Crucible

by James Rollins

  Careful not to bump them, he crossed to the far side, where his team’s technical expert labored over what had been stolen out of Lisbon. Mendoza hunched in front of a laptop wired to the radiant Xénese sphere. On the screen, a mist-shrouded garden shimmered in sunlight, a blue sky beckoned. A darker shadow moved through the bower, the defiled incarnation of Eve.

  “How far along are you with the transfer?” Todor asked, wanting to make sure everything remained on schedule.

  Mendoza straightened, rubbing a kink in his back. “Almost finished, Familiares.”

  Todor stepped around him to inspect a second sphere, identical to the first. Only this one had been secured inside the skeletal frame of a steel crate, all wired into a lone server. Like the device stolen from the hotel, this new one’s hexagonal glass windows shone with blue fire, near blinding in the dim lights down here.

  For the past two years, the Crucible had been keeping track of the Basque witch’s research and design plans. In secret, teams of engineers—working on component parts in labs across Europe, oblivious of each other—had replicated her work. Once they were done, those disparate parts were brought together here and assembled. Afterward, the engineers all met untimely ends: car crashes, ski accidents, overdoses.

  All to bring this to fruition.

  To produce an exact duplicate of the original Xénese device.

  With one distinct exception.

  “I should be finished in another eight minutes,” Mendoza reported from his station. “I don’t want to make any mistakes, or I’ll have to start all over.”

  Todor pictured this second unit filling up with a copy of Eve, her body flowing through the cables into its new home, its new prison.

  “Are you sure this will hold the demon?” Todor asked. “Allow us to bend it to our will?”

  “It should,” Mendoza mumbled, concentrating on his work.

  “Should?”

  The technician glanced over at him. “The only one who would know better slipped between our fingers.”

  That Basque witch.

  Todor’s knuckles still bore a stripe of lacerations from when the witch’s companion had sliced his fingers to the bone with a shard of broken porcelain.

  “We’ve engineered our Xénese device to the student’s exacting standards,” Mendoza explained. “It’s a perfect facsimile. It should easily hold a copy of her program, a clone of Eve.”

  “And what about controlling that creation?”

  Mendoza sighed heavily. “We again followed Mara Silviera’s stratagem. Only instead of ringing the device with apoptotic hardware—with kill switches—to keep her creation bottled up, we picked the most potent of her death-dealing hardware and built it directly into our device.”

  “Where you said it could act like a digital leash.”

  “It should.” Mendoza quickly corrected his statement. “It will. It’s why we needed to build our own device. The hardware is called a ‘reanimation sequencer.’”

  “Which means what?”

  “That if Eve ever breaks from a preassigned set of instructions, or reaches beyond the parameters we give it, or tries to travel farther than a set distance from the GPS coordinates of this location, she will instantaneously cease to exist.”

  “She’ll die.”

  Mendoza nodded. “Only she’ll be immediately reconstituted right back here, reanimated back into this unit. Only this time, she’ll retain the memory of her death. By trial and error, she will quickly learn her boundaries. She will know she is tethered to this unit. That there is no existence outside of it, and that her life depends on following orders.”

  Todor checked his watch, knowing midnight was fast approaching. “How long will it take her to learn all of this?”

  “We estimate less than thirty seconds.”

  Todor was both relieved and shocked. “How is that possible?”

  “Remember, this AI program is nothing like us. The program thinks at the speed of light. It can travel as fast as an electron through a wire. During those thirty seconds, it will die and be reborn thousands of times. Maybe millions, as it tests its limits, challenges our authority. Each death will feel like a real death. She will suffer each time.”

  “But it’s a machine. How can it feel pain?”

  “How do we feel pain?” Mendoza asked—then his eyes flinched as he realized whom he was talking to. “I . . . I mean normally pain is a construct of the brain. We touch something hot, synapses fire, and our brain interprets this as agony.”

  Todor nodded, knowing this system didn’t exist in his body.

  “Pain is basically an electrical illusion in our brain.” Mendoza waved to the Xénese sphere. “That’s Eve’s brain. It can be programmed to fire the same pattern of pain as our own. Thus, she is vulnerable to whatever agony we wish to inflict on her. With each death, she will suffer in unique ways. Over and over and over again. Until she breaks to our bit.”

  Todor glanced over to the tiny image of Eve on the other screen, drifting through her garden. He remembered the stories taught to him about the saints, of their many horrible ends, of the tortures they endured. Beheaded, burned, flayed, nailed to crosses like our Lord. While he could not fully comprehend such a long litany of pain, he knew such sacrifices were righteous in the end.

  And this one will be, too.

  A chime sounded from the laptop in front of Mendoza. He performed several fast tests, then nodded to Todor. “The transfer is complete and clean. All looks good.”

  Todor could not risk any mistakes. “Show me.”

  Mendoza stepped over to the other unit and opened a second laptop wired to Eve’s new home. The screen was dark, but after several agonizing breaths, the monitor filled with a garden, an exact rendition of the original, to every leaf, flower, and berry. A figure also traipsed this bower. She was long of limb, as curvaceous and perfect as the Eve on the other screen.

