by Tarah Benner
“Whatever he’s planning, he needs the CEOs,” I say. “Each company he targeted controls some aspect of the bot technology.”
“Control the bots, control the world,” says Jared darkly.
“We need to take away his advantage,” I say. “Make sure that he can’t use the CEOs against their companies no matter what.”
“How?” asks Maggie. “The buildings are all on lockdown. The employees are scattered.”
I glance at Jared, who’s been watching the ticker along the bottom of the TV closely.
“I know of at least one company we can take out of the equation,” I say.
Jared seems to sense us looking at him. He turns and fidgets nervously on the bed. “You want me to help you protect Vault from Mordecai?”
“That’s right.”
“How?”
“By making sure Mordecai can’t access that data.”
Jared nods slowly, his brows furrowed in deep concentration. I can tell he’s formulating a plan — figuring out how we could break into Vault and change the authentication settings.
“What about the bots?” asks Maggie. “Mordecai has to be watching that building. When he finds out, he’ll send the humanoids after us.”
“I might be able to help with that,” says Jared. He twists around, unzips his backpack, and pulls something out.
It looks like some kind of handheld scanner. A coil of wire is sticking out of the top, and there’s a thick layer of duct tape wrapped around the handle.
“What is that?” asks Maggie.
Jared turns it on, and the room is filled with a sort of low hum — almost as though the device is charging up.
“I started working on it after the first attacks,” he says excitedly.
I stare at the homemade device, which looks more like some middle-school science-fair project than a deadly weapon. “What is it?”
“It’s designed to short out the bots’ electrical systems,” he says in a breathless voice. “You just charge it up, touch it to a bot, and — zap!”
“Does it work?” asks Maggie.
If it does, it could be a total game changer — a foolproof method to defeat the bots.
“I don’t know,” he confesses. “I haven’t tested it yet.”
“But you think it works,” says Maggie.
“It should work,” says Jared, “in theory.”
I frown. No part of me wants to confront a bot with a device that’s only theoretically lethal, but it still gives me hope. It makes me think that the bots aren’t indestructible. At least there could be a way to take them out of commission without bludgeoning them like a caveman.
“Well, charge it up . . . You might get a chance to test it real soon.”
Jared and Maggie exchange a nervous look.
“We’re breaking into Vault,” I say. “And you’re going to help us.”
We decide to wait until dark to break into headquarters. Vault is located just two blocks south of Maverick in a three-story stucco building with a metallic gold exterior. The doors are black and have a gigantic five-spoke spinning handle for decoration.
After Zephyr’s abduction, Vault is still an active crime scene. Armed police officers are stationed around the block every two hundred yards, and I can hear choppers surveilling the street from the air.
I’m sure the building is being closely watched — both by the authorities and by Mordecai himself. Normally I’d say the chances of getting inside the building were slim. The police presence combined with Vault’s state-of-the-art security makes it a risky target, but we have Jared — deputy director of internal kiss-ass-ery.
So far Vault’s only vulnerability seems to be the CEO’s own neurosis. According to Jared, Zephyr Morgan rarely went out in public or held meetings face to face. He was so afraid of catching a deadly strain of the flu or the MRSA virus that he kept himself isolated from nearly everyone.
His one vice was a special vanilla latte infused with ancho chili powder. Most days Jared would run to the coffee shop down the street to get Zephyr his fix, but occasionally the paranoid CEO would be left to his own devices.
Two years ago, Zephyr bought the coffee shop and had his own private entrance installed via a tunnel running from the coffee-shop storeroom to the basement of Vault.
I can hardly believe the story when Jared tells it. It sounds like something out of a spy movie — or some crazy urban legend. It seems impossible that the high-tech CEO would rely on something as archaic as a secret tunnel. But if Jared is telling the truth, that tunnel could be our way in.
We park the car outside the police barricade and circle the block on foot. Night has fallen, but the place is lit by the swarm of police cars and portable emergency lighting. The bots are no longer standing outside of Maverick headquarters. Either the police managed to take them out, or Mordecai summoned them back to his lair.
From the street, the coffee shop looks deserted. The building is completely dark, and a blue paper “closed” sign is hanging inside the door.
Looking around to make sure we aren’t being watched, I walk up to the building and act as though I’m checking the hours. I turn around to face the street, drive my elbow back, and shatter the glass in one careful strike.
Maggie and Jared dash across the street, and I reach inside to unlock the door.
As we enter the café, the familiar scent of espresso and scalded milk fills my nostrils. The street lights reflect off the shiny wood tables and throw shadows behind the counter. The place is deserted.
I walk back behind the counter, and Maggie and Jared follow. Clearly they’re new to breaking and entering, but it isn’t my first rodeo. I flip on my Optix to guide us into the dark and work my way back to the storeroom.
It’s cramped and dark but surprisingly organized. Boxes are stacked on shelves all around me, and beans are sorted into neatly labeled bins. I don’t see any other door besides the emergency exit, but if Jared is telling the truth, Zephyr probably wouldn’t want anyone else to know about it.
