The Shadow Protocol

by Andy McDermott

  “As accurate as human memory gets, you mean. And you’d be surprised just how shaky that can be.” She remembered another question of her own. “This agent you keep talking about—I take it he’s the one with the implanted electrodes.”

  “He is.” Morgan stood. “And now you’re going to meet him.”

  Despite still being livid about her treatment by Harper, and appalled by Kiddrick’s ethics, Bianca couldn’t help but be impressed by the large room to which Morgan took her. Now, this was worthy of Bond or Bauer! The moodily lit chamber brought to mind NASA’s mission control, banks of workstations facing a wall of large screens.

  However, there were currently no missions to control. Most of the displays were either blank or displaying the STS logo on a screensaver background. There were enough workstations to accommodate thirty or forty people, with space for more toward the rear of the room, but only about half were currently active. Whatever work was going on appeared to be bureaucratic or system maintenance rather than high-pressure espionage.

  “This is the Bullpen,” Morgan announced. “Its official name is the Project Operational Command and Control Center, but nobody much likes the acronym.”

  “It’s not as good as PERSONA, no,” said Bianca.

  “That was more of a backronym, really. You can thank Dr. Albion for it. But this is where we oversee missions when our people are out in the field.”

  “It’s impressive,” she had to admit. “Looks expensive too.”

  “It wasn’t built just for the Persona Project, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s an existing facility that Persona has been assigned. We don’t like to throw money away on black projects, whatever the public perception may be.” He led Bianca, Tony, and Kiddrick through the room. “Here, I’ll introduce you to the team.”

  Of the twenty or so people present, most were clustered around one particular workstation. An enthusiastic male voice was the focus of their attention. “Levon must have a new puzzle,” Morgan said.

  Kiddrick was not impressed. “Don’t your people have anything better to do?”

  Tony gave him a half smile. “You’re only saying that because you can’t solve them.” They stopped at the edge of the group to listen.

  Bianca peered through the crowd. The speaker was an overweight young black man with a shaved head, eyes darting behind Coke-bottle glasses as he swiveled his chair to make sure everyone was taking in his words. “So, that’s the assignment. The diamond will be taken out of the vault by its owner in exactly twenty-four hours. You have to get that diamond. Question is …” A broad smile. “… how are you going to do it?”

  “Bribe the guards,” Tony suggested.

  The question master—Bianca assumed this to be Levon—shook his head. “The guards are very loyal to their employer. It would cost more to bribe them than the diamond is worth.”

  Another man, older and rougher looking, had an alternative approach. “Tactical assault. Eliminate the guards and blow the safe, then withdraw before local law enforcement arrives. Five minutes after the alarm’s set off, you said. That should easily be enough time.”

  “Wow, bloodthirsty,” said a slender woman with long blond hair, shaking her head.

  “Uh-uh,” said Levon to the man. “You’ve got selective hearing, Mr. Baxter! Like I said, it’ll take at least an hour to force your way into the safe by any means you have available.”

  Baxter wasn’t giving up on his idea. “A shaped charge would do it.”

  “My puzzle, my rules. You’ve got to work inside the limitations of the scenario. That’s kinda the whole point. Doesn’t matter what you use—explosives, drills, lasers, whatever—it’ll take sixty minutes to break that safe. I set the hard limits; now you gotta figure out ways around them.”

  A dismissive grunt. “Sounds like some sort of unrealistic Mission: Impossible crap. Count me out of this one.”

  “I’ll take your place if you like, John,” said Morgan. “Make sure you copy me in on the rules, Levon. What was the solution to the last one, by the way?”

  “The power lines,” said a tanned twenty-something man with a heavily gelled haircut. “Take out the substation in the town to cut off the juice, then climb along the lines to get over the perimeter defenses. Simple.”

  “Yeah, Kyle, so simple you didn’t think of it until two days after Tony,” said Levon. “And a day after Holly Jo. And—”

  Kyle waved his hands dismissively. “Yeah, yeah. The point is, that was the right answer. And I got it. Just like I’m going to get this one.”

