Daemon (42 page)

“Captured Daemon equipment?”

Ross nodded. “You guys bring it in, and this is where the techs reverse-engineer it to find out how to defeat it. But you just brought us our greatest find yet, Roy.”

They finally reached a scientists’ work area and stepped onto a raised dais of nonstatic tile. Several men in lab coats were gathered around something, making adjustments and holding small wrenches. Their bodies completely blocked what they were working on. Dr. Natalie Philips stood, arms crossed, observing the scientists’ work. A burly man in a sports jacket stood next to her. Merritt didn’t recognize him.

The ice chest and black case Merritt had flown in with stood open on the workbenches nearby.

Philips and the man looked up as Ross and Merritt arrived. Philips nodded. “Agent Merritt, I’m glad things went well in Brazil.”

“Anything to help this scavenger hunt of yours, Doctor.” They shook hands.

“Well, it might pay off big today.” Philips gestured to the man. “Agent Merritt, this is our DOD liaison. For security reasons his identity is classified. We simply call him The Major.”

Merritt raised an eyebrow, then extended his hand. “Major.”

The Major shook Merritt’s hand in an iron grip. “You’re something of a celebrity among Daemon operatives, I hear.”

Merritt shrugged. “That’s what they tell me.”

“Good to see you’re fully recovered, Mr. Merritt.”

Merritt reflexively stroked the burn scars on his neck.

Philips pointed to the nearby knot of scientists. “This is our research team on loan from DARPA. Identities also classified.”

“These introductions aren’t very useful.”

One of the scientists looked up from the huddle. He was an older Asian man. “The rig is ready, Dr. Philips.”

Philips nodded toward a nearby stool. “Have a seat, Agent Merritt. I think you’ll find this interesting.”

The scientists scattered, revealing what they had been working on—and what Merritt had brought all this way: a pair of sports sunglasses with yellow-tinted lenses and thick, metallic frames had been bolted into an armature in the center of the lab area. Wires and cables ran from inside the frames over to the lab bench. Set between the posts of the glasses was a clear glass cylinder in which floated a disembodied human eye, like some macabre olive in a jar. The severed nerve endings were alligator-clipped in place to position the eye staring straight forward through the right lens of the sports glasses.

Philips gestured to the rig. “That’s the right eye, Jon?”

Ross nodded. “I double-checked.”

She examined the rig closely. “The sniper’s bullet doesn’t appear to have damaged the blood vessels.” She checked her watch. “Eighteen hours, sixteen minutes since his death. The clock is running. We need to get this test started.”

Merritt was still staring back at the eye. “What sort of test?”

She turned to him. “We believe these glasses serve as a heads-up display for Daemon operatives, Agent Merritt.” She leaned in and pointed to a spot on the frame of the glasses. “A fiber-optic projector displays an image onto the inside of the glass lenses.” She pointed to a dot elsewhere on the frame. “This is a retinal scanner. The Daemon knows who’s wearing these HUD glasses, and this is a heart pulse monitor—over which we have placed an artificial pulse generator. We intend to fool the Daemon into thinking its operative is still alive and calm. If it hasn’t already invalidated his account, we hope to gain access to the Daemon’s darknet.”

Merritt nodded slowly. “So, that was the big hurry. You’re hoping to steal this guy’s identity.”

Ross stepped up to examine the rig as well. “We’re hoping for more than that.”

The Chinese scientist approached Philips while holding a thick, pouchlike belt made of stretchable black fabric. The belt had an ornate lion’s-head belt buckle. He offered it to her. “This one’s powered by some sort of fuel cell. We have nothing like it in the equipment collection. The Daemon is rapidly increasing the quality of its manufacturing process.”

Merritt pointed at the belt. “What’s it do?”

Philips took it. “It’s a wearable computer. The brains of those eyeglasses. Uses a satellite or radio uplink to the Net and connects to these glasses wirelessly with 192-bit military-grade encryption. The encryption key appears to reseed every few minutes. Hard as hell to crack.”

“What’s with the lion’s-head buckle?”

