Covert Affairs: Partnership : A Covert Affairs Romance (Book One)

by Valerie Vaughn

  “You can call me Jon,” he answered, somewhat nasally voice undeniably pleased. He dropped into the chair across from him, sprawling in a graceless slouch, one arm hooked over the upholstered back. “And you’re Syler.”

  “So my mother decided, yes.” The hacker chuckled with a tone better suited to old friends. “Don’t suppose you feel like untying me for this little chat?”

  “Mm, I suppose that’d be polite.” He leaned across the low table set between their respective armchairs to adjust his glasses instead, setting them level across the bridge of his nose. “My friends were rude to knock yours half off. I absolutely hate when mine go sideways.” He adjusted his own to underscore the point. They made his eyes look beady to Syler, but perhaps he wasn’t the best person to ask for an unbiased opinion.

  Jon, as he called himself, though Syler very much doubted that was his real name, gestured for one of the guards to come over and cut the ties around his wrists. Once the hired muscle had retreated back to his position at the door where another guard waited, Syler relaxed a bit, rubbing the chafed skin at the base of his hands to get the blood flow back. “Thanks,” he tossed out, equal parts civil and sarcastic.

  The hacker grinned. “So, tell me, what do you think of my dear Pyrona? Isn’t she fantastic?”

  “She’s certainly something. Fantastic is probably a matter of who’s side she’s on.” And didn’t it just figure that this maniac named his AI with all the reverence that Arthur named his damned cars.

  “I’ll grant you that,” he laughed. “I’ve been working on her for years. Adaptive computer learning. And where better to use her than in securing systems?”

  “Funny,” Syler muttered. “Today was the first time I had the opportunity to breach her firewalls versus defend against her attacks.”

  The other man waved a dismissive hand. “All part of the process. You can’t craft the perfect defense if you’re not also able to execute the perfect offense. You have to be able to keep out the best in the world, after all.”

  “Well on your way to doing just that, I’d wager. Out of curiosity, what are you hoping to do here?”

  “Whatever I want!” he crowed. “She was just a pet project at first, of course. I wanted something that would allow me to work with the speed of a team without the unreliability of other people slowing me down and fucking it all up. Now? She’s better than the combined forces of every elite programmer out there. Well,” he conceded. “Almost.”

  Syler sighed. “And I suppose that’s where I come in?”

  Jon grinned. “Yup.”

  “Ignoring the decidedly unpleasant everything leading to me being here right now, what’s my motivation exactly?”

  “Well,” he drawled, “you really have two options. Three, if you’re as clever as you’ve proven to be so far. Option one,” he ticked a finger up, “the world could suffer a loss of talent with me executing you. I’d rather not, even though it really is the fastest way to get rid of the only person who can best my girl. It’s been ages since I met someone who wasn’t a boring idiot.”

  Syler snorted, unable to help himself. Fucking egomaniacs on power trips. “I’ll pass on that one, thanks.”

  “Glad we’re in agreement. Option two then. You go have a lovely tutoring session or fifty with my girl and I. Let’s teach her a few new tricks and see how long it takes her to outpace you. It took her the better part of two years to beat me, but I’ve arguably done most of the heavy lifting for you already so I hope you won’t think poorly of us for taking so long.”

  “Yeah, I’m not arrogant enough to think that’ll take long. So what happens to me when I’m no longer useful?”

  “Oh, minds like ours are always useful. Pyrona is a very good girl, but she’s young still. Impressionable.” God, it really was nauseating to listen to someone personify their software, AI or not. “So I think it’d be good to have a partner to co-parent if you will. Bounce ideas off of each other. Train her up. Expand.”

  “Is this the join or die speech?” Syler deadpanned. “Because I’ve absolutely gotten it before. It’s literally how I wound up with my current job.”

  Across from him, Jon chuckled. “I saw that in your personnel file. Hacked into the CIA’s covert affairs division, did you? Ballsy.”

