Gone Dark (The Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Book 2)

by P. R. Adams

  “Yup. Saw that.” He headed back to the shack, slow as molasses.

  Seconds ticked by as he and Plastic Frames discussed my situation. Heat spread through Plastic Frames’ cheeks. Finally, he picked up the phone and made a call, staring daggers at me. If the call was to Mr. Amu, Danny would intercept that. If it was to security inside the facility…

  I flipped my right eye to the view from the drones overhead. Someone was hustling out to a security vehicle. Lights came on. It scooted down the road between the fence-enclosed parking areas.

  The timer I’d kicked off said I’d been at the gate for six minutes.

  The security vehicle’s headlights grew brighter.

  Andrews put a hand on my door. “Go ahead and park over there, if you would, Mr. Wentz. We’ll have someone drive you in and escort you.”

  “Sorry for all the trouble.”

  “We all got jobs to do.” Andrews backed up and hooked his thumbs into his belt.

  I parked parallel to the wall about twenty feet away and walked to the gate, attaché case gripped in my left hand, sucking in the fresh, spring air. Plastic Frames raised the iron bar, and I waved at Andrews as the security vehicle turned around and braked. The passenger door opened as I approached.

  I slid into the front seat and nodded at the beefy Asian kid who seemed to be holding in a laugh.

  When I slammed the door, the kid snorted. “You sure pissed Garth off.” He slapped the steering wheel with bodybuilder hands, the sort with fingers that seemed perpetually hooked.

  Garth. Who wouldn’t be bitter with that name? “Sorry about that.”

  He put the car into gear, finally laughing. “Nah. Everybody hates Garth. I’m Carl.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m glad I pissed him off.”

  We sped down the road, then turned into the area in front of the main entry, where the vehicles were parked. I counted eight in all.

  Carl got out and hitched up his pants. He was a few inches shorter than me, but probably had twenty, maybe thirty pounds on me. All muscle from the look of it. “I’m supposed to take you to the server room.”

  “Thanks.” I fell in beside him. “You guys on alert after the attacks?”

  “Yeah.” He gave me a side-eye conspiratorial glance. “Those guys must be pretty dangerous customers, if they’re real.”

  If they’re real. “You think it’s a test?”

  He slapped his badge on the card reader, placed a thumb on a pad, tapped in a code, and when the indicator went green, twisted the front door knob. He nodded for me to do the same.

  I put my badge on the reader, then my thumb on the pad, and repeated the code I’d recorded him punching in.

  The light flashed green.

  Chan’s work was airtight so far.

  Carl checked my attaché case at the guard station, then we hurried past more bodybuilders—men and women—to another locked door. Their eyes tracked us for a few seconds. The second door was the same card-fingerprint-key routine.

  When the door slammed shut, Carl glanced over his shoulder. “I think something’s up. An emergency patch of some sort? Guys in cheap business suits prowling all over the place? The Brazilian models?”

  Cheap business suits: Agency, maybe even Stovall. Brazilian models sounded like Maribel and Jose. “Is that your tenant group?”

  “I guess, yeah.” He slowed, pointed at a closed door labeled Customer Relations Management on the right. “That’s where they hang out most of the time. Bossy jerks.”

  They had been here! “How often do they show up?”

  “The Brazilians never seem to leave.” He sped up, then stopped at another door about twenty feet down, on the right-hand wall. Card-thumb-code, then we were inside.

  A young Indian man with a mullet and thick mustache looked up from behind a table with displays running along its length. There were four displays and three chairs. “What’s going on?”

  Carl thumbed at me. “Mr. Wentz here needs to apply a patch to some tenant servers.”

  The young Indian man grumbled and pushed away from the table, then came around and held a hand out. He was probably just a few years older than Carl but had a slight gut and seemed doughy. Bags under his eyes added years to his face.

  “Zero-day exploit.” I handed him the printout and gave the room a good look-over. Racks of systems, just as Chan had said there would be. Ventilation tiles, cool air.