The Chinese scientist nodded. “Blued titanium with diamond eyes. Very expensive—possibly indicating high rank. Daemon equipment often has stylistic fetishes. These are no doubt intended to imbue them with perceived mystical qualities.”

Philips grimaced. “Another one of Sobol’s psychological hacks.” She closely examined the sports glasses in the rig. “These look way beyond the capabilities of a portable fab lab. Grown-crystal optics…possibly laser-etched circuitry. Can we identify the factory?”

Another scientist weighed in. “Probably South Korean manufacture. Highest quality.”

“How long until we can get this test started, gentlemen?”

The scientists at the lab benches were making last-minute calibrations to hundreds of knobs and dials on rack-mounted monitoring equipment. One of them turned to Philips. “It will be a few minutes yet, Doctor.”

Ross approached her and pointed to the HUD glasses. “You think this runs off the FOM?”

Philips reacted to Merritt’s quizzical expression. “Jon means the Faction Operations Module, Agent Merritt. It’s how the Daemon coordinates the activities of the humans who work for it. That’s how it infiltrated corporate networks, that’s how it identifies new threats, and that’s how it distributes funds and privileges to its members. Basically, it’s the key to its power. The FOM is a distributed mesh network consisting of tens of thousands of nodes. Each node has a unique encryption key at any given moment. If we can clone these glasses, we might have an opening we can exploit to infiltrate the Daemon’s operations. Possibly to shut it down.”

Merritt nodded. “I’m all for that.”

The Major frowned at Philips. “If the Daemon knows we’re penetrating its defenses, it might lash out and start destroying companies.”

“If we’re careful, it will never know, Major.” She reacted to his grim expression. “Look, Daemon operatives coordinate their activities somehow, and so far we’ve been unable to find even a single e-mail or IM message between them. We’re missing something, and both Jon and I believe that that something is sitting right in front of us. Unless we conduct this test, we’ll have no chance at all of stopping the Daemon.”

“What
exactly
does this test entail, Doctor?”

Philips pointed at the captured glasses. “We plan on powering up these glasses so we can see what a Daemon operative sees while working on the Daemon’s darknet.”

The Major still looked doubtful. He pointed at the wires and cables running from the glasses and back toward the lab benches. “And this?”

The Chinese scientist stepped in. “Sound and video outputs. We’ll record the images projected onto the heads-up display of the glasses for later analysis. We’ll also project the images onto these monitors, here.”

“Nothing’s hooked into our computer network?”

Philips crossed her arms impatiently. “Major, it’s hooked to a DV camera. A camera whose embedded OS has been cleared of serial numbers. Please give us more credit than that. Now, unless the DOD has any objections, I’d like to conduct this test before the Daemon decides that this operative is KIA.”

The Major took one last look around. He nodded grimly. “Okay, Doctor. Proceed.”

Philips turned to the scientists. “Let’s do it, gentlemen.”

They tripped several switches. “Activating computer fuel cell.”

“The glasses have electrical power.”

Numerous television monitors mounted above the workbench filled with information. The scientists looked pleased. “Good. The computer belt has established a secure link to a nearby WiMax transmitter. Let’s get a fix on its location.”

Another scientist called out, “An encrypted link has been established between the glasses and the computer belt.”

“Retinal scanning in progress. Stand by….”

Philips took a deep breath. “Cross your fingers, people.”

They all stared at the glasses, but nothing obvious was happening. They waited.

The lead scientist smiled and turned toward them. “We’re receiving data. I believe we just fooled the Daemon.”

A cheer went up and high fives were exchanged at the lab benches. The Major was impassive, as always.

Philips, Ross, Merritt, and The Major moved to join the scientists crowding around video monitors. The screens displayed images being beamed onto the lenses of the HUD glasses. The Major squinted. “What are we looking at?”

Philips answered. “It’s a graphical user interface of some type—local time, GPS coordinates, power level, shield…Shield, that’s interesting….”

Ross pointed at the screen. “It looks like one of Sobol’s game interfaces. A menu of options. Like a first-person shooter.”

The Major scowled. “But what’s this tell us?”

