Antivirus (The Horde Series Book 1) (11 page)

Chapter 14

FutureTek Headquarters, Helena, Montana:
Kat Hale sat at the conference table with her arms crossed, her forehead creased in a scowl. The meeting was not going well at all, and Drew Jackson was doing his best to appease the Systemtech representatives.

“Look,” Drew was pleading. “All we’re asking for is some time. You have to understand the position we’re in.”

“What I understand is that we have a deal in place,” Michael Monroe, Systemtech’s CFO said easily. “It is a deal that was entered into in good faith by both parties and you are attempting to back out of it.”

“What about this don’t you understand?” Kat blurted out before Drew could answer. “We’ve got a dead employee, attempted industrial espionage, and we’re still trying to figure out what happened with Jon during the demonstration!”

“Kat,” Drew warned, holding out a hand to stop her from making a bad situation infinitely worse.

“No, Drew,” she said, slamming a hand down on the table in frustration. “This isn’t about the deal, and as far as I’m concerned, the deal shouldn’t even be affected! We will give you everything we have, Mister Monroe. You have to know this! But we can’t very well go against a Homeland Security directive!”

“It sounds to me like you’re hiding something,” Dan Hyde spoke up, thoroughly enjoying the proceedings and watching the two FutureTek employees squirm. He had held reservations about the technology since day one, and even though Monroe still believed in the actual technology, Hyde was quite pleased that everything was unraveling as quickly as it was. If he was smart and played his cards right, not only could he end the whole embarrassing debacle, but he might be able to topple his boss, too.

“We’re not hiding anything,” Drew said. “But Kathryn is right. Agent Alders’ directive is that nothing changes hands until they have completed their investigation. We simply cannot move forward on this.”

“Yet, I’m not asking for the equipment,” Monroe countered smoothly. “The technical specifications of this technology are part of the deal and there should be no reason that we can’t have access to that.”

“Are you serious?” Kat exclaimed. “The technical specs are the basis of their investigation. Perry sold the specs to an enemy of our country!”

“Which is why we wish to have them now,” Monroe continued matter-of-factly. “Every day we wait is time lost, and there’s no telling how long before this state-of-the-art technology is sitting on planning tables around the world. If we wait for our wonderful government to finish up with their investigation, it could be years before we have our hands on it. So you will find a way to get those specifications to me immediately.”

“You can’t be…” Kat began, but Monroe held up a hand and silenced her.

“Miss Hale,” he said, his calm demeanor replaced with a cold fury. “I have had just about enough of these proceedings. We have entered into an agreement to purchase this technology from your company and I mean to finalize that deal immediately.” He turned to Drew and glared at him. “If we do not have, at the bare minimum, the full range of technical specifications in our possession within forty-eight hours, I will see to it that our lawyers mire FutureTek and each individual employee in so much legal trouble that a cardboard box on a street corner will seem like the Taj Majal to you. Do I make myself clear on this?”

Drew was pale, but Kat was defiant. “You can’t threaten us,” she snapped. “We have no choice but to follow Homeland Security’s directive here, Mister Monroe. You have to understand this.”

“You and your company are in breach of contract, Mister Jackson, and you have forty-eight hours to remedy that,” Monroe continued, pointedly ignoring Kat. “If you do not, we will begin legal proceedings against you for breach of contract and lost revenue and I’m quite certain that our lawyers will have no problems whatsoever in being successful in the courtroom.” Monroe stood up. “This meeting is over,” he said, looking hard at Drew. “Forty-eight hours, Mister Jackson. Consider well the repercussions if you don’t meet that deadline.”

With that, he and Hyde left the room.

As they departed, Drew let himself fall into his chair with a beaten sigh. “Now what do I do?” he pleaded, putting a hand to his forehead.

“You can’t cave into this, Drew,” Kat said, leaning forward. “Even they have to know that the investigation takes precedence.”

“Yeah, but they want the specs right now and the argument is going to be that there’s no reason Alders has to know. It would be really easy to just give up the specs and tell Alders we had already given them to Monroe.”

“Except that you haven’t volunteered that information to Alders yet,” she snapped. “There’s no way you skate around that.”

“What worse, Kat? Dealing with Alders or dealing with Monroe and his company?”

“Don’t cave on this,” she repeated, her face belying her struggle to maintain her composure.

“That’s easy for you to say,” he went on. “It’s my ass on the line here, Kat. Not yours.”

“It’s all of ours.”

“I’m the one signing the checks,” he pointed out with a sigh. “They’re going to come after me.”

“Call Alders, then,” Kat went on. “Tell him what Monroe is doing and see if there’s anything he can do to otherwise authorize the release of the technical specs, or at least get in touch with Systemtech and hold them off for a while. We’re not doing anything wrong here,” she went on.

“That’s true, we aren’t,” he agreed and then abruptly stood, his face creasing into an angry frown. “If you’ll excuse me, Kat, I’ve got some work to do.”

He turned to leave, but she stopped him. “What are you going to do, Drew?” she asked.

He looked at her for a moment before answering. “What I’ve been doing,” he answered plainly and then turned and strode out of the room.

