The Ghost Network (book 1)

by I. I Davidson

  “Is that true?” John turned to her. Salome nodded wordlessly.

  “There was only one man who could save us.” Akane turned to John. “Mikael Laine.”

  There was silence.

  “Now.” Akane leaned over and tapped on her phone screen. “We actually weren’t treatable, none of us. We were effectively dead. We should have died. But your dad, John—he was developing a new technique. He was combining genetically altered DNA with a form of artificial intelligence—one with biological adaptations. He was trying to merge the two seamlessly. And I don’t think it was quite ready. I don’t think he’d perfected it yet. He wouldn’t have used it, maybe not for years. But then, John—you had your accident.”

  “And he experimented on his own son,” whispered Salome, “because otherwise he’d have lost him. It was his last resort.”

  “I guess it worked.” Akane shrugged. “Because he started using it on more patients. He used it on the three of us.”

  “Artificial intelligence.” John’s blood seemed to have slowed to a cold, sluggish trickle. “I’ve got AI in my system?”

  Akane cleared her throat. “We all do.”

  John stared down at his fist. The knuckles were white. “What does it do? I mean—what’s the point?”

  “The point is it kept us alive,” murmured Akane. “But, yes, there was a method to his madness.” She glanced quickly at John. “I don’t mean he was crazy. But there had to be some kind of madness in the things he was doing. Who else would have thought of this, let alone tried it?”

  “My dad,” whispered John hoarsely, “he wouldn’t do something evil.”

  “He didn’t think it was evil.” Akane grasped his hand. “I don’t think it is either. It is what it is. John, let me ask you something. Do you ever feel like . . . like a computer?”

  He swallowed hard. “John is the computer.”

  “Exactly. And so am I. So are all of us. Sometimes I get sort of . . . taken over. Like a program’s running in the background and I’m barely there at all. I’m just following prompts, you know?”

  John nodded. His brain felt heavy. “It happened at the Center. When I was working on the malware. In class. Even when we did those aptitude tests, right at the start . . . ”

  “I’ve felt it before too,” said Slack. “But never as strongly as I did at the Center.”

  Salome cleared her throat. “It’s like . . . flying.”

  “Or diving into a strong current,” said Slack. “And letting it carry you along.”

  “But the thing is this technology is decades ahead of its time. When I studied the files, at first I thought I was crazy. But I tried it out. I thought: what if I wanted to download information into me? Not my device—me. I picked something I never even tried, never even thought of trying: analyzing the cellular structure of Otou-chan’s spider plant. I held a leaf in my hands, and I meditated. I wrote down the information . . . ” She shrugged. “And then I looked it up on an academic botanical site. And I was right. Exactly right.”

  “But my phone . . . ” began John. “How did you . . . ”

  “Yes, I also tried uploading from my head. It took a lot of practice and a lot of meditation, but at last everything just clicked. I accessed your phone with my mind. Or rather, with the AI genetic material inside my brain. I’ve never heard of tech like that.” She shrugged. “Can you imagine what it’s worth?”

  “Roy Lykos,” rasped John. “That’s why he was after us.”

  “I saw his name in the files,” murmured Akane. “He was using the code name Freki.”

  The familiarity of it clicked suddenly, the name the gunman had called Lykos. “Freki was one of Odin’s wolves,” said John slowly.

  “So I discovered. That’s how I finally made the connection with the Wolf’s Den—and then I tracked the code name to Lykos. Yasuo Yamamoto signed the contracts, but it was Roy who masterminded everything.”

  “Yasuo is the one with the money,” murmured Salome. “He financed the Wolf’s Den.”

  “I saw his name on contracts,” nodded Akane. “Roy Lykos was involved in the development of the modified DNA,” she went on, “but he didn’t make the breakthrough—his colleague did. Your dad, John. You should have seen some of Lykos’s emails to him. So cold and bitter. And jealous.”

  “Roy hinted that he’d met Dad,” rasped John. “He didn’t say he’d worked with him for years.”

