“What the hell just happened?” I shouted at the vid on my office wall.
I gestured to initiate the exit process for both test subjects. Nothing happened. The software had been rewritten. My commands didn’t work.
My design had been twisted, corrupted. “Get them out!” I screamed at Jarret and Katie.
When I waved my arms, images of the forest, vital signs, and digital locations hurtled across the display. I slowed them enough so I could read the data.
Gia was dropping her breadcrumbs, but the images and audio they pinpointed didn’t help. She was walking toward a glitch, she said. I didn’t care about a stupid glitch right now. I cared only about getting her out.
Behind me, the unconscious bodies of Harlan and Gia slumped at the table, where they’d been since the test began. Their eyes stayed closed and their breaths steady, but their consciousnesses were elsewhere.
If I couldn’t get them back, they’d be vegetative—like their father.
“Where’s Dr. Fisher?” I shouted.
“She’s wrapping up her surgery,” Jarret said. “She’ll be here.”
I cursed.
My team scrambled into action. Katie gestured at the vid with both arms in a practiced motion, like directing an orchestra. The vid shoved my data to the left and gave her control of the right.
“I don’t know what happened,” Jarret said from behind us, where he bent over our test subjects. “Everything was fine. I don’t know what happened … I don’t know …”
“None of us knows!” Katie shouted.
“Just stay with them,” I said without turning. “Keep an eye on their vitals.”
I kept my gaze locked on the vid. Any bit of data could be the key to getting Harlan and Gia out of this neuro-nightmare.
The sound of something knocking against the steel table yanked my attention, and I looked. Jarret was shaking Gia’s body.
“Don’t!” I tripped over my feet to get to him and yanked his arms away.
He screeched as my metal fingers bit into his wrist.
“Sorry.” I stepped back and showed my palms in surrender. “Please don’t do that.”
“You’re right.” Jarret looked down at his own hands as though they’d betrayed him. “We can’t wake them without the exit process.”
“You could rip them in two.”
Jarret clutched his head as if imagining it. “No touching. Definitely no unplugging.”
I spun back to the vid and sorted and filtered, even though I didn’t know what I was looking for. Katie and I flung data across the giant display in silence broken only by our rapid breaths.
The door beeped and flew open, revealing two suited security guards on the other side. They barged into the room.
I blocked their path. “The prototypes are already in use.” I made a point to fist my metal hand at my side. I didn’t intend to hit anyone with it, but I wanted them to know I could.
“We have orders to confiscate them,” one of the guards said.
I stepped aside to reveal Harlan’s and Gia’s unconscious bodies slumped in their chairs. “Are you going to rip them out of our test subjects’ heads?”
The guard on the left stuttered a half step forward before the other held her back.
“No?” I gestured toward the door. “Then get out of our way so this doesn’t turn into a disaster.” It already was one, but they didn’t need to report that to my mother and the board.
They hesitated, exchanged hissed whispers, and backed out of the room. The automated door slammed shut behind them.
When Jarret spoke again, his tone was calmer than before. “You need to approach this from the other direction. Instead of figuring out what’s wrong, find out what went wrong and work forward.”
“Good idea.” I swiped in the air, and everything on the left side of the vid disappeared. “We need to find the source.”
Katie continued to fling her arms, directing traffic on her side of the display.
“Keep at it.” I steadied my voice. My team would fall apart if I looked as panicked as I felt. “We’ll approach this from both directions.”
Jarret said, “I think we can all agree we have a hack.”
“We find the hacker. Kick their ass.”
“Make them stop,” Jarret said.
I grunted my assent. “Stop them. Then kick their ass.”
“You can’t solve every problem by beating someone up,” Katie said, never slowing in her manipulations of the vid.
I cleared my throat and said to the vid, “Load cybersecurity bot.”
An animated image of a boxy robot appeared on the left side of the display, leaving Katie control of the right. In a chirpy voice, it prompted, “Whose ass are we kicking today?”
Katie looked at me.
“What? I customized it a little.” To the screen, I added, “Bot, we need to identify a hacker. Collect all data since we activated the computer-brain interface prototypes. For the first five minutes, the test went perfectly. Use that as your control.”
The boxy robot danced across the screen, each movement punctuated by a kick or karate chop. It returned to attention. “Collected. Do you have a sample of the anomalous data?”
