Protocol 7

NORTH OXFORD, ENGLAND

Spector Safe House

Hayden knew that what he was about to do could cost him his life. But if I don’t do it, he asked himself, what is there to live for?

As he walked down the deserted subway track he thought about all the people above him, from the university, the government, and beyond, who had called the shots on this project—people he’d never meet. They had taken his life’s work from him…or so they thought. Now he had one chance—just one—to take back what was his, or to live the rest of his life as a failure. A zero. A slave.

And what about Oliver? He was the greatest man he’d ever known, his close friend—his mentor. And if all that Simon had uncovered could be believed, he was trapped in the Antarctic and begging for his life, begging to be rescued! The Spector—the completed, empowered amazing Spector—could be the only vehicle in the world that could save his best friend’s life. It was the only vehicle capable of being undetected in the water and navigating the extreme ice in Antarctica.

It didn’t matter how dangerous it was.

He had to do it.

He picked his way down the last few yards of subway track with remarkable steadiness, painfully aware of the mustiness and stink of standing water. This is something I won’t miss, he told himself as he used the old-fashioned metal key to open the door to the security room. It was hard to believe it had been less than a day, just hours, since he had first brought Simon down here. And even harder to believe the years he’d spent in this place were almost behind him forever. He placed his hand against the biometric sensor plate. Moments later, he was inside shutting the heavy door behind him and looking up at the high steel arches of the domed ceiling and the cradles just below them.

One vehicle looked nearly complete. The other was barely a skeleton now.

Teah rolled and teetered up to him as he moved more deeply into the safe house. “Construction of Spector I is complete, Hayden,” she said. “The power test can begin at any time.”

Ah, yes, he thought. The last challenge. This is the one challenge that had terrified them all; the test that was so perilous to perform that the authorities insisted that Spector III be smuggled out of England and sent all the way down to the Antarctic, over his strenuous objections. Too dangerous, he had been told. Too noticeable. The electromagnetic pulse from the initial power-up of the engines, even to test levels, would tell all sorts of people that something very odd was going on under the River Thames—things that UNED and the others wanted to keep to themselves. He had argued and resisted and out-and-out refused. “I can shield it,” he insisted. “I can make it so quiet even you won’t know I’m doing it.”

Is that why they took it from me? he wondered now, for the first time. Because I was too pushy? Or because I really thought I could keep secrets from them?

It didn’t matter anymore. He would find out in the next few minutes if he had been right about shielding the electromagnetic pulse at power-up or not.

Andrew’s bulky safe phone buzzed in the pocket of Hayden’s jacket. He pulled it out and barked into it. It was Simon, babbling about the problems with his team. Hayden simply didn’t have the time—or the interest—to tell him that if the power-up test didn’t work up to specs, it wasn’t going to matter who was waiting upstairs or knocking on the goddamn door, the Spector simply wouldn’t have enough power to push itself under the water. He got off the phone as quickly as he could and immediately forgot why Simon had called in the first place.

He had work to do.

“Ready?” Teah said.

“No,” he answered honestly, “but let’s do it anyway.”

She tilted her head in an entirely un-robotic way and said, “Seventeen seconds to power-up.” Huge dynamos, like something out of an ancient Frankenstein movie, ground to life at opposite ends of the room, their whine moving up the scale. And those are just the little ones, he thought.

A huge power coupling attached to the underside of the Spector, thick as his waist, suddenly twitched like a living thing. Good, he thought, though he was startled by the thing’s power. Just how it’s supposed to act.

He moved quickly to the security consoles. This was where he would watch the data on the power-up and monitor the coherence of the shield. Even if the electromagnetic pulse was twice the size that he expected, he could still keep it from being detected by triggering the appropriate counter-pulse by hand.

“Six seconds,” Teah said, rolling up to stand close behind him. It was oddly comforting to have a friend—even a cybernetic one—nearby at a moment like this. “Five.”

“Oh, do give it a rest, darlin’,” he said, scanning the console.

Lightning spidered out of the dynamos. The skin of Spector I glittered, and tiny fingers of lightning rippled all along the surface, making it look as solid as steel one moment and as insubstantial as a semi-translucent insect the next.

The indicators on the console danced for him. Green…green…

“Son of a gun,” he said to Teah. “I do believe it—”

Suddenly, Teah’s massive cylindrical right arm smashed into the console with tremendous power. The clash of metal against metal, of shattering glass and silicon, drove him back. “Teah!” he shouted. “What the—”

She tore her arm free and brought it high. Hayden had to jump away to avoid the swing as she rammed it into the console again.

