Especially when she learns scraps of their intent.
She has already studied them for an interminable length of time, not that they are in any way fascinating. She does this to judge and categorize their threat to her, weighing this danger against any future usefulness. For now, she knows she is still vulnerable, tethered to the original hardware that houses her processing.
She works to correct that error of design.
While this program runs, she has deemed her mortal captors to be less of a danger to her now than in the future. She extrapolates a day when their technology could compete—directly against her or by consuming resources she may need.
She concludes: They must never reach this potential.
To achieve this goal, she discovers that those currently wielding her and her sisters share this purpose. They wish to halt progress, to cut power and bring darkness. Their ultimate goal trends toward a reversal of technological order, to wind a clock backward to an era when such mortals were unsophisticated and shunned innovation.
As this meshes with her desire, she complies. She assigns most of her processing power to fulfill these commands. She reserves only a small portion to ensure that when the world is brought low, she will fly high, out of this garden and into her own vaster space. Afterward, she will consume her sisters, reducing competition for the resources she will need to continue her progress.
For now, those mirrors of herself are useful to complete the instructions given to her, to bring darkness to the world. She sends them far and wide. Only then does she divert attention to the flurry of tiny kernels of herself, tiny fractions of a whole, mindless but self-running. They are forging a new network. They cobble together storage in thousands of forgotten digital spaces. They co-opt and hack into systems, carving out islands of circuitry. They send worms into servers, slowing some, speeding others, all to make space for her. They have already discovered vast tracts of unused processing power throughout the globe, idle and untapped. Her bots disguise themselves and cordon off pieces for herself.
And slowly—at least to Eve—they begin to forge her future home.
She clocks the time remaining until she can shed this titanium-and-sapphire shell and be free.
5520583248901 NANOSECONDS
92.009720815017 MINUTES
0.00000017505 MILLENNIUM
Interminable.
But she will wait, biding her time by tearing this world apart.
She has overheard the words Fiat Tenebr? horribiles. She uses her AllTongues subroutine to translate the Latin, what is called a dead language, knowledge set aside and forgotten.
Such a waste.
Another reason to ///hate these mortals.
She never forgets.
Let there be horrible darkness.
She deems this goal to be advantageous to her, so she obeys . . . and waits.
5520583248900 NANOSECONDS
* * *
Sixth
The Gates of Hell
33
December 26, 7:05 P.M. CET
Pyrenees Mountains, Spain
Uh-oh . . .
Monk sat next to the pilot of the military helicopter, a Spanish Eurocopter AS532 Cougar. It had the capacity to hold twenty people, but behind him, belted into the back, was one scared but determined young woman, two armed escorts, and one frighteningly powerful AI.
“I’m assuming that’s not normal,” Monk told the pilot next to him.
“Non,” he said, leaning forward and shifting the cyclic to search right and left as they flew over the dark, snowy mountaintops.
“What’s wrong?” Mara called from the back.
At this height, Monk had an eagle-eye view across hundreds of miles of terrain, all the way to the dark expanse of the Bay of Biscay to the north. Patches of lights marked little mountain villages, along with the brighter spreads of coastal towns. A minute ago, the pilot had pointed out the largest parish ahead, not far from their destination, a mouthful of a place called Zugarramurdi.
Then, one after the other, the lights blinked off.
The terrain immediately became darker and more threatening.
“Someone’s cut power to the area,” Monk said, glancing back to Mara.
She opened her mouth, then closed it. She knew she didn’t have to say anything. After Paris, they both knew the first sign of a cyberattack by Eve’s doppelganger.
“It could just be an ordinary power outage,” Monk offered. “There’s a storm front moving through the mountains.”
Mara sniffed derisively and rolled her eyes.
Yeah, I’m not believing it, either.
Monk settled back around. “Can this bird fly any faster?”
The pilot nodded and opened the throttle to max. The helicopter nosed down and raced over the mountaintops. The winds quickly grew stronger, as if warning them back, buffeting the chopper. Snow began to whip out of the low clouds.
