part0022

Despite her fatigue, it hadn’t been easy for Bekah to find sleep. The relentless cyberattacks on the Labyrinth had unnerved her, despite their being key to the success of Gregor Erkennen’s plan. Her conversation over coffee with Fischer had grounded her some, but sleep had still proven coy and flirty, disappearing around corners whenever it seemed close enough to touch.

For a long time she floated in a twilight state of semi-awareness, knowing she was prisoner in a waking dream she couldn’t control. A glass of water sat on a table in the gym after a shift. Bekah would pick it up and chug it, her goal to empty the glass for some unknown reason, though the water would always refill. She was starting to feel waterlogged in her own dream. The semi-aware part of her worried she’d wake up soaking in her own urine.

Empty of other people, the gym was semi-lit by Gregor’s camouflage protocol, casting the far corners of the room in angular darkness. An icy kind of aloneness prickled her skin. Not loneliness exactly, but a sense of being alone, on her own in the universe. Bekah’s only companion was the magically refilling water glass and her own, driven desire to see it empty.

A heavy, thudding sound when she set the glass down. Then the hollow sound transforming into a spine-cringing crash of metal on metal. It reverberated around the gym, and before the echo of it died, there was another.

Dream-Bekah turned to find a man working the overhead press. His back was to her. He’d push up the machine’s handlebars, then let the weights crash down.

It took a moment for her to realize he was seated, naked, at the machine.

“Stop that,” she said, emotionless. “You’ll damage the weights.” Didn’t he see the sign on the wall?

The man pushed the handlebars up again, then released them to fall.

“I said, stop that! Stop it!”

The man released the handlebars. He stood up and turned around. It was Daniel Tripp. Why hadn’t she recognized him from the bald spot on the back of his head?

Daniel advanced across the gym. He was smiling. Bekah kept her eyes up, on his, red embarrassment at his nudity creeping up her neck. There was something strange about his eyes. They were almost radiant.

“Could you maybe put on a towel?” she said, trying to make it a joke. They’d worked together a long time. They were family. But some family you should never see naked.

He continued walking casually toward her. He didn’t seem to care about his state of undress. Bekah’s heart beat with a distinct, deliberate rhythm. Not excited. Plodding, in fact.

“No, really,” Bekah said. Curiosity won out, and her eyes darted down, then back up. “Please, Daniel—a towel. Something .”

His eyes shone, though not the normal brown of Daniel Tripp’s irises. They were golden. Like Cassandra’s eyes.

“I’m the future,” Daniel said, advancing across the gym. “Embrace me.”

Bekah attempted to rise from the table, to get away. Her dream-body betrayed her. She sat paralyzed, unable to move. The full glass in front of her demanded she drain it dry. It was all she could do not to pick it up again.

“I’m the future,” Daniel repeated, arms spread wide as he drew closer. “Embrace me.”

The weights were dropping again, making the ringing sound. The press lifted and dropped on its own. Like it was haunted. Or afflicted by a poltergeist.

Daniel stood over her, arms still open. She somehow knew he planned to absorb her wholly, physically, into his own body. His eyes shifted from golden to red.

Dream-Bekah stood suddenly, the steely screech of her chair scoring the floor. The version of herself watching from twilight consciousness shouted a warning. Unable or unwilling to hear, her dream-self opened her arms to receive Daniel.

“I’m the future,” he said. His lips parted in a smile. Her feet edged forward, anxious to partake in what felt like victory, even if it was someone else’s—Daniel’s victory, or Cassandra’s. His red eyes flared. “Embrace me.”

Bekah bolted upright in her pitch black quarters. The chilled air blowing from the ventilation system teased the sheen of sweat on her skin, drawing a shiver through her like an electric current.

The station alarm. Her ears identified the plodding, metrical noise. The reason for the alarm finally registered. Something had tripped the security protocol she’d set to monitor communications. Someone must have opened a comm port from the station.

Bekah jumped out of bed to her computer console and ran a quick report from the alarm log. The message had been short. Only three picoseconds. Long enough to compromise the camouflage of Masada Station, if anyone was listening. Long enough to open a back door, if anyone was trying.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

First things first—Bekah verified that the port used to send the message had already been buttoned up behind the station’s firewall again. It’d been opened, the message sent, and the port closed again. Three picoseconds. A lifetime to a programmer. A canyon of opportunity that could allow an army of bad actor code access to the mainframe. She ran a second diagnostic on all traffic since the breach. There was no evidence of incoming data packets being received. In theory, that meant no virus had been inserted into the local network.

Unless the delivery payload wiped the log as part of its programming .

Bekah ran a second security program that she and Carrin Bohannon had just perfected together. It reviewed all incoming data through a strainer algorithm to compare random pieces of extant programming in the mainframe to ferret out aberrant code.

The program finished. No anomalies found.

Bekah hailed the War Room.

Bekah opened her mouth, then closed it again.

“Where’s Carrin?” she asked.

“Bohannon is busy,” Richter answered in his clipped German accent.

“Okay,” she said. “Put Maya on, then.”

Richter cleared his throat. “She is busy too,” he said. Then, “Is something wrong, Ms. Franklin?”

“No, it’s just … well, yes,” Bekah said. “Someone opened a potential security breach a few minutes ago. I ran a check and I don’t think there’s any damage, but I want to talk to one of my team down there. I want to know exactly who it was and ream them a new … wait, what do you mean busy ?”

There was a pause from Richter. “Something about an increase in cyberattacks against the Labyrinth?” He laughed in a way that sounded rehearsed. “Too much tech talk for me.”

The attacks on the Labyrinth had increased? At the same time there’d been a security breach on Masada Station?

