Daemon

by Daniel Suarez

  “Okay, okay.” Sebeck ran his character through the portal. He immediately came out on a windswept hillside in knee-high grass. The hillside overlooked a rocky coastline. The sea shimmered in the algorithmic sunshine. It was beautiful. He turned to see Ross’s assassin run through the portal, a shouting mob close on his heels. Ross snapped the gate shut just as the crowd reached it. They were now alone on the hillside. The sound of the wind sweeping across the grass was their only companion.

  “Where are we now?”

  “About two hundred miles north.”

  “Well, that is handy. So what’s up here?”

  Ross’s ninja avatar pointed. “Turn around and take a look off the coast.”

  Sebeck’s character started backing up.

  Ross barked, “Left arrow key.”

  “Oh.” Sebeck searched for the left arrow key on his keyboard. His view swiveled until he was looking off the coast again. There, in the distance, he could make out a jagged islet—perhaps a mile offshore and partially obscured by mist. Sitting atop the islet was a towering castle in jet-black stone.

  “Hello. Dr. Evil’s beach house.”

  “Chat rooms say it appeared the day Sobol died. No one has even gotten close to it and lived.”

  “We’ll need to tell the NSA. They need to impound these servers.”

  “These servers are in China. Or maybe South Korea. The companies that own them are politically connected there.”

  “Well, the Feds can exert a lot of political pressure.”

  “So can corporate executives.”

  They stood staring at the castle. It was Sebeck who broke the silence.

  “Why didn’t you transport us inside the castle?”

  “I tried. This is as close as we can get. I can’t use scrying devices to see inside either.”

  “Sobol’s locked it up tight.”

  “Basically.”

  They stood there for several more moments.

  “So, how do we get in?”

  “Is it me, or did I just say that no one has approached the place and lived?”

  “We’ve got to find out what Sobol’s up to. Better our cartoon skins than our real ones.”

  “Who says we need to get inside to find out what it’s for? What if we put the place under surveillance? Watch comings and goings?”

  “Great. So if a dragon and a fairy show up at the castle, what the hell am I supposed to do with that information? Put out a warrant for their arrest?”

  “No, but we might get some idea of how to get inside. With a little luck, we won’t be observed from this distance, and—” Ross stopped mid-sentence.

  Sebeck saw it, too. A huge shadow had cast over them from behind. It had a vaguely humanoid outline.

  “Control-Down-Arrow turns you around, Pete. Do it now.”

  “Control-who-what?”

  “Control-Down-Arrow.”

  “Hold it. Control…where’s the Down key?”

  “Pete! For the love of Christ, the Down arrow is a single key. Hold it down and simultaneously hold down the C-T-R-L key.”

  Sebeck did. His character pirouetted.

  A jet-black figure, about twelve feet tall, towered over them. The figure held an obsidian rod and wore a black crown. Piercing, demonic red eyes glowed from deep sockets. No mouth was visible as it raised its arm, pointing at Sebeck. A deep, gravelly wav file played, “Detective Sebeck. You don’t belong here!”

  Before Sebeck could do anything, a lightning bolt arced hotly from the rod, blasting his avatar to dust. His screen went black, and his entire machine crashed—never to reboot.

  Sebeck grabbed the headset mouthpiece. “Jesus! It said my name, Jon. And it just fried my computer. What’s it doing now?”

  Only Ross’s cursing came over the phone line.

  After the demon wasted Sebeck’s knight, Ross went into defensive mode, ducking and retreating. There wasn’t time to invoke another portal; the demon turned upon him. It raised its rod and spoke again. “You guided him here. Are you NSA or a Fed?” A pause. “Or neither? We shall see….”

  The hard drive on Ross’s laptop started clattering.

  “Shit!” He ripped the network cable from the socket. The game was still running, so he pulled the AC power cord and the battery, too. His laptop was now inert, the screen black.

  He slumped back into his hotel desk chair and took a deep breath.

  Sebeck’s voice barked over the phone. “Jon! What the hell is going on?”

  “I just disconnected, Pete. It was trying to find out who I was. I only had the game and a video capture program on this laptop, but I didn’t want to lose the video images.” He frowned to himself as he reinserted the laptop battery and placed the computer on the desk. His mind was turning over the possibilities. Ross stopped short. “Pete. I need you to come and get me out of jail.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just come to Woodland Hills and get me out of jail, please.” He ignored Sebeck’s questions and pulled off the phone headset, bolting through his hotel room door.

  Ross sprinted down the exterior walkway toward the lobby. He brushed past two regional sales reps unloading luggage from a rental car and hauled ass on the final straightaway, banging through the lobby push doors.

  The desk clerk was a fresh-faced, conspicuously Caucasian kid. He shot a stern glance up at Ross. “Watch the doors, please, sir.”

  Ross slammed into the counter, breathing hard. “I need access to your billing system. It’s an emergency.”

  “Perhaps I can assist you, sir.” He manned a keyboard, prairie-dog-like with his paws poised.

  “Do you track Internet use on guest accounts?”

  “Your Internet viewing habits won’t appear on your bill.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Do you connect guest billing information to an internal IP address?”

