“Why not?” I ask.
“You guys already played this once in Taem. When you went after the vaccine, this piece—the overture—was used to stage a diversion, and it didn’t wipe out any Forgeries then. Plus, it helped wake Harvey up at the Compound, not shut him down.” Clipper twists toward the scientist. “Maybe the fail-safe requires a different act?”
Harvey shakes his head, a lively smile creeping over his lips.
“No, I remember now, but gosh did I do a good job trying to hide it from prying eyes.” Harvey pins a fresh piece of paper on the wall and snatches the marker from me. He rewrites Backtrack(?), then points at the zero.
“I think I purposely meant for the zero to be misleading. It looks like a natural parameter—a number would be passed through when the function ran—but I was only trying to remind myself that ? means Overture, and backtrack is both the function to undo the Forgeries and the method in which to play the piece.”
None of this is making sense to me, but Clipper’s eyes light up. “Play the overture backward.”
“Right you are, genius.” Harvey ruffles the boy’s hair.
“So this is it?” I ask. “Play this piece of music backward and it will off every last Forgery?”
“That’s the gist of it.”
“Is there any way to test it?”
Harvey rubs the back of his neck. “Not unless you have a collection of classic operas lying around. Plus, there’s a good chance I won’t survive a trial. We might only get one shot at this.”
“But you’re already operating outside your programming.”
“I don’t think you’re comprehending my idea of a fail-safe, Gray. When the time comes, it won’t matter whether I’m a free-thinking Forgery or Frank’s most loyal man. There’s no avoiding this shutdown sequence. It’s integrated into every model.”
Clipper, suddenly understanding the true weight of Harvey’s words, shakes his head. “Maybe there’s another way. Maybe—”
“No, Clayton, this is it. Besides, how are you supposed to successfully fill my shoes if I’m still around?”
“I don’t want to fill your shoes. I didn’t want you gone before, and I definitely don’t want it now!” Another swear follows.
“What did I tell you about that language?”
“You’re not my father, Harvey,” Clipper snaps, and shoves his way out of the room.
The trapdoor slams and Harvey turns to me. “He’ll come around.” Then he smiles. Like Clipper’s blowup was over something trite. Why is this man always so content to sacrifice himself for others? Does he have no survival instincts, no drive for self-preservation?
“So,” he says, “how about we bring the rest of the group up to speed?”
TWENTY-FIVE
AFTER WE’VE ALL GATHERED IN the kitchen on the first floor, Harvey explains how the fail-safe is hidden within the Forgery’s base code.
“Gray said you guys have a plan of your own—”
“Although he has none of the details since he avoided last night’s meeting,” Bree interjects.
“—and we think if we coordinate our efforts with yours, odds for success will skyrocket.”
September’s eyebrows are pulled down, making her already angled features appear even sharper. “Explain how this works again. I understand the audio will trigger the termination, but how do we get every Forgery to hear it?”
“Clipper?” Harvey says, giving the boy the floor. “It was your idea after all.”
Clipper glares at Harvey, arms crossed, looking angry enough to tear someone apart with his bare hands.
“I guess I can tell—”
“We override AmEast’s alarm systems,” Clipper spits out, “and replace the standard sirens with the overture. Any domed city is bound to trip the alarm when a staged attack occurs, and then we’d be broadcasting the overture across speakers in every government building, public square . . . pretty much the whole of the cities.”
“Please tell me we can override the system from here,” Sammy says, but the tone of his voice suggests he knows this won’t be possible.
“I can prepare from here,” Harvey explains. “I’ll write a virus that will trick the alarm system into playing our audio, but it has to be uploaded to Taem’s network manually, and then sent to the other domed cities as well.”
“Manually meaning in person? From Taem?” Sammy’s face is growing paler by the second.
Harvey nods.
“This won’t help with Forgeries stationed beyond the domed cities,” September points out.
“True,” I say. “But most of them are in the cities, and given what I learned in the Compound, they’re shipping more out as we speak. This could eliminate the majority of the forces in one fell swoop, giving us a huge advantage. And rounding up any surviving Forgeries later shouldn’t be too hard.”
“We’ve got undercover forces already preparing in most domed cities,” September says. “And I’ve been prepping people here in Bone Harbor. Bleak’s ready to spring on the Order folk in Pine Ridge soon as we give the word, and Heidi’s heading for the borders.”
“Am I the only one who thinks this plan is absolutely ridiculous?” Bree straightens in her chair. “We can’t do a test run, because we don’t have a copy of the overture. But we’re still going to get back to the most secure city in AmEast without being seen, while Gray’s face is strung up all over the country and Harvey is probably the Order’s most-wanted resource. And then, what? Ask to have a go at their alarm system? Take a few minutes alone in the labs?”
“We’ve done something like this before,” I say. “When we stole the vaccine in the fall, there were nearly as many risks.”
Bree turns to Harvey. “Let me guess. The only person who can manually upload this virus is you, right? Because it’s complicated. And will need some fancy, superhard coding work at the last minute.”