by Adrian Smith
“How are we seeing this?” Lisa asked.
“I wrote a backdoor into the code when I worked for the security firm that provides these systems. I can now view it remotely. That way I can cover most of the major cities.”
“Smart.”
“Look,” Avondale said. He clicked his mouse and brought up a feed of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Plane after plane sat idle at the gates. Fire raged at the end of one of the expansive runways. Avondale panned the camera around, showing the suburbs beyond the airport. A trail of destruction was evident from a passenger jet slamming into the ground, destroying everything in its path. More fires raged out of control. There was no one left to put them out.
“What’s that?” Lisa pointed at the screen. Avondale zoomed in to where she was pointing. Several figures sprinted across the tarmac. “People are still alive out there,” Lisa said.
More figures ran after the first group. Someone stopped and opened fire on the chasing pack, taking several chasers down. The figure desperately tried to reload but was tackled to the ground. Lisa frowned as the chasers began tearing into the man. There was no audio, but she swore she could hear his screams. She turned away from the screen.
“That’s enough.”
The screen faded to black. “I’m auto dialing every government department. No luck. I’m even trying personal cell phones. Still nothing,” Avondale said.
“What about radio?” Cordwell said. “Military channels.”
“Yes. I’ve had some luck there. A few dozen people calling out from various bases.”
“Anyone senior?”
“Not yet.”
“What else have you discovered?” Lisa said, sitting down on a spare office chair. She wheeled it closer to the bank of monitors. Avondale flinched at her approach and his fingers tapped rhythmically on his desk. He stared blankly at her for a few moments.
“Okay. I’m sure you’ve heard of the dark web. Well, that’s just one of many layers. Think of the internet like an onion, made of layers. Now, most people sit up here on the top layer. Websites filled with tags so when you search, they pop up. They look at cat and dog videos, argue over politics, and troll one another. They read their sports team scores and watch Netflix. Then, as you go down the layers, you have fewer and fewer tags and find the sick and perverted. The people who don’t want to be found. Sex traffickers. Assassins for hire. Cannibals looking for meals. Really disturbing stuff. I even found a suicide service once.” Avondale shivered, and his shoulders shook. “Anyway, dig deeper and you find the runners. People who really run the world. The movers and the shakers. Want to become a leader? These people will make that happen for a price. Secrets and knowledge are exchanged. Problems and pests removed. Dig even deeper, and you hit this.” Avondale clicked three buttons on his keyboard. All ten screens changed to show lines and lines of numbers, and the occasional pairing of letters.
Cordwell whistled. “What is that?”
“IP addresses. For what, I don’t know yet,” Avondale said.
“Huh,” Cordwell muttered. “There has to be millions of them.”
“It’s what Sofia discovered when she hacked into a target’s laptop. We found gigabytes of these sequences,” Avondale murmured.
“Does this connect to ReinCorp?” Lisa pointed at the screen.
“In a small way, yes. The target Sofia acquired the intel from was connected to ReinCorp. There’s a lot of chatter on the dark web from survivors. Others have seen it. Hackers asking for information. One thing I’ve been able to ascertain is that nobody has a clue as to what exactly caused the combusting. We’re all in the dark, so to speak.”
Cordwell grunted. “I’ve never trusted corporations. All about profit and never about people.” He slammed his hand on the wall.
“Avondale, I need you to track Zanzi. Call up her implant.”
The computer genius tapped and clicked for a few seconds. “It’s offline,” he said. “Last location points here, just north of Sacramento.”
Lisa paced the room, her hand on her chin. It was near enough to the satellite installation. Everything kept pointing back to it. At this point, she couldn’t go chasing after Zanzi. Not until she had firepower and people to help.
“We need to find out if this is a virus or some other pathogen. I don’t believe it is. Nothing can act so fast in such a devastating manner. But I want to be certain. Any luck with CDC? WHO? Or LK3?” Lisa pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts list.
Avondale shook his head. “Nothing.”
“I’m calling an old friend. Maybe she survived.”
