Alienation

by Jon S. Lewis

  “It’s easier than you think,” she said. “All of the buildings are lined with something called Tempest shielding, which is a kind of electromagnetic protection that keeps the bad guys from accessing data. It also keeps us from tapping into any outside wireless networks. But as long as I have enough windows and my microwave tech wireless card, all I need to do is point the antenna at the satellite and I can log onto the Internet whenever I want.”

  “Won’t someone notice the activity?”

  “I doubt it. Most Wi-Fi connections are omni-directional, but going microwave allows me to point at a satellite. Someone would have to be looking for the signal to see it, and if they don’t know exactly where it is, it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

  “So how did you sneak the wireless card through security?”

  “I slipped it into Ms. Skoglund’s purse,” Danielle said. “Apparently security didn’t notice.”

  Colt watched as the antenna on Danielle’s wireless card swiveled while it searched for the satellite. “Speaking of Ms. Skoglund, did you get a chance to talk to her yet?”

  “I thought you didn’t trust her.”

  “If you do, that’s good enough for me.”

  “Good, because she gave me this.” Danielle reached into her backpack and pulled out what looked like a piece of yellowed parchment. It was wrinkled, and the edges were bent, but as she unfolded it, Colt could see that it was actually a map.

  “Is that the school?”

  Danielle nodded. “Back in the 1830s, the president of the university was an abolitionist who got involved in the Underground Railroad. The tunnel that you fell into was part of a network that was built beneath the entire campus, and it was actually used by fugitive slaves who were escaping to the North.”

  “That’s amazing,” Colt said. The tunnels led between the buildings, and there was even one that connected to a boathouse next to the river. “Where’d she find the map?”

  “Downstairs in the archives.”

  “And they just let her take it?”

  Danielle shrugged before she folded the map and slipped it back into her backpack. “It’s taken awhile, but we’re finally building a more complete profile on Heinrich Krone.” She pulled up a file on her computer. “We already knew that he enlisted in the German army, went through special ops training, and then went to work for Germany’s federal intelligence service. After that, he went off the grid.”

  “What happened?”

  “Ms. Skoglund thinks he was a spy, but we’re not sure. We couldn’t find anything for about a ten-year period, and then he showed up as the Chief Security Officer at Trident Biotech.”

  “Wait . . . what?” Colt felt dumbstruck as he tried to process what she just said.

  “Somehow word leaked that Trident was developing agents that could be used in biochemical weapons—you know, stuff like viruses that could wipe out an entire population—and they wanted Krone to make sure everything was sealed up tight. One of the federal investigators was found in a shallow grave outside of Yuma. A week later Krone disappeared.”

  Colt’s mind churned as he tried to understand what all of this meant. “Do you think he had something to do with what happened in Iowa?”

  “Maybe,” Danielle said. “Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.”

  “So why is he working with Lobo?” Colt asked. “I mean, on one hand he’s trying to exterminate humanity, but on the other hand he’s working for the guy who’s in charge of protecting us against the Thule invasion.”

  “Think about it,” Danielle said. “Lobo wants you out of the picture because you’re a threat to his job, but the Thule want to kill you because you might rise up and destroy them. Either way, both sides want the same thing. So if Lobo is going to pay him for what he was already going to do, why not take the money?”

  The door creaked open, and Danielle’s face went pale. “I thought you were at the gym.”

  “It’s nice to see you too,” Oz said. “I finished early, so I thought I’d see what you guys were up to.”

  “Nothing really,” she said. “Just studying.”

  “With McAlister? Yeah, right. He’s not exactly the studying type.” He took a bite from an apple that he was holding and leaned against the doorframe. “So, who did my dad pay a small fortune to? Because if he’s handing out money, I want in on it.”

  Danielle looked at Colt and then at the ground.

  “What?” Oz asked.

  “Look,” Colt said, his voice sullen. “I don’t really know how to say this, but we think your dad was involved in Senator Bishop’s death.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “It’s true,” Danielle said. “Someone found documents that link him to a hired killer.”

