Vortex

  The optical camouflaging concealed them long enough for them to hop straight over the turnstiles without activating the retina scanners, then they pulled up Tom’s mental map. They needed to get to one of Obsidian Corp.’s neural access ports. It was their first task.

  They slipped out of the hallways sprinkled with employees and ventured into the sectors of Obsidian Corp. minimally fit for human presence where the lights were dim, the floors lined with power plates for the various machines. This was where Praetorians slid through the halls on a standard patrol, with others in sleep mode, tucked against the walls.

  Remember, stay off the floors, Vik thought to them as they waited in the doorway to the machine-heavy sector.

  Tom nodded, even though Vik couldn’t see it. Not only would they get electrocuted by the conductive floors powering the Praetorians, they’d set off every alarm in the place if their footfalls tripped the sensors on the ground.

  They stood there, so close they were all touching, optically camouflaged inside the doorway, waiting for a Praetorian.

  Tom’s heart began to pound. They’d practiced this next part in the Spire twenty-five times, using the old Praetorian in storage. That one couldn’t see through their optical camouflage. Now it would count.

  Tom drew a sharp breath when a Praetorian circled around the corner, its curving metallic head atop its pendulous base. It slid toward them down the hallway, and Tom felt like worms were writhing in his gut. One command from a remote operator, and these machines could flood the hallway with poison gas, could electrocute them, could slice their heads off with lasers, or crush them to death. If Wyatt’s code wasn’t perfect, if one of them slipped, if Vik’s fingers weren’t nimble enough, they all died.

  As the machine slid past them, Tom seized its rounded head and swung himself onto the base. He felt it sway as Vik and Wyatt eased themselves on as well. He twisted around the neck to expose the back panel, and Wyatt quickly stripped it away to expose the control chip.

  Just as the pinpoint camera of the Praetorian lit up, a lethal red light of an alarm igniting in its depths, Vik yanked out its control chip and set about jamming the new one in its place. Tom watched, heart in his throat, wishing his fingers had been nimble enough to do it. But it worked. The Praetorian’s system blinked out, reset.

  They waited. Tom could sense Wyatt and Vik’s tension behind the optical camouflage. He could hear them breathing rapidly.

  And then the Praetorian powered back on again, utterly still for a long moment as it processed Wyatt’s SE Janus coding. The machine resumed sliding down the corridor with them on top of it. Tom shoved his mouth into the crook of his arm to muffle the insane urge to laugh, even though he knew any sound from him might trigger alarms. He felt Vik shift his weight, arm brushing his, and Wyatt’s hand pressed up against his. Her fingers gripped his and tightened until his hand throbbed.

  It helped him that she was nervous, too. It helped a lot.

  Relax, Tom thought to her. We’ll be in and out.

  The Praetorian was taking them on Wyatt’s preprogrammed course to the nearest neural access port. Tom would hook into the system, and the search program installed in his processor would begin hunting for the data pattern that matched the audio signal blaring through the earbuds into Yuri’s ears in the Pentagonal Spire, and therefore straight into Obsidian Corp.’s database. As soon as they had its location, Wyatt had one algorithm to order their Praetorian to return them back to where they’d come from, and another to send the Praetorian straight back to that transmitter. It would emit an electrical discharge to fry the transmitter along with the supercomputer it was attached to.

  By the time the transmitter was destroyed and the alarms began, they’d already be on the Interstice, heading home to Arlington, Virginia.

  Simple.

  The journey through Obsidian Corp. to the nearest neural access port felt interminable. They shifted positions clumsily, each with a foot on the base of the Praetorian, the other hanging into the air, all three of them clinging to the long, curved neck. The biggest test was the moment the Praetorian passed the first inert guard machines, all in sleep mode. Tom held his breath as they slid past those pinprick camera eyes, his heart in his throat, legs trembling.

  But they passed them, unseen, shielded by their optical camouflage, hallway after hallway, machine after machine. The gauntlet of Praetorians remained still. Tom felt like he might puke. He was so grateful he wasn’t doing this alone.