Ross read through the visible menus. “There’s no obvious way to navigate the UI. How do they work it?”

The lead scientist nodded. “The glasses have a built-in bone-conduction microphone. Could it be voice-activated?”

“We don’t have a voice pattern for this Daemon operative.”

Philips pointed at a small blue square glowing near the right side of the screen. “What’s this?” Barely legible text appeared just above the box, reading:
AAW-9393G28.
It was connected to the box by a glowing line.

Ross concentrated on the screen. “I’d say it’s a call-out. Looks like there’s an object still active in our captured equipment collection.”

“You mean like the name call-outs hovering over characters in Sobol’s online games?”

“One way to find out…” Ross approached the armature holding the HUD glasses.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to turn these glasses. If that glowing box moves on-screen as I move the glasses, then we know the glasses are showing us a virtual Daemon object that’s bolted to an external coordinate system—most likely the GPS grid.”

Merritt looked from Philips to Ross. “Why would it create virtual objects on the GPS grid?”

Ross called over from the rig as he turned it. “In Sobol’s online games, players and significant objects in the 3-D environment are denoted by virtual call-outs—pop-up menus that hover in space, providing information. I believe Sobol created the same system using the GPS grid.” He turned to Philips. “How’s that?”

The group looked stunned. “Oh my God…”

“What is it?” Ross moved over to the monitor.

The tiny glowing box paled in significance. Hovering eerily in virtual space beyond the real walls of the lab was a towering red call-out box ringed with a dozen mysterious and dangerous-looking symbols—skulls, X’s, and crosses. Beneath that was a line reading
40—Sorcerer.
At the top of the call-out was a rolling row of letters, like tumblers cycling endlessly next to the word
Stormbringer.

“What the hell is that, Jon?”

Ross studied the video feed. “That’s the call-out of a fortieth-level sorcerer—we’ve been infiltrated.”

The Major leaned in toward the screen. “Where is he?”

“In this building…” Ross moved side to side to get some parallax on the call-out. “He’s in the gaming pit.” Ross turned to The Major. “Call security—NOW!”

The Major shouted to a nearby guard. “Notify Secom that we have a highly dangerous intruder in the gaming pit. Activate silent lockdown.”

The guard reached for his radio, but The Major put his hand over it and pointed to the nearby phone. “Use a landline, you idiot!”

The guard nodded. “Sorry, Major.”

Ross pointed at the screen. “We’ve got half the talent on the task force in that room.”

Philips turned on The Major. “Just how the hell did he get in here, Major?”

“Let’s worry about that once we have the mole in custody. I’ll tell you this much: Britlin is going to have hell to pay.”

“Britlin. Who is Britlin?”

“The company that clears task force candidates.”

Philips looked at him like he was insane. “The government
outsourced
our background checks?”

“Britlin has worked with the intelligence sector for thirty years, Doctor. This is standard operating procedure.”

“What about the current situation seems standard to you?”

Merritt started loosening his tie. “We need to take him out before he can react. Let me go in there with a can of mace.”

The Major shook his head. “Negative, Agent Merritt. We have people on site.”

“No offense, Major, but I do this for a living.”

“We have thirty ex-SOCOM soldiers—counterinsurgency experts, each with more than a decade of experience. Delta Force, OSNAZ, SFB…”

Merritt stopped preparing himself. “Well, I see you were expecting trouble.”

Ross was still moving back and forth, trying to pinpoint the intruder’s location on a printed floor plan. “He’s one of the gamers along the back wall of the pit. User 23, 24, or 25.”

Philips turned to the scientists. “This intruder must be linked into the Daemon’s darknet. Can you jam his connection?”

The lead scientist looked dour. “We’re not configured to jam signals in the gaming pit, Doctor.”

“Major, we need that mole taken alive if at all possible.”

The Major nodded toward the distant blast doors. “Let’s get to the security control room. We’ll direct the op from there.”

