CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
The Federal Aviation Administration projects that by 2020 there will be 7 million small drones occupying U.S. airspace.
—GCN
MI5 Headquarters, Home Office
Thames House
12 Millbank
Westminster, London
Adam bounced up from his seat like a cork when they came into the room. “You guys look like you’ve been in a war. You okay?”
Mike patted his arm. “We’re okay. We promise.”
“Good, because that wasn’t cool. Do you want to see the video of what happened?”
Nicholas nodded. “We missed something rather major on the satellite pass. I’d like to see where the missile battery was hidden.”
Adam had the video queued up. He didn’t tell them he’d already watched it fifty times, heart in his throat every time.
He hit play. “Here’s your chopper, comes in quiet, perfect, hovers. Mike goes down, and, as she does, look here. The surface-to-air missile came out of the chimney. It was disguised to look like a piece of brick. The whole section slides free, and it launches, a direct hit on the windshield of the chopper. We think it was on a motion sensor.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Exactly. Nicholas, there you go. Your jump coincides with the missile launch, and, as you can see, the helicopter goes ass over teakettle, barely misses Mike’s head with the rotors, and flings you into the air as it flips, catapults Gareth to the edge of the roof, where he falls and you catch him, and goes down the building. Serious acrobatics ensue, and then Mike saves you and Gareth.
“I’m so sorry about the pilots. They didn’t know what hit them, literally didn’t change their speech patterns. It was so quick.” His voice cracked, and Nicholas put a hand on Adam’s shoulder.
“It felt like a thousand years up there. Thank you for this. Now.” He dropped a waxed canvas bag in Adam’s lap. “Here are all the hard drives from Ardelean’s house and laboratory.”
“Yeah, what was the laboratory about?”
“Manufacturing drugs. Epibatidine and LSD, for starters. But I’m sure there’s more—there was an entire genetics laboratory there, high-end stuff. You let us know what you find, okay?”
“Copy that. You’re heading to meet your dad? Here’s the address. That’s where they’re holding the hacker Temora. And, guys? You’ve just aged me nearly a year, and I don’t want to be twenty-one yet, too adult for me. So be careful, okay? Ardelean has to be royally pissed. I’ll bet he plans to give a new meaning to being on the warpath.”
Once Adam was alone again, he set up a pipe directly to Gray in New York, and the two of them began communicating through a separate, secure video feed. “How are the bosses?”
“They’ve been better. It was a long night. But they’re both alive and in one piece, so that’s an upside. Nicholas brought me all the hard drives.”
“Good,” Gray said. “How about we divide and conquer. You take half the terminals. I’ll take the other half. See what we can find.”
“Sounds good.” Adam spent twenty minutes setting up all of the hard drives on their dedicated terminals before he started pulling data out of them as fast as he could. Gray, remotely accessing his half of the terminals, whistled quietly to himself.
“What are you seeing?”
“There’s a lot here, Adam. Most of it is encoded—it’s going to take ages to sift through it all. Definitely experiments, years of data. The chemistry is astounding. If they’d been doing this in a government or university lab, they’d be Nobel contenders. I count three separate genome-related medications that they’ve developed. Two didn’t work in human trials, but the third showed promise. I assume that’s what Radu had Mike inject into him.”
“So when you say human trials—”
“Radu was the guinea pig. My God, he could have killed himself ten times over if any of this went wrong.”
“This server is all artificial intelligence generating information on the Voynich manuscript. We’re talking years of data and papers and footnotes. But the language itself—this is artificial intelligence at a whole new level. They were even starting to experiment with drones flown by AI instead of pilots. Now that’s a dangerous thought. These guys are geniuses.”
“Yes, they are. Imagine if they’d shared with the class. Here’s yet another new programming language, but I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t make heads or tails.”
Adam said, “That one I’ve seen. It’s based on the Voynich. They used it to build a completely new system that would allow them to infiltrate every computer that houses MATRIX.”
Gray whistled. “You know how dangerous that is? MATRIX is also on the servers at NORAD. And many other sites I wouldn’t want to allow control of to a couple of whack jobs who’ve built a new world no one can understand. They can highjack anything, everything, at any time. Very dangerous.”
“Radu is dead, Roman’s in the wind, and we’re responsible for figuring out what he might be up to. So instead of worrying, let’s keep pushing.”
Gray grinned. “Oh, how soon they grow up. I remember the days not long past when you would get yourself lost in the minutiae for fun.”
“Yeah, well, you guys made me a white hat for real, so now I have no choice but to be serious about it.” He went silent for a moment. “This scares me, Gray. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve seen a lot. If they’ve shared any of this with their people at Radulav Industries, and there are people out there capable of hacking these systems, we have no control anymore. I mean, we have to put out an advisory that all government computers cease using MATRIX at once, do you agree?”
Gray nodded. “Yes, we do. It’s a good lesson. We’ve never truly had control, my lad. We never have, and we never will. Wait, what’s this?”
He pulled a folder onto the screen, double-clicked it. A series of schematic drawings appeared, layering one on the other. “This is exactly what I didn’t want to find.”
“What is it?”
“The blueprints of Thames House, River House, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and Parliament, according to the labels. Detailed, thorough, and current. You better get Nicholas on the phone.”
“Dialing him now. What do you think it means?”
Gray said, “Here’s a lesson for you—always anticipate the worst.”