by Rachel Grant
He lifted their entwined fingers and kissed the back of her hand. “You can borrow Freddy. His wife, Angelica, is pretty great too.”
She turned in the passenger seat and faced him. “Are you…offering to share your family with me?”
“Will you do me the honor of taking my brother off my hands?”
She laughed. “I like you, Nathaniel Sifuentes.”
“What happened to ‘Hawk’?”
“I’m saving that for when you soar.”
“Oh, so that’s how this is going to be.”
“You’re only as good as my last orgasm.”
“I will rise to the occasion.”
“I know you will.”
He laughed.
Before they reached the compound, he called Josh and Chase and asked them to track down any operatives who had purchased HH drones for the holidays. Everyone who lived in the compound was single, and with low living expenses, they could afford to indulge themselves during the holidays. He’d bet more than one bought themselves a drone for Christmas.
They arrived, and, after dumping their shopping bags of clothes and other odds and ends in his quarters, she grabbed her fancy new computer and he led her to the gymnasium, where they had both a basketball and indoor tennis court.
“Tennis?” she asked. “I didn’t think that was a big military sport.”
“Robert Beck had a passion for tennis. There was an indoor court in the Alaska compound too.”
“Do you play?”
“I enjoy it, but I’m terrible at it,” he said.
“It’s good to do things you like even if you aren’t an expert. I think most adults forget that and give up some of life’s pleasures.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to him. “And what do you enjoy but you aren’t very good at? Because as far as I can tell, you’re pretty damn great at everything.”
He dropped a light kiss on her lips.
“I’m terrible at watching TV. But I do it anyway.”
He laughed. “How can you be terrible at watching TV? It’s not even a skill.”
“Oh, it’s a skill. I talk over all the dialogue—even when I’m alone—yelling at the characters when they’re wrong. And then I have to rewind and figure out what I missed when yelling. And sometimes, if I can’t take it, I’ll look up the show I’m watching online and read all the spoilers.”
He shook his head and laughed. “Okay. Remind me not to watch TV with you.”
“No way. You’re stuck with me, bad TV watching and all. I’m very good at other things, which makes up for it.”
“That you are,” he murmured, then he kissed her. A deep kiss that made promises for later.
“Enough of that, Hawk,” Chase said from the doorway. “There’s no mistletoe in here.” He shook his head. “You’ve defiled my cabin, haven’t you?”
Leah burst out laughing as they separated.
Nate said, “Sorry, man. Yeah. Maybe. A little bit.”
Chase clapped him on the back. “You owe me. So much.”
Leah kissed his cheek. “Thank you for everything.”
“I hear you need some drones,” Josh said, entering the room with Tricia Rooks. They each carried a box with the bright red HH logo. “We found two.”
Leah’s face lit up, probably brighter than any kid’s would on Christmas Day. Never in his life had a woman’s smile made his heart squeeze in quite that way.
Leah lined up the five drones in the center of the basketball court. A dozen people stood at the edge of the room, among them Josh, Chase, Freddy, and Keith. The rest were Raptor operatives who lived in the compound.
“For the first test, we’ll work with the preloaded firmware,” she said to her audience.
Each drone came with a motion-sensitive wand controller, the size and shape of a high-end smartphone with a two-inch screen to view images recorded by the drone’s camera.
Leah looped the strap for two controllers on each wrist and offered Nate the fifth controller. She showed him the basic motions to control movement by setting one of her drones in flight. It followed her movements perfectly, stopping only when her motion would send it crashing into the ground or other object. Like a self-driving car, it could redirect.
He copied it, and his drone flew smoothly, shiny metallic silver catching the gym lights, looking like a sixties-era vision of the future as it floated in the air. The aluminum alloy housing gave the drone more heft, which required a more powerful motor that purred like a contented kitten. The end result was a bigger, beefier drone that somehow danced with the lightness of a ballerina. She’d argued for lighter, cheaper plastic with the design team, but had to admit the metal sheath and retro-futuristic look set Peacemaker apart, made it exceptional, and was as recognizable as the bright red HH logo on the side. She wasn’t alone in making Peacemaker a success and needed to give the design team their due.
“Okay, that’s cool,” Nate said, wiggling the controller and watching the drone mimic the movement three feet away.
“Ready to test all five?” she asked.
“Ready.”
“We’ll launch the drones and then hit the AI button on the controller. Then they’ll do a basic friendship dance to show they’re communicating.”
One by one, she launched her drones and turned on the AI, then she nodded to Nate to launch his. Her drones reacted to the new one, making room as starlings would for a hawk, splitting and scattering, but still they moved in synchronicity, mirroring each other.
“Hit the AI button so your hawk can make peace.”
He laughed and tapped the button. The dance changed, no longer starlings and hawk, but rather five hawks, spinning and soaring.
“Wow,” one of the observers said.
She couldn’t help but beam. Having an audience for her art was rare.
“Bring it in,” she said as she landed her four drones.