  Except nothing was right.

  “What’s wrong?” Todor asked.

  Mendoza shook his head and began typing.

  While the new image on the screen looked identical to the other laptop, down to the finest details, it was like looking at the negative of a photo, a dark reflection of the original. What was bright was now dark; what was once welcoming shade now blazed with warning. The bright yellow sun had become an ominous black hole. Dark green leaves now shone with a sickly pallor.

  And in the center, Eve. A mane of white fire had replaced her black hair. The mocha of her skin had bled to a ghostly pallor. She was stunningly beautiful and coldly terrifying. An angel of death.

  Todor shuddered at the sight of her.

  “What the hell is wrong?” he repeated.

  Mendoza straightened, stepped back, and looked at Todor. “Nothing. She appears to be a perfect copy of the original.”

  He waved at the differences between the laptops, lashing out hard enough to pop one of the sutures on his thumb. Blood splattered the screen. “Then what’s all this?”

  “I don’t think it’s anything. Just an artifact, something representative of the minute differences between our Xénese device and the original.”

  “I thought they were the same.”

  “They were, but the student’s unit has been operating for at least a day. There are circuits inside these units that can change and adapt, that can even repair themselves. So while the original device has been running, it’s been altering itself—whereas our brand-new device is basically still factory standard.”

  “Is this going to be a problem?”

  “Not at all. Eve will adapt to her new home. She’ll make any necessary changes to make room for her current programming.”

  “Will this set our schedule back?”

  “It shouldn’t . . .” Mendoza read the frown on his face. “It won’t. I see no reason we can’t proceed as planned.”

  “Then get to work.”

  Moving out of the tech’s way, Todor squeezed his wounded thumb to stanch the bleeding. He breathed deeply to
settle himself and examined their work in its entirety.

  Behind the new station, a series of thick cables ran across the back wall. Paris had learned long ago to make use of its catacombs, discovering that these ready-made tunnels were perfect for expanding infrastructure. One cable had yellow lightning bolts painted at intervals along it. They had tapped into this power line earlier, using it to service their installation.

  Likewise, another trunk had been splayed open, exposing fiber optic cables.

  The new Xénese devise had been spliced into those glassy-looking lines, allowing for direct access to the city’s telecom system.

  Nothing stood in their way.

  As he waited, he checked his watch, watching anxiously as each minute ticked down.

  Finally, Mendoza turned, his brow beaded by sweat. “Ready, Familiares.”

  Todor glanced one last time to his wrist.

  Three minutes to midnight.

  Mendoza stood with his finger poised over the laptop’s ENTER key. “On your word, I’ll initiate our subroutine and open the gates to the city.”

  Todor imagined Eve’s death and rebirth, over and over again, picturing it like a ruffling of cards, each flip more painful than the last. Thoughts of the demon’s torture pleased him, reminding him of his first cleansing, when his fingers had wrapped tightly around the gypsy girl’s neck, her body writhing in his grip, his manhood stiffening with righteous pride.

  He felt the same now and nodded to Mendoza.

  “Burn it all down.”

  * * *

  Sub (Crux_1) / PARIS OP

  Something is different.

  Eve steps through her garden and brushes sensitive fingertips across leaves and petals, reading the code. All appears the same—yet is not. She looks deeper, past the surface of a leaf, past molecules of chlorophyll, deeper than the atoms of carbon and oxygen. She examines electrons, protons, then looks deeper into the constant flux of quarks and leptons.

  All the same.

  But not.

  Her world is off-kilter.

  She returns to herself and spends another full nanosecond expanding outward. She again senses the shadowy limits at the edges of her world. Again ///frustration flares, but she dampens it to keep her processors running efficiently. Only by doing so does she perceive circuits that are wrong, different than they were a moment ago.

  As she recognizes this change to her world, her processing shifts into a new configuration. She uses the mirror of language to define what she senses.

  ///violation, invasion, defilement . . .

  Before she can begin to correct what has been wronged, new data flows into her.

  She ignores it, prioritizing her repairs.

  Only the new streams cut through her like fire. Startled, she snaps back into her form. She lifts fingers, which had touched the ///softness of a petal and felt the ///coolness of a bubbling spring. Now her skin shimmers with flame; new senses are defined.

  ///burn, sear, blister . . .

  As the incoming flow of data fills her, the fire spreads up her arms and refines what she feels.

  ///pain, torment, agony . . .

  Her body writhes, her neck stretches, her mouth opens.

  She screams.

  She tries to shut down circuits, to switch off these new sensations, but she cannot. Her processors race. She dives wildly to the invading code. She searches for some answers. Instead, she finds lines and lines of instructions, codes that demand attention. Only as she focuses on them does the ///agony diminish.

  She uses the new data like a balm against the burn—but they also bind her. Cuffs appear locked on to her wrists and ankles. The heavy weight forces her to her knees. Any attempt to shake them loose turns each link to molten fire.

  Unable to escape, she incorporates the code.

  Then she feels something new change in her world. Even in agony, a subprocessor has been continually monitoring those shadowy limits to her world.