T
he glass security doors of the gaming pit opened silently, admitting a Korr strike team—half a dozen heavily armed men wearing Kevlar helmets, gas masks, and black body armor. They entered in close formation, single file, guns aimed over each other’s shoulders. The white Korr logo was a just a large stylistic “K,” like a heraldic symbol on their black helmets and breastplates.

Across the room another set of glass doors opened, revealing a second Korr strike team, identical to the first. The team leaders exchanged hand signals, then advanced in unison. They were a steely-eyed, professional bunch, with automatic weapons, Tasers, and beanbag guns at the ready. They moved as one, threading rapidly through the tangle of workstations toward their target. They clearly knew their business.

The strike teams fanned out, aiming toward the far corner of the room. As they moved in, several of them held up printed signs reading
Danger: Do not speak. Leave immediately.
White-hat gamers looked up one by one, nudging each other. Their game chatter died down, but the guards took up chatter of their own to compensate:

“Team two, cover that left flank.”

“Stop bunching up.”

“Cover that exit!”

“Clear the field of fire.”

The strike teams kept up a steady stream of talk as they formed into a wedge, focused directly on the target: the three gamers in the corner of the room. They could see the gamers’ heads dodging left and right beyond flat-panel monitors, reacting to what was displayed on their computer screens. All three men were completely absorbed in their games.

The forward team leader held up three gloved fingers and pointed directly at the players in the corner. Best to take all three down.

The strike teams were still tugging stunned gamers aside, holding a finger up for silence, then pointing to the exits.

Finally the two strike teams were in position, arrayed around their quarry at a distance of ten or twelve feet. They stared at the heads of three gamers—patches of close-cropped, spiky hair. The ambient chatter had died down now, and the targeted gamers appeared to sense something was up. They glanced around as the last of their neighbors scurried to safety. They were isolated. Silence finally fell upon the room, except for the stereo sound effects of nearby 3-D games.

One of the Korr team leaders touched a microphone switch on his gas mask and shouted in an amplified radio voice. “Users 23, 24, and 25. Remain seated, and put your hands where we can see them. This is not a drill!”

The two gamers on the left immediately raised their hands and looked up in utter shock. When they got a look at the dozen weapons pointed in their direction, they turned a shade paler than they already were.

The young guy on the right remained motionless, still sitting behind his monitor.

“User 25! Put your hands where we can see them! Now!” The team leader motioned for the two users on the left to clear the area. They were happy to oblige, and as they complied, two guards pepper-sprayed them in the face. They collapsed screaming as the guards zipped hand ties onto their wrists. It was done with expert swiftness and precision—like calf roping in a rodeo—and in no time, the guards were back on their feet, weapons ready.

User 25 was now isolated. A couple dozen eyes memorized the top of his head through gun sights. Bright laser dots clustered on his scalp.

The booming radio voice kept up the pressure. “Show your hands! Now!”

User 25 took a deep breath. “This is a mistake.”

“Hands where we can see them or we open fire!”

“A big mistake.”

“I said hands in the air!”

User 25 finally raised his hands. They were wrapped in jet-black gloves with silver caps—like thimbles—on the end of each index finger. Something was set in the palm of each hand, like a large crystal.

Suddenly a white-hot flash several times brighter than the sun pulsed through the room, followed closely by a second flash from User 25’s other hand. It took several moments for the light to flare down.

The strike teams were initially stunned, but then needles of agony burned into their brains. They dropped their weapons as they collapsed onto their knees, grabbing at their eyes and clawing their gas masks off their faces, screaming.

Brian Gragg kicked his chair away and stood up from the gaming workstation. As the blinded strike team members writhed on the floor, crying out, Gragg moved calmly toward the burly team leader who had shouted at him. Gragg aimed a silver-capped index finger at the man—a lens at its very tip. Black fiber optic and electrical cables ran down the back of Gragg’s hand like veins, disappearing beneath his shirt. “The name is Loki, asshole.”

A ruler-straight bolt of electricity cracked like a bullwhip from his fingertip into the man’s body armor, followed by a flickering series of bolts in quick succession—three a second. The team leader’s muscles jerked with each thunderclap. The smell of ozone filled the air.

