Dead Shift (The Rho Agenda Inception Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  That wasn’t good, but it wasn’t completely unexpected either. Grange made some modifications and tried again, as Dr. Morris took notes of exactly what he’d done. Then, satisfied that he had achieved a stable unconscious entity, Steve Grange pulled the plug.

  Without waiting for the two-minute timer to restore the electricity, Grange picked up one of the two flashlights on the workstation and switched it on, watching as Dr. Morris did the same. Then Grange walked to the server rack, disconnected the holographic data drive containing VJ1, and carried it across the room, coming to a stop before a wall panel that rotated open when he pulled on its handle. He tossed the HDD into the open bin and closed it, releasing the bin’s contents down a chute to the incinerator.

  He returned to the server rack, where Dr. Morris was already mounting the next HDD to the mainframe. After setting up the workstation and booting the system, they were ready to begin the VJ2 iteration.

  But this time, prior to spawning virtual Jamal, Grange repeated the modifications he’d made to the VJ1 iteration, with Dr. Morris verifying that the procedure was accurate according to her notes. Then they copied the changes to another HDD that would serve as the baseline for the upcoming VJ3 iteration.

  It was a slow, painfully manual process, and it would require many more iterations before the job was done. It was also an essential part of ensuring that the seed AI they were gradually bringing on line had no lingering digital connection to its prior iteration. Grange needed a completely functional virtual Jamal, but he needed to make damn sure it was under his control before he let it out of its box.

  For a moment his thoughts strayed to the real Jamal Glover imprisoned in the darkness of his drugged mind at the Hayward laboratory. But having downloaded everything he needed from Jamal’s brain, Grange could no longer concern himself with the NSA hacker. That man was now firmly under Qiang Chu’s control, and it was up to Dr. Landon to try to keep the Chinese agent from burning Jamal out too quickly. They needed to use Jamal to delay the NSA’s search for a few more days, just until virtual Jamal was ready.

  Already, Grange could tell that, unlike any of his previous attempts over the years, this time it was going to work. As he prepared to spawn VJ2, a new lump formed in the back of his throat.

  Sleep well, my love. Your wake-up call is coming.

  CHAPTER 51

  Caroline Brown knew that the other members of the Dirty Dozen called her Goth Girl and she didn’t like it. Not because it was inaccurate, but because it was so lame. Still, it was far better than Lisbeth, a Girl with the Dragon Tattoo-inspired nickname that Jamal Glover had once tested on her. She’d ignored the jibe so successfully that he hadn’t noticed how much she hated that association.

  Yes, she was a hacker and yes, she had piercings, tattoos, and the lot, but that was as far as the analogy went. Caroline’s mother owned a penthouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side while her father lived in Mountain View, California, and maintained a summer home in the Hamptons. Although neither of them actively rejoiced at her fashion choices, neither had tried to change her. Why should they? At the age of twenty, she’d graduated summa cum laude from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, with dual majors in computer science and robotics. Clearly, her odd interests hadn’t hurt her studies or damaged her intellect.

  On the strange side, she loved both her parents . . . her stepfather not so much. It wasn’t that he was abusive, but he was an attorney, aka an argumentative, know-it-all asshole. But her mom liked him, so c’est la vie. Her dad’s problem was that he liked pretty women, lots of them. And they liked his money. Ah well, he had lots of it, enough to put up with their all-about-me personalities.

  That thought brought her full circle to Jamal Glover. He was an arrogant young prick who imagined that he was “witty,” an impression reinforced by the blatant adoration of that heavyset sycophant friend of his, Gary. She’d studied Jamal’s coding. Slick stuff, but his fatal flaw was the seventh of the deadly sins. Pride. And he’d let it infect his work. Caroline knew that Jamal was unaware of the signature he left in his elegantly stylized code. But it spoke to her in a language that only she understood.

