the rush of the forced air. It sounded like a television was playing somewhere in another part of the bunker.

  Following the sound, we moved down the hallway. The walls were lined with large, framed blueprints and technical papers. As we passed by, Rex pointed one out to me. It was the specs for a camera to be mounted on a drone. It took me a few seconds to realize it was the same camera associated with my father’s company. Farther down the hallway we saw a technical paper about the processing of tantalum from Nigeria for use in tablet computers.

  The hallway led to a large atrium with a glass ceiling. There were dozens of potted trees and a fountain at the center of the room. Koi fish swam in lazy circles at the fountain’s base. Off to the side of the fountain were several robotic prototypes, machines that looked like more advanced versions of the equipment we created for the Game. While Tunde looked more closely at the robots, Rex stood by the fountain.

  “This is unbelievable,” Rex said. “A little bit of paradise, huh?”

  We moved farther into the bunker, down a longer hallway.

  “Listen,” I told the guys. “When we find Kiran, let me do the talking. I think I know the final move in this chess game.”

  “We’ve got your back,” Rex said.

  Tunde nodded. “Just signal if you need us.”

  At the end of the hallway, the distant voices we’d heard when we walked in were much louder. From the sound of them, they were indeed from a television.

  In fact, at the end of the hallway we found a second atrium, though this one was lined with television screens. They sprouted up on stands in a massive ring, like a circular window onto every corner of the world. As we stepped inside, we noticed that the TVs were tuned to various news outlets, live-blogging feeds, and web forums. All of them displayed up-to-the-second reports on the discovery of the Shiva program, the revolt of the brain trust, the collapse of OndScan, and the search for Kiran Biswas, wanted on dozens of international criminal charges.

  “First row seats to the fall…”

  Kiran’s voice emerged from behind us, and we all turned to see him walk into the room holding a mug of hot chocolate. He was dressed down, wearing jeans and a hoodie. It was strange seeing him in clothes I normally associated with Rex. I couldn’t tell if he looked defeated in his getup or even more smugly confident.

  “Don’t worry,” Kiran said. “There are no guards here. No alarms.”

  He sat down in a leather chair across from us.

  “Please,” he said, motioning to several couches. “Have a seat.”

  I chose to stand. So did Rex and Tunde.

  “Come on,” Kiran said. “We’re old friends. Don’t make this more uncomfortable than it already is. When you broke in here, I almost thought that maybe you’d finally come around to see my side of things. But looking at your faces, your expressions, I can tell you still haven’t caught on. I’ve always said I expected more from the LODGE … especially you, Painted Wolf.”

  While Rex and Tunde remained standing, I walked to a chair near one of the television screens and then dragged it closer to Kiran.

  I turned it around and sat on it backward, eye to eye with him.

  “I finally figured out what this is all about,” I said.

  “Oh,” Kiran chuckled, “you did, huh? Please tell me.”

  “Validation,” I said.

  Kiran looked bemused. “You think I did this to … impress people?”

  “No,” I said. “You did this to impress us. And it worked.”

  “I’m confused,” Kiran said.

  I motioned to the television screens displaying Kiran’s failure. According to the news crawls that I could see, the Shiva program was being dismantled quickly. Though it had done significant damage to certain sectors, it was not as widespread as intended. Then there was the brain trust; our information packet had worked. They’d rebelled entirely, all of them abandoning Kiran en masse.

  “You orchestrated the perfect audition,” I said.

  “I did? For what?”

  I let the mystery hang for a moment, playing Kiran’s own game.

  “Unfortunately, you’ve had it backward this whole time,” I continued. “You’ve been trying to win us over to your side and failing, honestly, because you didn’t have the one thing that I—that all of us—were looking for: compassion. You’ve been leading with ideas first and heart second. Ideas won’t change the world, Kiran. Computer programs won’t, either. People will. Admit that, and you’ll have finally passed the audition.”

&n
bsp; “What the hell are you talking about?” Kiran said, looking panicked.

  I smiled. “It’s time for you to join the LODGE.”

  Kiran laughed nervously. “You have to be kidding me!”

