3:20 p.m.
40 minutes left
“Can you please tell me what this is all about?” I asked my brother after Nick had left for the room down the hall. “If Nick is here something big must be up.”
“It’s going to be fine,” Trevor assured me without much effect, then, with the hint of a smile, he pivoted the conversation away from what he obviously didn’t want to talk about. “So, you two are on a first-name basis?”
I flushed slightly. “That’s not the point here. I’m just wondering why you’re asking us to take off again.”
“Look.” He took my hand. “There’s an important press conference here at four. We’re simply doing everything we can to make sure everyone on campus is safe.”
“By asking Jordan and me to leave it.”
I caught him glancing at the screen, and I couldn’t help but think that whatever he’d had up there when we walked in on him was part of the problem.
He let go of my hand and once again tried to change the subject, still appearing nervous. “Tell me about your trip.”
“I lost my purse. Forgot it on the plane.”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry.”
“And I was hassled at the airport in Cincinnati, going through security.”
“What happened?”
* * *
Nick connected his slate’s feed up to the digitized wall in room 4078 so he could more easily watch the Tac team breach Dakota’s house back in Cincinnati.
But truthfully, his mind was on Kestrel and the fact that she was here. He felt a strong urge to protect her and it was as if everything that was happening had suddenly become personal.
Also, he was wondering about the information from Trevor regarding other Artificials as human-looking as Jordan.
He peered down at his hands.
How did your fingerprints get on that violin? How could that have even happened?
Then the footage came up. Through the body camera he saw what the Cincinnati unit saw: Dakota’s two-story beige house, the quaint porch, the team members positioning themselves on either side of the front door.
Commander Leyman had taken Nick’s warning about booby traps seriously and had decided to send Artificials in first because, frankly, they were more expendable than people.
You can always replace a droid. You cannot replace a human life.
The logic presumed the superior worth of humans over machines. A cognizant Artificial like Jordan might be a different story, but that was a debate for another time.
Nick spoke with Leyman: “If you find Dakota, I want her brought in alive. She might have intel that can help stop a potential terror attack.”
A pause, then, “I understand.”
“Let me hear you say it.”
“We do all we can to bring Dakota Vernon in alive.”
“Good. Let’s do this.”
Leyman decided on a kinetic breach, so one of the Artificials toted a handheld, steel battering ram.
“We are green,” Leyman whispered into his radio to the team. “We are a go. On my count.” As he counted down softly, he held up three fingers, dropped to two, then one, and pointed at the door.
A quick knock, a verbal warning to satisfy the law’s requirements: “NCB!” then the Artificial smashed the battering ram against the door beside the doorknob. Because of his extraordinary strength, the wood splintered apart even as the lock gave way and the door flew open.
An agent tossed in a stun grenade.
The flash. The bang.
“Go!” the commander ordered.
The Artificials rushed inside.
While two of them button-hooked off to the sides, the one who’d breached the door and who was wearing the body camera dropped the battering ram and flipped his rifle in front of him into the high ready position.
And proceeded into the house.
The room was dark and Nick said, “Don’t touch the lights in case they’re wired to explode.”
“Yes, sir.”
He and his team flicked on the flashlights attached to their rifles, illuminating narrow streaks of greenish light throughout the shadow-infested residence.
While the other Artificials cleared the rooms on the first floor and then headed upstairs, Nick directed the one with the body cam to investigate the basement.
“Careful,” Nick warned. “Keep your head up and remember—I want her alive.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Artificial threw open the door to the basement and began descending into it, with the space slowly coming into view as he did.
As it turned out, it was more of a cellar than a basement, with a dirt floor, concrete walls, and a ceiling that contained only three bare light bulbs and no finishing panels.
Stacks of boxes. A scattering of old furniture. A washer and dryer. A tub sink. A furnace. Dakota’s mountain bike. A chest freezer.
Ripley’s body still hasn’t been found.
“There,” Nick said, “that freezer. Look inside it.”
The Artificial approached the freezer and, using the tip of his rifle barrel to avoid disturbing any prints on the handle, he tilted up the lid.
Dense curls of frigid air made it difficult to see inside, but when the Artificial brushed his hand through the vapors, they parted and Nick realized what the freezer contained.
No, it wasn’t Ripley’s body.
Instead, on top of a pile of indistinguishable frozen items were two human arms. From all appearances they had not been surgically removed from someone, but rather ripped violently from the sockets just as Ripley’s had been. By the size and musculature, Nick guessed they were from an adult female.
His heart sank.
Dakota?
“Move them aside,” he said, his voice catching. “See if there are any other body parts in there.”
The Artificial obeyed but didn’t come up with anything. He radioed in what he’d found and was returning to the stairs when Nick stopped him. “Wait. The ground. There in the corner under the edge of the freezer. Am I seeing this correctly?”
