Going Dark (31 page)

“Remember I told you I’ve been working with locally integrated AIs? I know I’m not the only one.”

I start packing up the cleaning kit. “Okay, maybe you could explain that.”

He nods. “I’m going to use metaphors, not mathematics, okay?”

“Works for me.”

•  •  •  •

He gets up, paces a few steps, raises his hands as if he’s trying to grasp the proper words. “The human brain—your brain—is a physical system that generates ‘you’—your personality, your thoughts, your feelings, your memories.” He
looks at me to make sure I’m following along. “It’s a crude analogy, but think of the Red as an entity, like you, existing across the computational resources of the Cloud, the way ‘you’ exist across the physical organ of your brain.”

I think about it, and shake my head. “No. The Red isn’t everywhere at once. It comes and goes.”

Issam shrugs. “Maybe
you
aren’t everywhere at once in your own mind. You can’t recall all your memories at once. You can’t consider multiple problems at the same time. And what you think about can be dictated. You’re an LCS soldier.” He taps his head. “That means you’ve got neuromodulating microbeads in your brain tissue.”

I nod wary agreement, wondering if I’m giving something critical away.

“You’ll agree that the activity of the microbeads influences who ‘you’ are. They can be used to affect your persona to some extent, your emotional empathy, and your ready state, that is, whether you’re asleep, alert, calm, or hostile.”

“Sure, but the microbeads are only active if they’re stimulated from the outside. By a skullnet or a skullcap.”

“And you have a skullnet that’s always on, providing a constant, baseline level of stimulation. Am I right?”

Grudgingly: “Yes.”

“An interesting aspect of bio-inspired AIs like the Red is that over time, they interlink. As they compete for computing resources, they set up cooperative pathways between one another that can influence both the pace and the nature of activity in their linked network. A local AI, given a repeating sequence of specific tasks, can expropriate local resources, restricting the influence of other entities within a given area. Because it’s a learning system, those entities may eventually just transfer tasks to the locally dominant AI. Think of it as your brain giving up on regulating some
neurochemical because that function has been taken over by the microbeads.”

“So control of who I am is handed off to an outside system . . . which works through the embedded microbeads.”

“Exactly. And in an analogous way, neighborhoods in the Cloud can be influenced by the activity of aggressive local AIs.”

I see where this is going. “You kept the UGF hidden by using one of these L-AIs to modify the behavior of the Red to . . .” To do what? “To suppress evidence of the facility? But you weren’t even hooked into the Cloud.”

“Not directly, but being off the grid is not going to make you invisible. It doesn’t take a direct connection to deduce that someone, something, or someplace exists. Most objects in the world, animate or not, have a kind of metaphorical gravity that influences elements around them, so the existence of a hidden location or organization or whatever it is can be detected from its effect on other things. The UGF was decades old to begin with, forgotten in most records, and remembered by only a handful of people who learned a long time ago to keep their mouths shut. So before Maksim got there, it had very little gravity. But our presence in there, all the activity, it was sure to be noticed. Trucks on the roads. Heat signatures. EM transmissions. Lights. So, I tasked an AI with obscuring or corrupting evidence of activity, and diverting queries and investigations.”

“But you’d need to crack into all kinds of systems to be able to do that.”

He shakes his head. “Not necessarily. You’ve seen maps of the Cloud, with nodes of activity charting the density of information packets. Some of that is the Red or linked to the Red—because the Red is not a single, simple system. It’s being rewritten constantly and constantly forges new links to other parts of the system.”

“Including your AIs.”

“They can share access, just like they share tasks.”

“So your L-AIs are hacking the Red to accomplish their tasks—and the Red has already hacked most of the world.”

He flashes an awkward smile. “Not exactly a secure system, is it?”

I pick up my HITR again, holding it in the crook of my arm, because maybe there is no security and who the fuck knows what’s going to happen next?

Issam sits again in his chair. He looks up at me with his vulnerable dark eyes, and he says, “The L-AIs are just like the microbeads in your brain tissue. They change the personality and affect the goals of the Red. I think someone is using an L-AI to continue the Arctic conflict. Why, I don’t know. Sell more armaments, maybe. Restrict petroleum development. Or maybe it’s more subtle than that.”