  Levi Elias had all of the Dirty Dozen trying to figure out how the camera feed of Jamal in the sensory deprivation tank had been manipulated so that it seemed to originate from the dry-cleaning shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In addition, Levi wanted to know the actual origination of that TCP stream. Caroline didn’t have those answers yet, but in her search of the camera systems in the Chinatown neighborhood, she’d stumbled across a white rabbit that had led her on a merry chase into Wonderland. And as she pursued it, Jamal’s code whispered to her.

  All of the security systems in a sixteen-square-block area around the dry-cleaning shop bore traces of Jamal’s digital fingerprints. The only way that made sense was if Jamal was actively involved in the hack that had fooled all of the NSA’s top cyber-warriors. But when she tried to pinpoint the origin of the streaming video from the isolation tank, it led to a North Korean trawler floating in international waters fifteen nautical miles off the Central California coast.

  Caroline accessed the satellite imagery of that area that had already been marked up and catalogued by NSA imagery analysts, specifically looking for electronic eavesdropping ships. Sure enough, one North Korean spy ship disguised as a fishing vessel had been on station in the area of interest for the last two weeks. And the electronic trail led to that boat.

  Ships designed to intercept communications were antenna farms, making them prime hacking targets through those listening antennas. But this made no sense. Why would the trace of the video feed lead back to a system that showed clear indications that it had been a target of one of Jamal’s hacks?

  Caroline pulled up the recorded video of Jamal’s floating body, illuminated as if by black light. The rubber cap that covered his skull reminded her of a densely populated pincushion, with a thin wire connected to each pinhead. For a full minute she watched as Jamal floated in the still water. If the video was a fake, it was a damn good one. But something about it bothered her.

  She leaned slightly forward in her Scorpion workstation’s zero-G chair. The surface of the water inside that tank was still, with only a few ripples disturbing its dark surface. There was no way that tank could be on a ship or a moving vehicle of any kind. The North Korean spy ship was a red herring.

  Damn it. Back to square one.

  Then again, maybe not. Caroline turned her attention to the hacked San Francisco power grid, which was just now beginning to come back on line. The security on most of America’s grid was so easy to bypass that it should embarrass every American taxpayer, and this one was no exception. Even with the additional precautions that system administrators had just implemented, she was in, unobserved, in less than a minute.

  It took her slightly longer to find what she was looking for. Jamal had been here too. But, curiously, the changes he’d made had only involved opening a different backdoor to the system. Caroline shifted her focus. That backdoor had been used more than an hour later by another hacker. A skilled one, but definitely not Jamal.

  Caroline lifted her fingers from the keyboard, pausing to run her hands up over her tattooed scalp, the habitual movement unnoticed.

  She was missing something, some critical piece of the puzzle. If Jamal was being kept unconscious and brainwashed in a sensory deprivation tank, why were his digital fingerprints all over the San Francisco cyber-attacks? If the tank video was a slick fake, then why had Jamal just opened backdoors into computing and security systems for others to take advantage of when he could have performed the final attacks without anybody else’s help? Why had Jamal taken the key-master role?

  Convinced that the tank video feed, whether it was real or fake, contained the missing puzzle piece, Caroline began the arduous process of seeking to find that camera system. Last night the team had been duped into thinking it was just one of th
e security systems they’d hacked in Chinatown. But they hadn’t hacked it; they’d been handed that video feed wrapped in such a pretty bow that they hadn’t questioned its apparent source. Right now her problem was that she only knew that the source wasn’t in Chinatown. That left a lot of territory to search—basically the rest of the planet.

  If Caroline was going to have any chance of finding the source, she would have to make some logical assumptions to narrow that search. She knew that Jamal Glover was behind these attacks. That supported the FBI theory that Jamal was creating a distraction to escape the country. The fact that Jamal had penetrated systems just to enable other hackers to perform a follow-up attack meant that he was probably working for another government. But someone with Jamal’s skills would have no problem fleeing the country under a new identity, so the distraction theory didn’t hold water.

