CypherGhost

by D S Kane

  Another photo icon on DeSpain cell blinked. Great Britain. A manufacturing corporation whose CEO was named Manus Blank. “And we are behind schedule. Mass protests we encouraged did not move the House of Commons as far as we require. We will trigger another incident but we won’t be ready for nearly ten days. So your unnecessary failure will help us.”

  DeSpain turned away from his cell’s vidcam and smiled. Then he addressed the group. “Anyone else with positive or negative progress to report? If not, I’ll assume the rest are on schedule.”

  Eleven photo icons blinked with questions or comments.

  * * *

  Three miles away from Cy DeSpain’s compound, Major LeRoy Malley pulled the headphones off his head. “Stop the trucks!”

  Avram nodded and touched the driver’s shoulder. He spoke a few words into his earbud’s mike. And the two other trucks also pulled to the curb.

  Malley hissed, “DeSpain and the other heads of his global group are meeting via their cellphones. The call is encrypted, but I’ve backtraced it and am attempting to discover each participant’s location. Nearly a hundred of them. If we delay our visit for just a few more minutes, we may gather enough data to identify all of them, including their current locations.”

  * * *

  The CypherGhost read the paragraph in the insulin pump’s documentation for the third time. Chinglish!

  The words made little sense to her:

  In the table stored is maximum and minimum as well as other statics. Many variables are not to be changed without a physician and a nutritionist to review but if they are in any way altered by a third party then the warranty is no longer in effect. Table is created by programmer who is also tabulator for all changes.

  She scanned the entire document, and found nothing useful. How did the FDA approve this garbage? It’s just a toy! She scanned for notes inserted into the code. No name for the table whose purpose was also undecipherable. And the actual code accessed over ninety other tables, most with long lists of zero values separated by commas, and no names. Worse yet, there was no further documentation she might use to find out which table contained the minimum and maximum bolus values. I’ll just have to guess, and keep guessing until I’ve killed Daddy.

  She finally found one that might be her search target. This table named had a name, “m-m-s-val.dat,” with an integer value “20.” She changed it to “150” and tried to administer a bolus of 150 units of insulin. The screen on her notebook flashed a blinking message: “Working.” And then, after five minutes, “Bolus administered.”

  The CypherGhost sighed in relief.

  She hoped her daddy would be dead before Avram’s mercs had a chance to interrogate her father, but it might be a close thing.

  * * *

  Major Malley nodded. “We have as much on each of the participants as we need.” He looked at Avram, who nodded.

  Malley said, “Proceed on to the objective.” Avram relayed the message to the other two trucks, and the vehicles rattled up to the compound’s gate. Sergeant Cheryl Swartz exited the back of the first truck and slapped a wad of C-4 onto the gate’s lock along with a radio-controlled detonator, then stepped ten feet to the side and pulled her cell from her pocket. She autodialed the detonator and the gate blew into pieces. After she entered the back of the truck again, all three of the trucks drove into the compound and the mercs rushed out to stand ready adjacent to the mansion’s front door.

  * * *

  DeSpain had taken his time answering the group’s questions, and then requested they each report their own status. He responded to their status reports.

  He could see that it was obvious the Joint Chiefs would have more than two weeks to think it over before they reemerged on his critical path. He was about to terminate the meeting when a siren blared inside the compound: “Intruder alert. Security breach, north property gate.” His cell’s screen switched from the photo icons of his team to the vidcam on the north entry gate into the stone-walled compound. He saw three trucks crash through the gate and move toward the mansion. The trucks were labeled, “Stern Garden & Landscape.”

  In seconds the trucks had pulled to a stop and began emptying soldiers out into his driveway. Nearly two hundred armored soldiers, each one carrying a long-barreled weapon, rushed toward the front door of his home.