As the door to the limousine slammed shut, Monroe continued the call he had begun as he and his security chief had exited the building. “Yes, his name is Rick Alders,” he was saying. “Homeland Security. He’s a Helena local. Get me a meeting with him immediately.” A pause. “I’m in Helena right now, so obviously
today
would be a good time,” he said sarcastically. Another pause, followed by a simple nod of his head and he ended the call. 

“You know this Alders isn’t going to give up the technical specs,” Hyde put in smugly from his seat across from his boss. The man would milk this for everything he could, and Monroe knew it. But Monroe also knew that, as much of a problem-child Hyde could be, he would be a bulldog if he turned him loose on FutureTek’s employees. Fortunately, he had every intention of doing just that.

“Do we know anything more on the Edwards’ murder?” Monroe turned the conversation to a different aspect.

“Just what we gleaned from the police reports. Perry died a couple days ago. Wife was taken out last night, shot in the head.”

“Do you believe Mister Jackson’s story?”

“What, that Perry is a traitor and Drew and his stooges know nothing about it?” Hyde scoffed. “Of course not. They might have Homeland Security fooled, but there’s no doubt that they’re playing both sides, hoping for a double hit on the tech.”

“All the more reason for us to get our hands on it now.”

“There are other ways,” Hyde offered slyly.

“I assume you will exercise extreme caution?” Monroe said coldly, knowing exactly what Hyde was referring to.

“Of course.”

“Very good,” Monroe said. “I will work with Homeland Security as planned and make an attempt at greasing the right wheels. In the meantime, I need the specs immediately. When can you move?”

“Tomorrow night,” Hyde said confidently. “I’ll have specialists flown into Spokane and drive in from there. I can have them here in twenty-four hours.”

“See that it’s done tomorrow night, then.”

“What about Jackson and his employees?” Hyde asked. “I’m guessing that some of them might be hanging around after hours. Their whole world is falling apart right now. They have to be desperate to save it.”

“Eliminate them,” Monroe said casually. “I will not have our founding stake in a potential trillion dollar industry screwed up by a bunch of country hicks. Do what you have to do. Homeland Security will likely pin the blame on the foreign interest that killed Perry Edwards and his wife.”

“It’s liable to get messy.”

“There are plenty of players in this game to direct attention toward,” Monroe replied. “Perhaps Mister Sherrard himself goes off the deep end. It would certainly help Homeland Security wrap up their investigation into Mister Edwards once they learn that Mister Sherrard masterminded the entire thing.”

“Understood, sir,” Hyde said with a smile as he pulled out his phone and sent a message. He had his team lined up and inbound before they reached their hotel.

Chapter 15

Davidson Residence, Helena, Montana:
Marquis Chavandar sat in an easy chair, a pair of binoculars focused on the house across the street. He had been there for the better part of four hours and the owner of the house, an older gentleman by the name of Grant Davidson, had been dead almost that long.

The Venezuelan had watched the two police officers show up at Jon Sherrard’s house just a short time ago and now he was watching them leave. Not very long for a visit, Chavandar thought. Then again, he knew their visit did not involve the technology he had been sent to retrieve, as that would be in Homeland Security’s ballpark. He wondered if their visit might involve the murder of Edwards’ wife the night before, since his contact had told him the two couples were close.

He again pondered Sherrard’s involvement in everything and briefly considered a straight-forward approach by simply kidnapping the man and torturing him for the information. However, he still didn’t know how deep Sherrard was involved with Perry Edwards, and it might be better to simply wait and see if the man gave himself away.

From the table beside the chair where he was sitting, Chavandar picked up the can of Coke with a rubber glove-covered hand and took a drink while watching the police cruiser pull away from the curb. He would continue to watch the house until nightfall and then dispose of the old man’s body. He might get another couple of days use out of the house if no one came poking around. By the time they would find the house owner’s body in the back of a stolen van at the airport and trace it back to here, he would be long gone.

He watched for another hour and, seeing no more movement or activity at the Sherrard house, he took a break from his surveillance to go deal with things upstairs. Mister Davidson, the owner of the house, was dead in his bed, the pillow still pressed over his head where Chavandar had smothered him. He was an old man, probably in his late 70s and he likely never knew what had happened as the assassin had arrived before the man had even awakened that morning. From the bathroom, Chavandar tore down the shower curtain and laid it out on the bedroom floor. He bundled the body up in the soiled blankets from the bed and then laid the bundle on the shower curtain. With duct tape he had found in the kitchen, he wrapped the dead man in the shower curtain and then wrapped him up tightly with the tape, sealing down the edges of the curtain from end to end. Wrapped up the way it was, it would take a while for the smell of decomposition to alert someone.

Leaving the body where it was—he would move it that evening when he took it out to dispose of it—he went back downstairs and took another look out the window. There was no change in the scenery, so he went to the kitchen and helped himself to bread and lunchmeat from the refrigerator and made himself a sandwich. A couple minutes later, he settled himself back into the easy chair with his lunch and took up the surveillance again.

When Jon Sherrard finally stepped out onto his porch in the middle of the afternoon, Marquis Chavandar knew exactly why the police had been there in the morning.

