Daemon

by Daniel Suarez

  “We have thirty ex-SOCOM soldiers—counterinsurgency experts, each with more than a decade of experience. Delta Force, OSNAZ, SFB…”

  Merritt stopped preparing himself. “Well, I see you were expecting trouble.”

  Ross was still moving back and forth, trying to pinpoint the intruder’s location on a printed floor plan. “He’s one of the gamers along the back wall of the pit. User 23, 24, or 25.”

  Philips turned to the scientists. “This intruder must be linked into the Daemon’s darknet. Can you jam his connection?”

  The lead scientist looked dour. “We’re not configured to jam signals in the gaming pit, Doctor.”

  “Major, we need that mole taken alive if at all possible.”

  The Major nodded toward the distant blast doors. “Let’s get to the security control room. We’ll direct the op from there.”

  Chapter 43:// Enemy Within

  The glass security doors of the gaming pit opened silently, admitting a Korr strike team—half a dozen heavily armed men wearing Kevlar helmets, gas masks, and black body armor. They entered in close formation, single file, guns aimed over each other’s shoulders. The white Korr logo was a just a large stylistic “K,” like a heraldic symbol on their black helmets and breastplates.

  Across the room another set of glass doors opened, revealing a second Korr strike team, identical to the first. The team leaders exchanged hand signals, then advanced in unison. They were a steely-eyed, professional bunch, with automatic weapons, Tasers, and beanbag guns at the ready. They moved as one, threading rapidly through the tangle of workstations toward their target. They clearly knew their business.

  The strike teams fanned out, aiming toward the far corner of the room. As they moved in, several of them held up printed signs reading Danger: Do not speak. Leave immediately. White-hat gamers looked up one by one, nudging each other. Their game chatter died down, but the guards took up chatter of their own to compensate:

  “Team two, cover that left flank.”

  “Stop bunching up.”

  “Cover that exit!”

  “Clear the field of fire.”

  The strike teams kept up a steady stream of talk as they formed into a wedge, focused directly on the target: the three gamers in the corner of the room. They could see the gamers’ heads dodging left and right beyond flat-panel monitors, reacting to what was displayed on their computer screens. All three men were completely absorbed in their games.

  The forward team leader held up three gloved fingers and pointed directly at the players in the corner. Best to take all three down.

  The strike teams were still tugging stunned gamers aside, holding a finger up for silence, then pointing to the exits.

  Finally the two strike teams were in position, arrayed around their quarry at a distance of ten or twelve feet. They stared at the heads of three gamers—patches of close-cropped, spiky hair. The ambient chatter had died down now, and the targeted gamers appeared to sense something was up. They glanced around as the last of their neighbors scurried to safety. They were isolated. Silence finally fell upon the room, except for the stereo sound effects of nearby 3-D games.

  One of the Korr team leaders touched a microphone switch on his gas mask and shouted in an amplified radio voice. “Users 23, 24, and 25. Remain seated, and put your hands where we can see them. This is not a drill!”

  The two gamers on the left immediately raised their hands and looked up in utter shock. When they got a look at the dozen weapons pointed in their direction, they turned a shade paler than they already were.

  The young guy on the right remained motionless, still sitting behind his monitor.

  “User 25! Put your hands where we can see them! Now!” The team leader motioned for the two users on the left to clear the area. They were happy to oblige, and as they complied, two guards pepper-sprayed them in the face. They collapsed screaming as the guards zipped hand ties onto their wrists. It was done with expert swiftness and precision—like calf roping in a rodeo—and in no time, the guards were back on their feet, weapons ready.

  User 25 was now isolated. A couple dozen eyes memorized the top of his head through gun sights. Bright laser dots clustered on his scalp.

  The booming radio voice kept up the pressure. “Show your hands! Now!”

  User 25 took a deep breath. “This is a mistake.”

  “Hands where we can see them or we open fire!”

  “A big mistake.”

  “I said hands in the air!”

  User 25 finally raised his hands. They were wrapped in jet-black gloves with silver caps—like thimbles—on the end of each index finger. Something was set in the palm of each hand, like a large crystal.