  “Is this some kind of joke? Because it’s not funny.”

  Colt shook his head. “I wish it was. Senator Bishop was part of the oversight committee that threatened to cut funding if your dad didn’t step down, and the DAA thinks that your dad hired a guy named Heinrich Krone to kill him.”

  “Is he serious?”

  Danielle’s eyes were filled with tears as she nodded.

  “It’s been going on for a while,” Colt said. “There were at least five others, and it looks like he’s not done.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because my name is on the list.” Colt reached into a pouch on his backpack and pulled out a thumb drive. “You can see for yourself. It’s here.”

  “I don’t get it,” Oz said as he ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “Because we didn’t know if we could trust you.”

  :: CHAPTER 37 ::

  One minute Colt was convinced that Oz had nothing to do with Operation Nemesis, and the next he wasn’t sure. Oz certainly looked upset when Colt confronted him about his father’s alleged involvement, but it could have been an act.

  Colt thought about asking for a transfer to a different dorm room, but that was bound to raise questions he wasn’t ready to answer. Thankfully Oz didn’t show up until just before curfew, and he was gone by the time Colt woke up Saturday morning.

  Grey asked if Colt wanted to grab some breakfast in the mess hall, but he decided to head over to the aerial field instead. He wanted to clear his head, and if he couldn’t surf, riding a hover-board was the next best thing. It looked like it was going to be a warm day. The sun was out, the sky was clear, and most of the snow had melted, leaving patches of white scattered across the grass. He worked on some basic maneuvers, trying to get used to the feel of the board as he glided across the track.

  It was getting close to lunchtime when Agent Starling showed up with Giru Ba. He was talking, she was listening, and Colt hoped they wouldn’t notice him. “Nice bit of flying, but you may want to consider bending your knees and leaning forward just a bit,” Agent Starling said. “It’ll decrease wind resistance and increase speed.”

  “Thanks,” Colt said, but before he could break away, Agent Starling started in about his boyhood admiration for the Phantom Flyer. “If it weren’t for your grandfather, I would never have become a world class flight instructor.”

  “I’ll be sure to let him know.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Agent Starling said, his smile showing teeth that were both impossibly straight and eerily white. Giru Ba stood behind him without saying a word, her large eyes focused on Colt. He felt uncomfortable under her gaze, and he wondered if she had telepathy and whether or not there was a way to block people from reading one’s mind.

  “Look, I’m scheduled for combat simulation in twenty minutes, and I haven’t eaten anything all day,” Colt said, hoping that Agent Starling would take the hint.

  “What a coincidence. We were talking about heading over to the mess hall, weren’t we?”

  Giru Ba nodded, though her eyes never left Colt.

  “Would you care to join us?” Agent Starling asked.

  “I’d love to,” Colt said, tr
ying to sound polite. “I really would, but I don’t want to be late for my training session.”

  “Then off you go,” Agent Starling said with a salute.

  After a quick lunch that consisted of grilled chicken and an energy drink, Colt headed off to Combat Simulation. The training session was held in what looked like an abandoned warehouse. The windowless walls were painted a sterile white, and massive girders crisscrossed a ceiling that stood fifty feet above the concrete floor.

  Nine other cadets were already in the room. Danielle was talking to Stacy and a girl Colt hadn’t met. Jomtong was there, along with Bar-Ryak and a cadet named Kethan Sareen. He was small, with short hair and a quick smile. Pierce stood nearby, slouched with his arms crossed, while Oz was off to the side, whispering something to Grey.

  “Welcome to Wonderland!”

  Everyone looked up to see an observation deck where Agent Graves was standing next to a man with round goggles and a waxed mustache. He was short and a bit overweight, with stubble on his head and a cherubic face that made it almost impossible to tell how old he was.