  His bottom lip poked out. “They sent someone out for a software patch?”

  “Transmitting the fix might trigger something. We think the routers might have been compromised.” The way Chan explained it, it made sense.

  But Mullet’s bottom lip poked out more. “So ship it by courier.” He turned to Carl. “Did anyone call Mr. Amu about this? I don’t like it. I don’t see the patch number or system identification.”

  I turned to him. “Excuse me? It’s on the form. Below the travel order number.”

  Carl shook his head and chuckled. We probably weren’t the first alpha nerd dust-up he’d ever seen.

  “No, it’s not.” Mullet held the form out to me.

  I took it and pointed at a block of text. “Right here.”

  Then I punched him in the gut. Hard.

  Carl’s smile disappeared. And he went for his gun.

  I was on him instantly, chopping his weapon away with the edge of one hand, then driving the heel of my other hand into his armored gut.

  All the air rushed out of him, but he was still up, still functional. He reached for his radio with his left hand.

  I struck him in the jaw with an elbow strike.

  Bone popped, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

  I let him drop, pivoting on Mullet as he staggered backward. A blood choke finished him. I yanked zip ties from the lining of my attaché case, then tore the lining into strips. The zip ties bound their hands behind them; the lining strips gagged them. I zip-tied their ankles together and dragged them behind a row of racks.

  Carl’s pistol went into one of my coat pockets.

  We had been outside of the room’s cameras, which were positioned to watch the terminals and the center of the racks, so I had until Carl’s next check-in before anyone should be tipped off. I triggered the go signal to the others and set the attaché case down. The room was similar to what Chan had told me to expect, but I needed to be sure of my next step. Chan had given me some imagery for reference. I was looking for a dedicated physical connection from one of the terminals, part of a secure network.

  There. At the end of the table.

  I settled in at the terminal beside the secure one I wanted, pulled out one of the fountain pens, and twisted its cap. While it created a private access point in the network, I brought up a login screen. I had credentials from our first Cytek hack, at the Fanon mansion. No sooner was I logged in than a window popped up.

  Text appeared: I’m in.

  Chan began running hacks through our fountain pen access point.

  I shifted to the hard-wired terminal and started trying to log in with the compromised credentials.

  The first one failed. And the second.

  But the third worked. Once I had that, the real fun began.

  The terminal had no wireless connectivity, no active port for a storage device. That meant the only way to hack it in a reasonable amount of time was to undo some of the security measures—like the disabled port—from the inside. Chan had written a script that would do the work, but it relied on my typing in eleven lines of nonsensical junk, then plugging a device into one of the now-active ports to do the rest.

  On the sixth line, the facility alarm went off—lights flashed on and off, and the same deafening klaxon we’d encountered at the other Cytek facility boomed.

  Huiyin and Danny had been detected hacking from the strip mall.

  I corrected a typo, then moved on.

  Halfway into the tenth line, the door burst open. One of the bodybuilder ladies looked around, then fixed a hard stare on me. She had mahogany
skin, kinky hair trimmed almost to the scalp, and big, expressive brown eyes. Those eyes said she was on edge. “Where’s Carl?”

  I glanced up, tried to look a little more scared than anxious. “Bathroom.”

  “Goddammit!” She leaned back out and glanced down the hallway. “He left you in here alone?”

  “There was another guy in here. Indian, I think. Carl said he’d be right back, but the guy left. What’s going on?”

  “Some sort of hacking attack. You…would you be able to see it?”

  “Nah.” I stopped typing long enough to point at the terminal. “This is on a secure network, separate from yours. All kinds of encryption. You have to be in a building like this to access it. It’s safe as can be.” I typed in the final string of commands. “You want me to pass something on to Carl?”

  She glanced down the hallway again. “Yeah. Tell him to keep an eye on things.”

  “Will do.” I launched the script; output scrolled by. Window after window spawned.

  She shook her head. “At least we’re getting that emergency patch thing done.”

  “You bet.”