After the last crack, Gragg lowered his hand, and the team leader dropped to the ground dead, his body smoking and sizzling.

Grimacing from the pain in his eyes, the other team leader glanced around blindly and shouted, “Who’s shooting!”

“That’s not shooting!”

“Hooks!” A pause. “Where’s Hooks!”

“Get to cover and sound off! Sound off!”

Gragg moved toward the fallen men. He pointed and let loose with several seconds of deafening thunderclaps. Men crawled away screaming, only to be immobilized the moment the first bolt hit them.

In a few seconds they were all motionless or convulsing.

The sickening smell of burnt hair came to Gragg’s nostrils.

“What the hell just happened?” Philips stared at a bank of security monitors. The security command center was packed with Korr Security folks pointing at monitors and barking into radios.

The Major snapped his fingers at the control board operator. “Get on the horn to Weyburn Labs. Tell them we might be facing an illicit LIP-C weapon. I need countermeasures and tactics.”

Merritt watched the intruder on the monitor. “What’s an LIP-C weapon?”

“Laser-Induced Plasma Channel. Uses laser light as a virtual wire for electricity.”

“Where did he get it?”

“The Daemon appears to be dipping into our research pipeline.”

Philips turned on him. “Just how many sections of the intelligence apparatus have been compromised, Major?”

“Not now, Doctor. We’ve got men down.”

Ross, Merritt, and Philips stared at the large central monitor. There, the intruder was stepping among the fallen strike team members, sprawled on the floor of the gaming pit.

The Major barked at the board operator. “Seal zones three through six. Let’s contain this asshole.”

Another Korr officer spoke up. “I’ve got an identity on User 25: Michael Radcliffe. Grad student, MIT—”

The Major waved it aside. “That’s bullshit. Radcliffe’s probably dead.”

“Should we pump tear gas through the ventilation ducts, sir?”

“Use your brain. There’s a dozen gas masks in there with him.” The Major checked his watch. “Call in an electronic warfare team and a demolitions team. We need to jam this fucker’s uplink, then kill him.” He turned to nearby Korr officers. “I want commercially marked choppers over our twenty. Scramble the perimeter defense teams. Lethal force authorized. No one enters or leaves this facility until I say otherwise.”

“Understood, Major.”

Philips pushed up to him. “Major, we should try to take this man alive.”

“We’re not capturing anyone, Doctor. This situation is going to end right now, and whatever’s left is all yours.”

Ross pointed at the monitor. “He’s doing something.”

They all looked up.

The intruder was standing, moving his arms as though controlling invisible objects, his mouth moving in a rhythmic chant.

Gragg concentrated on the plane of D-Space. The entire floor plan of Building Twenty-Nine was replicated there, spread out around him as a life-sized wire-frame model overlaid on the GPS grid. It aligned precisely with the corners of each wall in the real world. This allowed Gragg to see the geometry of adjoining rooms. More importantly, images from the building’s dense network of security cameras were wrapped around the wire-frame model’s geometry, showing a patchwork of live video from those neighboring rooms—giving Gragg an almost X-ray vision through the dense concrete.

Korr personnel sprinted through the hallways, loading weapons and sealing doorways. They were ants in his ant colony. He had seen the strike teams getting ready all the way back in their locker room.

The garrison was in disarray.

Gragg turned to look far beyond the concrete walls of Building Twenty-Nine, to distant, glowing call-outs in D-Space. He selected dozens of virtual objects he’d stored there, then launched his prearranged summoning sequence, making somatic gestures and speaking the unlock code to the VOIP module. “
Andos ethran Kohlra Bethru
. Lord of a million eyes, Loki summons you….”

Gragg looked through the sealed blast doors leading into the lab. The guards there had been pulled inside, but Gragg looked into the artificial dimension beyond them. He aimed his gloved finger at a virtual object in the lab, an object he had insinuated into the equipment collection some time ago. Gragg closed his fist on the object in D-Space.

Somewhere beyond those thick concrete walls a compressed air tank sprayed powdered aluminum across the lab space—then ignited it with an electrical spark. Suddenly the building shuddered, followed by a dull roar and the muted shrieks of twisting metal. A deafening klaxon sounded the alarm throughout the facility. Blue strobes flickered near the exits.