  “That’s what I said about your encryption protocols.”

  “See,” he threw his arms wide, grinning. “We’re already getting along so well! Come on now, it’ll be perfect. I promise.”

  Syler leaned back in his seat, sighing. He raked a hand through his hair, letting his head flop back against the headrest. If the distinctive lack of explosions was anything to go off of, his agent was being abysmally slow in retrieving him. Useless bastard. “I don’t suppose you offer health insurance,” he drawled idly.

  “We could work something out,” Jon replied, amused.

  “Mm, well, in that case, let’s go have a look. I’m not sold, to be clear, but I may as well see her while I’m busy deciding how much I like breathing.”

  “That’s the spirit,” the other man hopped up, eager to show off his pride and joy, gesturing for Syler to follow. The guards took up positions on either side of him like the obedient little lackeys they were. “Let me show you to the server bank. I guarantee you, the CIA has nothing on this.”

  Thirty-Three

  “Park here,” Emily instructed. Arthur ignored her, pulling off of the street further down and tucking the vehicle into an alcove. “Oh my god, are you always this difficult?”

  “The less ground I have to cover, the better. And the street is entirely too vulnerable.”

  “‘Why yes, yes I am,’” she murmured, sotto voce. She tapped the ear wig on as he’d shown her on the way. “I’ll need a minute to get set up.”

  He was already out of the car, door snicking shut quietly. “Quick as you can, blondie.” He drew his Sig, proceeding towards the rear entrance of the warehouse. A glance at his watch told him it’d been only an hour since Syler had been taken, but that was still sixty minutes too long. It was well into evening, early January sky dark and promising rain. He came to the door and found a guard posted in a shadowed alcove. Quieting his steps, he slipped up behind the man, silencing him with a sleeper hold before he could sound an alarm.

  Stepping around the body, he moved to the locked rear door, opening automatically in time to the magnetic unscrambler in the watch. Not electronic meant not fried by an EMP bomb and thank fuck for that. Emily’s voice came on over the line. “I’m poised to hack the system, but they’ll know we’re here as soon as I do.”

  “Good.” Arthur grinned. “I’ll take all the attention I can get. Now find me Syler.”

  He slammed the door open, rushing at the first three guards with a blaze of gunfire.

  ---

  “Huh,” Syler commented as they entered the main server bank hub in the front wing of the warehouse. “So that’s what the hell you were up to with all of those orders.”

  “Isn’t she lovely?” he crooned. The nauseating personification of the AI he called Pyrona was rapidly becoming downright creepy. “They grow up so fast. She needed a space of her own.”

  The hub was less a room and more the vast majority of the building. What must have been an open floor plan at one point was a sprawling maze of server racks, cameras, and monitors, all canopied by a ceiling of fiber optic cables in every color available on the market. Custom fabricated bank racks, a state-of-the-art security system, and one hell of a central command post in the front large enough to seat half a dozen people comfortably. The center most monitor was the size of his car, for heaven’s sake, and, if he were being completely honest, it was giving Syler ideas about renovations for the operations branch. God, if he ever got out of here, it was going to take weeks for a clean up crew to pack up all of this equipment.

  Jon eagerly dragged him along to the central computer station, saddling up beside him and dismissing the guards off to one side. “Let us play gentleman. You won’t be any troub
le, now will you Mr. Perrin?”

  “Not really in any position to be, now am I?” he asked dryly.

  The hacker clapped him heartily on the back, turning his fervent attention to his network. Syler made a mental note to set up an emergency intervention team in the event he ever fell this deep down a manic engineering hole. Steampunk fever dream floor lamps were one thing, but technophilia on this level was really best avoided.

  “She’s fully automated. Always on, always watching, forever eager to stretch her legs and play. Why don’t you give her a test, hm? See how you fare.”

  Syler stepped up to the keypad, intrigued despite himself. “Just gonna let me take a crack at it? Really?”

