The comment caught her off-guard. Tess pulled herself together instantly and brushed a lock of hair from her face, then returned her hand to its fisted position under the opposite arm.
“You’re right. I’m part of it now. We control the weather. Or did until a few hours ago,” she said, her voice careful. “And I’m not happy about the change in status. We’ve lost control of the comms, the software test beds, and the arrays, Nik. Greg’s got logic bombs popping out of the software like ass cheeks at Hooters. We don’t know where to look next. We’re chasing shadows. All we know is that the arrays are doing big, very, very bad things to the outside world. We can’t tell anyone what’s coming and not just because our comms are down: we don’t know what’s going to happen or when or where.” She paused, glaring at him. “Why can’t we figure out what he’s up to and how to counteract it, Nik? What are we doing wrong?”
“What we’re doing wrong is approaching this like scientists who are rational and sane: two things Greg isn’t.”
“I can accept that. But back in the dark ages, Greg wrote very elegant code. Very clear and streamlined. This is dense, complex, and confusing. That bothers me. Greg doesn’t write crap code. Ever.”
“Not usually,” Nik said.
“Explain that.”
“There have been a few occasions since the arrays came out of testing a year ago.”
“What did the crap code do?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. But it was outside the spec of what we normally do here. None of us had seen anything like it before. Not since HAARP.”
Chills shot through her and Tess knew that her eyes had gone wide. Her pulse tripled, and all she could do was stare at Nik’s dark, shadowed, unsmiling face.
“You do remember what we were doing up there, don’t you?” he asked, his voice mocking. “Building ‘enhanced communications capabilities’ by bouncing electromagnetic signals through specific regions of the atmosphere’s upper strata. Even back then none of us believed it, Tess. We all thought it was weapons testing.”
“No, we didn’t, Nik. I didn’t. I wouldn’t have—,” Tess protested.
He cut her off with a look. “Come on. Remember how the experiment designs were always altered when they came back after testing? And we weren’t allowed to know the results?”
“That’s not so unusual—”
“Tess, take off those rosy glasses. Don’t you remember standing outside in the dark, freezing our asses off as we watched the sky erupt with all those weird, streaking lights and oddly shaped clouds? You know there’s no way in hell they were the result of long-range radio signals, and they weren’t the aurora. They only happened when the arrays fired, Tess.” He paused. “You used to say that the sky looked like it was warping and fracturing. Well, that’s what happens here, too. And you know TESLA’s signals aren’t comms and they aren’t benign.”
She said nothing for a moment, just looked at her hands. It wasn’t until years after she’d left HAARP that she’d begun to link the dates of world events with some of the “tests” she’d devised. She’d realized with no small sense of disgust that she was a contributor to the next generation of “peacekeepers,” the way her parents and grandparents had been. The clouds she created weren’t mushroom-shaped and the fallout wasn’t radioactive, but the destructive capability was infinitely greater. “Yes, I remember. I promised myself that I’d never again be involved with weaponry.”
“Let’s see. I’ll bet you also thought that Flint’s goals were benign.”
“No, Nik. Not benign. But there’s a long stretch of road between ‘not benign’ and deadly.”
“It gets significantly shorter when profit is involved,” he said bitterly.
She stared at him, at his dark eyes utterly devoid of any humor, any lightheartedness. They were cold and grim. “You’ve changed, Nik. Not for the better. Why?”
He grabbed a piece of paper from the recycle bin, scribbled a short list of words, then handed it to her.
Aceh. Sichuan. L’Aquila. Samoa. Haiti. Afghanistan.
The six words hit her like a fist. The paper fell out of her nerveless fingers and fluttered to the floor. Tess looked at him, unable to express the horror she felt. Together, those six events had claimed nearly three-quarters of a million lives.
And Nik had just taken responsibility for them.
Tess brought an icy, shaking hand to her forehead to brush away a stray hair, or pretend to. “You made these happen?”