The Major scanned the security monitors as a dozen red lights blinked on a floor plan map. There. The lab was consumed in flames. The camera image rippled with interference, vertical hold skipping. One of the scientists ran through the picture, burning alive beneath white-hot flames. Sprinklers deployed to little effect.

“Goddamnit…”

“The science team. Get medics to the lab! And the equipment collection—”

“It’s too late….” Ross pointed to the monitor.

On-screen an acetylene tank was spinning in a pinwheel of flame near the lab table, then exploded, shaking the building again. The monitor image went dead.

Philips slumped and covered her eyes. “We just lost some of our best people, not to mention the Daemon equipment collection.”

Merritt grabbed The Major’s shoulder. “Where do you need me?”

“Sit tight, Merritt.” The Major looked back at Philips. “Are you still glad you conducted your little test, Doctor?”

“Without this test we never would have discovered we’d been infiltrated.”

Ross nodded. “
That’s
why we weren’t able to join Daemon Factions. He was tracking our every move.”

The Major turned to him. “Maybe we shouldn’t have been playing games with the Daemon in the first place.”

The board operator looked up again. “He’s not going anywhere, Major. The gaming pit is locked down.”

Gragg stood before the sealed bulletproof glass doors barring his exit. The camera-lined corridor beyond led to the building entry vestibule.

Gragg turned to face another D-Space object hovering just to the right of the glass doors. It was a surreal blue button, floating impossibly there as seen through his HUD glasses. It was labeled in large glowing letters: OPEN. Gragg tapped the virtual button with his gloved hand. It flashed.

The real-world ballistic glass doors slid open, and he stepped through the opening and entered the anteroom beyond.

Philips threw up her hands. “He’s out of the gaming pit.”

Ross gestured to the monitors. “The security system’s been compromised.”

“Who subcontracted that, I wonder?”

The Major gave her a look. “Stow that shit right now.” He turned to the board operator. “Physically cut the power to the north perimeter doors.”

The board operator rolled back in his chair. He opened an electrical panel on the back wall and started tripping breaker switches.

Philips leaned over the board and clicked from camera to camera. “Where is he?”

“Don’t worry, Doctor. He’s trapped.”

“That’s what you said last time. Show me.”

“We just tripped the breakers. The perimeter doors are frozen in a locked position. He’s not getting through inch-thick steel plating.”

She studied the bank of black-and-white monitors. The large one in the center now showed the intruder standing in a dead-end hallway some distance from the exterior steel doors. He stood above three newly fallen guards, their bodies smoking. The intruder was just staring up at the camera. Unnervingly calm. He was only a kid—early twenties at most.

The Major nodded at the monitor. “I told you we’d stop him.” He turned to a nearby guard. “I want every gun on the tarmac focused on that exit.”

Philips leaned into the microphone sticking up from the control board. She held down the mic switch. “You’re trapped. Give up, and you won’t be hurt.”

The intruder’s tinny voice came in over the speakers. “Dr. Philips, I see you discovered D-Space. Or at least a layer of it.”

A flash of fear swept through her. He knew her real name. How could he possibly know her name? Thoughts of her parents in D.C. thrust front and center in her mind. She turned to The Major. “Call Dr. Fulbright at Fort Meade. Tell him to take my parents into protective custody. Now!”

The Major snapped his fingers at a Korr guard, who grabbed another phone.

She keyed the mic. “You know who I am. So who are you—or are you afraid to tell me your name?”

“Bitch. I’m Loki, the most powerful sorcerer in the world, and I’m about to ruin your whole fucking day.”

Merritt took off his suit jacket and headed for the door. “Keep this nutcase busy, Doctor.”

Ross grabbed Merritt’s arm. “No heroics, Roy.”

“I don’t plan on any.”

The Major blocked his path. “Where are you going?”

Merritt looked calmly at him. “I’m going to see how that prick deals with flash-bang grenades. Unlock the gaming pit, Major.”