*
"An errant flash drive?" Julia questioned Marco in a gray-walled windowless room. "The whole incident was a set-up from the beginning?"
"It's possible," Marco replied leaning back into a sofa and putting his feet up on the table in front of him. They had retreated to the basement of FedSec's main office building where secure rooms with recording devices and video cameras were available for discussion of classified topics. A clock on the wall displayed the time as 1:10 am. Marco had entered the facility minutes earlier to personally access the room's operations and shut down the listening and viewing recorders for their conversation. "We need a new place to work."
"Impossible to move at this point. Besides the issue is not the building, the attack was against our servers and software. We'll have to fix Horizon."
"Fix Horizon? Some hacker could have lined the server rooms with damaging code aimed not only at listening to us but also stealing every file we have. He probably already has every file we have."
"You think we are too far along with the build-out at Horizon to take another course of action?"
"With our plans?"
"Yes."
"Well we would have to stick with the main concepts, the core structure we had decided on is definitely far enough along. But the details, no."
"Hmm, don't you think a hacker only wants the details? Wouldn't they already be suspicious we were working on global surveillance tracking? Conspiracy theories often have a way of actually being true."
"He may have been suspicious, but now the rumors have been confirmed."
"That's okay, as long as our enemies do not have the details. We can change the specifics and throw off the advantage they thought they had obtained by stealing from us."
"I don't know. How differently can you code a program to do the surveillance work we expect?"
"Coding is not my area of expertise. But we can have our Silicon Valley friend take a look for us, and let us know if we are okay to move forward or if we have to start again. He could also check the physical Horizon infrastructure and confirm if we really have to worry about moving."
"If you are speaking about the friend I think you are speaking about, contacting him would be extremely risky. He said we should only reach out in a genuine emergency. People cannot know his connection to us and to this program."
"We have an emergency. A hacker has infiltrated Horizon and possibly stolen all of the Horizon files. Our plans are in jeopardy. You have quality people working on a possible breach, but you do not have the depth of technological prowess our friend can access. He has a team capable of conducting a much more thorough search than your analysts to uncover if we are truly at risk."
"Maybe we are better off not playing that card right now. We can fix a potential breach ourselves. If this situation becomes volatile, we are going to need our friend in the future. I do not want to cry wolf."
"We are not crying wolf. We already know the system has been attacked. What are you really afraid of?"
"Being hasty."
"Or being exposed for having made a mistake?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You took a flash drive from a reporter and put an access file directly into Horizon's system."
"Be careful with the words you are using, Julia."
"I'm only wondering if the real reason you are reluctant to contact our friend is because you have more to hide than an innocent mistake."
Marco slowly lifted his feet off the table and deliberately placed them on the floor as he moved to sit up straight. "Are you accusing me of irresponsible behavior?"
"No."
"What are you attempting to say with your statements?"
"Marco, I'm not your enemy and I'm not accusing you of any wrongdoing. But we are in a dangerous place. Our activity is not public information for a reason. We are not interested in having the public learn about our plans because the public may not appreciate our intentions. We are also being forced to establish a plan no future administration could disrupt. You and I will not be around to see COSA through to fruition. We will be replaced and we will die, but the system will carry on. We have to make sure we do not disrupt the ability of this project to live on after we are gone, and the only way to do that is to ensure the foundation is established today. Dallas Winter is a friend of yours, but you and I no longer have friends on the outside. We gave up our 'regular world' connections to ensure our nation's long-term security. The damage has already been done, very few names are connected to COSA, but two of them are ours. Under no circumstances can our positions be revealed, nor anyone learn the details of the operation. COSA will function autonomously. Future administrations will not be able to dismantle the legacy we have built, and more importantly, they will not want to. We are constructing a functioning, automatic process designed to stand-alone forever. We cannot make mistakes."
"I'm well aware of the stakes. I know the future we are building. I have been a champion of this plan from the beginning."
"We are hardly the beginning, Marco. Many minds before us set out on this path."
"Yes I know. But we have carried their ideas further than anyone. Like you said, COSA has to operate autonomously. We are the first administrators to solidify the reach of our intentions because we have identified the money. Once this project is financed as we have proposed, the rollout can continue without interference from levels of government. The real beginning is now."
Julia sighed. "If you believe that then there's even more reason to be vigilant. We are moving forward, there is no room to turn back." She stood and walked towards him. Sitting, she took his hand. "I did not mean to sound like I was accusing you of being negligent. But I think we, all of us, have to discuss how we are going to protect the operation we have built. We are going forward with this program, total surveillance is the best option for our country, for the world. Imagine an online file for every human on earth, immediately accessible to match suspects before there is an incident. We can bring terrorism to its knees. That's the goal here Marco, the end of living in fear."
"I agree and I swear to you I know my responsibilities to our project."
"I know you do. But we have to call our friend. We should be totally transparent and prepared to establish our own internal security protocol for moving forward together. We need to talk to him."
Marco dropped his head and stared at the floor. "I agree. But I want to be clear." He looked up at Julia, his eyes rimmed with defiance. "Dallas does not know anything. She saw a bunch of unidentified policy papers, nothing more. She does not know about COSA or programs connected to the broader project implementation."
"I'm sure you're correct, but Dallas Winter is not the disrupter I'm worried about."
"You want to find out who the hacker is?"
"Of course. But not only who. We need to uncover the information this hacker took from Horizon, and the plans he has for the evidence he found."