To the group, she said, “That’s the basic preloaded software. Without any updates, all the drones can do that. But that’s not the dance that will happen at three tomorrow. That one is a special one-time-only deal.” She turned to her computer and opened a terminal that connected to the drones via Wi-Fi or cellular signal, depending on what was available, and entered a code.
“I’m now going to make these run through the basic preloaded December 25 Drone Dance sequence—D25DD. Except for powering on, the remote controls are locked out of this sequence. That way, no one can act as a spoiler and ruin the show. If the drones are powered on and flying at three p.m., they will be in AI mode.”
She hit the Start button on the keyboard, and all five drones took flight and did a simple dance. This was the preloaded default, and it would be good enough for most viewers.
But most viewers didn’t know what the drones could really do.
Leah cut off the sequence, and the drones landed, then she returned to the center of the gym and one by one used a pencil tip to press the Reset button on the first three devices.
“I’m triggering the drone’s internal Wi-Fi or 3G connection to upload all the latest updates, including the D25DD choreography. The drones communicate with each other and share choreography, which is why I didn’t reset the last two. They should follow along, receiving their performance cues from the other drones. The dance they’re about to perform should be the final coding I uploaded at two a.m. Sunday.”
She entered the password to run D25DD into the terminal open on her laptop. The drones took flight and the dance started well. All performances would be different depending on the number of drones involved, but these were definitely the moves she’d programmed. The sequence was a full twenty minutes long. Like any halfway-decent fireworks display, it had to last and have a few surprises.
At seven minutes in, the first drone went rogue. It left the party and shot like a rocket across the gym, aiming straight for the audience.
Leah hit the kill button, and it did a hard reverse then dropped like a stone.
She d
idn’t take her eyes off the drones in flight, couldn’t see the faces of the onlookers, but heard their gasps as two drones first circled each other, then turned and faced the gathered audience. The lights strobed—which they absolutely should not do—and then they flew to the far end of the room—the limit of their reach—before zooming forward, charging the audience as they gathered speed. Leah used her open terminal to halt their flight before they could crash into the spectators.
At the same time, the final two drones flew erratically, tapping on the walls as if searching for a window or a door. When none could be found, they also flew to the far end of the room, then turned and charged. These drones targeted Nate and Leah—as if beckoned by the control wands. Leah hit the Kill button, and both drones halted, then dropped a few feet away.
Her heart raced as she looked at the silver drones that littered the gym floor.
They’d been programmed to attack the audience. To flash strobing lights. And to escape, or, if that wasn’t possible, to attack anyone holding a wand. Who knows what they’d do if they flew beyond the reach of their controllers.
Given their greater weight and strong motors, they could seriously hurt people if the attack was targeted. Especially if they ganged up—worked in unison to attack a single spectator.
She’d been able to stop the drones because she’d been logged in to the firmware. That wouldn’t be possible for the thousands of people attending Peacemaker events across the country. Because of the AI lock, there would be no way to stop drones going berserk during the D25DD flight.
15
They gathered in a large conference room on the main floor of the compound: Keith, Nate, Josh, Chase, Leah, and Michelle Hollis, who’d driven from a hotel in DC, where all the HH executives were staying.
Leah tapped at the computer keys, and the big screen at the front of the room filled with the recording of the drones’ wild flight, captured by cameras set up throughout the gym.
“How do I know you didn’t program them to do that?” Hollis asked. “I know you’re more than capable of it, Leah.”
Leah gave her former boss a look. “Because you know me, Michelle. This is my life’s work. You really think I’d do something this horrible?”
Hollis pursed her lips, then finally said, “No.”
“After the initial test,” Leah said, “we ran another one. Lucky for us, Raptor has a bunch of medical and other dummies they use for their trainings. We gathered every human-sized dummy we could find and set them up in the bleachers. I put all five control wands in the seats, between the dolls. This is what happened.”
Leah hit play on the second video. Nate watched the scene again, as horrified seeing it on the screen as he’d been when he watched it play out in real life. The drones had targeted the child-sized dummies. They’d teamed up and dive-bombed the children like birds of prey intent on the kill.
Leah hit the Pause button, and the drones were frozen in flight, in the act of pummeling a child.
Michelle Hollis covered her mouth with her hand, her brown eyes wide with shock and horror. “They’ll all do this tomorrow? All two point three million drones?”
Two point three million demon drones? Holy hell.
“Yes. Once one updates, it will update the others, spreading like a virus because we wanted to make it easy for customers. I hooked all five drones up to my computer and checked the code. The push update that three of them received when I hit the drone Reset button was uploaded early this morning.”
Hollis dropped her face into her hands. “Who did this? Dex? Before he killed himself?”
“I think it was Dex. And maybe he killed himself. Maybe this was his grand screw-you to the company. Or it could be someone else. But I’m pretty sure whoever it was would need Dex and his computer. He had direct remote access to the files.”
“So did you. Your computer could have been stolen Sunday, when Ainsley…”
“It’s possible. I haven’t asked what they’ve recovered from the townhouse. But even so, my computer, like Dex’s, was locked without my face scan and thumbprint.”
