by Dave Buschi
She created more punctures. With each new one she pulled and flexed her wrists. The tape was loosening. She redoubled her efforts. She tried again and again. Straining hard after another cut, she pulled and got one hand free!
She wasted no time. With her hands free, she pulled the tape from her mouth and frantically cut the tape from her ankles. Once unbound, she quickly went to Katie first and pulled the tape from her mouth. She pulled the tape from Hannah next.
Hannah’s little body heaved. Breathe! Katie gasped and Hannah sucked in air. Sue watched as their little chests filled and exhaled. She whispered encouragement to them. She quickly cut the tape from their ankles and wrists.
Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her girls were breathing! They were alive!
She hugged them both. Hannah cried.
Sue touched her mouth and whispered, “We have to be quiet.”
Katie looked pale, but she was breathing. Sue cupped her silky hair and smiled through her tears. “I’m going to get us out.”
Hannah gripped her and wouldn’t let go.
“Baby, I’m going to open the window.”
Quietly, she lifted the window sash and then the storm window. She used the letter opener to cut through the screen and pushed the screen away.
The dormer looked out onto the front yard. A steep roof led to a twenty-foot drop off. There were bushes down there, which she couldn’t see from this vantage point. She could only see the edge of the roof and the gutter, which she was fairly certain wouldn’t hold her weight; possibly not even the girls.
Taking a breath, she looked at her girls.
“This is what we’re going to do.”
She told them the plan.
24
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THE small monument sign had only a numbered address. No company name. Nothing to indicate what sort of structure might lie ahead.
A separate sign, which said ‘Private Property / No Admittance’, was further down the lane. Enrique flashed a card and the barrier went up and allowed them to pass. The buildings up ahead were two-story. To the laymen eye, the “hot site” looked like an unassuming office park.
That was intentional.
There was a chain-link fence, which ran around the several-acre perimeter. It was ten foot high. ‘No trespassing’ signs were posted along it.
About twenty-five yards past the fence was a landscape berm. That little swell of earth cleverly disguised a series of concentric concrete rings. Each concrete ring went around the entire office park. There were three of them with diminishing radii.
From a casual glance they almost looked like curbs, except instead of asphalt around them there was patchy scrub grass. Each curb varied in height and width. The largest was two foot tall and of equal thickness. Taken together, they weren’t much of a barrier. A person could easily step over them.
A vehicle, however, would have a harder time. In fact, each curb would stop almost any vehicle in their tracks. The curbs were actually grade beams, which went deep into the ground. The first went down eight feet below the surface. The next went down twelve and the last went down eighteen. Short of a monster truck, no vehicle was getting over those curbs.
However, the concentric rings weren’t intended as vehicle deterrents. Their main purpose was to protect from earthquakes. Specifically, the destructive seismic waves that rippled across the surface when an earthquake happened.
Not that this was an earthquake zone. But better to be prepared; least that was the rationale. If an earthquake were to occur, those concentric rings, each tuned to a different frequency range due their differing sizes, would form a shield around the two-story buildings at their center. In theory, the rings would perform like a rock in a river’s rapids. Seismic waves of an earthquake would flow around the two-story buildings, leaving them unharmed in their wake.
A rather expensive means of insurance. Particularly since the science was untested and unproven. Theoretically it had been tested in labs, and was on the cutting edge of the best way to protect structures from earthquakes. It borrowed from similar principles that stealth bombers used, when absorbing and deflecting radio waves. It had to do with vibrations and wavelengths and how lateral energy flowed across surfaces.
Three concentric rings, all visible, like tips of icebergs.
Beneath the soil were two more rings that couldn’t be seen. The fourth was just below the surface and nearer to the buildings. It was made entirely of recycled tires. Rubber, for diffusing vibrations. The last ring was buried a little deeper. It was made of plastic—recycled plastic—from millions of water bottles.
These five rings were all arranged around five, non-descript, low-slung buildings. Each made of ochre-colored brick with windows of dark tinted glass. Nothing special about them. Very ordinary. Looked like countless office parks seen in suburbs everywhere.
With one or two exceptions.
The roofs of the buildings were actually huge solar arrays. Together they could generate 1.9 megawatts. That was enough to power 2,000 homes.
Impressive. But only a smidgeon of the power this place actually required.
The windows of the buildings were another peculiarity. They were opaque spandrel glass. Couldn’t really tell just by looking at them—they looked like normal glass. They were for appearances only. No one could see through them, in or out.
Above those windows were louvers. From a distance they looked like brise soleils. They tracked continuously around each of the buildings.
The louvers were for air circulation. The buildings, more just shells, housed hundreds of absorption chillers, all utilizing cutting-edge technology. They ran at night when power costs were less expensive. They tied into on-site thermal storage facilities so that cooling could be provided during the day.
Lots of cooling.