  They passed a window gazing upon the black night over the icy landscape of Antarctica. And then the Praetorian stopped. They were at a neural access port. A tremendous flood of relief poured through Tom. He maneuvered awkwardly, slipping his fingers under the tunic portion of his optical camouflage, working a neural wire out of his pocket. He jammed it into the access port. It was time to let the search program installed in his head locate the audio pattern from the transmitter in Obsidian Corp.’s systems. He hesitated.

  Are you guys sure you can keep me upright while I’m hooked in? I’d rather not fall and get electrocuted, Tom thought to them.

  I’ve got you, Vik thought.

  Are you sure? Tom thought dubiously.

  Is Vik sure? Wyatt also thought dubiously.

  Vik’s pride was pricked. Hey, I am strong like an ox or a Yuri.

  Don’t worry, I’ll help hold you up, Tom, Wyatt thought.

  Tom waited until Vik had anchored an arm around him, squashing him up against the neck of the Praetorian, then he hooked the other end of the neural wire into the back of his neck. The search program in his head triggered and began rapidly scanning through Obsidian Corp.’s database. Tom had a search plan of his own in mind. He jolted out of himself into the vast tangle of information sparking through Obsidian Corp.’s systems, knowing he might be able to locate the transmitter before the program did. The sooner they could leave, the better.

  But Obsidian Corp. wasn’t like the Pentagonal Spire. Tom had no familiarity with the network of pipelines. He kept finding himself linking to external flows of information, feeds from the offices of congressmen straight into Vengerov’s databases . . . feeds from inside homes, buildings, from smart appliances, from intelligent streetlights. . . . He found himself in Obsidian Corp.’s external defense systems, and then he shot through a pipeline into the NSA’s Fusion Center in Utah, where the surveillance footage of every person in America was being stored. Then he snapped back into his own processor, and the search results blinked in his vision center, showing him a warehouse, empty but for machines and a supercomputer—and Yuri’s transmitter.

  But something strange happened. A wind of stellar power seemed to seize him, dragging him down another pipeline. It was like disappearing down a vortex or a black hole for an instant, because the pipeline drew him irresistibly into another subsystem. For a fleeting moment, Tom’s consciousness was in the datastream, the zeroes and ones dancing in his brain, and his mind met another mind. It was that same disconcerting sensation he’d experienced finding the third neural processor interfacing with Heather’s ship.

  The other neural processor seared his consciousness, and through someone else’s eyes, Tom gazed at a reflection swimming across the polished blackness of a nearby screen.

  Joseph Vengerov seemed to be staring right back at him, and for a chilling moment as their minds were linked, something curious and dark and stinging with possibilities stirred on all sides of him.

  “If it isn’t the ghost in the machine.” Vengerov spoke right to his own shadowy reflection. “Is that you, Yaolan?”

  Tom felt a spike of panic and reeled back out of Vengerov’s mind and into himself so abruptly, he almost lurched over. But Wyatt and Vik were practically bear-hugging him to the Praetorian, squashing his cheek against the metal pole, and their thoughts began bombarding him.

  Did you get the location? Vik thought.

  Where’s the transmitter? Wyatt thought.

  Tom straightened, bathed in sweat, anxiety a living animal clawing in hi
s chest.

  We need to get out of here, he thought to them, cold with dread. We need to go now. I think Vengerov knows we’re here.

  And then the first alarm split the air.

  Something triggered in their Praetorian. Its metal neck began to retract into its body. Tom heard Wyatt gasp as the metal slid between their fingers, less and less of it there to grip. Then Tom heard her pounding frantically at her forearm keyboard, and her command sent it springing back to its full height.

  Even that action proved dangerous. The deviation from programmed behavior must have registered in the system, must’ve blared their location to every machine in the building, because another Praetorian swung around from the next room, heading straight for them. Tom realized what was about to happen, and reached out to wrench Vik and Wyatt to a crouch as the new Praetorian spliced a laser through the air where they’d been. Their Praetorian fought back, spliced its own laser through the air, razing the other machine into smoking pieces.

  Wyatt! Knock out the floors! Tom thought to her.