  Suddenly a white-hot flash several times brighter than the sun pulsed through the room, followed closely by a second flash from User 25’s other hand. It took several moments for the light to flare down.

  The strike teams were initially stunned, but then needles of agony burned into their brains. They dropped their weapons as they collapsed onto their knees, grabbing at their eyes and clawing their gas masks off their faces, screaming.

  Brian Gragg kicked his chair away and stood up from the gaming workstation. As the blinded strike team members writhed on the floor, crying out, Gragg moved calmly toward the burly team leader who had shouted at him. Gragg aimed a silver-capped index finger at the man—a lens at its very tip. Black fiber optic and electrical cables ran down the back of Gragg’s hand like veins, disappearing beneath his shirt. “The name is Loki, asshole.”

  A ruler-straight bolt of electricity cracked like a bullwhip from his fingertip into the man’s body armor, followed by a flickering series of bolts in quick succession—three a second. The team leader’s muscles jerked with each thunderclap. The smell of ozone filled the air.

  After the last crack, Gragg lowered his hand, and the team leader dropped to the ground dead, his body smoking and sizzling.

  Grimacing from the pain in his eyes, the other team leader glanced around blindly and shouted, “Who’s shooting!”

  “That’s not shooting!”

  “Hooks!” A pause. “Where’s Hooks!”

  “Get to cover and sound off! Sound off!”

  Gragg moved toward the fallen men. He pointed and let loose with several seconds of deafening thunderclaps. Men crawled away screaming, only to be immobilized the moment the first bolt hit them.

  In a few seconds they were all motionless or convulsing.

  The sickening smell of burnt hair came to Gragg’s nostrils.

  “What the hell just happened?” Philips stared at a bank of security monitors. The security command center was packed with Korr Security folks pointing at monitors and barking into radios.

  The Major snapped his fingers at the control board operator. “Get on the horn to Weyburn Labs. Tell them we might be facing an illicit LIP-C weapon. I need countermeasures and tactics.”

  Merritt watched the intruder on the monitor. “What’s an LIP-C weapon?”

  “Laser-Induced Plasma Channel. Uses laser light as a virtual wire for electricity.”

  “Where did he get it?”

  “The Daemon appears to be dipping into our research pipeline.”

  Philips turned on him. “Just how many sections of the intelligence apparatus have been compromised, Major?”

  “Not now, Doctor. We’ve got men down.”

  Ross, Merritt, and Philips stared at the large central monitor. There, the intruder was stepping among the fallen strike team members, sprawled on the floor of the gaming pit.

  The Major barked at the board operator. “Seal zones three through six. Let’s contain this asshole.”

  Another Korr officer spoke up. “I’ve got an identity on User 25: Michael Radcliffe. Grad student, MIT—”

  The Major waved it aside. “That’s bullshit. Radcliffe’s probably dead.”

  “Should we pump tear gas through the ventilation ducts, sir?”

  “Use your brain. There’s a doze
n gas masks in there with him.” The Major checked his watch. “Call in an electronic warfare team and a demolitions team. We need to jam this fucker’s uplink, then kill him.” He turned to nearby Korr officers. “I want commercially marked choppers over our twenty. Scramble the perimeter defense teams. Lethal force authorized. No one enters or leaves this facility until I say otherwise.”

  “Understood, Major.”

  Philips pushed up to him. “Major, we should try to take this man alive.”

  “We’re not capturing anyone, Doctor. This situation is going to end right now, and whatever’s left is all yours.”

  Ross pointed at the monitor. “He’s doing something.”

  They all looked up.

  The intruder was standing, moving his arms as though controlling invisible objects, his mouth moving in a rhythmic chant.

  Gragg concentrated on the plane of D-Space. The entire floor plan of Building Twenty-Nine was replicated there, spread out around him as a life-sized wire-frame model overlaid on the GPS grid. It aligned precisely with the corners of each wall in the real world. This allowed Gragg to see the geometry of adjoining rooms. More importantly, images from the building’s dense network of security cameras were wrapped around the wire-frame model’s geometry, showing a patchwork of live video from those neighboring rooms—giving Gragg an almost X-ray vision through the dense concrete.