  “Sir, we are required by law to maintain—”

  “Goddamnit.” Ross swung his leg up and started clawing his way over the counter, sending brochures and phones flying. “This isn’t about pornography.”

  “You can’t—“

  Ross slipped on a PBX phone and tumbled to the floor behind the front desk.

  The night clerk locked his workstation, then pressed a button under the counter. “The police are on their way!” He raced for the back office just as Ross got to his feet.

  “Wait!” Ross lunged for the office door, but the kid slammed it in his face, ramming a heavy bolt home. Ross pounded on it with his open hand. It was a security door.

  The kid’s voice came through muffled. “You’re not the first idiot to look at porn on a hotel account, sir. But you just made it a whole lot worse.”

  “This is a police emergency.”

  “I didn’t see a badge.”

  “Look, I’m working with the Feds on the Daemon case. Sobol’s house is five miles down the road. It’s not improbable that I would stay here.”

  “You checked in weeks ago—before Sobol died. Just wait for the police.”

  “By the time they get here, it’ll be too late. The Daemon is going to attack your servers to find out who I am.”

  “I’m not listening, sir!”

  “If the Web server is in there with you, just pull the cables out of the back. That’s all I’m asking.”

  There was no response.

  “Kid! This isn’t a joke. The Daemon has already killed more than a dozen people. If it finds out who I am—“

  “Sir, I suggest you talk to the police about it.”

  Shit. Ross stalked around the front desk. He manned the computer on the counter. It displayed a browser-based hotel management program. A logon screen stared him in the face. Ross flipped over the mouse pad and found a tiny Post-it note scrawled with logons and passwords. He used one to log on. “Well, that’s one advantage I have over the Daemon….”

  Like most point-of-sale systems, this one was designed to minimize training requirements. Ross was presented with a st
andard switchboard form for the billing system. He chose Customer Accounts and searched for his name. He quickly found his billing record, but he couldn’t edit anything. The night clerk’s logon didn’t have sufficient privileges to change existing information—only to add new charges. Ross’s name and credit card number were clearly displayed. There was also a link for his Internet and phone charges. Damnit.

  The server for The Gate would already have the hotel’s main IP address—so the Daemon would know precisely where to launch its attack. If the hotel ran a common hotel management system—as was likely—then the database layout would be public knowledge. “Son of a bitch.”

  In the back office, the kid was on the phone with a 911 operator. Behind him stood a couple of rack-mounted servers, a router, and a network switch, their green LED lights lazily blinking. The whole rack was locked off to him, but a flat-panel monitor displayed the logon dialog for the server, bouncing around the black screen.

  Then, like a floodgate opening, the entire bank of LEDs started fluttering like crazy. The network was slammed with IP traffic. Even the kid noticed it. He heard the hard drive straining.

  “Hey! Whatever you’re doing out there, stop it.”

  Ross cocked an ear toward the office but did not take his eyes off the computer screen. “Kid, I’m not doing anything. That’s the Daemon trying to bash its way in. It’ll try to get at the Web access logs to find my connection to its Web site. Then it’ll try to link my billing record with that IP address. I’m begging you: please open the door.”

  Ross minimized the hotel billing app and interrogated the DNS server from a console window. Thankfully the server was not properly configured and permitted a zone transfer. This let him view the internal IP map of the network from his machine—complete with machine names and operating systems.

  The clerk watched the LED lights flickering like a Vegas marquee. Suddenly the server monitor screen came to life. The logon dialog went away and the desktop appeared. The kid spoke to the 911 operator. “He’s doing something to our computers.”

  Back at the front desk Ross typed like a maniac. Now he knew the OS of the Web server. He thought about the odds of cracking into the server in time to clear the Web logs. Not likely, and it was the first thing the Daemon would try for.

  “Listen, open the door.”

  “No way!”

  Ross flipped back to the hotel’s Web application. He needed to go straight for the customer database. The file extension on the URL told him it was a scripted page. He started typing directly in the URL box of the browser, back-spacing to the hotel’s domain name—to which he appended the text: /global.asa+.htr

  Then he hit ENTER.

  To Ross’s relief, the hotel hadn’t patched their Web server, either, and the browser disgorged the source code of the application onto the screen. The developers had been lazy; near the top of the code, there was a database connection string and two variables for dbowner: one for logon and one for password. He was in.

  In the back office the kid closely watched the server’s monitor. Command console windows kept appearing and disappearing on the screen—commands entered at blinding speed. The hard drives labored. Dialogs came up showing file transfers. There was no way a person could work this fast. He tried the server’s enclosure door. Locked. He couldn’t shut the server down if he wanted to.

  Ross logged back into the billing application using the sysadmin logon he had found in the source code. He navigated to his customer record. This time all the fields were unlocked for editing. There wasn’t a DELETE button, so he rapidly filled the billing record with false information, replacing his own name with “Matthew Sobol”—along with a phantom address, a random phone number, and all 9’s for a credit card number. He was about to click SUBMIT when he heard footsteps running on the tile floor of the lobby behind him.

  “Hands in the air!” The shout echoed in the lobby.