She moved away and pressed the phone icon, saying a prayer of thanks for Avondale and his brilliance, and his ability to piggyback the military cellular networks. After September 11th, the federal government had understood the need for an independent, reliable communications network for agencies and the military. Private and secret. LK3 wasn’t privy to the network, but Avondale was. Some, like her friend, had secure phones in case of emergencies.
The phone rang a few times before a shaking voice answered, “…hello…?”
“Monica? It’s Lisa.”
“Lisa? Thank God. Everyone’s gone, and I have the worst headache. What’s going on? I’m finding corpses turned to ash. I’ve tried calling people, but no one’s answering their phones.”
“That’s what I want to find out. Virus?”
She heard Monica scoff. “Impossible. Or I should say, nothing natural.”
“Where are you? We need your help.”
“Hood River.”
“Good. Sit tight. We’re on our way.”
Lisa hung up and turned back to Avondale and Cordwell. “Avondale, keep at it. Contact anyone you can. Keep records. Tell them to stay inside. Monica said she doesn’t think it’s a virus, but I think it’s the best way to get people to stay inside. And if Zanzi’s implant comes back online, call me.”
Avondale slid two new smartphones across the desk. “I made some modifications. You should get twenty-four hours of battery life. I’ve switched on tracking too.”
“Thank you. Have you got enough food and water?”
“I’m good.”
Lisa moved to the door, then paused. She turned back and handed Avondale one of the syringes filled with Harriet’s blood. “In case we don’t make it back, get this to a virologist. It comes from a girl who was a prisoner in the satellite installation. Zanzi saw something strange in it. Thirty minutes later, HQ was attacked.”
Avondale frowned, but accepted the syringe, slipping it inside the small bar fridge next to his desk.
Lisa pivoted. “Keep in contact and stay out of sight.” She followed Cordwell back out onto the empty street and raised her rifle.
Thirty-Six
Pacific Ocean
Off the East Coast of Japan
Major General Touma Yamada stood in front of a large flat-screen TV and waited for Ryan to handcuff Cal to a chair and take a seat. Ryan gazed around the luxurious boardroom. They may be on a submarine, but this was built for pleasure. Instead of bunks for the crew, there were private cabins, lounges, and entertainment rooms. He had enjoyed a hot shower and meal, devouring the food like one of the Siphons he had fought on Mt. Koya. He shook, remembering their sightless eyes and red-lined, ivory skin. He had wanted to sit down with his wife and get her side of the story, find out why she had abandoned him and Zanzi. But Touma had insisted on briefing him on why he needed The Nameless.
Touma cleared his throat and switched on the TV. It showed a picture of Yamada Tower in Tokyo. At the top of the tower, one side narrowed into a point, which was surmounted by a one hundred-meter communications antenna.
“As part of my work for OPIS, we built a supercomputer to help implement our plan. Primarily, she was constructed to cope with the vast amount of data needed. Buried within her servers is a coded file. It contains a safe list. Persons needed to rebuild the world. Somehow, that file has been corrupted and changed by, I suspect, O
ffenheim.” Yamada sighed. “I lost a lot of people. Important people. Loved ones.”
Goro walked into the room, handed him a blue folder, and set other copies around the desk. Touma continued. “I need you and your team to get Goro and me into the building and into the server rooms before the second wave.”
“Second wave? It’s going to happen again?”
“Yes. In ten days’ time.”
Ryan glanced down at the file, at the schematics of the building, and at the picture on the screen. “Why don’t you just blow the comm array on top?”
“You misunderstand my reasons, Mr. Connors. I don’t want to stop wave two. I want to protect those chosen to lead Japan forward. I need The Nameless to get us into those server rooms so we can switch the computer off, reboot it, and install updates, securing the safe list and blocking Offenheim from changing it again. My technician has written the code. All we have to do is install it.” Yamada sipped his tea. “We built defenses and safeguards. Only I can switch off the servers, while Goro has to switch off the data storage in the basement at the same time.”
“Why all the secrecy? There’s no one left to stop us,” Ryan said.