  “Lykos wants us in his hands,” said Salome calmly. “Roy and Yasuo and Ms. Reiffelt. They want this technology.”

  “And they’re going to keep coming after us,” said Akane grimly. “They’re not going to stop. John, that feeling, that out-of-body sensation—I thought it was just the way I was. I thought that was how everybody felt when they got onto a computer. But it’s not. It’s just me, and you, and us.” She nodded at Slack and Salome. “Because it’s in our DNA.”

  Salome jerked up, as if a current had run through her bones. “The helicopter—”

  “You said afterward you couldn’t fly one,” said Slack.

  “Ah.” Akane bit her lip. “Like my spider plant. See, the tech doesn’t just make us great coders and hackers. Salome, your programming accessed the ability to fly a helicopter. For as long as you needed to do it. Could you get into that chopper right now and fly us to Anchorage?”

  Salome recoiled. “No,” she said with a shaky smile. “Keep that thing away from me!”

  “Then . . . ” Akane looked as if she was running through thousands of files in her head; maybe she is, realized John. “The AI inside you—it knows you’re safe for now. So the data will delete itself, to make room for more information if you need it.” Her brow furrowed. “Hang on . . . ”

  She leaned over to tap the screen again. John’s eyes flickered down the data and the graphs, assimilating it in an instant. That’s how it works. Yes, the storage will cope with that many terabytes of data but then—

  He quickly shifted his eyes toward Akane’s. “I just did it again!”

  “Yep. Your drive’s making space for the information.”

  “This is awesome!” yelled Slack, jumping to his feet. “We’re cyborgs!”

  John couldn’t share his excitement. A dull gloom was creeping over him. “I thought it was me. That only I was talented. I thought I was good at this stuff.”

  Akane shook his arm. “It is you, John.”

  He couldn’t help feeling it wasn’t. “It looks like Eva’s the only one of us who’s really smart. Naturally smart, I mean.”

  “Ah.” Akane took the phone. “I’ve got a theory about that. When you mentioned Eva, John, I started searching the medical records for her too. I couldn’t find any data at all. Not a single file—not even a school one.”

  “That ties in with everything else about her,” sighed Salome. “What’s your theory?”

  “I think . . . ” Akane stared at her screen. “Mikael’s early records do talk about other subjects. Experiments that . . . didn’t quite pan out.” She raised her eyes. “I think Eva Vygotsky’s one of them.”

  “The faulty one,” John whispered. “That’s what Lykos called her.”

  “The teachers are wary around her,” said Salome. “She’s so odd. Imogen Black’s suspicious of her. Yasuo avoids her. Roy actively dislikes her.”

  “Remember what Eva said when she found the malware?” John rubbed his arms, shivering. “She said if she couldn’t fix it, she’d lose her whole mind.”

  “I thought she was being overly dramatic,” said Salome, drawing her hands down her face. “Maybe . . . she meant it literally.”

  “Because she knew instinctively it could infect her.” John felt sick. “If it can delete the Wolf’s Den files and her brain is practically digital . . . what could it do to her?”

  “Delete . . . ” whispered Salome.

  They sat for a long moment
, with horror sinking over them like a heavy, dark cloud.

  “Do you think she knows?” asked Slack suddenly.

  “She may not know for sure, but I bet she suspects. She has those strange episodes, like she switches off.” Salome sighed. “I used to joke that she might be a robot—not that she laughed. If Akane got to the bottom of this,” she said firmly, “Eva definitely could.”

  “We have to get her out of that Center,” said John desperately.

  “Oh, no.” Salome’s eyes widened as she clutched her braids. “I let her stay there. I let her stay on that island. You tried to persuade her to come with us, John. But I was so obsessed by the helicopter, it was all I could think about. I didn’t even try to—”

  “Your programming,” John reassured her. “The data was taking up all your bytes.”

  “That’s right.” Akane nodded. “It wasn’t you, Salome, so don’t feel guilty.”

  Slack stood up, propping himself against the ramshackle wall. “But what does the Center have to do with all this?”