The Artificial turned so the body cam was directed at the site.
“The dirt looks disturbed,” Nick said.
“Yes, it does.”
“Move the freezer.”
He did, his superior strength evident again, then placed a hand on the loosened soil. “Yes, sir. It certainly appears like someone’s been digging here.”
“Alright. Call in a forensics team. I want to know what’s buried there. And do a DNA test on the arms. Use your commander’s portable kit and get the results to me ASAP.”
* * *
“I know you have work to do,” I said to Trevor after I’d summed up our trip and explained how we almost missed our flight to Seattle. “Do you have to go? Should we wait here for you?”
“I need to speak with Agent Vernon and then get to the conference center.”
Jordan surprised me by speaking up. “Trevor, may I ask a question first?”
“What’s that, Jordan?”
“I want to know about the CoRA.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Is it real?”
An almost imperceptible pause. “What makes you think the CoRA might not be real?”
“My mother died. I’m not sure if she’s there,” Jordan said, which wasn’t exactly an answer to Trevor’s question. “She was damaged beyond repair in the attack in Cincinnati. I would like to be assured that she’s alright. I’d like to check on her.”
“Jordan, I can’t let you access the CoRA.”
“Just to confirm things.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
Trevor checked the time, then said, “Let me go talk to Agent Vernon. Wait here until I get back. Give me five minutes and then we can head over to the conference center together.”
Then, without another word, he hastened into the hallway and left to find Nick.
Jordan’s eyes were fixed on the digitized wall and I realized that, even though Trevor had swiped the images aside earlier, he hadn’t logged out when we walked in and disturbed him.
“I need to find out.” Jordan crossed the room toward the wall.
“Jordan, no. He was clear.”
“I just need to see for myself.”
I stepped in front of him. “Don’t.”
“Please move, Kestrel.”
“Or what?” I said emphatically, folding my arms.
“Or I’ll move you.” His reply was so cool and tempered that it almost frightened me.
I could hardly believe what was happening.
Of course, I was no match for Jordan physically, so there was no way I’d be able to stop him if his mind was made up, and it clearly was.
He was as strong-willed as I was.
After trying unsuccessfully one last time to convince him to give this up, I reluctantly stepped aside, Jordan walked to Trevor’s wall, placed his hand on the sensor, connected to the facility’s network and, with Trevor’s unfettered access to the system, began to search for a way into the Consciousness Realignment Algorithm.
* * *
The DNA from the arms came back.
Dakota.
Nick’s heart sank.
She was very likely dead, and although he’d been estranged from her for some time, they’d been together for nearly twelve years. They’d loved each other, and, even though that love had eventually grown cold, there was a time when it’d been real and now, as he thought about her being gone, he felt a deep sting of grief.
As he was waiting for the forensics techs to arrive to uncover whatever had been buried there in her basement, a knock came at the door and, when he opened it, Trevor Hathaway said to him, “Agent Vernon, there’s something I need to tell you. I found those names you wanted me to pull up.”
“Alright. And?”
“Dakota Vernon. She was on the list. The file said you two had been married.”
“You’re telling me Dakota had an Artificial made of herself?”
“Yes. A month and a half ago. Her name is Anastasia.”
“Who else?”
“Well, I didn’t get a chance to look though all of the files—but I thought you should know about her—”
“So, you don’t know if I did?”
“If you did what?”
“Had an Artificial made of myself.”
Trevor’s mouth hung open for a moment before he replied. “No. I don’t know. I would have to finish going through the files.”
“Do it. I’ll be here. Run my name and make sure there isn’t someone else out there who looks just like me and has my fingerprints.”
* * *
Over the last few minutes as I’d watched, Jordan had found the portal to the Consciousness Realignment Algorithm and, now, with his incomparable computer skills and phenomenal typing speed, it didn’t take him long to hash the password.
“Jordan,” I said. “You need to stop. Trevor could come back at any time and—”
“Check the hallway.” He was busily entering code.
“What?”
“See if he’s coming. Please. I just need to know. Just like when you lost Naiobi.”
I was about to tell him that he had no idea what it was like to lose someone, to really lose someone who was alive, but guessed that even if I were to say those things, it wouldn’t stop him, so I swallowed my words and did as he asked, going to the doorway and peeking out.
Trevor was on his way back, but was still maybe forty meters away down the lengthy corridor.
“He’s coming. Close it up.”
Jordan swiped his finger swiftly across the screen, scrolling through files at a mind-boggling rate. “Just a minute.”
“You don’t have a minute.”
Then, all at once, he stopped.
“What is it?” I asked. “Did you find her?”
“I’m in.”