  She snorted and closed the door.

  I pulled the other fountain pen out—heavier, something powerful—uncapped it, drew out a cable, and connected it to the keyboard port. Almost immediately, a window opened on the terminal, and a message filled the dark space: Chan here. In now. Downloading. Take the fountain pen. Get out. Drawing them to east wall.

  Drawing them to the east wall—that meant they were going to slap an explosive packet up near the top, dead center. Huiyin and her damned explosives.

  More screens opened, more text flowed. Fast. Frighteningly fast. Secure system or not, Chan had it under control.

  I slid Carl’s gun in front of the terminal, out of sight.

  The door burst open again, and the big-eyed woman poked her head in. “Hey, you gotta go. Where’s Carl?” Breathless.

  “Bathroom still.” I got up, grabbed the attaché case. “Is everything okay?”

  “More trouble.” She seemed ready to run down to the bathroom.

  “Well, I’m done here. Can you escort me out?”

  Her full lips twisted. “Sure. I guess.” She stepped back to let me out.

  I was partway through the doorway when the Customer Relations Management door opened. Jose and Maribel stepped out in skin-tight, studded black leather pants and shirts.

  I froze, pulled back in just enough to be out of sight. “Oh. What an idiot. I forgot to screen lock the terminal!”

  The Assassin Twins sprinted for the exit.

  Big Eyes seemed ready to leave me, so I made the screenlock a minor production. When I was done, she rushed me down the hall, waving at a pair of the other security guards as we passed the station.

  She called over her shoulder, “Tell Carl I took Mr. Wentz outside.”

  Then we were through the front door, glancing at the flashing lights of security vehicles speeding out the front gate.

  And at Maribel.

  She stood halfway between me and the last vehicle, knife in hand, smiling. “I thought I smelled you, Stefan.”

  Her knife hummed to life.

  Chapter 30

  Maribel danced closer, graceful as a ballerina. Blood pounded in my ears, and Big Eyes’ gasp was as loud as a scream. The air grew cool and stale. My shirt felt damp beneath the coat, and the tie seemed to choke me. It was as if someone had thrown a switch on a giant air conditioner.

  Tension. The shakes. Everything was magnified, focused.

  Big Eyes scraped back a step and muttered, “What the fuck?”

  I swallowed. “What’s going on? Who is that?”

  Big Eyes froze. That was what I needed.

  I backed toward her. “Aren’t you supposed to protect me?”

  Maribel frowned. “Don’t be an idiot. Look at him. Hair dye, contact lenses, and prosthetics. That’s all it is. It’s Stefan Mendoza.”

  “Who?” I turned toward Big Eyes, earnest, confused. But she was already seeing through the disguise, piecing things together.

  Going for her gun.

  I dropped the attaché case, grabbed her by her armored vest, and flung her toward Maribel. Two hundred pounds, easy. The android dodged aside, and Big Eyes hit the ground with a pissed-off grunt that turned into a squeal as she rolled across the concrete.

  It bought me a second, and that was all I needed to flip the situation.

  I scooped up the attaché case and bolted north, along the building front. Maribel’s sneakers squealed on the concrete as she twisted and pursued, staying between me and the only exit from the compound. In a long-distance run, she would close before long, so I added a surprise and leapt to the roof.

  There were air conditioning units, ducts, and other equipment to hide behind—cover, even with advanced optics. I jumped again, got behind an air conditioning unit, and tore off my coat.

  Maribel landed on the roof with a crash, close enough that I had a good idea where she was. I pulled my own plastic knife from the bottom of the attaché case.

  Maribel shouted, “You can’t escape, Stefan.”

  She was searching. Probably listening.

  I crouched and flicked through the video feeds rolling in from the drones. The first security cars were screeching to a halt outside the building in the strip mall; Danny and Huiyin were in position. A couple of the second wave of security vehicles were headed to the mall as well, but the rest were speeding around the building, heading toward a section of the east wall that had smoke rising from it. Chan and Ichi were green dots rushing through the woods.