  Then she jammed her neural wire into the access port, jabbed the other end into her neck, and unleashed her virus into Obsidian Corp.’s wireless systems to knock out the electric floors and disable their surveillance system. It was their emergency program—in case this disastrous scenario happened.

  Tom’s heart careened against his rib cage as he wondered whether it was working yet, whether the floors were out or not. But the next Praetorian swung into the hallway with them, and their Praetorian shrank automatically into a battle stance before Wyatt could stop it, minimizing itself as a target, jarring all of them, sending them hurtling off.

  Vik shrieked, Wyatt yelped, and Tom squeezed his eyes shut as his back hit the floor. They barely noticed their Praetorian destroying the other

  For a moment, they all lay there, locked in place, waiting.

  Program worked, Wyatt thought.

  Tom muffled his automatic laughter.

  Quiet! I don’t know if I knocked out surveillance! Wyatt thought. Air shimmered as she moved back over to the access port and hooked into it again. And then a split second later, “Okay, surveillance is out, after all.”

  Tom and Vik lay there, heaving for breath.

  “More are coming,” Vik said.

  “Probably hundreds,” Wyatt agreed.

  “Run to the Interstice?” Tom suggested.

  “Sprint!” Vik gasped.

  They all scrambled to their feet and dashed back the way they’d come, running so fast, they almost tripped over themselves. Their Praetorian rolled alongside them.

  Another Praetorian swerved around the corner, and they dove as their Praetorian lashed out with its laser, but the other Praetorian shrank in time to dodge, and its answering laser flared out, slicing off the weaponry of their protector. For a moment, Tom, Vik, and Wyatt stood there, paralyzed, realizing they were defenseless—but their Praetorian whipped forward, an electrical surge building in its base.

  “That’s going to travel across the floor, come on!” Tom shouted, and they swerved into the nearest doorway, slamming the door behind them. They found themselves heaving for breath, trapped inside an icy cold warehouse.

  Tom needed more air. He tore down the hood of the optical camouflaging, and so did Wyatt and Vik. For a moment it was like they were three detached heads floating around, and Tom frantically spun in circles, searching for a way out, for something they could grab or do in here to escape. . . .

  Nothing. Nothing. Not even a neural access port. There were only two doors. One led to a hallway rapidly filling with Praetorians, and the other led outside.

  Outside. Tom shuddered.

  “I don’t have any ideas,” he confessed. “Do you guys?”

  “This was a bad plan. This was a bad, bad plan,” Wyatt whispered. “How did Obsidian Corp. find out we were here? We were so careful! She tangled her fingers in her hair. I must’ve missed something.”

  “It’s not your fault, it’s mine. He noticed I was in the system,” Tom murmured.

  “But I hid your IP! You shouldn’t have been detectable!”

  No, he shouldn’t have been. And then a terrible suspicion swept over him.

  He was looking for me.

  Vengerov had called him “the ghost in the machine.” Tom remembered that term. Blackburn had said it first. His mind filled with the image of Yuri that day on the stairwell, following them down. The dots connected in his brain, making sense of it all.

  Vengerov had been listening that day. He’d heard Blackburn, and he learned someone else like Tom and Medusa existed. Then he learned that the ghost was a friend of Tom’s. It couldn’t have been difficult from there, extrapolating the likeliest suspect. Tom had a notoriously extraordinary friend. Medusa.

  That’s why Vengerov approached Tom about giving Medusa a virus. And Tom stupidly went to Medusa and told her LM Lymer Fleet had only been surveilling her because she was winning too much—he’d been passing along Vengerov’s lie. That wasn’t the reason Vengerov was watching her. Tom was the reason she wasn’t on guard anymore. Vengerov was hunting that ghost and he believed it was Medusa. Tom may have doomed her. He’d doomed them all.

  Vik paced in a frantic circle. “There’s going to be more of those Praetorians soon,” he said, eyes on the door to the hallway. “We have to get out of here. We can’t stay! They’ll bust through that door any minute!”

  “There’s nowhere to go, Vik.” Wyatt hugged herself, visibly shaking. “We’re never getting through those machines. That’s the only path. The only other way is outside.”