“Could that L-AI have been used to launch the conflict?” I ask him.

He gives me a curious look. “Do you have a reason to think that’s what happened?”

I don’t say it aloud, but yes, every anomaly on that mission gives me a reason to think an L-AI was involved. “This Arctic AI—it’s not one of yours?”

“No. But this is a big world, with billions of people, maybe a million smarter, more clever than me. Someone else was bound to work it out. I mean, if you can manipulate the Red, eventually you’ll own the world. Right?”

•  •  •  •

Issam is too important an asset. I decide I want him where I can see him. “You’re staying with us,” I tell him, “until we figure out friendlies and hostiles and what we’re going to do.”

He nods, looking relieved. “Sure. That’s fine.”

When Logan wakes up, I have him request a cot. There’s a fee. Logan tells them to add it to the bill.

It’s a big room, so we’re able to set the cot up between the foot of Tran’s bed and the closets.

Despite the presence of the bodyguard outside the door, we’re uneasy all afternoon, tensing every time we hear footsteps in the hall. 1800 rolls around and Logan orders dinner—room service from the hotel across the street. God knows what that costs.

He sends the bodyguard home.

Just past 1930, Tran finally wakes up, surprised to find himself still alive. As he sits up, a slow smile spreads across his face. “Hey, this means we get to do another mission.”

I contemplate holding a pillow over his idiot face until he stops kicking.

Logan would probably interfere.

“Is it okay if I open network access?” Tran wants to know.

Logan and I answer together,
“No!”

•  •  •  •

We set up a watch rotation. Tran volunteers to go first. I let him, though I’m suspicious it’s a scheme to get access to Issam’s farsights so he can get out in the Cloud without directly violating orders. As I set a wake-up signal, I hear him asking Issam to look up reviews of
The Shattered
, which I’m pretty sure is a comic.

“Don’t log into anything,” I warn him.

“If I do, I’ll make a new account.”

I cut that idea off at the roots. “Issam, don’t let him use your farsights, and if he threatens you, just wake me up.”

Tran rolls his eyes, but Issam frowns, not at all sure if we’re joking. I shut myself down—

—and wake up on schedule.

The room is dim but not dark. Despite his leg wound, Tran is up, pacing between the foot of the cot and the door, his M4 held muzzle-down in the crook of his arm. He looks over at me. “You’re early.”

“Just a couple of minutes.”

Logan is asleep in what was Tran’s bed, while Issam is snoring on the cot.

“Sitrep?” I ask Tran.

“Nothing to report.”

I clomp and creak to the toilet. “How’s the leg?” I ask him when I come out again.

He flashes a grin. “Like I keep telling you, I’m good.”

I shake my head as I get out my HITR. “Secure your weapon, soldier, and go to sleep.”

Tran takes over the bed and checks out. I sit in the recliner with the HITR across my lap, listening to activity in the hall. After forty minutes or so, Issam starts dreaming. It’s a bad dream. He’s twitching and breathing in little gasps. I watch him for a few seconds. Then he sits up so suddenly he startles me out of my chair. Even in the dim light, I see the whites of his eyes, wide with panic. His right hand grabs at his throat, and then he’s on his feet. His gasps change to constricted whoops as he lurches past me toward the door.

I’m so shocked, I step out of the way. But he doesn’t make it to the door. Outside the toilet, he goes down. He’s on hands and knees, drool running from his mouth as he struggles to breathe. I step past him, lean into the bathroom to hit a call button I remember seeing there, and then I hit the light. Issam lifts his head, looking at me with bulging eyes, his throat swollen. I don’t think he’s getting any air at all. I step past him, throw the door open, and yell down the hallway, “Emergency! We’ve got an emergency!”

The nurse on duty comes running. It takes only seconds for her to reach us, but Issam is already on his back, on the floor, his whole body trembling with spasms. The nurse is speaking out loud, using her farsights to summon an emergency team while she tries to establish an airway.

By this time, Tran and Logan are both awake and all the lights in the room are on. There’s nothing we can do, so we stay out of the way while the medical team works.

In the end, there’s nothing anyone can do, and Issam’s lifeless body gets wheeled away on a gurney.