  “John’s father was one of the founding directors of the Wolf’s Den.” Akane turned the phone toward John. “He set it up with Roy Lykos specifically for the development of this project. I’ve read so many files. I’ve read email threads between them that go on for volumes. They were close, John—until you had your accident and your Dad was forced to make that breakthrough. And Lykos got too greedy too soon.”

  Roy’s lies tumbled through John’s mind, and his head began to ache. “It looks like my dad always meant for me to go to the Center. He changed his plans because of Lykos.”

  “I reckon Mikael almost created the Wolf’s Den for you,” said Akane. “To keep you safe, as well as further his work.” She sighed. “But then he discovered Roy’s motives, and they weren’t good. That’s when he vanished.”

  John’s voice rasped in his throat. “Did Lykos kill him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Akane bleakly. She touched his hand. “But your dad did love you, John. It’s why he did this thing to you in the first place.”

  “Flies and honey,” whispered John. “With Dad out of the way, Lykos used the Center to attract us and keep us.”

  “So why the malware attack?” demanded Slack.

  “I don’t know.” Akane sighed. “A distraction? I don’t think it was Lykos’s doing.”

  “The Russians?” suggested Slack.

  Salome shrugged. “It could have been any regime. Or any private organization that wanted the tech.”

  “So,” said Slack, “the Wolf’s Den people weren’t the only ones who were after us.”

  “More importantly, what do we do now?” Salome spread her hands. “Where do we go?”

  “Far from the Wolf’s Den,” said Akane. “You shouldn’t go back there.”

  “Not while Lykos is the alpha wolf,” said John bitterly. The sting of betrayal was sharp. “He’s taken over my dad’s whole project.”

  “The Center isn’t bad in itself, I think,” murmured Akane. “After all, like John says, it’s his dad’s creation. But we all have to stay away from it now.”

  “But we can’t go home,” Slack pointed out grimly. “They’d just come for us there!”

  “For sure,” Akane nodded. “They came for me in Tokyo.”

  “And we can’t trust anyone around here,” said Salome. “Those helicopters took off from this airport. If we ask for help, they could turn us straight over to the hunters.”

  They stared at one another in silence.

  At that moment, a green light shone with sudden intensity from Akane’s phone. Alarmed, she lifted it.

  “Those are coordinates.” Salome eyed the digits pulsing on the screen.

  “And I didn’t put them there.” Akane gave a reluctant grin. “I’ve been hacked.”

  65 33 31 N

  167 56 53 W

  “That’s all it says?” Salome winced. “Anyone could have sent that.”

  “We’ll ignore it.” John shuddered.

  “No.” Akane’s voice was hoarse as she pointed at the screen. “John.”

  John is on the computer

  The now-familiar cursor flickered again.

  John is the computer

  John’s heart was in his throat. He could barely speak the word.

  “Dad?”

  John is the computer. Leona is the bug.

  65 33 31 N

  167 56 53 W

  John’s eyes were hot. “Dad,” he whispered again.

  “John,” whispered Salome. “John, are you serious?”

  “We can’t trust that!” exclaimed Slack.

  “Yes. Yes, we can.” John raised his eyes. “It was our joke, me and Dad. Just us. We used to laugh about Leona always borrowing my computer. It drove me crazy. I got so angry, but Dad would laugh. He said it was a bug in the system. But we never shared that with anyone. Because it would have hurt Leona’s feelings. And Mom’s.” He was hoarse now, his throat thick with tears. “We never told a soul. It was just us.”

  Akane leaned over to hug John—but her phone crackled so loudly that she yelped, jerked back, and almost dropped it.

  “Listen to me.”

  John flung himself forward, grabbing the phone from Akane. “Dad? Dad!” The screen was a blizzard of static, the face an unidentifiable fuzz of green light, but he knew that voice. “DAD!”

  “Listen, all of you. Please.”

  John was too choked up to respond.

  “I don’t have much time.” The blurred, streaked shape glanced nervously over its shoulder. “Akane’s figured out so much, but you need details. I don’t know how long this connection will stay up. Or unmonitored.”