  “Not before me,” said the blonde. “And I’m going to beat Tony this time as well. A huge diamond? That is so mine.”

  “Just don’t spend too much time thinking about it while you’re on duty,” said Morgan. The undertone of Fun’s over, now get back to work was faint, but firm. It had the desired effect; the group began to disperse. “Not all of you—there’s someone I want the chief specialists to meet.” He waited until only six people remained. “This is Dr. Bianca Childs. She’s agreed to stand in for Roger until he’s fit to return to work.”

  “ ‘Agreed’ is rather a simplistic way of putting it,” said Bianca.

  Baxter was instantly suspicious on hearing her voice. “She’s not an American? Isn’t that going to be a security issue, sir?”

  “For the moment, Dr. Childs has been granted limited security clearance on the authority of the Director of National Intelligence,” Morgan replied. “In due course, she’ll receive whatever she needs to carry out her role.” Baxter didn’t seem entirely mollified, but nodded. “Dr. Childs, these are the senior members of the Persona Project.”

  He made the introductions. The slender blonde in expensive stilettos was Holly Jo Voss, communications specialist. John Baxter, tactical commander; Bianca assumed from his general demeanor that he was a soldier. The puzzle-setting Levon James—his desk cluttered with Transformer toys—was the information and systems specialist, or as he jokingly put it, “chief hacker.” Smug hair-model Kyle had the improbable surname Falconetti and the title of surveillance controller; his job—as far as Bianca could tell from his boastful but vague description—was some sort of pilot.

  There was another man, standing behind the others. Until Morgan gestured him forward she had barely registered his presence. Brown hair, dark gray eyes, far from unattractive but …

  Normally she thought she was good at reading people, but this man was giving nothing away. His expression was neutral, body language unrevealing. But it didn’t seem a deliberate attempt to shield his true self.

  It was almost as if he had nothing to shield.

  “This is our lead agent,” said Morgan. “At the moment, also our only agent, but … well, we’ll see. Dr. Childs, this is Adam Gray.”

  The agent needed only a moment to perform his own assessment, she saw. No wasted time, just a clinical, almost machine-like sweep of his gaze over her. “Hello,” he said.

  “Hi.” They shook hands. Again, she could draw no conclusions about him. This grip was neither clammy like Kiddrick’s, nor as domineering as Harper’s. Firm, cool … blank. It told her nothing.

  He released her hand. She expected him to say something else, but he stayed silent.

  “Okay,” said Morgan. “Adam, Tony, I’d like Dr. Childs to see a demonstration of PERSONA. Dr. Kiddrick?”

  Kiddrick led the way out of the Bullpen. The group headed through several security doors to a lab, what resembled an operating table in the center with a pair of curved benches near its head. Computer workstations occupied the room’s far end, a large metal cabinet between them.

  “I’ll set everything up,” said Kiddrick.

  Adam lay on the table as the scientist opened the cabinet. The upper shelves were filled with row after row of what Bianca at first thought were DVD cases before realizing they were somewhat larger, while below them were racks containing glass bottles and vials of various sizes. The drugs Roger had developed?

  “Need a hand?” T
ony asked as Kiddrick fumbled with the two weighty metal cases he had taken from the bottom shelf.

  “No, I’ve got it,” Kiddrick muttered. He clomped back to the benches, putting one case on each side of the operating table. The first one he opened contained the piece of equipment from Kiddrick’s slide show—though Bianca noticed it was somewhat bulkier and less sleek than its illustration, with an almost jury-rigged appearance; a prototype rather than a production model. The other contained a similar device, but thicker still and with a prominent slot set into its front. “Who do you want to use for the demonstration?”

  “Who aren’t we likely to need?” asked Morgan. “We don’t want to waste someone who might be useful in the future.”

  Kiddrick took the second device from its case. “What about, ah … Wilmar, he’ll do. Conrad Wilmar.”

  “Do we have any video of him?” said Morgan. “It would help to show Dr. Childs how effective PERSONA is.”

  “There should be a recording on the server,” said Tony, going to one of the computers.

