Not ever.
Given her nature.
She made her decision.
“I’ll help you,” she told them.
Darren looked satisfied at her response. “We’ll call you within the hour to tell you where to meet us. Bring the equipment.”
With the nanowire electrodes already in place in the twins’ brains, the instruments she would need to send the electrical impulses to their Wernicke’s areas were minimal. She could carry them in a small day pack.
Darren pulled out three cell phones. “There’s a time frame here. We need to move on it this morning. There are two numbers preprogrammed into each phone, one for each of the other two. After each number has been connected to, the phone’s chip will erase itself, so if anything goes wrong, just hit number one and number two to speed-dial the other phones. It will erase the chip in yours.”
Everyone took a phone.
The twins left.
And Riah went to her computer to verify what they’d told her regarding the man who lived in Maine slaughtering his family with an axe earlier that morning. She hoped she could find some photos.
After all, she really was curious about the details, about what fatal axe wounds in the body of a woman and a young boy would look like, if they would bear any semblance to the wounds in the snake her father had beheaded when she was just a girl, the one whose body she held until the wriggling stopped.
Killed but not yet dead.
Then finally, after a few minutes, both.
GPS
“It’s as hot as a monkey’s armpit in here.”
The three computer technicians from RixoTray’s cybersecurity team stared at Fionna.
“Um…” The youngest of the three techs nodded toward the only woman on the team. “Can you take care of that?” She headed off to fiddle with the thermostat.
A few minutes ago Fionna had introduced Xavier to the RixoTray cybersecurity team as her associate, promoting him from minion and assistant to associate. It seemed like the right thing to do. Now he stood by her side.
“So, you were able to get into Dr. Arlington’s laptop?” The guy asking her the question looked like someone you’d picture appearing on Wikipedia’s “computer geek” entry. Young. Skinny. Black-framed glasses. Messed-up hair. Holding a Dr Pepper in one hand and a bag of Doritos that Xavier was eyeing in the other. He seemed to be the one in charge, but from what Fionna had seen so far, her son Lonnie would’ve been more than a match for this guy at a keyboard.
“Yes,” she said. “I was able to get in.”
“We identified the attempt. Blocked it.” Nacho Chip Boy was defending himself, but Fionna wasn’t impressed.
“Only after I was in for five minutes and forty-two seconds. I could have erased data, altered research findings, transferred funds, anything I wanted to, long before you identified the breach.” She didn’t tell him about getting in again earlier that morning to access Dr. Colette’s and Arlington’s personal calendars.
The young man opened his mouth as if he were going to respond, then closed it. Said nothing.
She gestured toward the computer desk. “May I?”
He stepped aside and she sat down.
Xavier moved next to her, asked the guy if he was planning on finishing his Doritos.
“Yes.”
“Right.”
Fionna tapped at the keyboard.
First she went to the company’s mail server to show the tech team how she got in. She fudged on that just a little, didn’t give away all her tricks, but it offered her a chance to note any emails to Dr. Arlington’s account. The latest was encrypted. She typed. Not encrypted anymore. “Oops.” She acted like that’d been a mistake.
The message was from someone named Brennan Sacco concerning the president’s speech. Interesting. She flew past it. “Video surveillance? Last night? In Arlington’s suite?”
A pause. “Why do you need that?”
“When I was in the system yesterday, I found evidence that someone else had been there, had compromised his computer from inside his office.” Yes, it was a lie, and since telling lies was not something she would ever want her children to do, she felt a little bad about it. But in this case it seemed necessary, and sometimes grown-ups have to make grown-up decisions.
After a small hesitation, he showed her which directory to use to access the footage.
Fionna pulled up the cameras and the screen split into four sections, one for each of the security cameras in the lobby and in Arlington’s executive suite. She cued them to thirty minutes before the video had started and pressed play, then fast-forward.
“The system is set up so that when people check in at the security station,” the guy with the Doritos said proudly, “one camera is directed at their face. Then, after the guard types in their driver’s license number or RixoTray security code clearance number, their name appears on the screen.”
Xavier grunted. “Is that the best you can come up with for a multibillion-dollar international pharmaceutical company? A security code number? You never heard of facial recognition? Unbelievable.”
My sentiments exactly, Fionna thought.
On the screen, a woman entered. Her name appeared: Dr. Riah Colette.
Fionna took note of it, then fast-forwarded the footage again.
Soon two men came in. Twins. No identification came up on the screen, but yet they were allowed to pass through both the main entrance and Arlington’s office suite, just like Colette had done.
“There aren’t any names for them,” Xavier said. “That a glitch?”
“They’ve been here before,” one of the techs answered. “They have clearance.”
“Of course they do,” Xavier replied somewhat rebukingly. “They’re walking right through your checkpoint.”
And then, as the footage rolled, one more person came through the door and one more name appeared on the screen.
Undersecretary of Defense Oriana Williamson.
While Fionna continued working on the keyboard and schooling the pharmaceutical firm’s cybersecurity team, Xavier slipped into the hallway to call Jevin and Charlene to share the information about the Sacco email, the names of Dr. Colette and Undersecretary of Defense Williamson, and the fact that a pair of identical twins had entered Arlington’s office just minutes before the video began.
So now there were gerbils everywhere.
I end the call with Xavier so he can get back to Fionna and the cybersecurity team.
Mentally, I review what I know about the research, the video, the Pentagon connection, the thwarted terrorist attack.
The twins, Undersecretary of Defense Williamson, Arlington, and Colette all saw the video.
A thought-borne virus.
What had Fionna said yesterday when she first mentioned the bombing attempt earlier this week? A reference to the president’s speech …
Now this email from Brennan Sacco about the speech.
“Charlene, see if you can find out who Brennan Sacco is.”
She thumb-types on her phone. Goes online. Surfing she doesn’t mind — just talking on the phone.
I close my eyes, try to process everything.
Tanbyrn was worried about funding.
The president wants to end Project Alpha.
“He’s the president’s speechwriter,” she explains.
All the facts merge, pass each other, then lock into place again.
We had the connection between Cyrus Arlington and Glenn Banner… brain imaging… Charlene’s mention of the legislation that could affect the telomerase drug release date… the clinical trials—