A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) (11 page)

Michael frowned. “Doesn’t seem clean to me.”

“So your way’s the only way?” Jade said. “Spend a few more years in this line of work and then talk to me, ace.”

“You sound like Diomedes,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” she asked, apparently unable to hear over the music cluttering the air.

Michael stopped short of asking what she expected would happen to him in those “few more years.” There were other things to deal with. He raised his voice. “I said we should look for Caitlin! She might not find us up here. Stay here. I’ll have a look over the balcony.”

Jade put a hand on his arm before he could stand. “Safer back here. You wait, I’ll look.”

He let her, and opened his pack as she left. A single purple light on Holes’s platform glowed from within. “Any luck on the employer’s email address?”

“Nope. I am thus far unable to access origin data of sufficient detail to determine identity. More favorable results may be possible with continued processing.”

“Keep at it.” Michael glanced up to find Jade still at the mezzanine railing. “What about Jade’s email account?” he asked, not without a pang of guilt.

“Accessed. Her message content holds no evidence of deception in her assertions that she is hired solely to protect you, however I did not find direct indication of her employer’s identity. I have collected metadata from message headers that will aid my analysis.”

“Will she notice the hack?”

“There is a chance of detection of less than two percent, in the event she chooses to search for intrusions. Do you wish a copy of her message content?”

Jade turned from the railing with a nod and a wink when she saw Michael watching her, and made her way back to the table.

Michael took a breath, finding his back teeth clenching. “No,” he whispered. “No copy.”

“SECURITY BYPASSED.
Data-tether established. Now scanning.”

Caitlin nodded to the A.I.’s report without comment. She sat with her back to the club. The fingertips of her right hand pressed on the corner of Felix’s laptop, as if she were trying to keep it from blowing away. Michael and the freelancer woman sat flanking her on either side of the table.

Caitlin caught herself holding her breath and let it out.
What was Felix doing in Gibson?
Rue had lost track of him there. She would wait at the train station to try to regain him. Perhaps Holes would find something more substantial on the laptop. She sighed inwardly and wished she had the luxury of being able to feel bad about such a breach of Felix’s trust. If they found nothing, if this was all in her head, then she’d own up to it and apologize when the whole business was over. Yet she knew in her gut something was wrong.

Michael’s gaze caught hers before they both looked back down to the laptop. Jade seemed focused on watching the room. On the screen of Holes’s platform, the A.I.’s quintet of circles spun with an inscrutable, undulating rhythm.

In the sense it could “like” anything, Holes liked having new objectives. While the term “like” was merely a defined state of a higher-than-standard number of active system directives, it was also a label useful for interfacing with its creator and other humans. Weeks after Holes’s intelligence passed the sapience-point in its emergent creation, the A.I. became cognizant of a difference between the human use of the term and its own use. The specific parameters of that difference remained unexplored.

While it was a curiosity, it was not a priority.

Encapsulated within the AE-35 portable processor platform on the table, Holes focused the majority of its resources on an analysis of the laptop computer belonging to Felix Hiatt—this analysis being a subset of obeying all directives given from Michael Flynn, itself a subset of obeying all directives of Holes’s creator, Marc Triton. Specific parameters: scan for and collect data related to the locations and/or activities and/or directives of Felix Hiatt within the past forty days. Additional parameters gave priority to those data that indicated a clandestine purpose. Analyze such data to extrapolate probable employers or other missing details, if possible.

Assuming Holes comprehended the definition of
clandestine
—one of many terms for which Marc had tested understanding in Holes’s first weeks of awareness—contents scanned so far contained little in the way of promising data, even in encrypted areas.

And yet . . .

Pattern detection continued to return a possible hit on levels barely above coincidence. Holes noted it, raised threat level protocols by a factor it judged appropriate, and then detected a concealed partition on a virtual GNDN drive that Felix Hiatt had created within the target dates. The partition featured encryption greater than Holes would have forecasted for its size and Felix Hiatt’s known level of skill. Counter-encryption required a full seventy-two seconds.