  DeSpain had two bodyguards in the hunting room with him. Not nearly enough for this situation. He wouldn’t have time to leave using the hidden stairway he’d built from his second story bedroom. I’m in trouble now. He spoke into his cell to the group of his followers. “That will be all. Carry on with your activities. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  He tried to rise off the overstuffed leather couch in the hunting room but his legs felt as if they were made of rubber. Immediately, he knew he’d overdosed his insulin. He tried to get to the kitchen but fell onto the floor. He realized this was no normal overdose and it couldn’t have been done by himself.

  His hands and feet cramped and his entire body convulsed just once. He lost bladder control and his vision began to stipple.

  DeSpain knew he was dying. He saw tiny explosions where there were none. His heartbeat accelerated but his breathing slowed. His final thought was, I’ve been hacked! My insulin pump, it’s been… He needed to erase the meeting he’d videoed. He grabbed his cellphone but couldn’t maintain his grip. The phone dropped to the floor, and skittered away, just out of reach of his outstretched arm.

  He could feel his limbs convulsing wildly. Then he saw a another brief burst of fireworks, then everything slowly faded into darkness.

  CHAPTER 44

  December 13, 12:34 p.m.

  Cy DeSpain’s home,

  300 North Portage Path,

  Akron, OH

  When Avram and his mercenaries broke down the door, the mansion seemed silent. His soldiers pointed their automatic weapons in front of them as they entered the hallway, Avram with them. He saw two suited heavies, on their knees with their hands interlocked above their heads, offering surrender.

  After their weapons were confiscated and they were plastic-cuffed, Avram asked one, “Where is DeSpain?” The merc nodded his head toward the hunting room.

  * * *

  The CypherGhost sat cross-legged on the bed, watching the feed from her father’s security cam on her mindspace’s internet screen. She watched Daddy drop the cellphone as he went into his death spiral. She watched her father’s CGM report that his blood glucose level had fallen to zero. She’d read the tech specs on the unit and knew that a dead person would have a zero glucose level well within a half-hour of death. She took a deep breath and smiled. I’m safe now. And Daddy deserved what I did to him after the way he treated my mom and me when I was growing up.

  She accessed the cellphone on the floor and scanned its file folders to see what he’d been recording. There were over six hundred video and audio clips. The video clips were all his meetings over the last year. The audio files were every phone call he’d either made or received during the last month. She copied everything, but it was taking a long time. A half-hour passed, and by that time she could hear the commotion in the hallway. Time to leave. She erased the contents of the phone and pulled her mindspace from the compound.

  * * *

  Ann had also been in the DeSpain compound during the operation. She had arrived just at the moment when the mercs broke down DeSpain’s front door. She’d watched it all from the safety of her own mindspace. When DeSpain dropped his cellphone, she had also copied all his audio and video files, plus his address book.

  Then, she’d embedded her presence within the CypherGhost’s to make it more difficult for the other woman to detect her. And the CypherGhost was too busy with her work on DeSpain’s medical devices and his cellphone to notice Ann.

  She could sense the CypherGhost’s presence fading away. Why had the CypherGhost come here? Why had she murdered DeSpain? She scanned the hunting room of DeSpain’s compound. Ann dropped her mindspace into the cell’s directorie
s and examined every folder. The CypherGhost also has these files! I need to know what’s so important in these. She began searching through everything she’d copied. When she heard Avram’s voice, she exited the hunting room and brought herself to consciousness in the safe house, a thousand miles away.

  * * *

  With several mercs in front of him, Avram walked into the compound’s hunting room and found DeSpain unconscious and convulsing, his body twisting like a kite in the wind. Avram called, “Medic!”

  It took mere seconds for the medic to arrive and attend to DeSpain. Just a few more seconds for the medic to shake his head. “He’s a diabetic, sir. This patch on his arm is a pod pump. Looks like he’d been overdosed and is suffering from hypoglycemia. I don’t know how much glucagon to administer to counteract the insulin.” The medic administered three injections of glucagon. The two men stood over DeSpain’s body as the convulsions subsided into shaking. But then, the breath left DeSpain for the last time. “Sorry, sir. He’s gone.”