  Oh well. Levi Elias was the NSA’s top analyst. Last night, Levi had directed the Dirty Dozen to hijack all the security cameras in San Francisco’s Chinatown. That meant Levi believed that whoever was behind all of this was in the San Francisco Bay Area. Even though Caroline didn’t know why Levi had wanted those cameras hacked, she knew that the NSA action had triggered the cyber-attack on San Francisco. Apparently Levi was getting too close for someone’s comfort.

  Caroline’s hands moved back to her keyboard. She would make the simplifying assumption that Jamal Glover was somewhere in the Bay Area. It would take time, but Caroline made a vow to herself. She would find that arrogant ass and when she did, she’d teach him once and for all who ruled the cyber-roost.

  CHAPTER 52

  Qiang Chu jabbed a finger into Dr. Landon’s chest, just hard enough to make sure he had the graying brain surgeon’s complete attention.

  “Jamal Glover has slept long enough. Prep him, wheel his body out here, and get him back in the tank. I have need of his services.”

  Despite the fear Qiang saw behind Dr. Landon’s eyes, the man stood his ground. “If we kill him he’ll be of no use to anyone.”

  “If I can’t use him when I need him, then he’s already dead to me,” Qiang said, leaning in closer. “And so are you.”

  Dr. Landon swallowed hard, nodded, and turned toward the fully equipped emergency room where Jamal Glover’s unconscious body lay atop a hospital bed.

  Qiang watched the doctor disappear through that doorway and turned back toward the waiting sensory deprivation tank. As talented as was the team of Chinese hackers in the adjacent room, they couldn’t compete with the skill and knowledge of the young black man who was America’s top cyber-warrior. The speed he had demonstrated in penetrating and disabling the security systems that had facilitated last night’s attack had stunned Qiang’s top hacker.

  Now that hacker reported that the NSA cyber-warfare unit was rapidly unraveling the tangled trail that might lead them to this facility. If that happened before Grange could upload virtual Jamal AI, the Americans would find this facility. And they’d find the Grange Castle laboratory.

  All of the billions of yen that the Chinese government had spent on this project would have been wasted. It would also mean that Qiang Chu had failed. He’d burn San Francisco to the ground before he allowed that to happen.

  He watched as Dr. Landon’s assistants wheeled the gurney bearing Jamal Glover up beside the freshly cleaned and refilled tank. As they lifted its access door, Qiang’s eyes were drawn to the plastic bag fastened to a stainless steel rolling IV rack that an assistant maneuvered alongside it. Dr. Landon inserted a needle into the IV tube’s injection site and dispensed the hallucinogen and amphetamine cocktail that would shortly pull Jamal from one dream world into another.

  Removing the sheet that covered the young man’s form, the team transferred Jamal into the salt water, kept at a constant 93.5 degrees Fahrenheit. With practiced precision, they hooked the far end of the skullcap wiring harness into a connector above Jamal’s head. Disconnecting the upper end of the IV from the portable bag, Dr. Landon inserted it into an identical connector inside the tank.

  The doctor turned to study the display of Jamal’s vital signs. Appearing satisfied, he nodded to the lanky man at his elbow. “Seal it up.”

  Qiang stepped up beside the doctor as he seated himself at the central monitoring station. “How long until we can upload the new scenario?”

  “It’ll be fifteen minutes before the sedation wears off and the new drugs take full effect. When his brain readouts look ready, I’ll let you know.”

  “That long?”

  He swiveled toward Qiang, his jaw muscles working. “You do your job and let me do mine. I’m rather good at it.”

  Qiang stared back at the doctor but said nothing. The man showed more courage than had been demonstrated by the leader of the Bay Area Triad after things went wrong last night. It was one reason why Dr. Landon was still alive while fish now fattened themselves on the chum that had once been Gan Liu’s body.

  Qiang gave a slight nod. “Fifteen minutes then.”

  When the doctor turned back to his monitors, Qiang shifted his attention to the one that displayed Jamal Glover floating in the strange illumination only visible via the special camera that shared the tank with him.