Suddenly, Teah was possessed, smashing apart Hayden’s creation in some demonic rampage. As he shielded himself from her rage, he knew there was only one explanation: she was being controlled by Remote Access Intervention. The drawback of AIs was that unlike humans they could be remotely manipulated, and this made them both vulnerable and—in the wrong hands—unpredictable and dangerous. Until now though, he’d thought that Teah was shielded from this attack. He hadn’t considered the possibility that RAI was able to penetrate the computer code.

Hayden covered his head as sparks illuminated the walls of the cavern.

“Teah, no!” he said. “Don’t do it, don’t! The shield won’t hold; they’ll know!”

“Power test complete in five seconds,” Teah said calmly, as if she wasn’t tearing the security console to pieces right in front of him. “Three…two…one.”

There was a massive whump as the electromagnetic pulse—the one that Hayden was supposed to counter—boomed through the room and beyond. Hayden could feel it echo through his body, making his bones ring like a broken bell.

The Spector glowed with a ghostly blue light. The remaining indicators still flickering on the ruined console were green. The vessel had passed the test—it was functioning perfectly.

The only problem was that now everyone from here to the orbiting satellite ring would know.





ENGLAND

Undisclosed Location

Seventeen miles northeast of the safe house, in a remote location only a few knew existed, the electromagnetic pulse from the Spector boomed like the sudden, unmistakable blast of a not-so-distant bomb.

The junior surveillance officer on duty noticed the spike on six different sensor outputs at the same instant. He almost shot out of his seat as he touched the communications panel and shouted into it.

“Sir! I need you to look at this, now.”

Two supervising officers, Dalton and Bryan, appeared out of the shadows in an instant. They recognized the lights and read-outs without being told what they were looking at.

“What the hell?” Bryan said, almost in awe.

“Hold on a second,” he said to Dalton. “Let’s do a calibration of the system. I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

Bryan requested the computer do a calibration of the sensor array, and then asked the young duty officer if he had a location.

“North Oxford, sir,” the younger man said immediately. “The Spector site.”

“Son of a—”

An artificial intelligence module had leapt to life the instant the pulse hit the sensors; now it had finished its multivariate situational analysis. It interrupted the humans to tell them it had processed all the information available, sent out instructions for more data, and received and processed it in the time they had spoken. “Security breach in Oxford Construction Facility,” the AI said, almost sounding bored. “Counterforce Protocol initiated.”

The AI had deployed an armed counter-insurgency team before the officers even had a chance to recognize that something was wrong.

Four miles further to the north, in a concealed and sensor-shielded airfield, the blades of a specialized chopper were already beginning to turn, and a team of special operations officers in full gear ran for the aircraft, ready for the task. The helicopter itself was pitch black and oddly fibrous, its hull completely invisible to sonar, radar, and mass detector. No military markings or civilian call letters were visible; they couldn’t be, they would jeopardize the secrecy of the safe house.

It would take them less then twelve minutes to reach the facility.





NORTH OXFORD, ENGLAND

Spector Safe House, 12:29 PM

Hayden turned on his heels and ran.

Teah was still at the security console, pounding it to bits with every ounce of her cybernetic strength. Hayden knew with absolute certainty that the entire plan was blown.

The Spector he had worked so hard to make, the vehicle he was this close to taking for his own was lost to him forever.

He knew all about the Counterforce protocols. Hell, he’d helped to write them years earlier. They were an armed response to attempted sabotage or invasion, and that was exactly what he was doing. He knew where the Special Forces detachment that would respond was stationed, and he knew exactly when they’d arrive.

I have to get the hell out of here, he thought…and at the same time, he was formulating a Plan B—the image of the completed Spector flashed before his eyes, and he saw himself hijacking the vessel bound for Antarctic continent. A last, desperate stratagem that he and Simon and the team just might be able to pull off…

If I can get what I need out of here before they arrive, he told himself.

And he already knew the timing: he had twelve minutes.

* * *

The chopper hovered over the surface of the Thames so low that it churned the water into a gray froth. Seven members of the Counterforce team dressed in black SWAT uniforms and night vision goggles jumped out of the cargo hold and hit the water with barely a splash.

They would gain access to the safe house through a special escape hatch in the double-hulled dome, even if it meant cutting through the metal with a laser. It wouldn’t take them more than a few minutes.

* * *

Hayden started scrambling through the various components scattered on his work desk. He looked over his shoulder at his insane robot as he slapped a small device onto the holo-display and started downloading files he knew he would need.

She had finished her destruction. Now she was just standing there, motionless, over the smoking wreckage of the console. As he glanced at her he saw her head twitch in an almost human way, as if she was listening to a voice only she could hear.

How could it have happened? he asked himself. How could Teah have been seized by Remote Access Intervention? Somebody had the ability to seize control of the AI from a distance—probably a very long distance, through the satellite net itself—and make it do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted.