  Avram nodded. With DeSpain gone, the only clues they might be able to use to find the others would be the records Major LeRoy Malley recorded from the online meeting DeSpain just finished with his followers.

  He felt like, once again, they had not moved much closer while they were now exposed to anyone who had access to the vidcams from the security system. He turned to Malley. “Get Drapoff to scrub the security cam footage.”

  But he suspected it was already too late.

  As he looked around the room, he saw the cellphone. Avram picked it up. He took a few seconds to see its file directory. The cell had been erased of all its data.

  In the truck, traveling back to the airport, Avram thought about DeSpain’s death. He felt, in his gut, that it was the CypherGhost who had hacked DeSpain’s insulin pump, but he couldn’t be sure. He wouldn’t accuse her until her knew if she had really done it.

  As the flight back to Washington DC ascended into the clouds, Avram tried to conjure a plan. Operations was what Avram knew best and it wouldn’t help him with the kind of plan he’d need now.

  Planning was Jon’s forte, not his. He decided to speak with Jon after they were back at the safe house. He closed his eyes, thinking, I’m too tired to think right now. I need to be sharp when we reach the safe house, so I can work with Jon on a plan. Avram was asleep in less than a minute.

  * * *

  The CypherGhost thought nonstop about what she’d just done. Murdering her father was not something she’d ever thought she could do. Yet she didn’t feel anything after killing him. She remembered how much her mother had suffered before her eventual death from alcoholism in relative poverty while, after their divorce became final, her father became rich and powerful. I was wrong to leave my mother alone and helpless. But Daddy should have helped out.

  The mercenaries would soon be returning from their failed mission. She assumed they would have concluded she was responsible for forcing the huge bolus of insulin into her father. The CypherGhost is no longer safe here.

  She’d been “invisible” for long periods before, avoiding street cams and leaving little that could mark her travels. It’s what I have to do now. She pushed a few pieces of clothing into her backpack and left the safe house as quietly and as fast as she could. She walked to the downtown bus station to take her out of Washington.

  On her way, she realized that if she could figure who was on the list of powerful men in her father’s cabal, it was possible she could assume her father’s role, and control the world. I bet I could do it all without them realizing it was me and not Daddy.

  It was then that she remembered that the mercenaries would be flying back to Washington very soon. She set to work searching airport flight plans for the airports in and near Akron that served private aircraft.

  * * *

  Ann heard the apartment’s front door close—a nearly silent click. She assumed that someone had entered the safe house but she was too pressed for time now to leave her meditative fugue state and see who.

  She knew soon all her own Bug-Loks would cease their functioning, and she would once again be “normal.” Helpless.

  She faded back into in a near-reality fugue, trying to determine what she could do to transform her own neural clusters to perform the functions performed by a Bug-Lok module. Some of the functions were easy to imitate, some impossible. The most difficult and most valuable one was using her brain to access a nearby local area network. A cyber function of wireless internet—something the Bug-Lok was designed to do—seemed impossible. She kept trying. And she kept failing. This was her most important project: Hack my own brain.

  She had another project to complete, and this one was just as important, but absolutely impossible until she successfully completed the first one. She already knew she could alter or stop the functioning of an active Bug-Lok unit within her. What she wanted to be able to do now was to use the internet to reach into another person who had ingested Bug-Loks, by using her own Bug-Loks. Even if she could replicate Bug-Lok functions using her own brain, was controlling another person’s Bug-Loks using just her brain even possible? Even though she was sure it was impossible, she knew she would have to try.

  She wasn’t aware of time passing. She knew that after about two hours she would become run down, tired, and hungry. Then, she’d have to become conscious again to find food before she slept. But when she thought two hours must have passed by, she still felt strong. So, she kept trying.