  The technology that used Jamal’s brain to hack the real world was magical. But it was nothing compared to what Grange was about to accomplish in his laboratory far beneath the castle.

  Qiang would give Grange the time he required. But to do that he would deal with the American agents who hunted him. Their connection to The Ripper puzzled him, but he could figure that out later. There was an old saying from the Cathar Crusade. Kill them all and let God sort them out.

  Whether or not there was a God, he meant to do exactly that.

  CHAPTER 53

  Seated in the lotus position atop the queen-size bed, Jack let his mind float, tethered to a tiny point of flame in an infinite sea of darkness. Jack released the thin strand that connected him to that pinpoint, allowing himself to float deeper and deeper into the dark.

  The dream coalesced around him, along with the full knowledge that it was more than a dream, that there was a primal sense of another presence. Anchanchu. Once again, Jack found himself in that familiar nineteenth-century London alley. Apparently Anchanchu regarded it with a fondness that most people associated with home.

  As Jack stepped forward into that fog, he saw the dark figure, fifty feet in front of him, and broke into a sprint toward it. Anchanchu ducked to his left, passing through a yellow door as if he were a wraith and Jack followed, now less than a dozen feet behind.

  A dimly lit cave opened up before him and, as in his previous dream, another Jack stood before him, this time with his gun leveled at a skinny, ragged man whose dirty-blond dreadlocks hung almost to his waist.

  “Freeze!” The other Jack’s command rang through the still night air like the tolling of a church bell.

  The ragged man froze, then turned away from the girl’s limp body, which hung like a rag doll. She was suspended by her cuffed wrists, chained to the wall in a way that reminded Jack of cramped al-Qaeda torture cells in the Middle East. And hanging on a meat hook beside her was Harry’s broken body.

  For a fraction of a second, that sight stunned Jack, allowing Anchanchu to increase his lead. Then Jack forced himself away from the strange vision that unfolded before him to race after Anchanchu, out of the cave and down a steep, dark slope. Five feet ahead of him, Anchanchu jumped off the cliff.

  Screw it! This was Jack’s dream and he could take a suicidal dive as well as Anchanchu. At full sprint, Jack reached the cliff’s edge and plunged outward and down.

  Willing himself forward, Jack reached Anchanchu before they hit the ground, reaching out to grab his throat with both hands. At that touch the world melted away around him.

  I stride the familiar curved hallway toward a rendezvous that has been too long in coming, savoring the view through t
he building’s transparent outer wall and ceiling. Low on the horizon, Quol’s purple moon looms in stark contrast to the lacy-orange Krell Nebula, which forms a backdrop in the dark sky. But tonight I have no time for idle reflection.

  As I make my way toward the chambers of Valen Roth, overlord of the High Council, I encounter no other living being. I feel other Altreian minds clustered behind nanoparticle doors throughout the immense web of rooms that form the Parthian, but none step out to confront me. Wise choice.

  Not even Valen Roth can withstand the full power of my mind. Up ahead, he awaits my arrival, aware of my dissatisfaction with his latest edict, but feeling secure in the protection the One Law provides every member of the High Council. For thousands of cycles, no one has dared risk the punishment its violation would provoke. Until tonight.

  As I approach the portal into Valen Roth’s chambers, I reach out with my mind and find him alone in his study. It does not surprise me. Only my brother, Parsus, knows my intent, and since Parsus sits beside me on the High Council, that leaves Valen Roth one mind-link short of forming the Circle of Twelve that would be capable of subjugating my will.

  Reaching the entry portal, I step through, feeling its nanomaterial melt away and then reform behind me, and smile with anticipation. Soon, Valen Roth will trouble me no more and Altreia will welcome a new overlord.

  Jack felt strong hands shake him hard enough to wobble his head on his neck as he sat cross-legged on the bed. Blinking, he sucked in a breath and found himself staring into Janet’s brown eyes, the sudden transition back to self so disorienting that he felt a wave of dizziness take him.