  Outside. Tom had done that already, and it hadn’t been winter then. It would be colder. Outside was death. He knew that in his bones.

  Suddenly a voice boomed out, filling the air around them. Tom shivered as he recognized the upper-crust British accent with a hint of Russian. “To the invader or invaders in my complex, salutations!”

  Vik and Wyatt grew rigid. Tom held his breath. Vengerov sounded like he was enjoying himself.

  “I apologize for the welcome you’ve received from my killing machines, but alas, you took us quite by surprise. I know you are trapped, and I know where. Bravo for making it this far. I dearly regret that you disabled my surveillance system, because I would greatly enjoy seeing your face as I assure you that at this very moment, fifty Praetorians are converging on your position, primed to bring down that wall on my command.”

  Vik spun toward the door again, like he expected it to explode in on them. Wyatt’s head bowed downward. Tom couldn’t stop shaking.

  “But I see no reason for needless bloodshed or a dramatic display of force,” Vengerov went on. “Therefore, I shall give you this opportunity to surrender yourselves to my custody. If my machines discover you facedown on the floor, disarmed, with your hands linked behind your heads, they will spare you. Otherwise, they will kill you like dogs. I give you ninety seconds to make your decision about whether you intend to live or die.”

  His voice cut off abruptly, leaving Tom, Vik, and Wyatt shivering in the warehouse, eyes wide and frightened.

  “We have to do it,” Wyatt said. “We have to give up.”

  Vik was ashen. “We’ll get thrown in prison for this.”

  “It’s better than being dead, Vik! We’ll tell Vengerov the truth. He rigged up Yuri, so we came here to free him. Vengerov can’t talk about doing things that are wrong. . . . He’s the one who probably ordered Yuri’s neural processor destroyed!”

  “Just like he could do to ours,” Vik pointed out darkly. “He didn’t care about Yuri—what makes you think he won’t do it to us?”

  “He won’t,” she stammered. “He—he can’t. We’re still useful to the military, and Vengerov’s on the same side as we are. Maybe we’ll face some sort of disciplinary thing. Guys?”

  “No one knows we’re here, Wyatt,” Vik countered, his eyes intent. “He doesn’t have to hand us back over. He could kill us or do anything he wants to us.”

  “We have t
o surrender. What choice do we have?” Wyatt said intently. “And why aren’t you saying anything, Tom? What do you think?”

  They both looked at him.

  Tom felt a strange, odd calm despite his certainty of doom. He knew what would happen. If they resisted, they died. If they surrendered, well, Joseph Vengerov had manufactured the processors, and he’d manufactured the census device. When he caught them, he’d demand far more than their excuses—he’d stick them under the census device and cull them for every last secret in their heads. He’d tear the truth out of them, and he’d learn what Tom could do.

  Who would stop him? They weren’t in the United States. They were on a distant continent. No one knew they were here, and there was nothing stopping Vengerov from doing whatever he wanted. Vengerov would find out Tom had been in his head, seen through his eyes. He’d realize Tom was the ghost in the machine he’d been tracking, and when he culled Tom even more, he’d learn that there were two ghosts and Medusa was the other one. Tom would give her away and he knew he couldn’t stop that from happening.

  Tom closed his eyes. He couldn’t let that happen. Vik and Wyatt didn’t know about Medusa, so they could surrender. They should surrender.

  “Wyatt’s right. We don’t have a choice,” Tom said to them. “Our only way to survive this is to hope Vengerov shows mercy. I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would go this way. Just lie on the floor.”

  Tom made a show of lying down, to be sure Wyatt and Vik would do it, too. When they were both down, gazing at the floor, breathing so hard he could see it, Tom eased himself back up to his feet again.

  There were a million things he wished he could say to Vik and Wyatt, but he knew even if he tried, he wouldn’t get the words out. They’d all get tangled up in his throat, and his friends would both realize what he was about to do and maybe talk him out of it—and he’d let them persuade him because he didn’t want to do this. He didn’t. It killed him to think he’d gotten them into this; he’d give anything to see them escape. But the only one he could help now was Medusa. He could still send her a message. He could warn her Vengerov was onto her.