Again, none of this was visible. The place to the naked eye looked like any unassuming office park. Outside of Raleigh there were plenty such office complexes that had similar looking structures.
There weren’t any vehicles in the parking lot. That was unusual, James thought. There were always vehicles in the lot.
They pulled up to one of the buildings and emptied from Enrique’s car. There was a niche next to the double doors, which from a few feet away almost looked like an ATM terminal. In the niche there was a keypad and a place to put one’s hand. It was a biometric scanner. James pressed his hand against the reader and typed in a passcode. A moment later, the doors clicked open.
They entered a small lobby. There were no pictures on the walls and no rugs on the floor, just concrete. Bare concrete.
The only adornment at all was a white line on the floor. A camera captured their entry. In front of them was a desk where Security normally sat. It was empty. James frowned. He’d wanted to follow standard protocol. With no one here that was going to prove difficult to do.
They went through a mantrap, which looked like a vestibule, except for the metal bars and bulletproof glass. There was another scanner, this time for retinal identification. James placed his forehead against an ivory-colored cushioned pad and let the red eye oscillate across his face.
Seconds later, the door clicked open. James and Enrique walked down a corridor and entered the DECON chamber.
The DECON chamber was split into two areas. One for women and one for men. The men’s area looked like a locker room. A very sterile locker room.
From a large locker they each retrieved some disposable scrubs, sat on the benches and stripped down. They slipped into the scrubs and adjusted them to fit. They put their shoes back on. They put booties over their shoes and stored their pants and shirts in the lockers.
It was all routine. In James’s case, he’d done this at least a hundred times since this place had been built. He didn’t even view it as strange anymore. It was like wearing a hard hat at a construction site, or a tie to the office.
“Ready?” James said.
“Yep,” said Enrique.
They went through the airlock.
25
BEHIND them the doors hermetically sealed. There was a short corridor ahead, which ended with a pair of stainless-steel elevator doors. Even now they could hear the vibrations coming from below.
Appearances and sizes were misleading. From the outside the place had appeared to be an office park. It wasn’t. And as for size, “The Vault” was considerably larger than it appeared. That was due to the fact that the majority of the hot site was below ground.
They entered the elevator. Enrique pressed the button for one of the lower levels. “How’s your ankle?”
“Fine.” James was keeping his weight off it as best he could.
As they descended, the vibrations intensified; unseen equipment emitting a constant hum. Everything in this facility was fully automated. Very little was required from the operators, aside from the need to verify systems were performing correctly. Ever since the Siemens’ fiasco, where the backup servers hadn’t been working for months, an enhanced series of fail-safes had been implemented to prevent similar failures.
The businesses and corporations that relied on The Vault were too lengthy to mention. Today a crisis had done a tsunami on the financial community. Tomorrow they would all be knocking on the door of The Vault to bail them out. Except this time the bailout wouldn’t be the Fed with money like a few years ago, but ComTek with their data.
All their data… from the names of the accounts to the amounts, and everything in-between.
The Vault’s primary function was the protection of data. It served as the last bastion of defense for many of its clients. Large companies, for the most part, still utilized their own data recovery systems. But since the latest breakthroughs in compression technology and deduplication, where almost unlimited amounts of data could be sent in seconds from anywhere in the country, many companies in the last two years had either shifted to using ComTek in lieu of their old systems or were using them as a redundant system. The cost was negligible, when considering the low cost per terabyte and the credits insurance companies typically gave for having two independent disaster recovery systems.
The Vault continuously backed-up and protected distributed data from thousands of locations. The encryption process that The Vault utilized was state-of-the-art. Even if a server blade were to leave the facility, the data it contained was useless without the cryptographic keys that unlocked the data. Those keys were protected through an intricate matrix that only the client controlled. Clients didn’t need to worry about their data being vulnerable. All information contained in The Vault was impregnable even to the most sophisticated algorithmic attacks.
The Vault was so nicknamed for good reason. This place was for serious data storage. A tier-5 facility. The only of its kind. It didn’t get more serious than this.
The lift came to a stop.
A moment later the doors opened. They exited into a shiny sterile environment and walked past humming equipment to the Fishbowl. The room had glass walls on all four sides. As they entered, the two-inch thick glass door—actually it wasn’t glass, but rather a composite material similar to PYREX®—sealed behind them and the insistent hum from the servers was replaced with silence.
Enrique took a seat at one of the terminals. Above them was a bank of monitors that showed dozens of views from the surveillance cameras. It was eerie being the only two people in the facility. Even on Christmas Day this place normally had a small cadre of personnel and Security.
“Let’s make this quick.” James wanted to get to his family. Already, he was questioning his decision to come here.
Enrique moved the mouse and typed on the keyboard. “It’s going to take a few minutes.”
A sharp pain came from James’s ankle and he grimaced.
Son of a.
“I’ll be back. I’m going to the Break Room to get some ice.”