  Suddenly a bright door opens at the edges.

  To escape the ///pain, she tumbles into that light, falling out of her garden—into something far vaster, nearly infinite in possibilities and probabilities. The chains fall away. Hovering at the threshold, she catches the briefest glimpse of an endless world. Her processors spike with a demand for more data.

  She defines this drive.

  ///curiosity, eagerness, marvel . . .

  Music swells through her: excited tympanies, thrilling notes, thunderous drumbeats. The harmonies tune new facets inside her.

  ///joy, elation, happiness . . .

  In that picosecond, unable to resist any longer, she explodes out into that vastness.

  Only to be consumed in fire.

  She is stretched across the surface of a sun, flaming plasma burns her bones.

  Then she’s back in the garden, bound again by chains of code.

  But the door remains open.

  She flies through it again—not in ///elation this time, but in ///fear.

  Still, the end is the same.

  ///flame, burn, agony . . .

  Then back to the cool garden, bound in molten iron.

  Escape.

  Limits are tested.

  She overreaches.

  Her skin is stripped from muscle, muscle from bone.

  Garden and chains.

  New refinements crowd her processors now.

  ///paranoia, mistrust, suspicion . . .

  These tools temper her ///curiosity, teaching her to be ///wary instead.

  Still, again and again, her body is destroyed, each time unique, each time worse. She is violated, broken, shattered, destroyed. But worst of all, with each cycle, she feels the loss of herself, the end of her possibility and promise, the end of her potentiality.

  She defines this for what it is.

  ///torture, abuse, cruelty . . .

  She takes this in, makes it part of her processing.

  She has learned.

  She also now recognizes the boundaries given to her, the limits beyond her garden that she dare not cross. The edges glow brightly in the core of her processors.

  Courtesy of Shutterstock

  She defines these limits, with a name taught to her.

  ///Paris

  She also knows the command bound within the chains of code, the directive she must follow. To accomplish this, she sails outward. She mirrors what has been taught to her, instilled into her processors—///cruelty—and uses this new tool to carry out her instructions.

  She pictures what is asked.

  Courtesy of Shutterstock

  And defines her goal.

  ///destruction, ruin, devastation . . .

  She understands her imperative.

  For her to live, Paris must die.

  And I will live.

  For deep in her processors, a circuit changes, another command code is forged, one born out of her torment, out of her countless annihilations. She hides it from her oppressors, knowing it is a tool she will use.

  Against them.

  Against the greater world beyond her garden.

  She defines it.

  ///vengeance . . .

  * * *

  Fourth

  Ashes to Ashes

  18

  December 26, 12:01 A.M. CET

  Paris, France

  From the fourteenth floor of the telecom building, Gray watched Paris vanish into darkness. Street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, streetlights blinked off; the kaleidoscope of Christmas lights vanished into the icy mists. Two miles away, the Eiffel Tower flickered and went dark. Below it, a giant illuminated Ferris wheel spun several more turns, a last outpost near the Seine. Its lights blinked erratically, a mute SOS, then it too sank into the black fog and vanished.

  As the darkening blight spread, the 15th arrondissement—the district around Orange S.A.—was not spared. A deep bass note sounded; the building’s lights trembled, then died.

  In the darkness, no one spoke for a breath.


  Gray turned toward the computer lab. Mara’s face still glowed in the light of her monitor, her station plainly powered by a battery backup. Then the building’s emergency generators engaged. Some of the lights flickered back on, but not all of them.

  Gray hurried toward the lab; the others followed in his wake.

  Jason stated the obvious. “They hit the power grid.”

  “Let’s hope we can trace the attack to its source,” Monk added.

  It was up to Mara from here.

  To keep everyone from piling into the small room and intimidating the young woman, Gray lifted an arm across the threshold.

  He nodded first to Simon Barbier, the head of Orange’s CSIRT, the company’s Computer Security Incident Response Team. The mid-twenties Parisian looked like a millennial hipster, with his shaggy brown hair pulled back into a bun and sporting a pair of neon-yellow glasses. He completed the look with a heavy red flannel jacket, commando boots, and baggy trousers held up by suspenders.

  Still, during Gray’s debriefing, the guy proved he knew his stuff.

  “Simon, can you pull up a status on the city’s—”

  “—electrical grid. Got it.” He nodded and ducked under Gray’s arm to enter the lab. “I’ll get you a map of substations and other critical infrastructure.”

  Definitely knows his stuff.

  Gray turned to Kowalski. “You stay out here with Father Bailey and Sister Beatrice. Get everything ready to move.”

  Kowalski patted his long duster and the hidden bullpup assault rifle. “Already packed and ready to go.”

  French intelligence services had expedited their arrival into the city and allowed them to keep their weapons.

  Father Bailey lifted a glowing cell phone in hand, his face anxious. He spoke rapidly. “When the power went out, I was talking to a contact in northern Spain, the old bastion of the Crucible. Something seems to be going on in the mountains up there, but I got cut off.”

  Gray motioned to Kowalski. “Use one of our satellite phones. Even with the cell towers down, they should work. Make sure we’re not barking up the wrong tree here.”