  “The name’s Agent Daniel David O’Keefe, though most of the cadets like to call me the Gamemaster. You’ll know why soon enough,” he said with a light Irish brogue. “And this here is Agent Graves, who has asked to observe today’s exercise.”

  Agent Graves nodded, and as his eyes fell on Colt, a thin smile crossed his lips.

  “Now for the uneducated, you happen to be standing inside one of the most amazing inventions in the history of this fine world,” Agent O’Keefe said.

  The air started to shimmer, and a moment later the cadets were standing in a dense rain forest. But something was off. The leaves on the trees were iridescent blue, the sky was pink, and the branches were filled with featherless birds that were a kind of charcoal color. Their eyes were covered in cataracts, and they had wings like bats.

  “Simulation training allows us to create unique environments using holograms, so we can put you through scenarios without risking your precious little lives. Right now you’re standing in a jungle on the planet Bantoah,” Agent O’Keefe said. “Go on, touch something.” He stood with his hands on his hips, smiling as the cadets did as they were instructed. “The technology we developed gives dimension to the holograms. It feels real, doesn’t it?”

  The air shimmered again, and moments later they were standing in what looked like Times Square, only there were hovercars flying overhead and strange aliens walking the streets alongside human counterparts. The simulation was so real that Colt could smell a nauseating mixture of urine and exhaust as though it were real. Virtually every square inch of real estate was covered with some kind of advertisement. In fact, there was so much visual noise that it was practically impossible for any one message to stand out over the others.

  Agent O’Keefe explained that the city would be the backdrop for their training exercise, and he offered no apologies for lifting it directly from the pages of a Phantom Flyer comic book. “In this scenario, your objective is to stop a crackpot robot that calls itself Intellitron from launching nuclear missiles. It wants to wipe out humans so a bunch of godless machines can take over.”

  “I thought this looked familiar,” Colt said. “The Phantom Flyer got sucked through a rift and into an alternate Earth where a scientist was working on a new artificial intelligence program for the military,” he said. “One of the robots he was testing turned on him. It’s actually Intellitron’s first appearance.”

  “Who didn’t know that?” Danielle said, rolling her eyes.

  Colt ignored the sarcasm. “It hacked into the Pentagon and sent something like a dozen nuclear warheads into Russia, which pretty much started World War III.”

  “So how do we stop him? Or it? Or whatever it is?”

  “Let’s hope we get lucky,” Stacy said, butting into their conversation. “It has super intelligence, it can rip a tank in half, and you can’t destroy it because it can repair itself.”

  As Agent O’Keefe went over some of the ground rules, Colt looked to the sky for caped superheroes. He didn’t see any coming, but he noticed that Agent Graves was watching him.

  “There’s a building called the Omega Foundation just around the corner and down the block,” Agent O’Keefe said as he went over their primary objective. “You have exactly forty-five minutes to break in and shut that robot down before it uploads the launch codes for those nukes. How you accomplish that objective is up to you.”

  He flipped a switch on what looked like some kind of remote control, and a cache of weapons and other supplies appeared. There was an FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile with a launcher, an M82A1 sniper rifle, three M4A1 assault rifles, an M60E3 machine gun, two Sig Sauer P228 handguns, a satchel with a computer, and four ammunition belts filled with Electro Magnetic Pulse grenades.

  “Now remember,” Agent O’Keefe said, “you’re in a densely populated urban setting, and CHAOS has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to civilian casualties. This isn’t a video game, and I don’t want anyone to go in there with guns blazing. You’re part of a covert mission, and your assignment is to eliminate a single target. So if you want to pass this test, make sure you keep that in mind. Oh, and I almost forgot,” he added with the hint of a smile. “I thought you might have a bit of fun with this.”

  The air shimmered, and what looked like a fifteen-foot-tall robot made out of spare parts from a Sherman tank appeared in the middle of the street. A cab driver slammed on his brakes and veered over the curb and into a hydrant.

  “This big galoot is what you call an ABS,” Agent O’Keefe said. “Does anyone besides Romero know what it stands for?”