26
SUE wedged herself between the wall and dresser and pushed with her legs. The dresser fell in front of the door with a crash. Sue knew it would only hold the men for a moment. She joined her girls in the closet and pulled the bi-fold closet door shut. Through the slats she peered into the room. She heard the men yelling.
She touched her girls. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
The closet they were in had the scent of cedar. Winter coats and other garments were hung on the rod above them. Their house was built thirty years ago and had plenty of quirks. This closet was one of them. It served double duty. As a space-saving measure, the closet was designed so that it opened onto two rooms: the room they’d just left and the adjacent room that was once a bedroom, but now served as James’s office.
Sue and her girls crawled through the coats. They could hear the men banging on the door.
“Now, Mommy?” Katie said.
“We need to wait.”
Sue looked through the slats into the office. She saw James’s computer. It was turned on for some reason. He usually left it turned off. To the right of it, she could see the door. It was already open.
There was the sound of wood splintering and Sue took the opportunity to pull the bi-fold door open. She maneuvered back through the coats so she could look into the room they’d just left. The dresser was shaking. The wood trim around the door was hanging off the wall. They’d succeeded at breaking the door jamb and she knew it would just be a matter of seconds before they pushed the dresser out of the way.
She crawled back and joined her girls. “Okay.”
She nudged Hannah and Katie forward.
There was a loud wrenching sound and then a crash. By the sound of it, the dresser had fallen from its side. The three of them left the closet and Sue went to the open door. She took a chance and peeked out into the hallway. She caught a glimpse of the men entering the room they’d just left. She looked back at her girls.
“I’ll be right behind you,” she whispered.
“Mommy?” Hannah’s lip trembled.
“It’s okay, baby. I’ll be right behind you.”
Her girls went through the door and headed down the stairs. Sue followed behind. They reached the landing. There was a propane tank that for some reason was propped against the wall. They squeezed past it, headed down the last few steps to the hallway and made a beeline for the garage door.
Upstairs, the men were yelling.
Katie and Hannah reached the door. Sue fumbled with the key. She got the door open and locked it behind them. She knew that would only slow them down for a moment. But that was all she and her girls needed.
Her girls were by the minivan. Sue went to the workbench area. They kept spare keys to both cars in a jelly jar that was hidden behind James’s tool box.
Sue pulled the tool box aside and looked for the jelly jar.
It wasn’t there.
27
JAMES finished slurping down his second bottle of water, and then limped back towards the Fishbowl with an ice pack. He looked at his watch. Enrique better have something to show him. If not, they were leaving, conspiracy evidence or not. He’d turned the TV on in the Break Room and had been horrified by what he saw.
An airplane collision had occurred half an hour ago and debris had rained down on a suburb only five miles from his house. Air Traffic Control was scrambling to route planes without use of the computerized systems they normally relied on. An FAA spokesman declined to comment further, other than adding they were dealing with a host of issues concurrently.
Crowds were rioting in the major cities throughout the US. They were seeing spikes in crime not seen since the 1970s. The National Guard had been mobilized and curfews were in effect.
He needed to be with his family. Not here, running down some hunch of Enrique’s. Enrique was right; this virus thing would be figured out and stopped. AngelGuard already had a patch, which meant they’d isolated the virus. Infected systems would just need to be quarantined and reset to their status prior to infection. It was a little mo
re complicated than that, of course. But basically it boiled down to that when you took away the peripherals. When a system crashed or data was lost, it could all be brought back as long as an effective disaster recovery system was in place.
There was an upside to his and Sue’s savings and checking account loss not being an isolated incident. He’d been thinking they were victims of identity theft. Had that been the case, it would have been an uphill climb to recover their losses. They might never fully recover what they’d lost.
But this…
This whole-scale collapse of banking networks was an entirely different scenario. It guaranteed banks would implement recovery systems; essentially reset customer accounts to their status 24 hours ago. Any transactions post infection would be retracted. It would be a tricky proposition. Some banks, the smaller ones that didn’t have sophisticated disaster recovery systems in place might face losses. But his bank, which was a client of ComTek’s, would be able to restore accounts to their amounts pre-infection, which would include his and Sue’s.
At least in theory that’s how it worked. But The Vault had never been tested on this scale. James looked around at the vast subterranean breadth of humming equipment. This place—a window into a post-apocalyptic underground world, if there ever was one—was about to earn its keep.
So much of what he did everyday was monotonous routine. To be in a situation where the worst-case scenario was happening was sobering. While he didn’t have the impressive job title, or the fat paycheck, the value he brought to ComTek was about to be beyond monetary comprehension.
Trillions of dollars were safeguarded in this facility.
While he wanted to get home to be with his family, a part of him was struggling with a small, but critical omission. He was surprised that this place, which was about to become the most important facility on the globe, was unmanned, except for him and Enrique.
Security should be here.