  “Oh, she won’t let you hurt her. You couldn’t if you tried. I haven’t been able to slow her down in ages and only then with her time out code.” He paused. “I won’t be sharing that with you, obviously. I don’t share it with anyone.”

  “Can’t say that I blame you,” he replied, attention already fixed on the login screen. He cracked his knuckles. “Let’s put you through your paces, shall we Pryona?”

  It took him almost no time at all to breach her login screen, the volleys back almost teasing now that he was looking for it, like being toyed with by a playful child learning the boundaries of her new friend. He resisted the urge to shudder, horrified by this iteration of his chosen specialty. In the future, he thought, he’d really be staying away from devices that had the potential to cause this much damage. That was possibly more a reflection of the instability of its creator than of the machine itself, but all the same he’d be reconsidering his stance on designing fully AI systems. Arthur may have been joking about death rays all those months ago, but this thing might just be able to build one by itself if left to its own devices with a hardwired line into a manufacturing shop.

  And speaking of Arthur…

  A security alarm blared out from every corner. Jon snarled, shoving him out of the way of the keyboard to pull up the main camera displays. If the sound of gunfire was anything to go by, Arthur was on the opposite side of the building. Syler sighed. Always late, that one.

  The guards in the corner were momentarily startled, but that wouldn’t last long. Not particularly interested in spending any more time cuffed with a bag over his head, Syler darted out of the way and made a dash for the server banks as one of the guards popped off a shot in his direction.

  “Not in here, you idiots!” Jon barked.

  Syler tore off his glasses, snapping the release on the legs. The taser might well be dead after that EMP, but he did still have knives to work with and that would have to count for something when the goons caught up with him. He unsheathed the thin blades, ducking behind a corner as the guards advanced, waiting. As the first one cleared the edge, he plunged the stiletto cleanly into the man’s shoulder, brushing against the taser trigger just on the off chance—

  He was thrown back and away with a jolt, hair almost certainly standing on end as the static coursed through him. His hand shook where the voltage had exceeded the capacity of the hilt. Well that was a fun glitch. EMP must’ve blown out the ground wire instead of frying the entire thing.

  The wounded man dropped with a crash, not even managing a scream before the hyped up taser had taken him out. Giving the knife up as a loss, particularly with the way it was still smoking in the felled guard’s shoulder, Syler instead dove for the man’s weapon, landing with a crunch and sliding several feet across the floor as he twisted to aim for the second guard.

  The shot the other man got off clipped dangerously close to his left ear, but his own aim was thankfully entirely more reliable than that, bullet landing dead center of mass. He heaved himself up without pausing to catch his breath, half-turning to face the center desk, gun up and cocked.

  He was met with Jon’s own gun pointed at his forehead, the man only a few feet away. “Freeze now, please. You’re making a mess of my girl.”

  Syler snorted, hands dropping to his side. “Can’t say I’m particularly sorry about that. You did kidnap me.”

  “We could’ve worked so well together,” the other man tutted as he stepped forward and rested the barrel directly against his brow. Syler closed his eyes, swallowing as a shot rang out.

  Byron’s body dropped to the floor, hole in the side of his head. Syler breathed out heavily through his nose, hazel eyes fluttering open to send a baleful look in the direction of the door. “You’re late.”

  “Terrible traffic,” Arthur replied, already wrapping arms around him. He sank into the other man’s embrace easily, body going limp even as his heart continued to pound. Syler buried his face in his agent’s neck, inhaling deeply, and started to laugh. It was probably manic if the hands stroking gently over his back were any indicator.

  He wasn’t sure how long they stood there, but by the time his pulse had returned to normal levels, he found that he was eager to wash his hands of this entire mess and sleep for approximately the rest of January. “Arthur?”

  “Yes, love?” he murmured, lips pressed just above the shell of his ear.

  “Give me your cufflinks. We’re blowing this damned place up.”

  “Mm, you say the most attractive things.”

