Freedom (43 page)

He continued scanning for bugs as Philips followed him

It took nearly twenty minutes, but by the time he was done, he had located eight bugs in all—from the bar to the bathroom to the bedroom. The stranger then sat down on a changing bench at the foot of the bed and removed his hood and goggles. Jon Ross sighed in relief and smiled at her. “There we go.”

“Jon! My god . . .” She rushed to hold his face in her hands. There was that slight crinkle at the corner of his eyes when he smiled that she missed so much. Before she had time to think about it, she was kissing him passionately. After a moment she pulled back to look at him.

He gazed back, and then pulled her close, kissing her harder, longer, and with a strength that almost squeezed the breath from her.

He eventually relaxed his hold. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“How on earth did you find me?”

He tugged on the silver chain around her neck, coming up with the amulet he’d created for her.

She scowled. “You gave me a tracking device? How romantic . . .”

“It’s more an amulet of protection.”

“Protection from what?”

“From Loki—and people like him. I didn’t want his machines harming you.”

She studied the amulet and then turned back to him. Philips pointed to the metal box on the nearby table. “You’re sure they can’t hear us?”

Ross nodded. “Bug Vault. It produces generic sounds of human habitation—footsteps, television, stuff like that. It’ll make them think their bugs are still in place.”

“How the hell did you get past ranch security? This place is surrounded by the best surveillance system money can buy.”

“Yeah, they’re using the latest technology—a Beholder Unified Surveillance System designed by Haverford Systems. State of the art.”

She looked puzzled.

“Let’s just say it has some flaws built in, compliments of the Chinese people.”

She sat down next to him. “I was worried I’d never see you again.” Philips looked at him gravely. “But why would you take such a stupid risk to come here?”

“I came to get you, Nat.”

“What made you think I needed rescuing? This is where I need to be. They’re about to launch Operation Exorcist, and unless I can stop them, they’ll take control of the Daemon.”

He contemplated her words. “The Weyburn Labs people have expanded on the work you and I did at Building Twenty-Nine. They’re starting to crack their way into the Daemon’s darknet. I don’t know how they did it, but they’ve started spoofing people and creating darknet objects. They used it to capture Pete Sebeck, and he’s here on the ranch now.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“From Pete Sebeck.”

“Peter Sebeck is
alive
?”

“Yeah, look, it’s a long story, but Sobol rescued Sebeck from his execution and sent him on a quest to justify humanity’s freedom. The Major just kidnapped Sebeck and brought him here. There’s about to be a serious showdown, Nat, and I need to get you out of here.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Loki Stormbringer is headed this way with an army of machines. There are two dozen darknet factions on his heels. Once Loki’s army is gathered, this whole place will be a war zone.”

“
The
Loki?” She sat on the arm of a nearby sofa and shook her head. “I can’t leave, Jon.”

“Why not? This isn’t your—”

“Look, you have no idea how happy I am to see you, and I can’t tell you how much it touches me that you risked your life to rescue me. But I can’t go. The plutocrats are planning to execute some sort of cyber warfare attack. Physically storming this ranch won’t stop it. I need to figure out what they’re really up to and stop them. Luckily, I have some clues.” She brought him over to a huge stack of documents on a nearby desk. “They’ve given me tech documentation on Operation Exorcist—but something about it doesn’t make sense.”

“Operation Exorcist?”

“Yes. Remember the Destroy function of the Daemon—the command that destroys all data in a Daemon-infected corporation? Well, they’ve come up with a blocker.”

“How the hell did—?”

“They figured out that if they use a formatstring hack they could inject executable code through the tax ID function parameter. It puts the Destroy function into an infinite loop so that it doesn’t return a value.”

“Meaning the Destroy command won’t be issued . . . making the Daemon harmless to them.”

She nodded.

“Can they really inject it into all the Daemon-infected networks?”

“The
Ragnorok
module is a Web API. They can invoke the function from anywhere.”

“Jesus . . .”

“They could do it with a
script
. They’re using the Daemon’s own high availability against it.”

Ross gestured to the piles of technical documents marked “Top Secret.” “But you said something’s not adding up.”

“Yes. I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours examining all this, and it just looks too rosy.”

“A ruse?”

She nodded. “Jon, they’re planning on launching their Daemon-blocker attack from thousands of machines, and then they’re going to send in police and paramilitary strike teams to seize tens of thousands of data centers around the world—all at once. It would easily be the largest covert operation launched in the history of mankind—by several orders of magnitude—and I don’t see how an international operation this size could be kept secret.”

“You mean from the Daemon?”

“I mean from anyone.”

She picked up a sheaf of documents. “So how am I supposed to believe this? It’s not credible.”

“So Operation Exorcist is a lie.”

“Or we don’t know what the real Operation Exorcist is. They’ve basically put me under house arrest here to read through propaganda—so when things go to hell, I can attest to some congressional subcommittee how diligently Weyburn Labs and Korr were working toward defeating the Daemon.”

She threw up her hands. “But I saw
armies
of corporate soldiers down at the airfield. Something serious is about to go down.”

Ross grimaced. “Darknet news feeds have noticed private security forces moving into position to defend property—office towers, media centers, telecom infrastructure, and utilities. Also high-end gated communities.”