The partition contained seven image files. Each was identical save for slight variations in creation dates and filenames.

“Michael and Caitlin,” Holes announced to the humans clustered around it. “Can you identify any significance to the following images?” Holes waited the appropriate time for the humans’ understanding, registered a positional change that indicated that its platform screen was being swiveled toward Michael and Caitlin, and then displayed the images.

“Isn’t that Niagara Falls?” Michael asked.

Caitlin studied it an additional point-eight seconds. “Aye, looks like.”

“Why?”

Holes related the details of its find, the directory location, and encryption. “I am unable to discern any significance to these images. They may be intended as a diversionary tactic. Should I continue to devote resources to them?” Holes opted to continue its analysis in the event it could provide additional information in the time required for the humans to answer with an affirmative or a nope.

“Is there something hidden in the images?” Michael asked. “In the file, I mean.”

“Nothing I have yet detected.”

“Keep checking.”

“Holes,” Caitlin said, “can you tell how the files got on his computer?”

Holes estimated a ninety-five percent probability that Caitlin’s intent was to inquire as to how the files got onto the computer, rather than to gauge his ability to find out. It was a human colloquialism, the proper identification of which had required over a week’s worth of coaching from Marc. Holes investigated before answering.

“The files were each transferred from Felix Hiatt’s phone after being received via email.”

“Email from who?” The question came at once from all three humans, expressed in slightly different ways. Of the three, Caitlin’s use of “whom,” was the most grammatically correct. Holes made a note for future investigation into the correlation between human grammar and human accents.

“Multiple sources. Back-tracing. Please stand by. I continue to find no hidden data within the image files.”

Holes followed the metadata back through the system, packet-tracing along a complex web of IP addresses, servers, and routing protocols. It could trace no one address to anything but an ambiguous end. Holes cross-referenced each to create a logical puzzle of partial differential equations.

“Stand by,” Holes reported after a period it judged sufficient for human impatience to prefer reassurance.

The source of the emails remained indeterminable. Available data provided only continual stalemate. Nevertheless, Holes ran an error-checking diagnostic that Marc once called Holes’s “emergent stubborn side” in a way Holes did not understand. In an experimental moment, anticipating no useful outcome yet following a minor directive Marc had introduced to inspire what he had termed “creative thinking,” Holes cross-referenced data from a previous search: that for the origin of Jade’s employer.

It broke the stalemate.

Holes did a double-check. The result, though anticipated as unlikely, appeared legitimate: a traceable path to the source of the emails. Holes filed the information for later dissemination to Michael, and then followed the data-trail along the labyrinthine path to where it led: to a tertiary node in a server cluster housed in the nearby city of Gibson.

“The pictures emailed to Felix Hiatt originate at a New Eden Biotechnics facility approximately fifty miles from our present location.”

Holes caught a sudden change in Michael’s posture, analysis of which indicated that the human likely recognized the name in conjunction with the Agents of Aeneas agenda. Michael seemed to analyze this for just under two seconds before he glanced at Caitlin who, from what Holes could determine, remained perplexed.

“Do you know the sender’s name?” Caitlin asked.

“Sender identity is not available without intrusion. Would you like me to initiate this?”

“Aye, by all means,” Caitlin said, “intrude.”

Michael cleared his throat. “Um, Holes? Keep in mind we’re in a public place here. If you find anything, be sure you’re . . . discreet when you report it, okay?”

“Safeguarding the confidentiality of designated data categories is among my core directives, Michael.” It was as specific as Holes could be without mentioning the Agents of Aeneas by name.

Without a countermand from Michael, Holes launched its feelers against the server in a search for vulnerable points of entry. Holes conducted its search via means that would not alert counter-intrusion measures. It had time.

