She inhaled deeply. “It’s because…”
“Yes?”
“…it’s…” A grin divided her face. “…broken. That’s all.”
“That’s it?” I huffed.
“That’s it. Now, did you have any other questions?” Other than explaining the science behind my eye, the doctor couldn’t have been any less helpful or any more strange.
“I guess not. Thanks.”
I tried to get up, but she put her arm in the way. “Oh, there was one other thing.” She put her hand on my shoulder and her smile faded. “I think your movement is great.” She leaned in and winked. “I’m all for equal rights for everyone.”
With that, she’d proven me wrong. The doctor went from eccentric to seemingly crazy. “My movement? Equal…what?”
Her face stiffened as she leaned back. “Nothing. Never mind. Have a good day.” She marched out of the room before I could respond.
With my new motto of not taking anything for granted, part of me wanted to follow her and demand an explanation. But her idiosyncrasies made it seem like she was off just enough that she probably made assumptions about me based on my appearance. It was all too familiar to me from when I was with Auto, so I put the thought out of my mind and headed back to the waiting area.
Helen was happy to see me. “That was fast. Is everything okay?”
I nodded. “I’ll explain on the way to Junior’s. Let’s go.”
We’d taken the next bullet, I couldn’t stop shaking my head as we sat down.
“She’s an eye doctor, but she needs to see a brain doctor. She was insane.”
Helen frowned. “What happened?”
“She said the white eye wasn’t harmless. But also assumed I was part of some ‘movement’ that was for equal rights. Can you believe that?”
“You mean like the Free People’s Republic?”
I was stunned she’d said the name out loud. “Sh!” My eyes darted around the bus to ensure no one had heard. I leaned in. “Are you trying to get us arrested?”
She tilted her head. “For saying the name of a group?”
“We can talk about it later.” I folded my arms.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
The bus came to an instant stop, and we hopped off. It was a quick walk to Junior’s building. I pressed his door bell, and he buzzed us in.
It was Helen’s first time seeing the old building, and she was awestruck. “This place is amazing.”
I nodded, looking all around as we walked through the foyer on the mahogany floors. “Yes, it is. Woah.” I pointed to the golden chandelier above us, new since my last visit.
Helen’s eyes were wide as we took the stairs. “I hope we find excuses to hang out here more often.”
I snickered. “Me too.”
Junior met us in front of his office with a serious look on his face. “Come in. I’ve found some things.”
We followed him and took a seat in front of his desk.
He walked around and sat down, then cut to the chase. “Charlie’s medical history.”
I was as eager as ever. “Yes?”
Buzz!
My phone went off in my pocket before he could respond. “Sorry. Let me silence this.” I pulled it out and glanced at caller ID. My stomach dropped.
Incoming call from Tony
As much as I wanted to hear from Junior, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. I looked up. “Actually, I need to take this.” I tapped to answer, but Tony had disabled his hologram and speaker phone functionality, so I had to take the call the old-fashioned way.
“This is Ryan.”
“I only have a moment. Don’t believe anything he’s about to tell you.”
I was more than confused because Junior had said calls couldn’t be hacked in his building. “How did you—”
“I can explain everything. Meet me at the Bryant’s Pub, corner of Clark and Addison, in two hours. Come alone.”
The phone went dead, and I suddenly had a decision to make. As much as I trusted Junior, I didn’t really think twice about it. “I’m sorry, but we have to leave. I’ll come by another time to talk about your findings. Thanks again.”
Junior scowled. “Is everything all right? I can drive you.”
“Sorry.” I waved him off. “It’s kind of personal.”
Knowing just how important Junior’s research was to me, Helen must have realized I wouldn’t miss it unless it was important. She stood up. “Thanks, Junior. We’ll talk to you soon.”
We made our way out of his place, and Helen acted normal until we boarded a bullet.
“You going to tell me what just happened, or do I have to pry?”
“I know I don’t deserve it, but…” My brow went up as I looked her in the eye. “I need you to trust me.”
Chapter 14:
Shifting Between Two Minds
“I need you to trust me.” The solemn words of an authoritative voice echoed in the heads of the shadowy figures waiting in the dark woods. “But I know that trust is earned through openness and honesty. It’s why I tell all our members up front that this is all temporary. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Every assignment could be your last. Inevitably, some of you will question the importance of simple reconnaissance missions. Some of you might think they’re too risky. Some of you might even feel that any amount of Intel is not worth our lives.
“I’m not here to tell you you’re wrong. I’m here to tell you something that’s bigger than all of us. You see, knowledge is bittersweet. On the one hand, the smarter you are, the more you can contribute. Experts are often seen as the main voice on a topic, even though history has shown that a collective of semi-experts can prove as good or better at determining the right course of action. On the other hand, the more education you acquire, the more one thing becomes excruciatingly clear. Even the best and brightest don’t know shit.
“Ultimately, it boils down to a simple concept. The more you know, the fewer lies you’ll believe. This is vitally important because there comes a point in everyone’s life where you must make a choice. Let the world burn or fight the fire.