“We realized afterward.”
She took a deep breath. It didn’t steady her nerves. “How long after?”
“January of this year. I spent two weeks in Sydney. I hadn’t been off the Ice in a year. So for three solid days, I just surfed the Net, catching up on the news.”
“What made you look into those?”
“There were times when Greg would put out some strange code—upload it, run it—and it pissed me off that he wouldn’t explain himself. I was supposed to be in on everything he did. So I kept those dates in the back of my mind. When I saw what had happened in the world, I made the connection.”
“What did you do about it?”
“I confronted him. He denied everything.” Nik paused. “Tess, you don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel so good,” she admitted. Her voice sounded kind of wispy and breathless, even to her. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”
“The altitude may be getting to you. Besides, you’re exhausted. You had a long and harrowing trip and then walked straight into a crisis. When’s the last time you slept?”
“I don’t remember. And I forgot about the altitude. You’re probably right. But I’m okay.”
“How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”
“What time is it?”
“Four-thirty.”
“In the afternoon?”
He nodded.
“Then I think it’s been about six hours.”
“So throw low blood sugar into the mix. Want to continue this conversation over coffee and a sandwich?”
“Thanks, but let’s just keep going. I’ll be fine. So the dirty code that’s running now—?”
“It’s very similar to what Greg was doing when each of those six events happened.”
“How did you see his code? I mean, the earlier stuff.”
“I hacked his files,” Nik said bluntly.
She gave him a faint smile. “I’m impressed. Did he ever find out?”
“Not that I know of, but that’s not the point. I don’t know exactly what he’s doing this time, but the magnitude of whatever he’s doing is far greater than any of those events.”
“Oh God.” Tess paused as a deeply unsettling combination of fear and sadness welled up inside her. “Nik, I feel like I’m in an asylum. Or on the set of CSI: Antarctica.” She paused for a moment, then continued. “Let’s see if I have this straight: Greg isn’t just the antisocial jerk we all love to hate, he’s a mass murderer. And Flint ordered him to commit what amounts to genocide, repeatedly, using TESLA.”
“I never said Flint, Tess.”
She stared at him. “Then who?”
He shrugged. “Two of those events—China and Afghanistan—have strategic importance—”
“Strategic importance for whom?”
“The U.S. military. The earthquake in China was right before the Olympics, while we were in beta-testing down here. The floods in Afghanistan happened right before their elections. By then we were up and running.” He paused and leaned forward, bringing his face close to hers and speaking softly. “We did it, Tess.”
A shiver ran through her, the kind that as a child she had ascribed to someone walking over her grave. How appropriate. “Are you absolutely—?”
“I have proof,” he said harshly, and Tess caught her breath. “It’s all in the monitoring logs for the array. I think the results were much more intense than intended. I can’t accept the idea that the Aceh tsunami was an intended result. What I can see happening is
that we were supposed to hit a remote spot on a volatile fault line; it would have been an easy win, and easy to assess the impact. But either he didn’t do enough research on that section of the fault, or his computer modeling was wrong, or he just set some incorrect parameters. He wrote all the code himself so I can’t say for sure.”
“Do you remember how he reacted when he heard about the tsunami?”
Nik looked at her. “Yeah. Everybody was pretty shocked, but he just went white, then red. Then he left the room.”
“Nobody connected any activity from the array with the earthquake?”
“There was no reason to suspect anything. He covered his tracks. The code was uploaded in advance, and the arrays fired when most of us were either partying or asleep. Or gone. There was a skeleton crew here. It was Christmastime. Summertime. Downtime,” he said with a shrug. “I left a few days later for my vacation. I confirmed the timing by reviewing the monitoring logs when I got back. He couldn’t have planned it better, Tess.”
“What about the other ones? They happened at different times of the year.”
“His control got better with subsequent events and I think he became much bolder about not hiding it. The Sichuan earthquake was big, on an active fault, but inland. The damage was dramatic but contained. L’Aquila was still more contained. Samoa was barely a blip.” He paused. “I don’t know what Haiti was meant to prove.”
