by J D Lasica
Nico kept his voice low. “We free these four. We find Tosh, Carlos, and Judy. We grab Bailey and then get the hell off this damn island, right?”
“Maybe.” Bo turned to Viper. “How many people can fit on your boat?”
“No idea,” Viper said. “I’d guess eighteen, twenty max capacity if some go below deck.”
“How is this gonna work?” Nico said. “There are—what?—600 girls on this island. We just make thirty trips to shuttle them off to the Bahamas?”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna work,” Kaden agreed. “Maybe we can smuggle out footage of the camp. Get public pressure to force the U.S. government to do something. But first we focus on freeing the Axom four.”
“Then we find Judy and your two guys,” Viper said to Bo. “I did a reconnaissance. One guard posted by the front entrance. I’m hanging back. Who’s going in?”
“Let’s do surprise and disable,” Kaden said. It was a routine she and Nico had worked out when they wanted to immobilize an opponent. “I’ll run point.”
“On your right,” Nico said.
“I’ll bring up the rear,” Bo said.
She moved out along the left side of the studio. The rear door was boarded up. She peeked inside the windows but it was too dark to see anything. She reached the end of the building and angled the glass on Nico’s turned-off phone to get a reflection. She positioned it at the base of the building and saw the guard at the front door with a weapon, probably the same SCAR 17E smart rifle she’d seen the other guards carry.
She threw a pebble about twenty feet in front of the guard, just enough to attract his attention. Then she whipped around the side of the building with her hands raised.
“I want to surrender. My name is Kaden Baker.” The guard approached her with caution, smart rifle pointed to her chest. “And I demand asylum under Article Twelve of the Geneva Convention.”
She watched as Nico snuck up behind him. By the time she was seeking asylum, Nico was applying a chokehold. Nico had six inches on him—both height and biceps. After five seconds, the guard dropped his weapon and collapsed.
Kaden checked the entrance for booby traps. She entered the large open space, framed on two sides by mirrored walls and wooden rails. Across the room she spotted a figure. She moved efficiently across the polished bamboo floor until his face became clear in the frail light.
It was Alex, tied and gagged in a chair, just like her father was. She wondered what infraction he’d committed to get him tied up like this. And where were the others?
She didn’t like this.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Nico enter and then Bo, who stationed himself at the door. She hadn’t seen Alex since the incident in Dallas. She knelt and untied the gag from his mouth.
“You’ll be okay. We’re getting out of here.” She said it half to herself.
“How’d you find me?” His eyes looked surprised to see her.
“What do you—” It took a second for the realization to hit her. “It’s a trap!” she yelled. “We need to get out of here!”
She heard a sound in the back of the studio. Nico raised his HK416 toward the dark shadows.
At the front door, Bo signaled for them to hurry so they could get out of there. She got Alex’s hands free, and she and Alex both worked on the ropes tying his ankles to the chair. Suddenly, Alex’s chest started chiming.
“What’s that sound?” she asked.
“My medallion.” He removed it from his neck and looked at it quizzically in his palm. “It’s supposed to go off if someone who’s my ‘type’ comes within fifty feet.”
Clicking sounds on the hard floor, maybe the heels of a woman’s pumps. The lights came up. Kaden’s heart fell.
Walking slowly toward her, Rachel held a gun to the back of Bailey’s head. “You have a brave daughter, Bo,” Rachel said. “And a brave sister, Kaden. Drop your weapons or I’ll kill her in three seconds. One, two …”
All three laid their weapons on the floor.
“Now, interlace your fingers behind your heads.”
“I’m sorry, Dad.” Bailey was trembling.
As they raised their hands, Rachel said, “After your call, your daughter insisted on coming back to help you out.”
“How could you do this?” Nico asked her.
“A million points in reward money goes a long way on this island,” she said.
The shuffle of feet outside. Kaden’s eyes widened at what she saw next. A half-dozen of the kidnapped girls entered the front door and trained their bows and arrows on the four of them.
“Terrorist scum,” one of the girls spat out.
She didn’t know how, but they’d been indoctrinated.
Seconds later, a dozen uniformed Guardians entered with their smart rifles drawn.
They were prisoners again.
56
Samana Cay
The SUV pulled up at the rear of corporate headquarters in front of the private entrance to Volkov’s executive suite. He opened the door but turned back to Lucid.
“What’s the most secure building on the island?”
“The Data Center,” Lucid said.
“Let’s keep these three prisoners there, with a heavy contingent of guards.”
“Yes, Chairman.”
Volkov climbed out and waved his palm in front of the chip reader. The door clicked open and a sonorous automated voice said, “Welcome, Chairman.”
He ordered a guava purée from his assistant and tried to calm his nerves. What a day! His people had outsmarted the terrorists by using artificial intelligence. First, they lured the intruders into a trap by using AI voice technology. Today anyone’s voice could be replicated to sound a hundred percent authentic after supplying only a minute-long sound clip. They had much more than that with Alex Wyatt. The twist came in using AI that could simulate someone’s voice in a realistic conversation on the fly. That was still cutting-edge.