  Thirty-Four

  The Director eyed all of them with an expression that was equal parts dismay and exasperation. Syler dragged a hand self-consciously through his hair, although nothing short of a miracle and three showers was going to salvage the slightly fried curls. His barber was going to throw a fit. Arthur sat silently beside him, entirely too experienced with Jeanette’s displeasure for it to have any impact. And then, of course—

  “I see you brought a friend home.”

  Emily beamed, tossing the Director a jaunty wave. “Emily Larson, pleasure to meet you. That one promised me a job, but I get the impression that you’re the one who has final say over hiring decisions.”

  Boothman snorted. “I’m tempted to give you his.”

  “She can have it. I don’t want it anymore. Demote me to the mailroom for all I care.” It was an act of sheer willpower to keep his eyes open at this point. The adrenaline crash was hitting him with all the force of a semi-truck.

  “A major D.C. convention center has extensive structural damage following a localized EMP bomb detonating, a nearby hotel required repairs in the thousands after a shoot out, a portion of the warehouse district caught on fire during what was, apparently, an intentional pyrotechnics display on your part, and that’s all without getting into the truly spectacular body count across all three locations.” She paused to fix him with a glare. “I’m not sure you’re qualified for the mailroom.”

  “Oh lay off, Jeanette,” Arthur muttered. “We got the job done.”

  The Director sighed. “I have to at least pretend I’m punishing you or I’ll never hear the end of it from the sharks across the Potomac. They get exceptionally snippy when things blow up in their own backyard, to hell with the reason for that being their own inability to help take down a cyber terrorist.”

  “We’ll take a week of paid leave, thanks.”

  “That’ll do. Perrin, we’re clear to remove the additional firewall encryption around our system, correct?”

  “Hm?” Syler perked up, jolted out of his graceless slump at the sound of his name. “Yeah, yeah, should be fine. Byron, or whatever the fuck his name actually was, is dead. The system is blown to kingdom come—which, for the record, you should absolutely tell them was unavoidable and not intentional. No one’s eighty year old grandmother should be allowed to get their hands on any remnant of that equipment, let alone the morons in the FBI. They’d only hurt themselves with it.”

  “They’d try to replicate and weaponize it for their own uses.”

  “I repeat,” he muttered, stifling a yawn. “They’d hurt themselves.” He narrowed his eyes in Jeanette’s direction, appraising. “I’m not building you one either. Even from scratch, the entire premise behind something with the potential to out maneuver its creator a
nd unlimited capacity for growth is the security threat, not the solution.”

  Jeanette rolled her eyes. “Please don’t insult my intelligence like that, Perrin. You two can spend the week finalizing your report. Now get out of my office.” She pointed at Emily. “You stay.”

  Syler patted her on the shoulder consolingly as he got up and stumbled to the door, half supported by his grip on his agent’s elbow. “Remember that you wanted this,” he called as Arthur pulled the door shut behind them.

  The blond wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in tightly. Syler went along with it, perfectly happy to go wherever the man took them so long as it involved a bed and three uninterrupted centuries of sleep. They got about half a step through the antechamber doors before he was tackled around the middle by the force of nature that was Maria.

  “Syler!” She squeezed him firmly, releasing him only long enough to do the same to Arthur. “Are you both alright?!”

  Syler grinned weakly at her, stifling another yawn. His entire senior team and the Colonel were laying in wait out in the hallway. Bless this strange little family of his. “Yeah, but I’m about to pass out, so…”

  “I’m taking him home,” Arthur interrupted. “Good night everyone. Thanks for checking in.”

  Syler lost time from there, dead to the world the moment Arthur poured him into Lucy’s passenger seat and belted him in. Arthur smiled, leaning down to brush a hand through his hair. His handler reeked of smoke and gun powder and Arthur still couldn’t recall a time he’d been more lovely. He really was absolutely and irrevocably out of his mind for this man. Slipping out of his jacket, he leaned forward to drape it over the younger man, pressing a kiss to his temple as he did.