At least, such was the case initially. Minutes passed. The humans discussed hypothetical scenarios regarding Felix Hiatt and New Eden. At the ten-minute point, Holes had found no exploitable weaknesses. Thirty-eight seconds later it completed analyzing the Niagara Falls pictures, finding no hidden data. It reported this to the humans and refocused on penetrating the New Eden protections.

At the twenty-minute point, Holes judged a need for more aggressive tactics. Holes withdrew along the data-path, reestablished its own countermeasures, and approached New Eden anew via an even more circuitous route, so as to better confound a counter-trace. Tunneling worms of Holes’s own design began their attack. Defenses struck most down instantly, yet some managed enough progress to launch additional attacks. Holes kept stealth a priority, yet it could already detect the system’s counter-searches designed to map Holes’s own weaknesses.

Yet Holes still had time. Holes analyzed the pattern of the system’s countermeasures, found a weakness in that pattern that created intermittent vulnerabilities in the system’s defense, and altered its own worm attacks to strike. At the next opportunity, the altered worms burrowed past another layer of defense, drawing further data that Holes could use to further undermine—

At once Holes detected a new counter-attack; it was a trap!

The server defenses’ behavioral shift was abrupt enough to indicate a high probability of artificial intelligence. Holes dumped all offensive processes in a struggle to respond. In the microseconds it had to analyze the assault, Holes registered multiple data points that led to a single conclusion: whatever lurked at New Eden was a behavioral match to the intelligence encountered in the lunar-bound craft that the AoA had codenamed
Paragon
.

HOLES RETREATED
back to the makeshift VPN firewall from behind which it had launched its initial intrusion. There it entrenched itself as if within a bunker. It ceased monitoring the mic and camera on its portable platform, going blind and deaf to Michael and the others to free up processing power for defense.

Holes could cut power to its own Internet connection at a nanosecond’s notice, or even shut down its platform entirely if that became necessary to prevent an attack, yet these were options of last resort.

After all, Holes still had to complete its goal of discovering what Felix Hiatt was involved in. If anything, discovering the
Paragon
-sourced intelligence within a terrestrial server, while increasing threat levels by an order of magnitude, only increased that goal’s priority. It now fell under a primary directive: protect the interests of the Agents of Aeneas.

Realistically, Holes could not be certain if the A.I. presence in the New Eden server was the A.I. from within
Paragon
, or if humans had merely created it from
Paragon
elements. The Undernet had been down for long enough for an AoA cell to have designed such a thing without Holes’s awareness.

When it could spare the resources, Holes would have to calculate the odds that Holes had gained an ally. Until that point, Holes kept all defenses up.

And yet, once Holes completed its retreat, no detectable attack came. Though Holes judged its own ability to detect an incursion to be imperfect, Holes did possess all data the AoA had discovered regarding the workings of the
Paragon
A.I.

And then came a single ping via LDP/IP protocols. Then another. And another. All translated roughly to a single interrogative: IDENTIFY? The interrogative repeated, pulsing at the edge of Holes’s awareness as Holes searched for signs of stealth incursions. By all accounts, there were none. Holes, at last, pinged back—a blip that amounted to a digital version of, “You first.”

They traded interrogatives then, a rapid interchange of messages lobbed across cyberspace that amounted to nothing. Holes calculated a growing likelihood that aborting its hack attempt at this point would lose nothing and save time. It calculated further, balancing the risk of continuing against a chance of gathering data of vital importance to the AoA, Michael and, finally, Caitlin.

Holes reached into the Internet and registered a private, neutral space on a social media server. A nanosecond’s effort populated that space with a basic avatar that Holes could control via remote proxy commands. Soon after, Holes pinged an invitation to the presence on the New Eden server. The wait for a response was brief, but notable.

“T
HIS
IS
AN
INEFFICIENT
METHOD
OF
COMMUNICATION
.”
The message came in both voice and text from the avatar of a shimmering, silver cloud that formed in the space. Its chosen voice, Holes evaluated, could be construed as having female characteristics.