They sat for a few moments contemplating what that meant. The sound of murmuring television voices came from downstairs.

Ross looked at her. “So I can’t convince you to leave?”

“I care about you more than you know, but my duty is here.”

He grinned slightly in respect of her choice, then he moved over to the fifty-inch plasma screen mounted in a hutch in front of the bed. He pulled the television away from the wall on its swivel mount.

“What are you doing?”

He produced a small electronic device from one of his harness pockets, and uncoiled an HDMI cable, which he used to connect the device to the television.

“I’m opening the surveillance system’s back door to other darknet operatives so that they can help us collectively keep an eye on what’s going on here on the ranch. We’ll have a better shot at finding anything important with tens of thousands of people searching with us.” He spoke into D-Space. “Rakh, requesting high-priority Thread: review all camera imagery at Sky Ranch for evidence of complicity in current social disturbances. Publicize findings, ASAP.”

In a few moments, the screen showed an hourglass with a label reading:
Number of Respondents
. The number rapidly incremented into the thousands, gaining speed by the second.

“So . . .
thirteen thousand
people are searching the surveillance system for suspicious activity?”

He nodded. “This ranch is on a maximum-priority Thread—we’re all concerned about it. And it doesn’t hurt to have a good reputation score when summoning a smart mob.” He peered at the screen. “Past twenty thousand now.”

She was stunned. “This is amazing.” She closely watched the screen.

Almost immediately a “suspicious” item came up on the screen as a link. It read simply:
Broadcast News Set—by dPooley.

“They found something.”

“Thanks, dPooley. . . .” Ross clicked on the video link and brought up a live surveillance feed of a full-sized television sound stage, complete with green screens. The set looked quiet.

“A news studio.”

Ross clicked out to an overhead map of all the cameras in that location, bringing up a 3-D model of the building it was in. “Hang on a second, I have an idea.”

Philips pointed at the overhead map. “Look, they’ve got a satellite farm. This is a complete broadcasting facility.”

Ross brought up another view—this one of the producer’s control room. It showed an array of large screens as well as a window onto the studio beyond. “Do you think they’re creating the news here at the ranch?”

Philips shook her head. “It’s just one studio, and the news is running 24/7 on a dozen channels at once. This has some other purpose.”

“Let’s roll this back in time.”

“We can do that?”

“Yeah. One of the big selling points of the Beholder system was detecting recurring patterns over time—people casing embassies, that sort of thing. It can store
huge
amounts of video. Here . . .” Ross moved his hands, interacting with invisible controls. “I’m going to run backward to the last time there was activity in this control room.”

The image of the control room stayed relatively unchanged, even though the lighting changed very slightly, indicating a passage of time and voltage fluctuations in the overhead lights. Suddenly the room sprang into life, and there were several people in the control booth. Ross slowed down the rewind and kept rolling it back until there was a hand signal being given to a distant anchor person sitting at the green screen desk. He clicked the video into play mode.

Suddenly audio came through and they could clearly see the computer-enhanced image of the anchor on the central control board screen.

Philips shot a look at Ross. “Anji Anderson!”

He nodded. “So it is. . . .”

“Then she’s here at the ranch.”

On-screen Anderson was delivering the news next to a disturbing graphic with the word “Cybergeddon” in bold, terrifying letters. She was in midsentence. . . .

They were showing video of looting and fires looming over downtown areas throughout the world. Some of the scenes were at night.

Ross clicked the STOP button. He then sent the video out to the darknet, flagged
maximum priority
. Then he and Philips stared into space for several moments in silence, her hand over her mouth in horror.

Philips spoke first. “They’re going to deliberately invoke the Destroy function against everyone else. And in the chaos, they’ll seize control.”

Philips just held her head in her hands.

“We can still do something, Natalie. People know about this now.” She stood up and walked through a pair of French doors to get some fresh air. There was a patio just off the bedroom on the second floor, and it overlooked the grassy plain leading up to the huge main house in the distance. It was lit up like Cape Canaveral. Baroque music could be heard coming softly from the mansion, Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons,
and she could see shadows of party guests moving about on the terraces among ornamental lights.

Ross followed her outside, and they both stood at the railing.

Philips spoke matter-of-factly. “The Weyburn Labs team is preparing to hijack what’s left of the Daemon. They’re going to use it as a means to control people—just like Sobol did. Only this time, for their personal benefit.”

“Nat—”

“Even if we stop their plan, they’ll still seize control of the Daemon.”

The music in the background didn’t match the grimness of their predicament.

Ross gazed at the distant party. “The plutocrat’s ball.”

She nodded. “Celebrating their victory.”

Philips turned to see Ross come up alongside her and put a hand on her shoulder.

She shook her head. “I gave it to them, Jon. We cracked Sobol’s code, and I gave it to the plutocrats. The same API they’ll use as a weapon against the world. How many generations will be reduced to slavery because of me?”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“I’m supposed to be able to find the real message in the noise, Jon. That was my gift.”

“You had faith in democracy, Natalie. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Tears started to roll down her face. “Not you, though. You were the smart one. You never had faith in anyone but yourself.”