“I’m coming down there,” Bekah said. “And as soon as one of them comes up for air, I want a full report on—”

“No, you stay there,” Richter said. She could hear him moving. “I’ll come to you. You shouldn’t be walking around the station alone.”

“I can call Fischer,” she said, grabbing her personal access data device. Her jumpsuit felt glued to her skin. She hadn’t changed since the previous shift. Oily fingerprints dotted her PADD’s display. She wondered if she smelled.

No time for a shower .

“No, it’s my shift,” Richter said. “Let the old man sleep. I’ll come up and escort you down. Stay where you are.” He switched off the comms.

Her mouth was open to answer, but Bekah closed it again. Something was happening. She tried to calm her hitching, anxious breathing. But she couldn’t just sit here, waiting for Richter. She needed to be doing something.

Bekah re-opened the channel to the War Room.

There was only silence.

“Hey, anyone? Can someone get a message to Bruno Richter for me? Trying to save him a trip. Hello?” She checked the channel. It seemed to be open.

What the hell? Bekah was ready to kick some serious team ass…

Bekah grabbed her PADD. When she slid into the corridor, the half lighting snapped on. She headed for the vator, then pulled up short. The nearest lift was near the gym. She knew Daniel worked out before going to bed, and her sceye showed only a couple of hours had passed since they’d parted company. If Daniel was as restless as she’d been, she might run into him.

The thought made her blush.

Don’t be an idiot. It was only a dream .

Sure, yeah. That’s all it was. Still…

Turning and retracing her steps, Bekah opted for a slightly longer, less direct way to reach the War Room. She quickened her steps, like that would make up for the decision, the corridor lights blinking on and off as she passed between sections. Distracted while reviewing data on the PADD, she almost flattened her nose when the southside vator’s doors failed to open.

“What the hell? Is everything fucking broken on this station now?”

The control panel was dark. Inactive.

Maybe the breach had done damage after all. Maybe there was a worm in the system their cleaner code hadn’t caught.

The mainframe . A chill bloomed behind her breastbone.

At least the mainframe was on a separate, isolated network. The only way Masada’s mainframe could be compromised was if—

Three picoseconds would do it.

The corridor went dark, and Bekah stood for a moment in the blackness. First the vator control, now the lights?

“Lights,” she said, deliberately calm. The blackness remained. And the air—was it starting to get cooler? Maybe the worm that shut down the lifts and lights had also compromised life support…

Bekah tried to clear her head and think. There was a maintenance tube around here somewhere, near the vator shaft. Feeling along the chilly wall, she quickly found the raised wrench-inside-a-triangle icon identifying maintenance access. The tube had a ladder allowing repairs between station levels. She’d have to be careful in the dark, but she could feel her way down. The War Room was only two levels below.

Part of her regretted not waiting for Richter.

As if summoned, Richter’s voice came alive in the darkness, amplified by Masada’s public address system. “I asked you to wait for me, Ms. Franklin.” The glottal, German consonants sounded harsher in the dark. They carried an odd, eager quality. “You should have waited for me.”

There was a sense of the predator about them.

She removed the panel and reached in to grasp the cold rung of the ladder. Either the heat or all of life support was off, Bekah was relatively sure of that now. A hint of ozone, sharp and itchy, wafted up from the shaft below. Was the power grid totally fried?

She opened a new message in her sceye.

“Fischer, come on, come on,” she muttered. It buzzed in vain. She couldn’t even find him in the registry. Then she remembered: Fischer didn’t have an implant. “Damn it!…”

“Ms. Franklin.” Richter’s voice again, station-wide. “Where are you, Ms. Franklin? Just hand me the Hammer. Then this will all be over.”

He was coming. She would have run right into him if she hadn’t been worried about meeting Daniel.

Daniel. Carrin and the others .

Richter had been in the War Room when she called … fear gripped Bekah’s heart. Her team hadn’t been too busy to answer her call. They’d been unable. She knew it like she knew the station’s systems had been compromised … from the inside. And what had happened to Fischer?

She stepped into the tube. Halfway to the second level, she spied the blinking emergency light of a maintenance comms panel. Like the mainframe, maintenance was on a dedicated power circuit in case of emergencies. She engaged the panel and released a breath when it lit up. Bekah dialed the code for Fischer’s cabin. He might not have a sceye, but his quarters had wall comms.

In the dark corridor above, she heard footsteps. Glancing upward, she saw the roaming glare of a handheld light.

Richter’s voice, salivating. And echoing eerily, so close above and also, a half second later, coming over the station’s PA system.

Bekah held her PADD against her side and swiped the volume on the panel down with a finger. She felt a cramp threatening her other hand as she clutched at the cold rung of the ladder. She tried to relax her grip without losing it.

“Fischer, please…” she whispered. “Please, please pick up…”

His cabin comms chimed again and again, barely audible in the tight space of the tube.

The footsteps stopped.

“Is that where you are?”

His voice wasn’t amplified now. It was normal, if a little distant. Somewhere just above her.

The access panel. She hadn’t replaced it! How stupid could she—

A light shone down from above. “Hello, Ms. Franklin.” Behind its sudden brilliance, the face of Bruno Richter, gaunt and sharpened by the shadows, cracked wide in a broad smile. “I’m going to need that key hanging around your pretty neck.”

The hand that had been desperately trying to raise Fischer reflexively went to the key resting cold against her skin.

Viking warriors wore a hammer around their necks as a holy symbol. They touched it before battle, asking Thor to protect them .

Her grip on the ladder spasmed, the cramp taking hold. Bekah dropped the PADD, and it careened off the ladder below. She fumbled to regain her grip and missed the cold metal.