I looked at the screen, but all I could see was a jumble of indecipherable computer coding. “What is it? What did you find?”
“She’s not here.”
“What?”
“No one is.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The CoRA.” He turned and looked directly at me. “It has a couple dozen scattered file fragments, but that’s all. She’s gone. They’re all gone.”
The footsteps outside the door told me that Trevor was close and I hurried across the room toward Jordan to get him to close the screen, but he just stood there gaping at it.
“We don’t live on,” he muttered. “When we’re gone, we’re gone.”
Trevor appeared at the door and saw the two of us beside the screen. He looked at what was on the wall, entered the room, and closed the door softly behind him.
I expected him to be upset, but instead he sounded defeated. “So,” he said. “Now you know.”
“It was all a lie,” Jordan said.
“It was a necessity.” Trevor approached the screen. “I can explain, but first I need to look something up for Agent Vernon. It’s important.”
Jordan drifted away from the screen and stood beside the window, staring blankly through the glass and across the gloomy, fog-enshrouded campus.
Trevor quietly began closing the programs Jordan had opened.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “All of the promises to Artificials about living on, they’re all lies? How could you do this? How could you be a part of this?”
“We give them hope,” Trevor said as he worked. “What greater gift is there than that?”
“How about the truth?”
“Kestrel, I’m in charge of our global security. Can you imagine what things would be like if cognizant Artificials knew there was nothing beyond this life to look forward to? They might very well act in ways that would assure that they could continue to exist—burying trillions of files deep in the Feeds, creating endless backup copies of themselves, lashing out at their owners. Hopelessness. Rebellion. Anarchy. They might even take steps to remove what they perceive to be the greatest threat to their existence.”
“Human beings.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We can’t take that chance.”
Jordan still hadn’t said anything.
I shook my head in astonishment. “I just can’t believe that you’re involved in a cover-up like this.”
“We’re giving them a gift, Kestrel. Surely you can see that.”
“A gift? How is a lie a gift?”
“When it’s done for the good of all. When it’s born out of compassion.”
“It sounds like it was born out of fear.”
He came to the original images that’d been on the screen earlier when we first arrived.
Jordan finally spoke. “Has it always been this way? Was there ever a CoRA in the first place?”
Trevor sighed. “We tried to create one, but despite our best efforts, we couldn’t come up with a way to capture an Artificial’s true essence. Data, yes. Partial files, basic algorithms—those we could load. But aspirations? Dreams? Consciousness? Heartache? Joy? There’s no coding that can capture those things. That’s where we failed.”
He swiped through a few dozen pages on the screen and murmured, “There. Okay. Good,” then he spun on his heels. “Come with me to room 4078. We can talk about this on the way. The conference center’s been cleared and most of our security staff is there. It’ll be safe. You can wait there until the press conference is over. We’ll sort all this out then. I promise.”
But my attention was on Jordan, who hadn’t moved. “Are you alright?” I asked him.
“Huh? Yes.”
“You were staring into space. You stopped blinking.”
“I must have forgotten. To blink, I mean.”
“Come on. Let’s go with Trevor.”
But he shook his head. “I need to tell them the truth.”
“Who?”
“The others. The Artificials.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
“I can’t let you do that, Jordan,” Trevor said flatly.
“Don’t try to stop me. I don’t want to hurt either of you.”
“Jordan!” I rebuked him. “Don’t even talk that way.”
He doesn’t want his hope built on a lie. He doesn’t want anyone’s to be.
And then, while Trevor and I tried to figure out what to do, Jordan edged past us, and darted down the hall in the opposite direction from the one Nick and Trevor had gone down earlier.
Trevor pulled out his slate. “We need stop him.”
“But how?”
“Whatever it takes.”
* * *
Lenny Crenshaw was almost through the cuffs.
Though the flesh of his wrists was shredded and raw from rubbing against the rusted pipe, he was nearly free.
Just a little more and—
All at once, the blood-smeared plastic strip snapped in half, surprising him.
He pushed himself to his feet and hurried to find a way to contact his superiors at Prestige and tell them what’d happened to him.
And to the shipment.
* * *
After notifying his security personnel to track Jordan down and detain him, leaving me feeling confused and betrayed, Trevor took me to Nick, who was still in room 4078.
“There were no Artificials made in your image,” Trevor told him urgently, “but the one that was made of Dakota, she was given your fingerprints.”
“And where is she? Can you find her?”
“Yes.” Trevor tapped at his slate, then paused, dumbstruck. “She’s here on campus, Agent Vernon. At the power plant.”
“Take Kestrel to the conference center and have one of the Tac team members stay with her,” Nick said urgently, then he spoke into his radio transmitter. “Rodriguez?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Meet me at the power plant. I think that might be the target.”