  “Not at all. That’s what you’ve wanted all along, right? The brain trust, the black box labs, Shiva and Rama, all were designed to make you feel like a part of something. You’ve been looking for a family, and you figured that a cause, a noble cause, might be the way to get you there. But your ego did you in. Now that everything has crumbled, I think it’s time for you to start over. We’d like to give you a chance to do that with the LODGE.”

  Kiran shook his head. “This is silly.…”

  “We could really use someone like you on the team, Kiran.”

  “Enough!” he said. “You ruined something incredible. If you had let Shiva do its thing, the outcome would have been glorious. It doesn’t matter now. You probably thought you could track me down here and … what? Pull off a citizen’s arrest or something? I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I have dozens of bunkers like this across the globe. Even though I don’t have the brain trust or OndScan anymore, I do have one luxury. I have time … all the time I need to rebuild and come back even stronger.”

  Kiran picked up a remote from the coffee table and turned off the TV screens.

  “I’m going to leave now,” Kiran said. “You’ll be hearing from me.”

  “Actually, you’re wrong,” I said. “Time is the one thing you don’t have.”

  Kiran narrowed his eyes.

  “We weren’t the only ones tracking you,” I said.

  22.3

  There was a loud crash as the atrium’s glass ceiling shattered.

  Soldiers carrying weapons descended into the room from ropes, some of them landing with splashes in the fountain, before cornering Kiran. The soldiers shouted for him to get on his knees and put his hands over his head. Kiran obliged them, carefully kneeling as he was handcuffed.

  Tunde could not help himself and clapped loudly.

  “You see!” he shouted at Kiran. “As I have always warned you, this is what happens when you mess with the LODGE!”

  One of the soldiers helped Kiran to his feet.

  A man in a double-breasted suit and a bright green tie walked into the atrium from another part of the house. He wore glasses, had dark skin, carried a single file folder, and had a thick South African accent.

  “Well done,” he said to me.

  We shook hands.

  “I’m with Interpol,” the man in the suit continued. “I assume you’re Painted Wolf? And your associates here are members of the LODGE?”

  I nodded and then pointed to Rex and Tunde.

  “We’re the LODGE.”

  “My name is Lethabo Reddy,” the man said. “I am here to take Kiran into custody and work with you to clear your names. I realize you traveled incredible distances to get to this point. I have sightings of you across the globe. Someone even told me they’d picked up your trail in Beijing a few days ago. Regardless of whether that is true or not, we can help to make everything right again.”

  Tunde said, “Thank you, sir. That is all we have wanted.”

  Mr. Reddy opened his files and read through them quietly for a moment.

  “This is the matter of New York, however,” Mr. Reddy said. “I understand that you all essentially broke Mr. Huerta out of custody. Then gave the police quite a time running around the streets before you vanished on a flight to Nigeria. Is that true?”

  Rex said, “That’s true.”

  “And the computer program, WALKABOUT, did you design that?”

  Rex nodded. “But I didn’t use it to raid banks. Kiran did that.”

  “You did, however, use it to access multiple government databases, thousands of commercial and organizational cameras, and trillions of bytes of privately-held data in a search for Mr. Teo Huerta. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Rex said. “I was looking for my brother.”

  Mr. Reddy replied with a curt “Um-hmm.”

  “We were doing the only thing we could,” I said. “No one would listen, and Kiran framed us to appear guilty. The only way out was to run and prove our innocence ourselves. Ask Kiran, he’ll tell you.”

  “We certainly will,” Mr. Reddy replied. Then he turned back to the file in his hands. “And the business with the general in Nigeria? You were also behind that?”

  Tunde raised his hand. “We were defending my village.”

  “How about the balloon stuff in Mexico City?”

  Rex said, “That was pretty much all of us.”

  Mr. Reddy closed his file and then put his arms behind his back and looked us over carefully. We were muddy from the hike and exhausted from weeks of running and sleep-deprivation. Now that it was effectively over, it was hard for me to see the next move. I’d been so focused on stopping Kiran that the strategy beyond his takedown was pretty cloudy. I knew we would likely face some repercussions, but I had no idea what they might be. The last thing I wanted to feel in this moment of celebration was anxiety. Kiran, oddly enough, was the first to speak.

  “I pushed them,” he said. “I pushed them harder than anyone has before.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Mr. Reddy asked.