Touma pressed a button on the remote. The camera feed showed the foyer of the tower. Dozens of Black Skulls surrounded the building, identifiable by their insignia. Other cameras showed even more heavily armed men. Several Humvees were parked outside, machine guns poking through their roofs.
“Offenheim’s men,” Touma said.
“The same as on Koya?”
“Yes. Offenheim’s idea. Squads to take out survivors. He used them to attack my security forces and blow my robotics lab.”
“We barely escaped that. Those yakuza yours too?”
“In Shinjuku, yes. Once we had Sofia and her computer, we left.”
“After killing Holder and trying to kill Booth?” Ryan said.
“I apologize, Mr. Connors. There is always collateral damage.”
“We were chased by men speaking German. Japanese men.”
“Speaking German?” Touma said. He frowned and glanced at Cal. “Your men?”
“On the freeway, but not in Tokyo. First I heard about it was from Ryan,” she said.
Ryan rubbed his hands through his hair and shifted his weight on the chair. It was clear to him now that there were many factions at play. As to which one had the right intentions, he still had to find out.
“You keep saying ‘team.’ Last I knew, Booth and Sofia were in Osaka,” Ryan said. “Cal works for the enemy now.” He gestured at his wife.
Touma nodded to Goro. He opened the door and stood aside. Booth and Sofia were standing in the low corridor and turned, stepping inside.
Sofia’s eyes went wide at the sight of Cal. “I knew you were alive!” Sofia embraced her. “Why are you restrained?”
“These guys don’t trust me,” Cal replied.
Booth’s eyes were full of worry. He looked at Touma, eyebrows raised. Like Ryan, he was naturally cynical. A skeptic, full of questions. It was probably why they’d bonded so quickly all those years ago.
“He didn’t believe me, you know,” Booth said, glancing at Cal. She rattled the handcuffs.
“Believe what?” Cal said.
“Show her, Connors,” Booth said.
Ryan reached inside his jacket and pulled free the folded photograph. He slid it across to his wife. Cal spent a few seconds gazing at it. In those brief moments, Ryan saw the old Cal. Her eyes lit up and her crooked smile returned.
She hit him lightly on the arm. “You didn’t believe this?”
“I wanted to. We searched so long for you, Cal. I had given up. I thought you were dead. Booth shows up after three years and gives me new hope. I didn’t want my heart broken again. I couldn’t go through that again.” Ryan let Cal take his hand and squeeze it. He was angry at her but, after so many years, her touch gave him a sense of stability. Like the carousel he had been spinning around on since that horrible day had finally stopped.
He looked up at Sofia. “Allie? Keiko? Hogai?” he asked, worry in his voice.
“They’re fine. On board,” Sofia said.
“What happened?”
“His men intercepted our train,” Sofia said, looking at Yamada.
“And me on the way to the airport,” Booth said.
Touma cleared his throat and rapped his knuckles on the desk, made from Japanese cypress. “You can exchange stories and pleasantries later. I need to brief you on your mission.”
“I’m curious, Mr. Yamada. You have plenty of men. Why not get them to do it?” Ryan said as he sat up straighter and pulled his shoulders back. Booth had been right all those days ago. He had missed this.
“As I was saying before, for OPIS to achieve our goal, I was tasked with building supercomputers. We made seven and placed them in towers all around the world. Here in Tokyo.” He clicked back to the photo of Yamada Tower. “And one each in Leeuwarden. Buenos Aires. Denver. Addis Ababa. Perth. And Wellington.” The screen flashed photos of each of the towers in the cities mentioned. “I need The Nameless to get Goro and me into Yamada Tower so we can switch off the computer and secure our safe list. Only I can switch off the servers, while only Goro can switch off the backup. We must do it at the same time. Get us in. Protect us while we perform our tasks. Get us out safely. I’ll then help you leave Japan. Go home if you want.” Touma clicked back to the camera showing the exterior of Yamada Tower. “As you can see, Offenheim has men here. I need to be clandestine.”
Touma stared at The Nameless. “Before you ask. Why can’t we install updates from here? The towers are off the grid. Independent power. No internet connection. Constructed as a Faraday cage. No interference of any kind is possible. Electronic anyway. The only exception is from one of our satellites, and I am not privy to that information. Even with the codes we took from Ms. Ortiz.”