Jared flips on his Optix as well, scanning the floor for something I can’t see. I’d expect a storeroom floor to be dusty, but the room is completely spotless. There’s not a speck of dirt in sight — just a non-slip black mat thrown over the wide wooden planks.
Jared crouches down and rolls back the mat, and I get an unexpected jolt of surprise. There’s an outline of a compartment hidden under the mat.
Jared reaches his fingers into the crack and lifts the trapdoor up, and I bend down to help him. The door falls open against the shelf, revealing an opening big enough for a large adult and a narrow set of stairs.
I let Jared climb down first, helping Maggie into the hole. I close the trapdoor over my head, and we follow the steps to a wide tunnel.
A familiar claustrophobia causes my chest to tighten, but I take a deep breath and draw my pistol. Jared’s handheld tracker isn’t showing any bot activity, but following a stranger into a dark tunnel still makes me uneasy.
The tunnel is built on a gradual slope, and I hear a rumbling overhead. Maggie stops in her tracks and looks up, and I realize it’s just a car passing the coffee shop on the street.
We continue on for nearly a quarter of a mile when suddenly I see a door up ahead. It’s made of heavy-duty steel, is painted black, and has a very serious deadbolt.
Jared fits a plain gold key into the lock and turns the handle, and the door swings open without any trouble.
I can’t believe it. A company whose business is all about security has a secret door that could be opened by a locksmith. It makes no sense.
Maggie and I follow Jared inside. We’re standing in what looks like a boiler room, and I see a set of concrete steps. My eyes rake the corners of the room, and I get a tremor of apprehension about what might be happening outside the pale blue beam cast by my Optix.
The feeling of dread that’s been lying dormant in my gut is stirring again, constricting my lungs and causing my whole body to tighten. I lead the way u
p the stairs, push the door open, and point my weapon out into the hall. It’s dark except for the red glow of the exit sign and the pale white pools cast by emergency lights.
Maggie and Jared follow close behind, and a second later, a bank of normal lights tick on. I wheel around, half expecting Mordecai to appear behind us, but we are still completely alone.
Maggie draws the handgun I gave her, looking slightly awkward holding the pistol in the retention position. Undercover journalist or not, I wish she’d gotten more than a week of firearm training.
Jared moves nervously between us, consulting his bot device to make sure we’re clear. Every so often I have to turn to him for directions, and he leads us down a long hallway covered with dark wood paneling.
Between all the wood and the frosted-glass windows, Vault has a bizarre 1960s aesthetic. It’s not what I’d expect from a tech company, but I guess old is new again.
Jared points out the gold dots mounted along the ceiling and tells us they’re security cameras. Apparently, Vault uses a special program that assigns a unique tracking code to each person who enters the building. Since the system doesn’t recognize Maggie and me, it’s checking our faces against a crime-center database and a list of competitors’ employees.
We pass a wall emblazoned with the company motto — Security second to none. All the best laid plans, I think — derailed by a neurotic CEO with a coffee obsession.
The elevator won’t run on the emergency generator, so Jared leads us up two flights of stairs to a room he calls “The Brain.” The Brain is positioned in the middle of the third floor and houses all the servers where Vault’s data is stored.
Only Vault’s essential systems appear to be functioning, but the scanner in the stairwell accepts Jared’s code, and the lock clicks back in the door.
We’re standing in another hallway just like all the others. It’s got the same dark wood, gold trim, and plenty of bright fluorescent lighting.
We follow Jared down to an unmarked door distinguished only by a keypad and a heavy-duty gold panel. Jared tells us that the panel is connected to more than a dozen sensors, and when I look closer, I see that it displays the ambient temperature inside The Brain, humidity levels, motion caused by seismic activity, and other things I don’t understand. A little green light is illuminated by each number, telling anyone who cares to know that the data is secure.
Jared punches in a code and is immediately prompted for a verbal password. A second later, the door beeps, and Jared is able to push it open.
We’re standing in the middle of an octagon with eighteen-inch-thick walls. The room is covered in the little gold cameras, but my eye is immediately drawn to the center.
In the middle of the octagon is a huge bank of servers, and I instantly understand why workers call it The Brain. The servers aren’t free-standing black boxes like the ones they show in movies. These are small blue cubes fitted together in a giant orb that fills most of the space inside.
Every two seconds, all the blue boxes glow in unison. They pulse once like a heartbeat and then go dark, giving the impression that The Brain is alive.
I imagine all the documents, photos, videos, and spreadsheets scrolling across the master interface. The Brain must be able to digest all that information and convert it into a sequence of zeroes and ones — designed to be accessed and decoded halfway around the world.
For several seconds all I can do is stare. I’m so busy staring that I don’t notice that something isn’t quite right. I feel this itch on the back of my neck — an itch that tells me I’m being watched.
I wheel around. A woman is standing in the hallway behind us. She has long dark hair and a cold evil beauty. She’s dressed in one of the tight white jumpsuits, and she’s striding toward us into the room.
“Jared . . .” I growl.
“Shit,” he says, staring down at his bot-tracking device. A line of green dots just appeared on screen — a group of bots that wasn’t there before. “The walls must have been blocking the signal. They’re too thick!”