  “Before me,” Kiran said, his hands shifting uncomfortably in the cuffs, “they were at seventy, maybe eighty, percent of their potential. Rex was good but not memorable. Tunde was brilliant but isolated. Painted Wolf … well, Painted Wolf was gifted and driven, but she let her moral compass drive her decisions. They were a loose team, a group of friends. After me, they are a force to be reckoned with. I did what I had to do to make them what they are right now.”

  I actually laughed. Mr. Reddy turned and looked at me as though I’d been disrespectful. “It is true that we weren’t as close or as focused before the Game,” I told Kiran. “But that had nothing to do with your plans or ambitions. We came together to stop you and actualized our own potential to do it. You were a good adversary, Kiran. But I think you overestimate us, and your downfall was your own. As we say in China, if you do not change your direction, you’re likely to end up where you’re headed.”

  “Okay,” Mr. Reddy said. “Take him out.”

  Mr. Reddy motioned for the soldiers holding Kiran. The glass crunched on the floor beneath their boots as they began leading Kiran away.

  “What will happen to him?” Rex asked Mr. Reddy.

  He said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but … since you’ve been open with me … Mr. Biswas will be put to work. There is no sense in throwing him in a cell and letting that clever mind of his just rot. No, he needs to clean up the mess he’s made and use his gifts for productive, constructive purposes.”

  “You can’t trust him,” I began.

  Mr. Reddy interrupted me with a wave.

  “Of course,” he said. “Mr. Biswas will be placed in a secure location without contact to any networks or the Internet. His work will be on analog devices, mostly good old pen and paper. I assure you that he will be cared for properly, but I also assure you that he will not be free to pursue any private ambitions for a very, very long time. My sincere hope is that Kiran can become the person the world has always hoped he would be.”

  We all watched quietly as Kiran was taken out of the bunker. Through the windows we could see him being led by the soldiers across the open space toward a military helicopter. He ducked his head as he slipped inside. It was strange watching this scene play out and recalling how only a little bit ago I’d watched Kiran and Rex climb into a helicopter in Nigeria. Then, while I was mostly confident that everything would work out, I secretly worried my conviction would fail. Now I was watching everything we’d hoped for come to fruition. I can’t tell you how happy I felt seeing that helicopter lift off and then disappear into the sky. It was like an entire mountain range had been knocked from my shoulders.

  I looked over at Rex, and he looked at me and smiled.

  “We di
d it,” he said. “We did it.”

  22.4

  “So what happens to us now?” Rex asked me.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “That’s a first.”

  We were standing outside Kiran’s bunker as the sun sank behind the mountain peaks. While Mr. Reddy and the soldiers spent time walking through the building, cataloging and photographing everything, he allowed us time to make a few calls with our cells.

  I called ULTRA first.

  Javiera answered and screamed into the phone so loud I had to hold it away from my head for a moment. She told me she’d been watching the live feeds from my cameras. She’d seen the whole thing. Javiera asked when they’d see us next, and I told her it’d be soon, but I had no idea if that was true.

  As Rex called his parents and Tunde called home to Akika Village, I stepped away and rang my mother. She answered on the third ring, confused about the phone number that had shown up on her cell.

  “Mother,” I said, “it’s me. Everything is okay. It’s over.”

  She sighed, and I could hear the great relief in her voice.

  “Where are you? Are you coming home?”

  “Soon, Mother. Soon.”

  Mr. Reddy stepped out of the bunker and walked over to us. He pulled out the file folder he’d been looking at earlier. Reading it over silently, he took a pen from his pants pocket and made a few scribbles before looking back up at us.

  “Here’s the deal,” Mr. Reddy said. “We can’t exactly just let you three waltz back into the lives you had before this whole adventure. First, it would set a bad precedent. But, more importantly, I don’t think the lives you had before would work anymore. At least not the way they were.”

  Mr. Reddy turned to Rex.

  “I understand you effectively ghosted your parents’ status recently?”

  Rex nodded. “I did.”

  “We will have to deal with that later, but for now, we’ve worked things out with the Americans and you’ll be returning home to California. The FBI would like to meet with you in the next couple days to discuss your legal situation as well as make an offer. I’ll leave it to them to explain the details of that.”

  Mr. Reddy focused his attention on Tunde next.