“But Nik … No one knew? No one connected the dots?”
“We were busy with our regular work, Tess.” He gave her the shadow of a grin. “We’re not responsible for every bad thing that happens on the planet, you know.”
“What about Afghanistan?”
“Unambiguously political. Maybe he had a new client.”
As she stared at him, the universe seemed to narrow to a single view: Nik’s face. “Are you— Who do you work for?” she demanded.
“Don’t freak out. I’m no spy. I work for Flint. I don’t know if I can say the same about Greg.”
“Why haven’t you told anyone about this?” she demanded.
He looked at her. “Like who? Somebody is asking him to do this, Tess. Someone is bankrolling him. Maybe it wasn’t Flint and that’s why he was yanked. Maybe it was Flint and they really do want him doing other things. Maybe this is just Greg’s idea of fun.”
“It wasn’t Flint,” she replied, remembering Gianni’s veiled allusions to Greg’s actions.
A knock on the door cut off whatever Nik was about to say. He opened the door. Ron stood at the threshold.
“They cracked it,” he said, walking in and tossing a small collection of papers on Nik’s desk. Nik shut the door behind him as Ron continued, “The coordinates flipped out again so they don’t make any sense, but these are big events scattered all across the globe. Mother-freaking huge events of a magnitude we’ve never attempted. Nobody out there can decipher the commands, but the frequencies—,” he said heavily, his usual bantering tone gone. He brought up a hand to rub his eyes, then let it drop and looked at Tess and Nik. “I’m not being overly dramatic to say this really could be Armageddon.”
The three of them stood in silence for a moment, absorbing his words.
“So let’s assume that Greg is working for someone other than Flint. Who would want large-scale, simultaneous, consecutive events run in a dozen different locations?” Nik asked.
They were quiet for another minute. Tess closed her eyes as the reality became clear to her.
“I can only think of one person who’d want that, Nik,” she said, her voice low.
“Who? Bin Laden? Chávez? Putin?”
“Greg.” She looked up at him. His doubt was evident. Ron’s expression hadn’t changed.
“Tess … no. Come on.” Nik stared at her. “That’s crazy. He’s going to traumatize the planet because he’s been replaced?”
“Because he’s been replaced by me.”
“Sounds plausible to me, Nik,” Ron said quietly. “Nobody blinked when Nangpal said he thought Greg was behind the comms crash and the power blip, and no one else could have commandeered the arrays. He’s already trashed two locations. This is just another step on the same trajectory.”
Nik glared at him. “Greg ‘acting out,’ yes, I can see that. But taking down the whole world because he’s pissed off? Sorry, you’re overreaching.”
“Think about it, Nik. He has always liked to make his point with a sledgehammer when a scalpel would suffice. And now he has the opportunity to make one that Croyden Flint can’t miss. I think he’s gone rogue and those events in the queue are going to be successively bigger and uglier than what he’s already done.”
“So Flint is the target?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it, that either the man or the company or both could be his target?” Tess replied. “Flint owns a lot of farms in western Mexico, and Croyden has a home in Baja. The headquarters is in Greenwich, and Croyden has a home there, too. The best way to get Croyden Flint’s attention is to hit him in the bottom line. And what better means of doing so than to use Croyden’s most expensive investment as a weapon against him personally?”
Nik moved away from the wall to perch on the corner of his desk, one leg swinging freely, a dark scowl on his face. “So what now? If we go with your hypothesis that Greg’s acting alone, we haven’t exactly cracked the code of what’s going to happen.”
“I know that, Nik, but it gives us a framework. It will help us focus.” She ignored his rolled eyes. It was getting more difficult to ignore his obstinacy. “So, I need to know one thing straight up: Who out there”—she motioned to the door—“are his true believers?”