“It’s like the secretary of defense,” Tran says as a janitor cleans the floor. “Remember I told you about that? He collapsed while giving a speech and nothing the paramedics did could revive him.”

“Did you ever hear what he died of?”

“Yeah. I looked it up before we left. Acute asthma attack associated with a severe allergic reaction.”

“
Shit
,” Logan whispers, because that’s exactly what Issam’s death looked like—and the attending physician confirms it when he stops by later in the night to talk with us.

I ask him what caused the allergic reaction.

He doesn’t know. He can’t even guess. He’s never seen anything like it before.

•  •  •  •

At this point we all just want to get out of the hospital, but we are asked to wait until morning when the administrative staff comes in. So we sit in the room and talk about what happened. None of us believe it was an accident. But why was Issam the only victim? Why are the rest of us still alive?

Tran says, “It was like that with the secretary of defense. Just him. No one else, in a crowded auditorium.”

“Maybe Issam was poisoned earlier,” Logan says. “Maybe it was the bodyguard and it just took time.”

Maybe.

•  •  •  •

In the morning, we’re reclassified as outpatients. They provide me and Tran with decent-looking civilian clothes, and we get to move across the street to the associated hotel. Issam spent a night there—that worries me—but he only died when I insisted he stay under my protection.

A private subterranean tunnel connects the two buildings. We emerge in a small underground lobby furnished with chairs, a propane fireplace, and a check-in desk staffed by two smiling men and a dour woman. There is no direct access to the outside, but there is a single elevator, and across the room from it, a closed, windowless door labeled with a sign in many languages advising
MAIN LOBBY THIS WAY
.

Safe to assume this is the secure entrance. Convenient, since we’re transporting our HITRs open-carry and our pistols on display in their holsters. The dour woman at the desk greets us in excellent, if unsmiling, English. “Welcome, sirs. Your suite is ready. We do politely ask that your weapons be restricted to your rooms.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She doesn’t ask for IDs, biometrics, or account information, so I have to assume we’re still operating on Leonid’s credit. We’re handed key cards. They’re an old-fashioned means to open a door, but they have the advantage of being anonymous, unlike biometric locks.

“You are on a secure floor,” the woman tells us. “Access to your room is only through this lobby. The elevator will not accept any unregistered guests or stop on any other floors.”

We step aboard the elevator. There is no keypad. The doors close and we ascend nonstop to our room on the thirty-second floor.

We are in a one-bedroom suite at the end of the hall, furnished in simple, modern luxury. There is only one window. It’s floor-to-ceiling, but it’s just twenty centimeters wide and made of heavy glass. Hard to shoot through. Probably hard to blast through.

We investigate the suite with weapons drawn.

There is a bathroom off the front room, another off the bedroom. We clear them all and check the closets. When we’re done, Tran looks around in satisfaction. “This,” he announces, “is a step closer to a superhero hangout. Beats the hell out of the barracks at C-FHEIT.” He grabs the remote, flops on one of the two beds, and turns on the TV. “How long are we here for?”

“Tonight, if we’re lucky.” I head back to the front room.

“Hey, they have sex workers here,” he calls after me. “Licensed, bonded. Come to the room. Is that a security violation?”

“Yes.” I project my voice to make sure I’m heard. The effort makes my throat itch and threatens to start me coughing all over again, so I step back to the door to escape the need to shout. Tran has limited his search to women. He’s scrolling through their profiles. Logan is looking too. It’s an impressive selection. “Issam is dead. We don’t know how they got to him. We don’t want them getting to us.”

“Yeah, but we can’t squat in this room forever.”

“We’ve been here five minutes. Anyway, I want to wait for Papa to turn up.”

Tran pauses the selection. He looks at me with a wary gaze. “You’re not trying to cut some deal to work with Papa?”

“No.”

“Good. Because we are ETM—if Kanoa doesn’t kill us.”

“Kanoa already left you for dead,” Logan says, surprising me with his bitterness. “Your corpse would be food for crows by now if Papa hadn’t gotten us out of there.”

Tran returns his gaze to the TV. In a quiet voice he says, “For right now, I’m gonna believe he didn’t have options, okay?” He resumes scrolling, but his enthusiasm is gone.