  Colt raised his hand. “Armored battle suit?”

  “True enough,” Agent O’Keefe said. “There’s a cockpit inside the chest where the driver sits.” He looked down at the watch on his wrist. “Time is ticking, so you better get to it.”

  :: CHAPTER 38 ::

  As the noise of the city blared around them, Pierce suggested that they assign a field commander to run the mission from the ground. He was quick to volunteer for the position.

  “I think we should vote on it,” Stacy said as a rickshaw pulled by a robot with a single wheel sped by.

  Pierce sneered. “You heard him, we don’t have time. If the clock runs out before we find that robot, we fail.”

  “I nominate Oz.” The words spilled from Colt’s mouth before he knew what he was saying. But he knew that despite the distance that had grown between them, it was the right choice. Oz had been training in simulators since he was old enough to hold a weapon, and Colt knew if they wanted to pass the test, they were going to need his experience.

  “Any other nominees?” Stacy asked, but nobody said a word. “Okay then, all in favor of Oz?” Eight hands went up, leaving Pierce and Oz as the only dissenters.

  Oz stood there looking confused, as though he had no idea why Colt had nominated him. “I guess that settles it,” Stacy said. “So what’s the plan?”

  Oz hesitated as his eyes went from team member to team member. “Okay,” he finally said. “If this scenario sticks to the script, Intellitron has control of the Omega Foundation. That means it’s running the defense shields, repulsor rays, elevators, and even temperature control. We need to get Danielle close enough to tap into the operating system so she can shut that thing down before it launches the nukes.”

  “As soon as I break through one firewall, it’ll build another,”

  Danielle said. “I won’t be able to type fast enough to keep up.”

  “You’ll find a way, or we’ll fail,” Oz said.

  “No pressure or anything.”

  Oz ignored her and turned to the rest of the group. “While she’s launching a cyber attack, the rest of you are going to create a diversion.”

  “What are you going to do?” Pierce asked. “Sit back and take all the credit when we’re done?”

  “If you have a problem with me, we can settle it after class,”
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  Oz said. “But for now, we pass or fail as a team.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Pierce glared at him, his teeth grinding as he clenched his jaw.

  “Nothing.”

  “If anybody gets close enough to take Intellitron out, do it,” Oz said, turning his attention to the rest of the group. “But don’t take any crazy risks. We’re starting with ten agents, and that’s the number I want to see when we finish.”

  “Wait,” Danielle said. “I thought we couldn’t get hurt.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” Oz said. “But this is only a Level One scenario, which means the risk of injury is minimal. You can still be eliminated, though, so make sure you don’t get hit with a kill shot.”

  He divided up the weapons and let Grey drive the ABS. Grey scrambled up the handrails and into the hatch as if he was worried that Oz might change his mind.

  By the time the team arrived at the Omega Foundation, police had already set up a perimeter around the building, keeping the growing crowd at bay as best they could. The main entrance to the building was sealed, so Pierce suggested that they go through the sewers. Oz was quick to point out that they didn’t have any schematics to know where the tunnels would lead, much less which would open up to the basement level. They did, however, have some heavy weapons.

  The street rumbled as Grey moved the ABS into position, taking aim at the front door with a rocket launcher that was mounted on his right shoulder. With the flip of a switch, a rocket hissed before it slammed into the doors. Metal, brick, and glass erupted, and when the dust settled there was a gaping hole in the side of the building.

  Pierce shook his head. “That was real subtle.”

  “Let’s go!” Oz shouted. Bar-Ryak was the first inside, followed by Jomtong, Danielle, Stacy, and then Kethan.

  The air filled with a strange buzzing sound. Colt looked up to see three robots with domed heads flying toward them. They were covered in armored casing, and they had organic wings, as though they had been grafted from a dragonfly the size of a rhinoceros. “Scarabs!” he yelled. He remembered them from the comic book, and if this scenario played out anything like the story, the cadets were in trouble.