“Use the last five minutes for that. Can you compare the two, determine precisely when the anomaly started, identify the injected data, and then match the injected data to signatures of known hackers?”
“Processing.” The animated robot returned to kickbox grooving.
Katie stared.
“Maybe I went a little overboard with the customization.” I waved at her side of the screen. “Worry about your end.”
The robot stilled. “I have ninety-two percent certainty that the Web Witch performed this hack.”
“Web Witch?” Katie’s movements momentarily dampened. “Never heard of him.”
“Her,” the robot said. “Here is everything we know about the Web Witch.”
The robot faded into the black screen, replaced by text and images arranged in neat, labeled groups: known hacks, web posts, motivations, IP addresses.
“Katie,” I said, “a little help?”
The room went silent as she and I scanned through the information. I started with the IP addresses, but there was no pattern.
“She’s routing her connections through multiple servers,” I said. “Different servers each time. She’s smart.”
“I’ve got something,” Katie said. “She keeps coming back to this forum to brag about her exploits. Looks like she’s online now.”
“Call her.”
“Creating an account … Done. Now, I’m requesting a video call.”
A series of low, steady beeps filled the room as we waited. After the sixth beep, the call connected, pushing all the other data aside to fill the screen.
An image of a hag digitally masked the person’s face. The hag’s skin looked like cracked leather, stretched taut over sharp cheekbones and a hooked nose. Dark, bottomless pits filled her eye sockets. Her mouth twisted into a sinister grin. Wispy strands of white hair framed the grotesque face.
“Miss Hayes,” came the computer-disguised voice. The mouth opened and closed, and the inside was an empty black hole. “What took so long?”
“Cut the theatrics,” I said. “What do you want from me to release what you stole?”
“What I stole?” The voice was slow, taunting. “You mean your test subjects? I have Harlan right here. If I don’t get what I want, I could just … end him.”
“This isn’t about murder,” I shot back. “You want something, or you wouldn’t have answered my call.”
“Technically, it would just be shutting down a consciousness in a virtual space.”
Killing Harlan’s consciousness would sever the connection to his body. A body without its mind is an empty shell. That was the same as murder in my book.
The hag’s image flickered, replaced by a video clip of Gia stumbling through the forest. Dirt streaks trailed down her cheeks. She tripped, collapsed, and sobbed as she struggled back to her feet.
My breath stilled.
The footage was from a high angle, recorded from above—as if she were being stalked.
“Is it ransom you want?” I asked in a steady voice that wasn’t my own. The last month of practicing to be Business Lena was finally paying off.
“Patience, Miss Hayes.” The image shifted back to the hag, now wearing a mocking pout.
“What do you want for Harlan and Gia’s safe return?”
“Ah, better.” The hag’s grin widened, stretching the inky black mouth. “I want what every civic-minded, intelligent member of society wants.”
Impatience roiled in my stomach. I clenched my metal fist by my side and stayed silent.
“Control of CyberCorp Technology,” she finished.
Despite myself, I guffawed. “I couldn’t give you that if I wanted to. Every idiot who can watch a press conference knows I own only twenty-five percent.”
The grin tightened. “Then deliver that. I’ll worry about the rest.”
My laughter died. I could see how this would go. First, my quarter share. Then she’d come for the other significant owners. Maybe not my mother, but the others would fall like glass soldiers. None of them truly believed that CyberCorp could survive without my fresh perspective.
I was the keystone—one of the few who would fight the world to keep CyberCorp running and preserve its ability to do good in this world.
If this witch squeezed in the right spots, she could get her controlling interest. If I let her win now, no one would be left to fight.
“It’s a simple trade,” the hag continued. “Your shares for two innocent lives.”
Katie’s face mirrored my horror, but Jarret remained focused on Harlan and Gia. He touched their foreheads and pressed his fingers into their wrists. That couldn’t be a good sign.
“Give me time to figure out how to do the transfer to an anonymous recipient.” Before she could answer, I gestured with my right hand, closing it into a fist, and the call disconnected.
The display blanked, and silence pressed in on all sides.
“How are they?” I asked Jarret.
“Pulses are slow. We should get Dr. Fisher.”
Fear clutched my heart and squeezed. I nodded, and he tapped his micro-comm to make the call.
“What’s the plan?” Katie asked me.
“We pray Harlan and Gia find the hardware exit to initiate safe extraction,” I said. “And we stall.”