“Make no mistake. There is no middle ground. There is no neutrality. Merely staring at the blaze stokes the flames. These missions, and the knowledge we acquire from them, will help you make that decision without me having to sway you. You’ll see firsthand what our enemy is capable of, what they are planning. Then you get to decide. Are you part of the solution? Or do you declare yourself an enemy of free people?”
The night air was thick, humidity relentless. Heaps of sweat soaked through the squad’s Kevlar jumpsuits and into their backpacks. Through the trees, they focused intently on the beacon some two hundred meters away—an enormous, fenced-in building alit by intense security lights. In those final peaceful moments, each member concentrated on their duties. Some specialized in enemy engagement, some on infiltrations, and still others in computer hacking. But they all had one thing in common. None of them had a clue that they would be changing the very course of human history with their actions and decisions this night.
A whisper from behind commanded the squad, “Move to the edge and wait for the signal.”
The six of them crept to the last row of trees before the open field, and the leader followed closely. As the perspiration poured from their brows, not even one of them blinked. They were ready to dash at a moment’s notice, and nothing would distract them.
The building’s power flickered once. No one moved. The only noise were the wind and the leaves. Then, entire scene went black and another whisper followed. “Advance.”
The group inaudibly exploded into a dead sprint across the pitch-black field. As they reached top speed, their strides were two and three times that of Olympic runners. They didn’t seem to be getting winded in the slightest. Halfway across the field, one eye of each te
am member began to glow, the bright white light perfectly illuminating the remainder of their path. Approaching the chain link fence, the team simultaneously jumped four-meters to the top of the fence, kicked off just below the barbed wire, and flipped over the top with a half-meter to spare. The jingle from the fence was the only thing that disturbed the peace. As it subsided, the hydraulic sounds of auto-guards ebbed and flowed, confessing that they were making their way around the building.
Another soft command followed. “Get ready to engage.”
Two team members reached back into their packs and pulled out small cylindrical devices. Whipping them to the side, the devices extended to four times their original length and clicked into place. The team members lifted the wands straight into the air and waited for the first sign of movement from around the building.
“Perimeter breached. Eliminate intruders.”
The mechanical guards made their intentions known as they turned the corner, but it was already too late for them. The engagers pressed the button on their batons, and a dull tone fluttered out. A dual-threaded electromagnetic pulse burst in the direction of the guards, engulfing them.
They went offline with a murmur, their movement coming to a full stop in slow motion. “Eliminate…the…intru…”
The leading member again moved the mission forward. “T-D, shift and get us inside.”
The woman crossed her arms and closed her eyes. Upon opening them, the white light shown brighter. She quickly made her way to the building’s metal door. The team followed closely.
T-D reached into her bag, pulled something out, and extended her open hand. In it was a tiny, metal cube that she proceeded to tap. It began to move with barely audible crackling and popping, and after a couple seconds, it completed its transformation into a robotic insect. Using her free hand, T-D searched for the seam where the door’s locking mechanism met the wall and then placed her little friend near it. With a zip, the insect flew into the seam. Faint clicking could be heard from inside.
J-B’s head tilted with concern. “What’s that noise?”
Tiffany-Dominic shook her head at the silly question but answered it anyway. “The lockroach is determining the sequence to open the door.”
“No, not that. Listen.” The team focused their eyes on each other and held completely still. The otherwise silent night confessed that, off in the distance, there was a strange grinding noise. After a few seconds, they realized that the sound was getting louder.
“L-M and N-K, shift to engage and investigate. The rest of us will be going inside as soon as the door…”
Click!
Zipping back out, the lockroach fluttered its metal wings and flew into T-D’s backpack. A moment later, the door popped open. The team split with five members disappearing into the building and the other two around it.
Inside, the group was presented with a stairwell leading down. They took the two flights of stairs and came to another metal door.
“I got this one.” J-B mimicked T-D’s unlocking routine from before with similar success from his pet.
The door popped open, and they were met with a long, pitch-black corridor. With only their eyes for light, the team bolted in. Sixty meters in, they could see a silhouette in the darkness ahead.
The team slowed to a stop, and the leader shouted. “Do we have clearance?”
Seconds went by and the tension mounted.
“Yes. We have clearance. Let’s go,” a voice replied.
The team darted another twenty meters, and the woman who had been giving the orders greeted the man on the inside.
“How are we looking, S-A?”
“On target, A-A. Proceed into the console arena, and I’ll confirm the override.”
The team ran past S-A for another twenty meters and came to the end of the hall. They entered a large, dark space, and with their eye lights, they could see three doors, left, center, and right. Each door had an offline computer terminal next to it.
“Shift to hacking and get in place.”
J-B, T-D, and R-J crossed their arms and closed their eyes, then each approached a console. Staring back down the hallway, A-A waited for S-A’s confirmation, and right on time, it came.
“Override complete!”
A-A whispered, “Three. Two. One.”
