Chapter Two

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin

Kate Buchanan swiped through the security systems to check that no one was approaching her basement office. When she was sure she wouldn’t be interrupted, she pressed the key to start the Auspex debugging routine. It was a risk, but she’d picked up an error in his predictions and she needed to understand what had gone wrong.

Tension clawed at her stomach as she watched the streams of code flash across the screen until she was sure the program was running correctly. Correctly and untraceably.

Then she blanked the monitor.

While she tried to tell herself that her research was doing no harm to the Party—and could actually do a hell of a lot of good if only the administration would get their heads out of their asses—she was aware that if what she was doing came out into the open, she would likely lose more than her position.

She was a good Party member, but the ban on research was…stupid.

Her actual job was to monitor the chatter for alerts which might result in threats to the American people. A yellow alert was a risk of terrorist activity, a green alert a risk of aliens; unfortunately not real-little-green-men aliens, just people without the correct papers. Finally, a red alert meant a risk to the president.

Kate slumped in her seat and searched her e-reader for something to read while she waited. Her actual work was deadly boring and took up about 10 percent of her time. She’d only taken the position because Homeland Security was the only place remaining with servers big enough to carry out her entirely illegal research.

Luckily, she worked alone. In the early years of the Loyalist Party, there had been a whole team of analysts needed to monitor the chatter, all based in this cavernous office in the basement at Homeland Security, where the environment could be controlled. As the years passed, the alerts had reduced to a trickle, and the team of analysts to one person—her.

Chatter still flooded in from everywhere, managed by old systems that had been in use for what felt like a million years to Kate. The original surveillance program had been developed in the late 1960s to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War. Now it was used to scrutinize the not-so-private conversations of the American people. The secondary system had come along later in the aftermath of 9/11 and had originally been run by the NSA but had been handed over to the Secret Service by the current administration. Then and now, it gathered intel from the internet.

An invasion of privacy or a necessary evil? Her father always quoted the old saying: If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Well, Kate was definitely hiding something. And the one thing currently keeping her safe was that she was the only person monitoring the systems capable of picking up on her illegal activities.

A red alert flashed up on a different screen. Kate leaned forward and tapped the keys, adding the info dump to a folder that she’d forward to the Secret Service agents at the National Threat Assessment Center. Kate couldn’t read the actual information; it was all encrypted. Maybe they believed it would give her subversive ideas? Whatever the case, the agents at NTAC would then determine whether the alert warranted any action.

She presumed they did that by reading through the unencrypted info dumps, a slow and painful process since there were a minimum of fifty data streams attached to each alert.

Kate was developing a better way: Auspex, a powerful combination of predictive engine and artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, predictive engines and artificial intelligence research had been banned over a decade ago.

Twenty-four years ago, President Harry Senior had broken away from the Republican Party and started his own, the Loyalists. A continuation of the golden era of America, he’d called it, America for Americans. The Party had close affiliations with the Church, who considered computers some sort of devil’s machine and the idea of AI a total abomination against God.

Luckily, the administration wasn’t stupid enough to think they could run the country without any technology and bright enough to understand that trying to take away people’s cell phones might very well result in a revolution. Even so, after the pandemic and the big financial crash of the twenties, which the Loyalist Party blamed on China and bad decisions made by predictive engines, all research into anything interesting had ground to a halt.

Auspex had been the brainchild of Kate’s old professor and current boss, Oliver Massey, back when he’d still been head of computer studies at Georgetown University. The system was still incomplete when the ban came into force, but Kate had discovered a copy on the university servers seven years ago and had been working on it ever since.

Auspex took raw data from other systems, organized it, and ran it through various algorithms which then predicted possible outcomes. A week ago, Kate had finally gotten up the nerve to allow Auspex access to the chatter streams. And she’d been sure he—for some reason she’d always thought of Auspex as a he, not a she or an it—was functioning correctly. Except that now it appeared that something was off. She’d run all the previous week’s alerts through Auspex and every single one of them had resulted in a negligible chance of a threat to the American people.

Which didn’t make a lot of sense as she’d just received her weekly pat-on-the-back report from NTAC and, according to them, twenty-eight of the alerts she’d submitted—including all the red alerts—had resulted in a positive action. Whatever that meant. But she was sure it shouldn’t have happened for an alert with a negligible threat level.

An alarm beeped—she’d set them up to let her know if anyone was approaching. Kate flicked to the surveillance feeds and saw Teresa Martinez, Oliver’s personal assistant, getting out of the elevator.

After checking to be sure none of her screens were showing anything they shouldn’t be, she grabbed her jacket, which she’d hung over the regulation photo of President Harry Coffell Junior—ugh—then slid her e-reader into a drawer. It wouldn’t do to let the world know how little time her job actually took.

The door opened without a knock, and Teresa entered.

Kate blanked her expression and curved her lips into a bland smile. “Teresa,” she said. “How lovely to see you. Can I help you with something?”

Teresa was somewhere in her thirties, slender, with perfectly styled dark hair, her clothes and makeup immaculate as always. She’d tried to befriend Kate when she had first started, but Kate was pretty sure that had been more about who Kate’s father was, rather than about Kate herself. Growing up as the daughter of a supreme court justice, she had learned to recognize political ambition. And avoid it. Teresa was also active in the Church, and invariably asked why Kate had been absent from the “compulsory” morning service. Her answer, that she had too much work, was no doubt recorded somewhere to be held against her at a later date.

Then she noticed that Teresa carried a plate. With cake.

Weird.

“I wasn’t sure if you knew,” Teresa said. “I’ve been appointed the new Political Officer.”

“No, I didn’t know. What happened to Richard?”

“Retired,” Teresa said with a satisfied smile.