“We’re all adults here, Tess. Intelligent ones,” Nik replied drily. “Everyone here now knows Greg was a few ticks off the dial from Normal. No one at this installation would knowingly participate—”
“Are you sure that no one would go along with him? Are you sure, Nik?” she interrupted.
“Tess, all of us—including you—are here for the same reason. For the adventure and the work. We know what we’re doing here is not ‘cutting edge’ stuff. It’s not ‘bleeding edge.’ It’s over the horizon stuff, practically science fiction. We put up with Greg’s bullshit because the ‘wow’ factor beat grading undergraduate papers, fighting for tenure, and sitting on dissertation committees. No one knew what Greg was doing.”
“You did,” she snapped, and saw Ron’s eyes widen as Nik’s face became suffused with an ugly flush. “If either of you have the slightest doubt that someone out there isn’t thinking clearly, I want them locked out of the sandbox and the system immediately. Understood?”
Nik stared at her. “Do you always stir up this much shit?”
“Honestly, Nik, I’ve never worked in a place where there was this much shit to stir up,” she muttered under her breath. “I have to get something to eat. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 20
By late Friday night, Greg was comfortably installed in a small suite at the five-star Bay Hotel in Capetown overlooking a white-sand beach fringed with palms. It was almost midnight, and he had a glass of wine resting on the table next to him. His feet were up on the railing of his private balcony as he reveled in the warm, wet air of autumn. He wasn’t going to let the reality of the two-person security team—backup for the goons who’d been on the flight with him—ruin the ambience. He’d informed them that they would stand their watch outside his door, not within his sight. He’d put a rapid stop to their protests and Fred and Tim, his other babysitters, had reluctantly acquiesced.
He should have called Croyden by now; those executive lapdogs had requested and then demanded that he do so. He hadn’t. Gianni had called, demanding that Greg get on the phone. He’d refused that, too, opting for a shower and a nap first, and then a meal.
That’s when the velvet gloves—if that term could even be applied to the way they’d been treating him—had come off and they’d started making their puny threats. He’d just smiled. Nothing could faze him now. The
game was already under way. The Mexican earthquake had been his opening salvo. The storm in Connecticut was intended to let Croyden know that no place on the planet would be safe. Every x hours—x being determined by Tess’s activity on TESLA’s networks—the world would experience another outrage, and Croyden would be treated to another show of Greg’s power. The earth would be ravaged. It would be the last, greatest reality game: Survivor: Earth.
By now, the Teslans could see the havoc the arrays had begun to wreak, and they’d have figured out that more was to come. But he’d ensured that no one at TESLA would be able to hack his code and stop it, and no one would be able to bring the installation back on line. He’d foreseen that possibility back in the early days, when he’d been designing the program. At least half the programmers and most of the scientists had some hacking in their backgrounds; some of them had been good at it. But letting them win was never an option. He’d built the system to respond to every attempt they made, to every keystroke they entered. Every input would alter the code, usually with the effect of speeding it up, sometimes by ratcheting up the intensity. And if someone somehow managed to get too close to actually deciphering his code, they would trigger the last, best geostorm civilization would ever see.
He picked up the handset of the hotel phone on the table beside him—why be secure?—and, with a smile, directed the operator to put him through to Croyden in Park City, Utah, where Gianni had said he was vacationing with his family. Then Greg settled back in his chair and lifted the wine to his lips, enjoying it with every sense.
He’d been extremely thorough. He’d found every one of Croyden Flint’s many residences and then had moved on to identifying every Flint-owned entity from coast to coast, from continent to continent. He’d looked at every corporate unit, every field test station, every farm, every chemical and manufacturing and processing plant. Then he’d done the same for all of Flint’s largest competitors.
Certain areas—the southern and central United States, huge swaths of Canada and central Europe, northern Iraq, southern India, the plains of South America—were dense thickets of Flint-owned enterprises. Destroying Flint—the man and the company—was an eminently reachable goal.
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