  “We’re listening,” John rasped.

  “The DNA in your bodies: it’s true. It’s genetically modified and spliced with a form of AI, but there’s more. You’re all—each one of you—connected to a network of supercomputers. The Wolf’s Den is part of that network, but it’s not the heart of it. Remember the key lines in some of your favorite stories, John?” A smile crept into the crackling voice; John could hear it, and he blinked hard. “Magic is strong at the conjunction of those key lines. And that’s like the Wolf’s Den.”

  “But you said it’s not the heart of the network,” Salome interrupted sharply.

  “No. That’s IIDA. That’s what I called her, the mainframe supercomputer.”

  Her. His father was talking as if IIDA was a person, thought John. “She triggered our . . . abilities?”

  “Not triggered. You’ve all had your abilities since I operated on you—but at the Wolf’s Den nexus, you got a massive signal boost from IIDA, through the network. The work you’ve been doing there has given you access to IIDA. She recognized you and synchronized with you.”

  “That’s freaky,” murmured Slack, but he didn’t sound freaked out. He sounded impressed.

  “John, you received messages while you were at the Center. They came from IIDA. She recognized danger and prompted you to get out.”

  “Because you created her.” John’s eyes burned, and he gritted his teeth to stop himself from crying. “She wanted us somewhere safe.”

  “Yes. She did. And so do I, but you’re not safe, not yet. And I know Akane has a way to get you out, but she can’t do it here.”

  “You know?” Akane grabbed the phone back from John.

  “IIDA is my baby, Akane. Of course I know.”

  They all fell silent. The image on the phone screen jittered and frazzled.

  “I’m sorry. All of you. I had no choice but to operate. You were dead.”

  Slack licked his lips and swallowed. “We understand.” He seemed to speak for all of them; they nodded to each other.

  “The tech wasn’t ready, but I had to make it ready. I had to bring you back from the grave.” There might ha
ve been a smile in the crackling voice. “That’s why you’re my Ghost Network.”

  “Ghost Network,” said Slack, the corner of his lip twitching. “I like it.”

  “Now go to the coordinates I sent you. This connection is about to be dropped. Goodbye, my ghosts.”

  “Dad.” John seized the phone again. “Dad!”

  The screen was blank, as dead as he’d thought his father was. He stared at it for a long time anyway, not trusting himself to look up.

  Akane was tapping rapidly on her phone, her intense expression lit by the glow of the screen. At last, she pointed toward the southeast.

  “OK, I googled it. Cape Mountain is that way, and beyond it . . . these coordinates are for a place called Tin City. On the mainland, south of here.”

  “City?” Slack brightened.

  “Don’t get excited,” she told him dryly. “It’s less of a city than the one on Diomede. It’s a long-range radar station, abandoned by the USAF. There’s a ground support station and a military airstrip—that’s all.”

  “And how is that supposed to help us?” asked John. He cleared his throat and gritted his teeth. Dad’s alive. This is all insane.

  “I don’t know.” Akane shrugged. “But these are the only instructions we’re going to get, and they’re not just from Mikael. You know what my programming’s telling me?”

  She gazed at them all, her mouth curling slightly.

  “IIDA agrees with Mikael. We’re going to Tin City.”

  “There’s a path that way.” Akane’s voice was muffled by her thick hood. “But it’s longer and too obvious, and I don’t think we should take it. I think we should head cross-country, across the flank of the mountain.”

  “In this weather?” squeaked Salome. She peered into the blinding blizzard toward the lowest visible slopes. Most of Cape Mountain, including its summit, was hidden in icy cloud cover.

  “I’m fine with that.” Slack pulled an extra woolen beanie over the one Eva had given him. Akane’s bulging backpack had been stuffed with winter clothing, along with dried survival rations, glow sticks, hand warmers, and even a folding shovel.

  “I couldn’t carry tents,” she explained. “We’ll have to dig a snow shelter if we get in trouble.”