Chapter 16

National Security Agency Headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland:
“We’ve got a hit,” Lieutenant Danielle Martz said, tossing a sheaf of papers down on the desk in front of Major Thomas Bolson. It was yet another report in a long line of reports they had run across while searching day and night for any and all information they could find on their wayward program.

“Anything worth pursuing?” Bolson asked, looking weary and skeptical. At this point, everything they had come across had proven worthless in their search, and he was dog-tired.

“That really depends on if we’re willing to suspend disbelief for a bit,” she said, tapping her finger on the report. “You’ve got to read this, Tom. It’s a Homeland Security agent report out of Montana.”

“Homeland Security?” he repeated, his interest piqued.

“You’re not going to believe it,” she finished quietly, a lopsided grin on her face.

Bolson snatched it up and leaned back, letting his eyes roam over the report. It was penned by an agent named Rick Alders, reporting on an apparent industrial/national espionage case centered in Helena, Montana. It was not the case itself that was intriguing, but the short paragraph detailing a revolutionary human direct interface to a computer, with a human having a run-in with a rogue virus they had determined to be the Horde during a test run.

“You’re kidding me,” the major said, looking up after a bit.

“About what part?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest. She had had the same apparent misgivings about the story that Bolson was probably experiencing. Most of the reports they had read over the past 48 hours had come from virus and security software firms, reporting on what little the outside world knew about the new virus and wondering why it didn’t appear to be very virulent, popping up only here and there, before disappearing again. “Are you talking about the fact that a company out there has succeeded in putting a human into cyberspace?” she asked. “Or maybe you are having a hard time swallowing the fact that the test went wrong when the subject allegedly came into direct contact with our baby.”

Bolson tossed the report back on his desk. “At any given time, there’s dozens of private firms out there working on being able to get someone into cyberspace, but for someone to have actually done it?”

“Yeah, I feel the same way. It’s almost B-movie material.” She pointed to the report. “Still,” she went on, “it’s a Homeland Security report, high security and top level clearance only. Either this Alders is a crackpot, too, or he’s into something he can’t explain.”

Bolson leaned back in his chair. “Okay,” he mused thoughtfully. “Assuming that the report is true and this company—what is it, FutureTek?”

“Yes.”

“Assuming this FutureTek has managed to make this theory a reality, how does the Horde figure into it?”

“That’s one of several million dollar questions,” Martz answered. “On one hand, because of what we have done with the Horde—or rather what it has done to us—we have to suspend disbelief and accept that FutureTek does indeed possess the technology to put a person into cyberspace and they have done so.”

“Go on.”

“While everyone else thinks the Horde is just a computer virus, we know that it’s a sentient life form,” she continued. “Of that, we no longer have any doubt. It’s been living and evolving now for two years, right under our very noses, and we have irrefutable proof that it’s capable of deception. However, while we know it’s alive in a technical sense, in two years’ time, there is no telling what it has evolved into. Is it logical? Is it rational? Or maybe even pissed off and psychotic?”

“You’re talking about emotions, Dani,” he pointed out.

“It’s an active AI,” she replied. “We don’t yet know what it’s completely capable of, but we certainly can’t rule out the development of emotion.”

“Well, we do know that it’s hostile because it acts like any other virus and attacks systems and networks. That’s simply part of its programming.”

“Right. So let’s delve into the pure science fiction aspect of our little problem. What happens if the Horde comes into contact with a human psyche in cyberspace?”

Bolson couldn’t suppress the laugh. “Do you have any idea how absurd that sounds?”

Martz threw up her hands and shrugged. “No more absurd than telling someone we have developed a sentient computer program that got loose and is roaming the internet at will. Of course, we can’t forget that it took us two years to see that it was alive because it hid that from us that entire time.”

“True,” Bolson conceded, realizing that FutureTek’s unbelievable technology was no different than their own unbelievable technology.

“So in theory,” Martz went on, “what happens if a human consciousness crosses the threshold into cyberspace and comes into contact with the Horde?”

That gave Bolson pause for thought. “Well,” he finally began, leaning forward and rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “How would you characterize a human psyche in cyberspace? Obviously, we can agree that he doesn’t have a physical manifestation. So he would likely resemble a program or some other line of coding,” Bolson finished.

“Meaning the Horde would likely treat the person the same way it treats actual program code.”

“Correct,” the major stated.

“So the Horde would attempt to exercise its programming on the person’s consciousness.”

“I suppose it would,” Bolson agreed. “But do we even know if the Horde is acting on its programming? Given two years and an actively-evolving artificial intelligence, it probably doesn’t even recognize any of its original programming parameters.”

“So it would be the equivalent of a free-thinking alien life form and would react to the presence of an intruder in what way?”

“If it retains anything at all of its initial programming, it would likely attempt to suppress the intruder,” he shrugged.

“Attack and neutralize.”

“Yes,” he answered. “Dani, can you imagine what that would be like?”

“No, and neither can you,” Martz stated matter-of-factly. “We’ve got a lot of questions here, Tom. Whatever truth there is to this, we need to find out and we need to find out fast.”

“Agreed,” Bolson said as he reached for his phone. “I’ll get us on the next flight to Montana.”