  Korr personnel sprinted through the hallways, loading weapons and sealing doorways. They were ants in his ant colony. He had seen the strike teams getting ready all the way back in their locker room.

  The garrison was in disarray.

  Gragg turned to look far beyond the concrete walls of Building Twenty-Nine, to distant, glowing call-outs in D-Space. He selected dozens of virtual objects he’d stored there, then launched his prearranged summoning sequence, making somatic gestures and speaking the unlock code to the VOIP module. “Andos ethran Kohlra Bethru. Lord of a million eyes, Loki summons you….”

  Gragg looked through the sealed blast doors leading into the lab. The guards there had been pulled inside, but Gragg looked into the artificial dimension beyond them. He aimed his gloved finger at a virtual object in the lab, an object he had insinuated into the equipment collection some time ago. Gragg closed his fist on the object in D-Space.

  Somewhere beyond those thick concrete walls a compressed air tank sprayed powdered aluminum across the lab space—then ignited it with an electrical spark. Suddenly the building shuddered, followed by a dull roar and the muted shrieks of twisting metal. A deafening klaxon sounded the alarm throughout the facility. Blue strobes flickered near the exits.

  The Major scanned the security monitors as a dozen red lights blinked on a floor plan map. There. The lab was consumed in flames. The camera image rippled with interference, vertical hold skipping. One of the scientists ran through the picture, burning alive beneath white-hot flames. Sprinklers deployed to little effect.

  “Goddamnit…”

  “The science team. Get medics to the lab! And the equipment collection—”

  “It’s too late….” Ross pointed to the monitor.

  On-screen an acetylene tank was spinning in a pinwheel of flame near the lab table, then exploded, shaking the building again. The monitor image went dead.

  Philips slumped and covered her eyes. “We just lost some of our best people, not to mention the Daemon equipment collection.”

  Merritt grabbed The Major’s shoulder. “Where do you need me?”

  “Sit tight, Merritt.” The Major looked back at Philips. “Are you still glad you conducted your little test, Doctor?”

  “Without this test we never would have discovered we’d been infiltrated.”

  Ross nodded. “That’s why we weren’t able to join Daemon Factions. He was tracking our every move.”

  The Major turned to him. “Maybe we shouldn’t have been playing games with the Daemon in the first place.”

  The board operator looked up again. “He’s not going anywhere, Major. The gaming pit is locked down.”

  Gragg stood before the sealed bulletproof glass doors barring his exit. The camera-lined corridor beyond led to the building entry vestibule.

  Gragg turned to face another D-Space object hovering just to the right of the glass doors. It was a surreal blue button, floating impossibly there as seen through his HUD glasses. It was labeled in large glowing letters: OPEN. Gragg tapped the virtual button with his gloved hand. It flashed.

  The real-world ballistic glass doors slid open, and he stepped through the opening and entered the anteroom beyond.

  Philips threw up her hands. “He’s out of the gaming pit.”

  Ross gestured to the monitors. “The security system’s been compromised.”

  “Who subcontracted that, I wonder?”

  The Major gave her a look. “Stow that shit right now.” He turned to the board operator. “Physically cut the power to the north perimeter doors.”

  The board operator rolled back in his chair. He opened an electrical panel on the back wall and started tripping breaker switches.

  Philips leaned over the board and clicked from camera to camera. “Where is he?”

  “Don’t worry, Doctor. He’s trapped.”

  “That’s what you said last time. Show me.”

  “We just tripped the breakers. The perimeter doors are frozen in a locked position. He’s not getting through inch-thick steel plating.”

  She studied the bank of black-and-white monitors. The large one in the center now showed the intruder standing in a dead-end hallway some distance from the exterior steel doors. He stood above three newly fallen guards, their bodies smoking. The intruder was just staring up at the camera. Unnervingly calm. He was only a kid—early twenties at most.