  “Now, Dr. Childs,” Kiddrick said, “I’ll explain the procedure in more detail when the time comes to train you on it. For now, this”—he indicated the first machine, which he had just connected to its companion with a fat length of cable—“is the PERSONA device itself, which handles the reading, transfer, and imprinting of the subject’s synaptic patterns into the agent. Adam, I mean.” Bianca glanced at the man in question, who was staring silently up at the overhead light cluster. “The other device is the recorder.” His tone became critical. “It’s a separate unit because it was only intended to be used in lab conditions, but that plan went by the wayside.”

  “It gives us more flexibility,” insisted Morgan.

  “Well, if it breaks, don’t blame me; I advised against it. Still, at least I don’t have to haul the whole system around. It’s rather heavy.” The mocking look he gave Bianca suggested he expected that to be her responsibility.

  “I found the video of Wilmar,” said Tony from the workstation.

  “Good,” Morgan said. “Dr. Childs, take a look at this, please.”

  She went with him to the computer while Kiddrick continued to fuss with his equipment. “What am I looking for?”

  “Just get a handle on his personality,” Tony told her. He clicked the mouse, and a video began playing.

  Conrad Wilmar, it turned out, was a middle-aged man with large glasses and crinkled, receding red hair. “No, no, that’s fine,” he said to someone off camera. “Okay, so, what do you need me to do? Are you going to ask me questions, or …?”

  “No,” said Albion’s voice. “Just tell us about yourself and your area of expertise.” Bianca recognized the background as the lab in which she was standing.

  “Sure, sure, no problem,” Wilmar replied. He had squirrelly, fidgety mannerisms, as if his brain were working slightly faster than his body could handle and dumping its excess energy straight into his nervous system. He looked directly into the lens. “You want me to start? Okay, my name is Conrad Wilmar, and I’m a professor of biochemistry at Carnegie Mellon. I’m currently working with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Resear—Hey, is it okay for me to be talking about this?” He looked toward his interviewer. “I know we’ve all got proper clearance, but I don’t want to take any chances, y’know?”

  “It’s fine,” said Albion.

  “Okay, right. So, what was I saying? Oh yeah. I’m working with DARPA to develop battlefield treatments and inoculants against biological weapons. Specifically, against weaponized strains of Bacillus anthracis and Neisseria meningitidis, which if anyone is ever mad enough to employ bioweapons in warfare are likely to be among the prime threats …”

  Wilmar kept speaking, but Bianca had already drawn some conclusions about his personality. Very smart, jittery, and seeming socially inept on the surface—but with an inner confidence emerging upon moving on to his specialist subject. An alpha nerd, then; someone who could seem nervous and bumbling when out of their usual element … but anyone underestimating them did so at their own risk. She knew the type. She had worked with quite a few of them.

  “Okay,” said Kiddrick. Bianca looked around to see him fitting Adam with the complex skullcap of electrodes from the slideshow, a cable running from it to the PERSONA device. “Tony, can you find Wilmar’s disk?”

  Tony went to the cabinet and ran his finger along the cases. “Okay, Vulich, Wagner, Wall, Warner … here we are.” He slipped the box out from its companions.

  Bianca regarded it dubiously. “So, how big are these disks if they can supposedly record the complete memories of a human brain? You’d need more than just a blank CD.”

  He opened the case to show her. Inside was a flat, dark gray slab of plastic, about an inch thick. “It’s not really a disk—we just call them that because it’s easier than saying … God, I can’t even remember the full name. High-Capacity Rapid Access Multiplexing Static Memory Module? Something like that.”

  She tried to pronounce the acronym. “Hurk … huck-ramsumm?”

  Tony grinned. “Yeah, that’s why we stick to ‘disk.’ Anyway, it’s basically a very, very big and fast flash drive.”

  “I still don’t see how any kind of computer memory would be big enough to record a person’s entire memories, though. The brain has billions of neurons—trillions of synapses. Storing them all would be like trying to fit the entire Internet on an iPod.”