  And a red dot was close behind: Jose.

  All the training in the world couldn’t prepare Ichi for an android. Not alone. I needed to get out there.

  I flicked back to my own eyes and tossed the attaché case against ductwork about fifteen feet away, then loosened my tie as the echoes died.

  Maribel landed beside the attaché case, but she didn’t drop low. She just stood there, scanning, as if trying to figure out where I could have gone after banging into the duct.

  I flicked the knife to life and jumped.

  It almost worked.

  The blade caught her in the left shoulder, cut into her back. A good strike. But not far and not deep.

  She spun, giving me a last slash at her right hip, then rolled away, ending on her feet.

  We turned to face each other. The dress slacks and shirt felt out of place, confining. Maribel’s black leather bodysuit didn’t seem any better. It didn’t seem her style, either. Nor did leaving her back to me when she checked out the noise.

  Jacinto! Like in the mountain ambush!

  I snorted. “Missing the feel of flesh already?”

  The Jacinto-Maribel android rolled its head on its neck. “I suspected this was you and wanted it done right. Our sponsors are growing impatient and would like you permanently retired.” The android assumed a very solid but stiff Kali pose. Mechanical. Like someone who trained but never actually used the art.

  Of course, any training was worth something. After all, I had to land damaging strikes to make a difference against an android, while half my body was still flesh.

  Only one approach made sense.

  I charged in, left arm tucked, knife arm just off my hip.

  Jacinto-Maribel went for my left arm, no doubt hoping for a joint lock. I elbowed the grab away and landed a palm strike into the android’s solar plexus. Not for stunning but to disrupt balance and expose the gut.

  It worked. The android fell back slightly, arms out. It managed a counter-strike that caught my knife arm, scraping along the forearm and bicep, slashing away my shirtsleeve and a layer of skin, but that was it. The slash was weak, sloppy, the blade improperly angled.

  I kept the pressure on, pushing the android back and working my knife like a piston—thrust, thrust, thrust, thrust.

  And then Jacinto-Maribel got the blade around, inside my knife arm. The android slashed, and before I could
twist away completely, the blade slid across my ribcage. The cut wasn’t all that deep, but it sheered through flesh, shredded muscle, and gouged bone.

  It was a distinctive sort of pain, and it came with ample bleeding.

  Time was now working against me even more.

  I slashed with everything I had, thought I felt the resistance of flesh, and backed off, pushed the pain away the way the Agency had conditioned me to.

  Jacinto-Maribel laughed. “You think you can stand against this body? You’re faster than I expected, but—” The laughter died as the upper left section of the android’s face peeled away, and the eye slid out of the ruined socket.

  My desperate slash had landed after all. “Wicked knives.”

  The android lunged forward, screaming. Pure Jacinto. Inexperienced. Reckless.

  I crouched and twisted outside the arcing blade. Barely. With a step, I was behind her. My own blade came up with all the power I could manage, driving deep into the base of the android’s back while I threw my left arm around its neck and cupped its chin. Once again, I had it off-balance.

  It brought its blade around, caught me in my knife-arm shoulder.

  But my arm still worked. I hauled back, keeping the android unbalanced, leaning. And I drove my blade into its face, jabbing again and again, trying to make or find an opening that would give me access to its brain.

  The android pulled its knife free, lost its grip, flailed, then went limp.

  After dragging it a few steps more, I flung it down. Something pink oozed from the area just behind the gashed eye socket.

  I dropped a knee against its neck and drove the blade through its head just to be sure.

  The pain started punching through the edges of my block-out. I pulled my shirt off and tied it over the cut. No conditioning could completely shut that sort of pain out, but it was my best chance of staunching the bleeding.

  Head buzzing, I connected to Ichi. “Ichi? You okay?”

  Her voice was a whisper. “Waiting.”

  “Maribel’s down. Jacinto was running the android. He may be running Jose, too.”

  She grunted. He must have been close.