“Sofia. Your opinion?” Ryan asked
“It’s a good security system. I’m impressed.” She chortled. “That’s why I couldn’t get anywhere last week. You built a dummy system. I spent days throwing everything at those firewalls. Clever and inventive, Mr. Yamada.”
“Yes. I know.”
Sofia looked at Ryan. Her eyes spoke volumes. Her curiosity was piqued, but she really didn’t want to help one of the madmen responsible for the events of the past few hours.
“If we help you, we want one of your private jets,” Ryan said.
“Deal. Anything else?”
“Any intel you have on Offenheim, his residences, business interests. Anywhere he’s likely to be.”
“Mr. Connors, if we are successful, I will gladly provide you with that information.”
Ryan pushed his chair back and stood, stretching his legs. Even though he had showered and eaten, his brain was fuzzy from lack of sleep. He was running on fumes. He looked up at Touma, and at Goro standing to one side.
“It seems strange to me. That you would turn on OPIS so readily,” Ryan said.
“Mr. Connors, remember, I saw the madness and tried to change it. Offenheim is crazier than I thought. Never would I have guessed that he would bring everything forward by two years. We still had thousands of tasks to finish. Selected citizens were to be forewarned by twenty-four hours, to give them time to get where they had to go.”
“As usual, the privileged hide away in their bunkers, while the world they set on fire burns!” Ryan scowled. All his life, he had fought men like Yamada. It sickened him to know he and others were responsible. If he still had his gun, he would put a bullet in the man. He flinched. Angry at Touma. Angry at OPIS. Yes, the world had been a mess, but that didn’t give them the right to commit the near extinction of the human race.
“Please, Mr. Connors, sit.” Yamada gestured to his chair.
Ryan remained standing, looking at each of The Nameless members. Booth. Blond hair, shaved on the sides, long on the top. Carefully styled. He was wearing jeans, boots, and a black shirt. He grinned, lopsided, at Ryan. Sofia,
her sultry eyes filled with compassion and warmth. She would follow him into the depths of hell if he asked. Finally, he looked at Cal. She watched him. For once, he couldn’t tell if it was a look of concern or if she was calculating her next move. Was she on their side? For the first time since he met Cal, he couldn’t read her. Couldn’t be sure where her heart lay. Was she playing everyone?
Ryan sat down.
Touma nodded at Sofia. “Ms. Ortiz. It seems, despite my men’s persuasions, the codes on your computer are not the ones we asked for. They are useless. Now, the real ones, if it pleases you.”
Sofia glared at him, studying the general. Her scrutiny filled with fire. She unclasped her pendant and handed him the USB hidden within.
“Sometimes fortune favors the brave and just. Ms. Ortiz stumbled across valuable data. We can use this to prevent OPIS from interfering with Japan,” Yamada said.
“What are those codes? All we found were streams of numbers, like IP addresses,” Ryan said.
“That’s exactly what they are. Each group of nanites has an alpha. The alpha is responsible for receiving the master broadcast and sends signals to the millions of other nanites in that person’s body. That alpha has a unique address. The codes are transmitted via satellite down to our towers, cross-checked, and beamed out to all the cell phone and radio towers. Finally, the commands are broadcast to the nanites within each person’s body. Those select few that have the correct safety code remain dormant. Those that don’t… Well, you saw the results.”
Ryan looked at the blueprint on the screen, his mind scanning through the possibilities. He didn’t trust Touma Yamada as far as he could throw him. “I’d like to get Sofia to look at ours. How do we know we’re not on the next kill list? Update the nanites in here so we’re safe.” Ryan tapped his right temple with his finger.
Goro looked at his grandfather and bowed his head. Touma nodded.
“No problem, Mr. Connors,” Goro said, still bowing. He smiled as he righted himself.
Goro opened a laptop and inserted the USB. He clicked through the icons and started the file with the streams of 15-digit number sequences. The flat screen behind him split into two screens. One showed lists of green numbers, the other red numbers.