“So you’re saying that tomorrow afternoon, two point three million drones are going to attack all the people gathered to watch them dance all across the country?”
“Yes,” Leah said.
Hollis rolled her hand into a fist, and her face contorted in pain. “We have to cancel all the events.”
“I can fix it,” Leah said. “It will take me hours to piece together the code, but I can do it, if you give me a computer with access to the company servers. My code is still there. It’s just broken apart. I can repair it. But once the repair is in place, we’ll need to lock down the system to prevent whoever created the berserker code from uploading it again. They will have switched Dex’s computer’s biometric lock with their own once they were in.”
“I need to talk to Tim about this.”
Leah shook her head. “No, Michelle, there’s a reason I only invited you to this meeting.”
“Tim might have been behind your firing, but there is no way he’s behind this. This will destroy HH.”
“And potentially kill thousands of people. Children,” Nate said.
She met his gaze and nodded. “You’re right, of course. That is far more important. But Tim Hathaway didn’t write that code. He knows nothing about programming and AI.”
“I agree,” Leah said, “but if word gets out that I’m fixing D25DD, whoever wrote the berserker code will gut the system. Tim might talk to the wrong person. Or you might be overheard. Every engineer in the company knows how to program a surveillance drone, so it’s not crazy to think someone could be listening. Hell, Raju, Piper, and Kevin have been designing spider drones for the last ten months. And you’re all staying in the same hotel. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t trust the damn walls.”
“If that’s the case, they could already know I’m here.”
“If anyone asks, tell them you met with me as I requested but say I’m freaking out about being fired and angry. That’s what they’ll hope to hear anyway.”
“But only tell that lie,” Nate said, “if you can be convincing. You tip whoever did this off, and Christmas is cancelled for two point three million families.”
Hollis nodded, and Nate figured she was up to the task. She was smart, and Leah said they could trust her. She proved herself when she reached into her briefcase and pulled out a laptop. “How long will this take you?”
“Probably much of the night.”
“This is the only machine I brought with me to DC. You’ll have to cut off remote access to the company’s servers when you’re done.”
“I’ll notify you before I do it.”
“We need to change my face scan to yours.” She tapped a few keys, then said, “Jesus. I can’t believe I’m entrusting you with the entire company.”
“It’s this or delete D25DD. If that happens, not a single drone will fly tomorrow.”
“We still might have to do that if you can’t fix it.”
“Yes.”
Hollis tapped several keys, then turned the computer to Leah. “Smile for the face scan.”
Once the task was completed, she rose from her seat. “I want you to know, after we spoke this morning, I called Captain Sullivan and asked about your firing. It appears he received a spoof email from his chain of command ordering your firing, so when the MPs called to confirm the order to escort you off base, he gave them the go-ahead. He was in the middle of a holiday gathering with family visiting from across the country. He didn’t give it the attention he would have otherwise.”
“I think that was by design. Tim and Dex never expected the firing to be questioned,” Leah said. “But then the police needed to confirm my story in the investigation into Ainsley’s death.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do about Tim,” Hollis said. “I can’t fire him. But his action destroyed our relationship with the military.”
“Not to mention destroying Leah’s reputation, lea
ving her without money, car, home, or phone in a city where she knew no one,” Nate added, again pointing out that the company consequences were minimal compared to the human ones.
She met his gaze. “Again, you’re right. My problem is, I don’t know what consequences he’ll face beyond losing the military as a client.”
“If he spoofed a military email, there are legal consequences,” Leah said.
“Tim doesn’t have those skills. You know that was Dex.”
Leah nodded.
Unsaid was the fact that Dex was dead, having paid a much higher price than the crime of spoofing a military email deserved.
“Anyway, I wanted to let you know what I learned. I will deal with Tim’s power play, but I’m not sure how. Yet. Now, I need to get back to the hotel before anyone notices I took off.”
“Is anyone behaving suspiciously?” Keith asked.
“Everyone is in shock over Ainsley and Dex, so it’s impossible to know.”
She turned to Leah. “Show up at the executive suite right before the show and hand me the laptop. Let’s see how everyone reacts.” She then faced the rest of them. “You should all come. Bring your families if you want. You can be my special guests.”
“Put Raptor down as extra security you’ve hired,” Keith said. “We’ve got an arrangement with DC police and will be able to carry firearms into the venue if we’re there in an official capacity.”
Hollis nodded. “Consider it done.
An hour into Leah’s coding marathon, Josh and Nate stepped into the conference room. Josh held a menorah and a box of candles, and Nate held the menorah he’d purchased Sunday night for her. “I thought you might want to do it together tonight,” Josh said.
Leah smiled. Without siblings, she’d always only had one menorah to light, but she knew in some families, each member had their own.
It was strange and more than a little heartwarming to feel like her family was expanding, even in this small way. After they said the blessings and lit their menorahs, Leah asked, “Do you have siblings, Josh? Family you usually do this with?”