  The Major nodded at the monitor. “I told you we’d stop him.” He turned to a nearby guard. “I want every gun on the tarmac focused on that exit.”

  Philips leaned into the microphone sticking up from the control board. She held down the mic switch. “You’re trapped. Give up, and you won’t be hurt.”

  The intruder’s tinny voice came in over the speakers. “Dr. Philips, I see you discovered D-Space. Or at least a layer of it.”

  A flash of fear swept through her. He knew her real name. How could he possibly know her name? Thoughts of her parents in D.C. thrust front and center in her mind. She turned to The Major. “Call Dr. Fulbright at Fort Meade. Tell him to take my parents into protective custody. Now!”

  The Major snapped his fingers at a Korr guard, who grabbed another phone.

  She keyed the mic. “You know who I am. So who are you—or are you afraid to tell me your name?”

  “Bitch. I’m Loki, the most powerful sorcerer in the world, and I’m about to ruin your whole fucking day.”

  Merritt took off his suit jacket and headed for the door. “Keep this nutcase busy, Doctor.”

  Ross grabbed Merritt’s arm. “No heroics, Roy.”

  “I don’t plan on any.”

  The Major blocked his path. “Where are you going?”

  Merritt looked calmly at him. “I’m going to see how that prick deals with flash-bang grenades. Unlock the gaming pit, Major.”

  The Major appraised Merritt for a moment, then grabbed a radio and headset from a nearby charging station. The man looked as determined as he had in the famous Burning Man images from Sobol’s mansion. He tossed them to Merritt. “Good luck.” The Major watched him exit.

  Philips turned back to the monitor and keyed the mic again. “Loki, Sobol is using you. What you’re doing is high treason. If you surrender now, I can help you.”

  “You can help me?” He laughed. “I’m not the one who needs help. The society you’re defending is doomed.”

  “It’s your society, too, Loki.”

  “No. It’s my parents’ society, not mine. What does it offer my generation? A meaningless existence. Living long, boring lives, milked each day by salesmen. Livestock for a permanent ruling class. Well, I have
no use for their laws, their maps, their failures. The Daemon has already defeated them.”

  “This is your last warning: surrender.”

  Loki smiled. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  Philips sighed in exasperation and pounded the mic button again. “We physically cut the power to the door in front of you. Your hacks won’t work. Even if you manage to get through the door, we’ve got snipers covering the tarmac. They’ll cut you down from two hundred meters downrange. Just surrender.”

  Loki shook his head. “You’re not thinking in enough dimensions, Doctor. Only part of me is in this building.”

  Squads of heavily armed Korr Security guards ran to take up positions next to a guard shack ringed with highway barriers and razor wire at the perimeter gate. Behind them a quarter mile of bare tarmac stretched to the nearest hangar, but most of their attention was drawn inward, to Building Twenty-Nine itself. They listened to their encrypted radios and the voice coming through it.

  “Shoot on sight. Repeat: Shoot on sight….”

  “Copy that, Secom. Out.”

  A bay breeze kicked up, sending scraps of paper tumbling over the expanse of concrete and flattening them against the chain-link fencing. Nearer to the building another squad of Korr guards with scoped M4A1s rushed to take up positions in the staff parking lot—the best cover available. They took aim at the sealed steel doors of the building.

  The roar of speeding engines suddenly came in on the wind. One guard turned, then urgently grabbed his officer’s shoulder, pointing. “Pas op!”

  They both turned to see one, then six, then fifteen, then thirty cars screaming in from several vectors along the runway, racing in through the gaps between distant hangar buildings. The cars swerved with remarkable coordination, all converging on Building Twenty-Nine like a school of piranha.

  “Polizei?”

  The lieutenant blew a whistle, and everyone turned to face him. He pointed and shouted with an Afrikaans accent. “Incoming! Take cover!”

  “Might be car bombs.”

  “Belay that!” The cars had already closed half the distance. More were issuing from between the distant hangars. The lieutenant keyed his radio. “Secom, we have several dozen vehicles inbound at high speed. Code 30.”