Second, they turned select captives at Immersion Bay against their potential liberators. What poetry! Six of the at-risk girls with rebellious streaks underwent a procedure for implantable smart contacts—lenses implanted between the iris and the natural lens. Takes all of fifteen minutes and you’ve got someone who’s susceptible to whatever reality we want them to believe.
Volkov checked the time: just after four p.m. In less than two hours, the Seaduction would be on its way with its world-changing cargo. He’d given the crew instructions to wear their smartglasses to glimpse a special send-off message in the sky.
But his thoughts were already onto the effects of the Fantasy Strain would have on the United States, Britain, and Western Europe. Centuries of hegemony, vanquished. Crushed in the cruelest possible way.
And the beast was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. Revelation 13:7.
Viper hoofed it back to his Boston Whaler the moment he saw Bo, Kaden, and Nico being marched out of the Dance Studio and Rachel holding a gun on Bailey. Looked like she’d double-crossed them.
He untied the vessel from the dock, started the engine, and headed along the northeast coast of Samana Cay. When he was clear of the shoreline and certain he wasn’t being followed, he got onto the secure comms with home base, Annika and Sayeed at Red Team Zero.
He filled them in about what he’d seen. They said to stay tuned, events were unfolding fast. He set a course past Immersion Bay around the eastern tip of the island where he’d wait for further instructions.
He might be one man, this might be a small boat, but there was a lot he could do with the firepower below deck. A hell of a lot.
Three armed guards ushered Kaden, Bo, and Nico into the subterranean level of the Data Center. Bailey was taken somewhere else. They passed through three layers of security to get down here. The room was cramped and bare except for three folding chairs and a small table. Looked like an unused meeting room. They performed a full sweep of the room and found no cameras or listening devices, but they stuck close together and
kept their voices to a whisper.
“I wish you’d listened,” Bo said, shooting Kaden a sideways glance. “You, Bailey, and Nico could have been in the Bahamas by now. Would have put my mind at ease when they put a bullet in it.”
“Quiet, I’m thinking,” Kaden snapped.
“Don’t talk to your father like—”
“Are you kidding? Listen for a minute. They confiscated our weapons and my earpiece. But they didn’t notice my contacts.”
“So? You can see better?”
Looks like Bo has an annoying streak. “Smart contacts are still new enough that the guards figured they were for vision correction, if they noticed them at all. I’m picking up a strong Wi-Fi signal down here. That means I can still access Amelia.”
Nico jumped at the news. “That means Internet. We can contact anyone!”
“I’m thinking bigger. Hold on.” Kaden blinked three times and Amelia appeared in her classic aviator outfit, standing beside the door. She started talking but Kaden couldn’t hear her. So Kaden began using American Sign Language, a nice little skill she’d picked during two summer of volunteering at a youth shelter for deaf kids.
Amelia began signing back. She was relieved Amelia could understand—not just sign language but the ability to read it as the signer, not the receiver. With Amelia right there in front of her, Kaden always had to remind herself that Amelia sees what Kaden sees.
What is this building? Kaden signed.
Data Center, Amelia signed.
For the whole island? We haven’t been able to hack into their servers.
Yes. The main room has an air-gap design, Amelia signed. One access point but it would take weeks to crack it.
“You were right,” Kaden told Nico. “Air-gapped.”
“Damn it all,” he said.
At least they knew they were in the nerve center now. The Data Center was the hub that controlled the tens of thousands of digital screens, sensors, and CCTV cams scattered around the island. There must be a way to access the central servers. That was the key to everything.
Kaden had read on one of her hacker boards about a new blackout technique that could target a physical space and its surroundings. She couldn’t remember the details, but she pointed Amelia in the right direction and she was able to find the thread.
Once Kaden told Amelia what she had in mind, her AI went out scouring the Internet for what was needed. Amelia then spidered all the open channels in the Data Center to find a suitable hardware match.
I’m sorry this is taking so long, Amelia signed.
It’s been like five seconds, Kaden replied.
No, 5.87 microseconds—an eternity. Found it. I had to go on the Darknet. I think I need a shower.
I forgot to ask about the backup generator, Kaden signed.
It’s within the pulse blast radius.
Kaden nodded and stopped signing. Amelia smiled that breathtaking smile of hers and waited.
Kaden turned to Nico. “Remember Dallas, when we were trying to add one of us as a super admin?”
“Yeah, we ran out of time.”
“And we didn’t have Amelia.”
“True.”
Kaden worked out the final details of a plan. “Amelia said the servers are on this floor. Second door on the right. It’s nice and cool down here—they must keep them below ground to avoid the tropical heat. We can create a temporary power blackout lasting a few minutes.”
“What good would that do?” Bo asked.
“We need to access the server room. It’s a longshot, but it might work. Here’s my idea.”