Every place of work had a state-appointed Political Officer. They were chosen from those active within the Party, members who had proved their loyalty. They had little real power, but they could make your life a misery by reporting infractions if you got on the wrong side of them. Such as not having a picture of the president in your office. Or covering that picture up so you didn’t have to look at his smug face all day.

Teresa peered around the room, no doubt checking for infractions. Kate had gotten complacent in the years she had worked here. But no one could afford to be complacent these days. Breaking the rules could mean the end of your career. Or worse.

“I called a meeting this morning after prayer—about my appointment—but you didn’t attend.” Was that an accusation? Probably. “And as it’s the president’s birthday today, we all met up in the foyer to watch his speech. I baked a cake.” She peered at Kate. “You must have missed the memo.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” That would be a black mark against her.

“So I thought I would bring you a slice, give you the wonderful news. And ask if there’s anything the Party can do to make your life more worthwhile.”

Leave me alone?

Reinstate the space program and sign me up?

Let me draw a mustache and glasses on my presidential picture?

Kate decided against mentioning any of those options. Instead, she picked up her cake and took a forkful, chewed it slowly, and hoped Teresa would go away. She swallowed. “Lovely cake.” By the time the plate was scraped clean, Teresa still hadn’t moved.

“Well,” Kate said. “That was nice, but I really must get back to work.” She waved a hand at the bank of computer screens. “Lots of chatter today.” It was actually true. Since the president’s speech announcing the return of democracy a month ago, the chatter had exploded with alerts. Especially red.

Finally, Teresa took the hint and gave a nod. “We’ll see you at prayer meeting tomorrow?”

She smiled. “Of course.” Not. Though maybe she should make the effort. She didn’t want Teresa’s visits to become a regular event. Best not to give her an excuse. As the door closed behind the new Political Officer, Kate switched on the video feed, watching until Teresa was safely back in the elevator.

The debugging routine was still running, so she swiped one of the many screens and flicked through the TV channels. It didn’t take long—there were only three—and she found the news feed streaming the president’s birthday celebration, set inside a glittering ballroom full of glittering people. She was so glad she wasn’t one of them. She zoomed in and searched the guests. Found her sister.

Stella was beautiful. She had their father’s blond hair and dark-blue eyes, and her mother’s figure, slender but curvaceous. Kate, on the other hand, had her mother’s red hair, pale-blue eyes, and her father’s tall, skinny figure. They couldn’t have been more different in looks, or in temperament. Despite that, growing up they’d been close.

Not so much now. They’d gone in different directions. Whereas Kate had shunned a position in the Party, Stella was extremely ambitious. At thirty, she was high up in the administration. Kate tried not to hold it against her, and they usually met up at least once a month for lunch or dinner.

She panned out and was just about to shut down the feed when she spotted another guest. One she hadn’t expected to see. For a moment, she stared, shock holding her still.

Gideon Frome. Kate hadn’t seen him in nearly ten years, back when he’d been engaged to Stella and had a brilliant career ahead of him in the Party. Then everything had fallen apart; his younger brother had vanished, supposedly to join the rebel forces, and his father had committed suicide.

Guilty by association, Gideon’s political career had crumbled. He had broken off his engagement to Stella, and she hadn’t tried to hold onto him. He’d left DC and joined the army. As far as Kate was aware, he hadn’t been back since.

She remembered him as super sophisticated, with a casual, laid-back elegance and an easy smile. There was no smile on his face now, and any hint of laid-back was gone—she reckoned for good. He looked hard, his face full of sharp angles and harsh planes. His mouth was a thin line, his green eyes cool, alert, his dark hair cut military short. He wore civilian clothing—a dark-gray suit, a white shirt, and a blue tie. Ultra conservative. And a scar ran down the right side of his face from beneath his eye to his upper lip.

Kate picked up her cell and hit Stella’s number.

“Hey, there,” Stella said. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“I was watching the news feed and I saw Gideon. I didn’t know he was back.”

“He’s been back for over three months,” she said. “Where have you been?”

“Working. So what’s he doing?”

“Harry asked him to come back. Gideon is a hero now, which is great for publicity. He’s been appointed second-in-command at the Secret Service.”

“Wow. So all has been forgiven?”

“It seems so. Not that there was anything to forgive. Gideon wasn’t involved in his brother’s disappearance.”

Not that that would make a lot of difference. “Have you spoken to him?”

“Just briefly and quite amicably. Which is good, as he’s back on a permanent basis. The president is fond of him. He always was. He trusts him despite everything that happened.”

The unspoken words were there. Or Gideon wouldn’t have survived the disgrace that had enveloped his family ten years ago. He would have disappeared. Or had a convenient accident. They all knew how these things worked. Kate might not like it, but maybe it was the price they had to pay for peace. There hadn’t been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil or an outbreak of any viral disease—man-made or natural—for many years. People could go about their lives without fear. And if everything was just a little bit boring, well, things could be worse. Much worse.

“Okay,” Stella said. “I’d better go mingle, but are we still on for lunch on Saturday?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll see you then.” And the call ended.

She watched the party for a few more minutes, then a light flashed on her screen. The debugging routine had finished. Kate pushed all thoughts of Gideon from her mind. She had more interesting things to think about.

She inspected the output window and pulled up the last line, went back into the program, and commented out the problem. It appeared to be related to the encryption process.

To check, she ran one of the red alerts from the previous week. It came back with a negligible result. Again. Sitting back, she considered the problem from a different angle, then typed in a new query.

What is the probability that this alert will result in action by NTAC?

72 percent.

So what did NTAC know that Auspex didn’t?

She pulled up the info dump. And stared. Auspex had decrypted the information and, for the first time, Kate could actually read the chatter.

And it made no sense at all.