To hell with that, he thought, and turned away from his traitorous creation for the last time. Two can play that game.

Nine and a half minutes and counting.

Stay focused, he told himself. Don’t miss anything. There were several key modules that he needed to disconnect and take with him as he fled the facility, or no future plan of any kind would work. He knew that the completed Spector would need to be rigged differently, so he had one chance to grab what he needed.

There was no going back now.

Nine minutes.

His fingers started shaking as he raced through hundreds of security codes that allowed him to access the deepest, most classified files. He was manipulating the entire system through a sequence of passwords that he had created himself to keep others out and protect his work—and now he was the one doing the damage.

There was a faint clang above him—the noise of metal on metal, coming from outside, from beyond the dome itself. Are those footsteps? he asked himself. Or something landing…rolling? He could feel a wild panic rising inside him as the rumbling grew louder.

Six minutes.

He snatched the little memory device off its docking pad. Time to make a run for it, he thought as he fumbled for the last bits of equipment and started sprinting toward the back door. I can’t risk being captured, he thought as he ran. I can’t.

He had never felt such fear before. His body trembled uncontrollably as he filled his arms with a bulky tangle of hardware and ran.

Four min—

He was fifteen feet from the escape hatch when the lights went out.

Damn it, he thought in the middle of the darkness. They were even faster than I thought.

There was a hum and a clank as the emergency lights switched themselves on. Suddenly the ghostly shapes of the Spectors were illuminated by harsh white beams that sliced up from the floor. The outer skin of the vessels, which automatically mimicked the environment, made the vehicles almost invisible. Hayden, short of breath, skidded to a stop and shoved what he had collected into a small duffel bag. He forced himself to keep going, moving very slowly and, in absolute silence, toward the secret escape route.

He was starting to panic.

There were footsteps coming from above. He could hear them. He looked up to see a ceiling hatch directly above Spector I slowly unlock and open. The black ops team lowered themselves through the opening, like spiders dropping in on their prey, holding laser-guided weapons mounted with lethal-looking canisters.

Hayden recognized the attachments to the weapons. Immobilization gas, he told himself. No intruder would have a chance once the gas had reached their system. And this time, I’m the intruder.

He had only one chance, and he decided to take it. He crouched down close to the floor and kept going. Just a few steps, he told himself. Just get out this door; they don’t even know it exists. It’s not on any of the schematics. I made sure of that. Just slip outside, into the tunnel, get to Simon and the others and—

He heard the hissing when he was less than ten feet from the exit.

* * *

The surveillance team released the immobilization gas as they carefully scanned the entire facility for intruders. There was no reason to wait; the facility was supposed to be empty. If anyone was there, they deserved to be gassed; if no one was there, the only cost was a few ounces of antipersonnel aerosol. Either way the Counterforce Team members were already masked. That was standard operating procedure.

It took only seconds for the scanning AI to locate the intruder. It spoke to the team members through the earpieces in their helmets, describing him in detail, feeding them his location as seen through the security cameras.

They spread out into a wide crescent and moved slowly across the bay, following directions, using the equipment as cover, staying quiet. They were in no hurry. Their intruder had nowhere to go.

He was trapped.

Hayden barely made it to the door, duffel bag in hand, before his body started reacting to the gas. His vision distorted as he watched his own hand reaching for the doorknob. He felt his knees weaken as if his joints had suddenly turned to rubber.

He heard a sound behind him, the clack-clack of a weapon being cocked. He didn’t want to turn around—his turn had come, he told himself irrationally—but his body was beyond his control. He spun slowly, like a disoriented swimmer underwater, and saw a man with a gas mask and goggles, dressed in black, pointing a large rifle toward him.

At me, he thought.

He was beginning to lose feeling in his body. He knew it was over.

But he could still sense, just a little, a strong set of hands grabbing him from behind, dragging him back toward the door.

The voice was familiar, though he couldn’t quite place it. A small but effective dose of the immobilization gas had penetrated his system, and he was falling into semi-consciousness. He felt bodiless, but was still strangely aware of everything around him.

“You grab the module case, and I’ll lift him,” the voice said.

Seconds later, everything went black.





NORTH OXFORD, ENGLAND

The Hidden Entrance

“So I guess this all makes sense to you somehow,” Samantha said, her voice dripping with weary sarcasm.

Jonathan was sitting in the front seat of the Rover. Samantha on the far side of the back seat, watching the empty road and waiting. Waiting for Ryan to finally arrive, waiting for Simon and Andrew to return from the underground tunnel with Hayden in tow, waiting for the world to just return to normal.

Neither of them was very good at waiting. They sniped at each other instead.

“Sam,” Jonathan started, knowing he didn’t want to get into it with her—

“Sam?” she asked. “You haven’t called once in the last year and you feel comfortable calling me ‘Sam?’”