The building rumbled to life, the lights and computer consoles illuminating. The hackers opened their eyes, each with a single, intensely-glowing pupil, and they went to work on the terminals. As they tapped frantically at the virtual key displays, holograms of seemingly nonsensical numbers, letters, and symbols began to appear and disappear in an instant.
After thirty seconds, J-B got the door on the left open. He sprinted in while heckling the other two. “I win! You owe me drinks when we get back.” He plugged in his storage chip and began hacking away.
T-D and R-J softly cursed their defeat as their doors popped open and they ran inside.
A-A had little patience for their childishness. “We have no time for games! It’ll be all of our asses if we screw this up.”
In the right room, R-J couldn’t help but respond, “Aye, aye, Captain.”
As angry as their silliness made her, A-A knew that it was her team’s way of reminding everyone that leaders rotated every mission, and no one was truly in charge of anyone else. That was when A-A turned to the only teammate who hadn’t said a word all night, someone with many more years of experience than her. “How am I doing, C-D?”
“So far so good.”
A-A nodded and resumed her command. “Status update, J-B.”
“Seventy-two percent intel acquired.”
“T-D status.”
“Sixty-five percent data acquired.”
Angry that he was falling behind, R-J didn’t need prompting. “Shit! Fifty-eight percent over here.”
As the moment’s ticked by, the absence of the team’s engagers became more and more obvious, and anxiety grew in A-A. Everything had played out as planned except for the din in the distance, and the more she thought about it, the more it disturbed her. Leading up to the mission, there were rumors that military-grade auto-guards were being tested out. They were immune to EMP. But A-A had been told they wouldn’t be ready for a year or longer.
J-B chimed in again from the left. “Ninety-two percent.”
T-D laughed out loud in the center. “Hah! Ninety-four percent.”
But the right room was silent, and A-A was instantly furious that there was still horseplay during the mission. “Dammit, R-J, give your update!”
“What the hell?” The shock was apparent in R-J’s voice.
J-B wasn’t buying it. “Nice try, loser! Intel acquisition complete.” He popped out his storage chip and put it in his pocket.
T-D finished next with a similar response. “Second! Acquisition complete.”
A-A had had enough of R-J’s immaturity. “I swear if you all mess this up, there will be hell to pay when we get back to—”
“No, dammit!” R-J shouted. “Everyone, get over here now.”
Alarmed, the rest of the team gathered, cramming into the right computer room.
J-B was skeptical. “What is it?”
“Look.” R-J pointed at the hologram.
The other hackers squinted at the code on the screen. It only took them a second to figure out what they were seeing.
“Holy…mother…”
“Son of a…”
A-A was clueless. “Break it down for C-D and me. What are we looking at?”
R-J explained, “I was copying the databases from a project called Indemnity, and it had a pointer to an unknown database. I ran a reverse ping on the pointer, and it returned the strangest thing I’d ever seen. It’s one hundred times larger than any database I’ve ever seen, and the table naming convention is old, to say the least. I thought it was a gli
tch at first, but it passed three authentication routines. Then, I handshake-polled it, and sure as shit, it requested a login. It wrenched my rapid-force algorithm, but the over-the-rainbow table worked like a charm.”
J-B couldn’t contain himself. “Idiot! You left out the most important part! It’s the goddamn Gaia system!”
A-A had only heard of the name but was otherwise unfamiliar. “What does that mean?”
C-D wasn’t a hacker, but she knew what it was. “If what he’s saying is correct, you’re looking at the very foundation of Atlas Digenetics. The records of every single host and migrator, the data from every migration. Is that right, R-J?”
He nodded. “My initial scan puts the number of records a little over two hundred and fifty trillion. It’s all there.”
C-D blinked. “That’ll never fit on a storage stick.”
T-D flinched. “Hold on! I thought they used a tiered data model. How can this be all of the data?”
R-J pointed to the hologram again. “They did go to a tiered data model, but it looks like all their plumbing goes through Gaia first. It’s an old-fashioned data warehouse. Look. The last update was from twenty seconds ago.”
J-B was skeptical. “Why the hell would they continue to funnel through a legacy system? They’re just begging to have their system hacked.”
R-J pointed to the holo. “Maybe, but if it were a trap, it would have failed one or more authentication routines. This is real, and we need to figure out what we’re going to do with it. It appears I have write and read access.”
In all her training, A-A wasn’t prepared for the discovery. “How does this change the mission, C-D?”
“If I know J-A, she’d want us to try to give as many people our gift as possible.”
A-A raised a brow, thinking about J-A. “How do we do that?”
Typing away, R-J was already heading down the same line of reasoning. “Organic hosts! I decrypted a few fields, and more than half of their active hosts are flagged as live. Some of them have been on ice for a while, too. Since we know that migrators and hosts from the same geographic area tend to jive better together, I can cross-reference their location of origin and update the pairing records. There are no guarantees, but I think that’s our best bet.”
Between Two Minds: Revelation Page 23