She leaned closer to them. “We’ll create a localized digital power outage. We create a tiny pulse that’ll disrupt the magnetic field used by everyday electronic devices. When we set it off, everything digital on this floor and the two floors above will go dark. It’ll kill all computers, smartphones, lights, CCTV cameras, televisions, radios, digital wristwatches. But unlike a real electromagnetic pulse, it doesn’t damage the physical devices. It won’t fry your digital watch—but it’ll reset the time to 00:00.”
“I see where this is going,” Nico said.
“I don’t.” Bo looked out of his depth.
“Yeah, yeah,” Nico said. “Step one, a digital power outage hack. The Data Center—everything goes dark. Step two, we access the server room, slip in your USB drive, do a hard reboot on the servers.”
“Wait, what?” Bo said. “I’ve been running ops for twenty years and never heard of something like a localized blackout. First of all, they must have confiscated your USB thingie—”
She reached down, pulled off her right tennis shoe, and peeled back the hidden compartment in the heel. She pulled out the thumb drive and dangled it in front of her father. “The drive will reboot the servers and create a new user with super admin privileges.”
“And that’s good?” Bo asked.
“Wait and see,” Nico said.
“Annika had a wicked idea—I’m still working on it,” Kaden said.
Bo looked like he was trying to follow along. “But how do you create a power outage in the first place?” He waved his hand across the small room. “If you haven’t noticed, our options are limited.”
Only by your imagination, she wanted to say. “We can hop onto a small physical device that’s connected to the Internet and essentially turn it into a nondestructive mini-EMP gun that’s not used for evil. Now, Amelia says there’s only one Internet of Things connected device in this building with a capacitor that can be repurposed for this. A bug zapper racket.”
“You’re kidding.” Bo collapsed back in his seat.
“It’s lying on a secretary’s desk one floor above, just eighteen inches from a networked computer, and it’s resting on an ashtray with a copper rim. So we can hop onto this IOT mosquito zapper and turn it into a small EMP device that can temporarily shut down the network through code. After Amelia hacks the internal circuitry of this racket, it’ll send out a small pulse that’ll knock out the power of anything within a hundred and fifty feet. Voila, a mini-blackout.”
“Wait.” Nico brushed his palm across his forehead. “That could corrupt the data on the flash drive.”
“Got that covered.” She showed them the inside of her shoe’s secret compartment, lined with copper mesh and solid aluminum. “I basically created a tiny Faraday cage.”
“A what?” Bo looked confused.
“It’s like a force field that shields everything inside—”
“Forget I asked,” Bo said. “What about me? What do I do?”
Kaden took on a serious look. “You stay put for now. Trust me.”
She put her shoe on and went through the plan five times with Nico, looking for holes, factoring in unexpected variables and unlikely scenarios. Finally, they were ready.
It’s almost time, Kaden signed to Amelia.
You know I’ll be offline during this, right?
Yes.
The two men took their positions at the far end of the room. Kaden knocked loudly on the door’s glass window. “Bathroom break emergency,” she shouted.
A guard appeared and peered into the room. He shook his head no.
“Come on, I won’t bite. Super emergency!” She hopped up and down, raised her hands over her head, and backed away from the door to show she posed no threat.
The guard entered cautiously with his weapon drawn. “Nice and slow. Don’t try anything.”
“There is no try,” Kaden said. The guard looked confused. Obviously not a Star Wars fan.
She signed to Amelia, Execute now.
Before Kaden had a chance to say please, the lights died. Everything was black. She reached for his smart rifle and heard the guard exhale a surprised grunt. She took the butt of the rifle and brought it up hard against his face. That didn’t floor him, but they struggled for the gun and it clattered to the ground.
She set herself into her favorite kickboxing position and delivered a roundhouse kick to his chest, sending the g
uard crashing down on the table. A few times a year she practiced this move with her eyes shut just in case she needed to bring down somebody in the black of night.
Nico was on top of the guard now using a chokehold to immobilize him, by the sound of his gasps. After a few seconds, the gasps stopped. He was out cold.
“Let’s go,” she said.
From the far end of the hallway, she heard the panicked voices of guards. No flashlights, though. She led the way, heading left and feeling along the far wall until she found the second door. They entered. It was cool but not cold; she pegged the temperature at around sixty-eight F. No sound or movement in here. This was the hard part, groping in the dark for a tiny USB slot on whichever machine was the master. They split up and began feeling their way around the room. The space felt much bigger than she expected.
“Are we looking in the right place?” she asked in a low voice.
“I can’t tell,” Nico whispered.
A bank of low-wattage lights clicked on overhead. They could see—and be seen.
“They must have a second backup power source,” she said. The outside hallway still looked dark, but the Data Center was the brains that powered this smart island, so no real surprise they planned for just such a contingency.
The room was long and windowless, with two rows of tall gray steel telco racks holding scores—maybe hundreds—of what she recognized as high-end blade servers with their gleaming blue and green lights, blinking as if speaking an alien tongue with one another. The racks stretched almost to the ceiling, leaving just enough room for overhead airflow and for the cables that disappeared into the false ceiling.
She removed the thumb drive from her shoe and continued down the rows of servers looking for a master terminal window. “We need to find this thing in the next thirty seconds or else …” Her voice trailed off.