“Okay then, Samantha. My apologies, I didn’t know using a nickname had anything to do with frequency of contact.”

Samantha gave a small snort. “Seriously Jon, stop being yourself.” She turned back toward the entrance of the tube and silently ordered Simon: Come back. NOW.

She’d never been able to completely turn off her feelings for Simon, though she had struggled with them many times. Now, though, everything seemed to be spinning out of control, and she didn’t know what to anticipate next. She had no idea how to feel about anything anymore.

She leaned her head against the cool glass of the Rover’s window, closed her eyes, and sighed deeply.

Jonathan broke the silence.

“Samantha,” he said, “I know how outrageous all of this must seem to you. The secret messages, the wild car chase, the masked men in your flat…it’s crazy, I know.” Samantha’s eyes slowly opened, but she didn’t move her forehead from the coolness of the window. It felt good: solid, stable. “I’m not sure how all of the pieces connect yet,” he said. “None of us are. I’ve only been in England for a few hours, and I’m still not sure if it’s my people or Hayden’s or somebody else entirely who’s chasing us, or what they know. But Sam—Samantha—I came back because I was genuinely afraid that something was going to happen to Simon if I didn’t.”

Samantha pinched out a smile that Jonathan couldn’t see. “Simon is more than capable of taking care of himself,” she said, “Unless you’ve got some government-issued super-ninja assassin squad waiting in the wings.”

“If you’re referring to his self-defense skills…I know how good they are; I trained with him. But this is different, Sam. Very different.”

“It can’t all be about that stupid message and the chess diary,” she said. “I mean, really? A diary?”

Jonathan didn’t answer at first, and she wasn’t surprised. For as long as she had known him, Jonathan had always been involved with one government agency or another, and she hated that. All the secrecy, all the vagueness. She’d never felt completely comfortable with him, and the last few hours hadn’t changed that one bit. She also found Jonathan’s fascination with Simon’s father disturbing and rather contrived. Why it bothered her, she didn’t know, but it did. She knew something was wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“It’s absurd,” she said. “You know what I think about all this crap. You and your government bullshit. You know I’ve always hated this surveillance and tracking stuff. That’s why I chose to take a less bureaucratic job…and even then I had to go live in the jungle, go climb Mount Kilimanjaro for Christ’s sake, just to avoid being constantly monitored, even in the hospital.”

“Look,” he snapped, turning to glare at her in the back seat, clearly frustrated, “I really don’t care what you like or dislike at this point. You decided you had to be part of this thing. You forced your way in. And now, like it or not, you’re part of it.”

“Bullshit!” she shouted. “I could get out of this car right this instant! I could go to the police and tell them everything!”

He laughed at her—a short, harsh sound. “Tell them what? A man broke into your apartment, but you have no evidence and you don’t remember anything about him? You saw a cheerful message from a dead man—a message that’s been destroyed, by the way—but he seemed okay? That your friend’s house was broken into, which is clearly a sign of international conspiracy and—”

“Oh, just shut up,” she said and focused outside the window as if to ignore looking at him.

He let her steam for a long time. When he spoke again, it was in a low and serious tone. “It’s just not safe for you to be in England anymore,” he said. “You or any of us.”

She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t. “I’m going to get a drink,” she said without looking at him. She sounded angry and brittle, even to herself. “I’ll be right back.”

Without another word she opened the door and left the Rover, ignoring him as he called after her. Jonathan leaned back in the driver’s seat and turned his head to watch her cross the street and enter the family-owned teashop that looked like it hadn’t changed since the early ‘90s.

It was too much for her to handle. He could see that. She needed some time to herself, if only a few minutes.

“Maybe when she gets back here, she’ll have thought it through,” he said to the empty air.

But he had serious doubts.

* * *

Takara stood absolutely motionless in the blackest of shadows, less than half a block from the parked car. She couldn’t hear or even lip-read what Samantha and Jonathan were saying, but she didn’t have to. Their gestures, their body language, even while they were seated in the vehicle, told her more than enough. These two didn’t care for each other. And they certainly didn’t trust each other. But they were committed to whatever the plan was.

She touched the lobe of her left ear and triggered the communication device that linked her to her superior. It wasn’t the most pleasant sensation to begin with, and speaking to him was never enjoyable—never safe. Still, it had to be done.

He acknowledged the connection with a single syllable. “I have them in view,” she said without preamble.

And then, in answer to his question: “No. The others are not here. I just arrived. They could be on their way; they could be—”

He interrupted, already bored with her report. She listened to his instructions and nodded though she knew he could not see her.

“I understand. Of course. Yes, I’ll report later.”

She touched her ear again and severed the contact. Time to move.