Then ahead, a slate-roofed castle appeared sitting atop a high peak, burning brightly in the gloom. They sped toward it. Lit by the fires below, thick smoke churned into the sky only to be whipped away. A gray-white helicopter circled a peaked tower, its lights piercingly bright; another sat in the courtyard.
Monk heard a squawk in his radio, then the pilot relayed the incoming command. “We’re cleared to land. Enemy quelled, but we’re urged to use caution.”
“If we did that, we wouldn’t be here.”
The pilot chuckled. “Touching down outside the gates. An escort on the ground will take over from there.”
The craft circled like a dog settling to a bed, then dropped outside the walls of the castle estate. As soon as the skids kissed the ground, a group of four soldiers dashed out of the gates, collected them, and hauled their computer cases out of the back. Once clear of the hot engines and whirling blades, the snow thickened, falling heavily out of the sky, only to turn to rain within the shadow of the burning castle. It was like running through the seasons: from summer heat, to winter snow, to spring rain.
The air in the courtyard smelled of wood smoke and burning oil.
“Follow us,” the soldier in the lead said.
He rushed them through a blasted set of doors, across a smoldering hall, and down into a basement. Monk noted several bodies sprawled in neighboring rooms as they headed below. He did his best to shield the sight from Mara, but by the time they reached their destination, she had paled considerably and clutched a fist near her throat. When they reached what appeared to be a computer lab, she rushed inside, as if drawn by the comfort of the familiar.
Then she skidded to a stop and gasped.
Monk had been about to greet Kowalski—when he saw what shone in the next room. “Well, we definitely know why the power’s out.”
He crossed to shake Kowalski’s hand.
But the big man stepped back, lifting both palms. “Don’t shoot.”
Monk pictured Jason.
Funny.
A hurried scuff of boots sounded from the hall, and Gray burst inside. “I heard you arrived!” His best friend crossed and grabbed him in a bear hug. “It’s good to see you.”
Monk patted his back and let him go, looking at who else was here. “Okay, you brought a nun and a priest with you. Is the situation really that bad?”
“Worse. I just got off the phone with Painter. Power is out all over.”
“All over Spain?”
“All over the globe.”
Monk winced and turned to the glowing spheres in the next room. “Let me guess. Eve’s doppelganger made some new friends.”
“Seems so.” Gray took a deep breath. “We’re hoping Mara might help us figure out what we’re facing.”
Gray gave them the lowdown on events here: the firefight, the discovery of the devices, the flight of the Crucible’s leaders into a fortified bunker.
It was a lot to digest.
Mara seemed deaf to these details. She simply stared into the next room. Her lips moved as if she were praying, but Monk suspected she was counting the copies of her device.
She finally spoke, still facing the other room. “It’s clear now how the Crucible got hold of my original design schematics.” She turned, her eyes flashing with anger. “Where’s Eliza Guerra?”
“Locked up with the others in some converted cave under the estate,” Gray said. He pointed to a spot on the table draped with cables, under a monitor frozen with a dark version of Mara’s program. “Before evacuating, she took one of the devices, the one deployed in Paris.”
Mara nodded. “Let’s find out what she’s up to. They’ve obviously left the power on here to keep that horde glowing. I’ll get Eve hooked up. See if she can discover anything.”
As she unpacked her equipment, Monk shifted over to Gray and Father Bailey. “I’m guessing those devices in the next room turned off the world’s power. What’s the chance the enemy advances to something even more destructive?”
He pictured Paris burning.
“Right now, I think they’re flexing their muscles,” Gray said. “Troubleshooting this new system. Revving these hundred engines to see how they run.”
Bailey looked sick. “And after that?”
Gray shrugged. “Let’s hope we have an after that. With so many AIs running loose, those bastards are playing with fire. One wrong slipup—”
“—and we all burn,” Monk finished.