  Ross turned to see two Woodland Hills police officers aiming Berettas at him from beyond the front desk. They squinted over their sights, with a two-hand clasp.

  Ross tapped the SUBMIT button, then raised his hands. “It’s all right. I’m working on the Daemon case with officer Pete Sebeck of the Thousand Oaks police department.”

  “Stop talking!” One of the officers motioned to the countertop. “Both hands, palms down on the counter!”

  In the back office the kid stared at the computer screen. A DOS window was up, displaying a customer record:

  Room 1318—No Name (999) 999-9999

  CC#9999-9999-9999-9999

  Then the server crashed.

  Chapter 23:// Transformation

  Sebeck escorted Ross out the front door of the Woodland Hills police station. Ross rubbed one wrist. “Do they always cuff people that tightly?”

  “Only the troublemakers.” Sebeck’s new police cruiser was parked at the curb, and he pointed Ross to it.

  “I like the color better.”

  “Just get in the car.”

  Ross sniffed the morning air. “It’s good to breathe free again. I was starting to worry you weren’t coming.”

  “I needed to smooth things over with the DA. The Daemon trashed the hotel’s reservation system.”

  “That’s not my fault. They should have applied security patches.”

  “Jon, I talked the prosecutor out of bringing criminal charges, but I’m getting the distinct impression we’re chasing our tails. Sobol’s always three steps ahead of us.”

  “Are you kidding? We made great progress last night.”

  Sebeck gave him a look. “I got killed, and you got arrested. How is that great progress?”

  “Well, if you’re gonna look on the gloomy side—”

  “Just get in the car.”

  “What’s with you?”

  “I got an earful this morning over this little stunt. I’ve got NSA agents moving into my house. My son’s not speaking to me. My wife is speaking to me, and I haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet. Other than that, everything’s just great.”

  “Pete, we need to reconnect with the Daemon as soon as possible.”

  “We’re just stumbling around blind.” Sebeck got into the car.

  Ross thought for a moment. “I know a good coffee place near here.”

  “That’s a start.”

  Calabasas was an upscale bedroom community not far from Woodland Hills. It was part of the circulatory system of L.A. and, like most towns, straddled an artery of freeway.

  Ross guided Sebeck to a new shopping plaza—a riot of pastel stucco, imitation fieldstone, and palm trees—that more resembled a Tim Burton film set than a retail center. The sprawling parking lot was clogged with tiny au pair cars and the monstrous SUVs of stay-at-home moms.

  Sebeck gazed at the scene from an outdoor faux-French café. Beyond a nearby railing stood a burbling water feature replete with ducks, as though this wasn’t a desert but a mill pond in the south of France. If someone cut the pumps, Sebeck figured the ducks would be dead inside of six hours. He tossed a piece of croissant to them and sipped his AA Kenya coffee.

  Across the table Ross sipped a triple latte. The cup was something straight out of Alice in Wonderland. Sebeck frowned. “What the hell was that thing that attacked us last night? And how did it know my name?”

  Ross put his latte down on a freakishly large saucer. “I’m not surprised it knew your name, but I am surprised it spoke your name—particularly since I didn’t hear it.”

  “What do you mean you didn’t hear it? It said my name in a huge booming voice.”

  “Yes, but I think the file only played for you.”

  “What file?”

  “The sound file. Someone was recorded speaking your name. That recording was saved as a sound file, and your computer played that file on command. But it wasn’t on my laptop.”

  “Why would I have the file but not you?”

  “Because Sobol placed it on your computer.”

  “But that should have been easy.
Sobol’s press release said Ego puts a back door in every machine that runs it.”

  Ross took another sip of his latte and shook his head. “No, I don’t buy that.”

  “Hold the phone. You were the one saying that Sobol could do anything. That we shouldn’t underestimate him. Now you’re saying he didn’t put a back door in the Ego AI engine?”

  “What sense would it make to place a back door in a program, and then tell everyone? All that would do is drastically reduce the number of machines Sobol would have access to. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Sobol was insane.”

  “So everyone keeps saying. You know, it would have taken a coordinated effort—by many people—to place a back door in release code.”

  Sebeck pondered it. “So, why would Sobol lie about the back door? That lie basically destroyed his own company.”

  Both men realized it at the same time.

  Ross tapped his chin, thinking. “So, the reason was to destroy his company. I have no idea why, but clearly, that must have been the purpose of the press release.”

  “It’s just insane….”

  “Maybe, but if there was no back door in the Ego AI engine, it brings us back to the question: how did the Daemon know it was you last night? Remember: you were playing on someone else’s account.”

  Sebeck shrugged. “You’re the expert.”

  Ross took another sip of his latte. “You were running the game on the same machine you received Sobol’s e-mail on, correct?”

  “You mean the e-mail with the video link?”

  “Yes.”

  Sebeck nodded.

  “This whole time we were focusing on what Sobol said in that video, but it never occurred to us that playing the video might also install a Trojan horse.”

  “To do what?”

  “Open a back door in the computer that runs it.”

  Sebeck thought for a moment. “Wait. Aaron ran that video file on the sheriff’s network. Hell, I think most people at the department got a copy. It also found its way to a lot of journalists.”