“How many?” Maggie cries.
Jared doesn’t answer. He just stands there, frozen, as four bots approach. The humanoids are all designed to look like women — beautiful deadly sirens with flawless skin and long silky hair.
Adrenaline courses through my veins, charging my body and sending blood rushing to all my extremities. Suddenly it hits me over the head — that horrible realization that we’ve been tricked.
It isn’t a coincidence that the bots are here now. They’re here because we’re here — and because they needed Jared.
Jared holds the code to unlock The Brain, and Mordecai set the perfect trap.
22
Maggie
The awe I felt at the power emanating from The Brain is immediately replaced by horror. Five women in white have followed us to the room. They’re all tall and fit with long flowing hair, cold eyes, and cunning faces. They’re humanoids.
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end as the bots disperse around the room. They’re staring at us with a look that’s not quite a smile and not quite a glare. They’ve been expecting us.
In that moment, half a dozen thoughts flash through my mind. First, that we’re too late. We came here to prevent Mordecai from gaining physical access to Vault, but we just opened the door for his bots. Somehow he learned that we’d joined forces with Jared, and he had to know that we would end up here.
Fortunately, I have no time to dwell on my spiral of dread. Jonah’s voice calls me back to the present — summoning my attention from a million miles away.
I look over. He’s holding his rifle ready to bludgeon the bots. Jared is holding out his duct-taped bot-stopping device like a magical amulet to ward off vampires.
I glance over my shoulder. Jonah is backing out of the room. He yells something that I can’t make out, but I catch his meaning anyway: We don’t want to fight them here.
The bots watch us go in stillness as we crowd out of the room. But the moment my foot crosses the threshold, the humanoids lunge forward.
I turn to run, and my feet seem to have a mind of their own. I can feel them slapping the slick black tile, but they won’t move as fast as I need them to.
I stumble, and I feel a cold hand grab the back of my shirt. Raw fear shoots through my body, paralyzing me from the waist down.
I don’t think. I just fling my arm around and crack the bot in the head with the butt of my pistol. The bot’s grip on me loosens for an instant, but its expression doesn’t change. It doesn’t feel pain or irritation. It just executes its mission.
The bot’s strong hands grab greedy fistfuls of my hair, and I let out a stifled hiccup of pain. I twist my whole body to the side, trying to get away, but the more I struggle, the more it hurts.
The bot latches an arm around my neck, holding me firmly in place. It tightens its grip, which immediately stops the flow of blood to my brain. I try to fight the bot’s tightening choke, but it just sinks it in deeper.
Uncontrollable panic floods through my body, and I claw at the arm locked around my neck. My fingertips slip off the smooth silicone skin, and I feel myself losing control of my muscles.
I’m barely conscious of my movements as the animal part of my brain kicks in. I feel myself slipping as the darkness presses in when the trance is suddenly lifted.
I sense movement in my periphery, but I can’t see a thing. There’s a groan of pain that’s unmistakably human and a loud thunk! of metal on plastic.
My eyes are swimming in tears of desperation, and I feel myself floating into darkness. I throw my body weight to the side so we fall to the ground, but the bot quickly adjusts its position.
It wraps its whole body around me, tightening its hold like a python. My body flops uselessly on the ground, my lungs heaving with the effort of breathing.
My brain fumbles to stay online as it’s slowly starved of oxygen, but a yell of anguish reaches my consciousness — a holler and a crash that reverbe
rates through my bones.
A tiny tickle of electricity shoots down my spine, and my skin prickles as the jolt travels through my body. The little hairs on my arms stand on end, and I stop fighting as the pressure suddenly lifts.
Cool delicious oxygen floods my lungs, and I gasp for air to drink it all in.
“Come on!” calls Jared, bending down to extract me from the bot’s loosening grip.
I feel a pair of hands that must belong to Jared. They’re warm and fumbling and thankfully human, and I blink fast to clear the tears from my eyes.
Jared’s face is deathly pale. He’s holding his device in one hand and peeling the bot’s appendages away with the other. He seems genuinely stunned that his invention worked.
Jared pulls me to my feet, and my eyes search for Jonah.
He’s hunched up against a wall, where a large crack has split the wood paneling in two. He looks dazed.
I rush toward him, still a little dizzy, and Jonah reaches for the back of his head. His hand comes away covered in blood, but I swallow down my terror and grope for his arm.
“Get the others!” I yell to Jared, who still looks stunned that he managed to save me.
“I can’t!” he stammers. “It needs to recharge.”
The hall seems to tilt on its axis as I help Jonah to his feet. I’m still lightheaded from my near loss of consciousness, and the bot that threw Jonah is approaching us lazily.
Three more are closing in behind us, watching the action with mild interest.
“Come on!” I croak.
Jared trips along after us. I struggle to get my shoulder wedged under Jonah’s armpit. He’s still woozy from his impact with the wall, and his movements are clumsy and slow. Something warm and wet drips down my neck, and I realize it has to be blood.
I lurch toward the door leading to the stairwell and slam my palm down onto the sensor. The light blinks red. I hit the button again, but the door refuses to open.