  An unwelcome thought emerged into her mind. She counted the number of Bug-Loks within her that were operating and came up with only eleven. She ejected the eighteen nearly dead or damaged units and emerged back into the real world. Time was running out faster, now.

  Since she had witnessed what the CypherGhost had done to Cy DeSpain, she wondered whose side of this battle the CypherGhost was really on. She knew the hacker’s abilities were at least as good as hers, but she couldn’t fathom what drove the CypherGhost. She was now sure the CypherGhost was her enemy.

  Had Ann enough power left in the Bug-Loks still functioning within her, if she needed to defeat the CypherGhost? How to do just that was something she hadn’t even thought about. Would Ann have to kill her? If necessary, she was certainly willing. But how to do it was a mystery to her.

  * * *

  The CypherGhost exited the bus at a stop in the northern suburbs of Washington DC, close to Baltimore. She settled into her motel room, sat on the ratty couch in the corner of the room across from the ancient television, and closed her eyes to facilitate entry into the alternate realm.

  While she focused on absolutely nothing but her breathing, she visualized messages sent and received by Avram, Jon, Cassie, and Ann, one at a time. Cassie’s messages—her incoming and outgoing texts and emails—were few and uninteresting. Jon’s were a bit more relevant to her interests: Jon received one from Avram indicating they had started to analyze the group cellphone call and its implications. This is pure gold!

  She copied the intel Jon and Avram had accumulated and completed her own analysis. They hadn’t enough information to determine who among her father’s contacts were involved in the coup, or what their roles were. All they have is a list of names!

  From the contents of the cell that she had copied, she was able to backtrace eleven of the ninety-three people involved in the conference call. She replayed the conference call in its entirety. She was sure she was the only one with a copy of the conference call. I know more about the plan now than anyone else.

  She wondered if any of the participants in the conference call realized her daddy was dead? Then she wondered if they would notice if she assumed Daddy’s role, without divulging she was the one doing so.

  I must try. I could rule the United States and possibly the entire world.

  * * *

  Avram awoke and called Jon from the Cessna. Avram seemed cranky. Jon asked, “What’s bothering you?”

  “Cy DeSpain is dead from a massive overdose of insulin. I have a bad feelin
g about this. I have no proof, but I am certain that the girl Ann brought home isn’t what she appears to be.”

  Jon nodded. “I’ve suspected for the entire time she’s been among us that she has her own objectives.”

  “Yah. She’s been using us. I wonder if she was responsible for DeSpain’s death.”

  Jon laughed. “Really? Like in the movie Scanners? From a thousand miles away? Give me a break. That’s too much to believe.”

  “Remember what your countryman Sherlock Holmes said. ‘When all the logical alternatives have been discarded, what remains, no matter how fantastic, must be the truth.’”

  “Avram, you’re losing it. Remember, Holmes was a fictional character.”

  Avram scowled. “Sometimes fiction is just a more believable version of the truth.”

  Jon said. “Ah, yes. The ultimate conceit. Look, I’m freezing in this terminal waiting for your plane to land. Any idea of your ETA?”

  Avram shrugged. “No. We might as well make good use of the time while we wait. We need a plan to stop the coup. Jon, this is your task.”

  Jon replied, “We’ll actually have two mission to complete. We need the Joint Chiefs neutralized and we need Cy DeSpain’s corporate conspirators terminated, along with any support organization they’ve recruited. Both tasks have a low-probability of success, but since both missions must be undertaken in tandem, the odds are asymptotically unlikely to be successful. Do you agree?”

  “When has that ever stopped us?”

  Jon chuckled. “Yes. Well, then, let’s get started on this plan for a march to Armageddon.”

  They worked using Jon’s Microsoft Project cellphone app on Dropbox, where they could both share the the changes they made to the file in real-time.

  They started their planning with long lists of known facts, assumptions, and objectives. They then crafted a very rough draft for each of the two missions, and, over the two hours while the Cessna plodded through the storm, they completed several improved drafts.