  “On a normal, direct transfer, it’s just a matter of having enough bandwidth to push the data through,” Kiddrick explained patronizingly as he finished securing the skullcap. “Which we do. Recording takes longer, though, because it has to encode and compress everything to fit on the module. To continue your iPod analogy, it’s like shrinking a raw audio file down to an MP3. It sounds the same, but takes up far less space.”

  “I know some audiophiles who’d argue at extremely tedious length about it sounding the same,” said Bianca. “And doesn’t an MP3 lose some of the data when it’s compressed?”

  “The brain interpolates the missing information and fills in the gaps.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a good idea when you’re talking about memories. People have enough holes in their recollection as it is.”

  “Well,” said Kiddrick, stepping back, “you’ll see for yourself in a minute. Everything’s ready. Tony, can I have that disk?”

  Tony brought it to him, Bianca and Morgan joining them at the table. Kiddrick opened the PERSONA’s screen and waited for the machine to start up, then carefully inserted the disk into the recorder’s slot. He checked some figures in another window, then returned to the cabinet. “The drug we use to prime the agent to accept a new persona is called Neutharsine. Roger’s name; I’m not keen on it myself. It’s the protein inhibitor I mentioned.” He returned with a jet injector, carefully loading a small vial of liquid. “It suppresses certain parts of the target brain’s memory, and it’s also used after a mission to erase the implanted persona.”

  Bianca looked down at Adam. He was still staring silently up at the lights, unmoving. “Are you sure there aren’t any long-term side effects?” she felt compelled to ask. “Especially if you’re giving him repeated doses.”

  Kiddrick shot a look at Tony—whether seeking his permission to speak or warning him not to say anything, Bianca couldn’t tell—before replying. “There are side effects, yes, but they’re minor and easily managed. Now, watch this.” He moved to the head of the operating table and positioned the injector against Adam’s neck. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” said Adam, without emotion.

  Kiddrick pulled the trigger. Adam grimaced, then relaxed. Bianca watched him closely. Though it was hard to imagine how, he seemed to become even more expressionless, as if the little personality that he had expressed was draining away.

  After half a minute, Kiddrick clicked his fingers above Adam’s face. The agent’s gaze instantly locked onto them. “Okay, Adam. Does everything feel normal?”

  “Y
es.”

  “Good.” He examined the PERSONA’s screen, seeing a READY message. “Okay. Here we go.”

  He typed in a command. New windows appeared, one displaying a simplified graphic of a brain. Colored patterns drifted across it—then flared into brilliant, manic life.

  Adam’s whole body spasmed. Bianca jerked back in surprise, before leaning in for a closer look. His eyes were flickering rapidly from side to side. She also saw that his hands had twisted into gnarled fists. “Is he in pain?” she asked, concerned.

  She expected Kiddrick to answer, but Tony spoke first. “No. It’s not exactly pleasant, but it doesn’t hurt.”

  “Okay, the transfer is in progress,” said Kiddrick, looking up from the machine. “It’ll take six or seven minutes. That’s longer than a direct transfer would take, because it has to decompress the data.”

  Bianca kept watching Adam. His eye movements, she realized, mirrored the unconscious flicks of a person recalling memories—but at a far greater speed. “You know, I have real trouble reducing the sum total of a person’s self to just ‘data.’ ”

  “Would you prefer if I called it ‘the soul’?” Kiddrick replied sarcastically.

  They waited for the device to do its work. The whirlwind of colors on the graphic eventually dimmed and slowed. Kiddrick peered at some numbers on the screen, then nodded. “Okay, it’s done. Now, Dr. Childs.” He gestured theatrically at Adam. “I’d like you to meet … Conrad Wilmar.”

  Adam sat up, blinking. His gaze hopped to each person around the table. “Okay, ah … yeah, I can do without the whole staring thing, thanks.”

  Bianca was no expert in American accents, but even from those few words she could tell that Adam’s had changed. It did sound like Wilmar’s, but she wasn’t prepared to accept that alone as proof that the PERSONA process genuinely worked.

  “The memory check?” Tony prompted.

  “Yes, yes.” Kiddrick signaled for Adam to face him. “Okay. What’s your full name?”