“Can’t keep up?” asked Rideout.
“It’s not a pissing contest, son. It’s the new bit, the code randomizing thing.”
“The mutagenesis,” cut in Angel absentmindedly.
“Whatever you call it.”
She turned to him. “It’s important! It’s key. I call it mutagenesis because the whole thing is based on mimicking biology.”
“Is this going to be a graduate school lecture?” asked Simon, his face weary.
Lightfoote continued. “Look, we have code that hunts and recognizes Fawkes’ worm like a white blood cell. In the body, one thing those cells do is mutate the parts of them that recognize the foreign invader. For some mutants it screws them up. They don’t work anymore. But for a few, the mutations make them better or create variant cells that recognize mutant pathogens. And when you combine that with recognition-based replication, you quickly select for optimized cells, and make lots of them. It’s evolution!”
“I think I’m gonna fail this test, professor,” said Simon.
The two NSA men stood behind him. One interjected. “Yeah, but you know what happens when you get a lot of mutants in a population? You get cancer. Or autoimmunity. Bad changes with the good. Things go south, you know?”
“Sometimes,” admitted Lightfoote.
“And so what are we doing?” continued the man. “Unleashing rogue code, independent of any controls, that’s designed to replicate and mutate? We could lose control over it.”
The other coder chimed in. “We probably will lose control over it.”
Rideout waved his arms animatedly. “Does what is happening now look like an abundance of control? Sounds like you’re scared this thing might actually work, take down the worm. How about we put that fire out first, before it burns everything to the ground? We can worry about Angel’s mutants afterward.”
Simon nodded. “That’s about how I see it. We either fire the new weapon and hope the collateral damage is low, or we watch as that thing out there tears our world apart.” He stared at the two men. “But we need you two on this. Angel’s nearly done but she needs those modules from you. You in?”
They looked at each other. One sighed. “Yeah, I guess so. We have to do something.”
The other nodded. “Okay. But we are literally letting a genie out of the bottle here. Remember that a year from now.”
Lightfoote nodded. “If there still is a digital world left over for this code to haunt, we’ll work on it.”
“How close are you two?” asked Simon.
The men were back at their terminals. One called over. “We’re done. That’s the fight. We built a bomb, we’re just pissing our pants about arming it.”
Simon turned to Lightfoote. “Angel?”
“I’m debugging the mutation code. I don’t have the time to fine-tune it, and that worries me. Too much and it will fuck itself to oblivion. Too little and it won’t adapt fast enough to identify all Fawkes’ worms. But I’m almost there! Then I just need to assemble the modules and fire it out.”
An explosion rocked the building and the lights flickered.
“What the hell?” cried Rideout.
Dust filtered down from the ceiling and the lights completely cut out. Emergency lighting clicked on while the computers continued to hum. Shouts from floors above erupted, followed by gunfire.
“Fawkes,” said Lightfoote, her face grim. “He’s going to shut us down the old fashioned way.”
“Jesus,” mumbled Simon, rising stiffly to his feet.
Rideout unholstered his pistol and checked the magazine. “Thank God you put the servers on generator power. That explosion blew the main lines.”
“But not the hard lines. They’re buried too deep. We still have time!”
More gunfire. More screams above.
“Not much!” cried Rideout. “You two, you’re done, right? So get your asses over here! Move those cabinets to the door — quickly!”
The NSA programmers shoved the two waist-high cabinets, computer paraphernalia spilling out of the poorly closed doors, to block the entry. Rideout overturned a long table, spilling workstations and monitors to the floor.
Lightfoote tossed him a holstered firearm. “Mine. Give it to them.” She returned to the code.
“Spread this out!” said Rideout, waving his arms across the room. He frowned. “Either of you ever fired a weapon?”
Both shook their heads.
“Either of you ever want to fire a weapon?”
One put out his hand. Rideout gave him the black pistol.
“Safety’s in the trigger, so don’t point unless you mean to kill. Got it? Pull the trigger with follow-through, you’ll feel the safety release and then the shot. Slow, steady, pull. No panic. Aim and pull slowly, even if Godzilla comes through.” The NSA coder nodded frantically. “You,” he yelled at the unarmed coder, “grab that large wrench over there. Hide behind the server wall. If the guns fail, beat the shit out of the first person who comes in range.”
Simon braced himself on the wall beside the door, gun pointed at the entrance. “I’ll have the first. They won’t know what hit them.”
Rideout crouched behind the overturned table and motioned the NSA man with the gun over. “They’ll have to get past us to get to Angel, then get around the server farm between the door and her desk. We need to buy her all the time we can. Even if that means our lives, you understand? Her code has to get out!”
The programmer simply stared at him.
“What about the servers?” asked Simon.
Lightfoote called back. “I just need this computer, this one connection to send it out through the NSA back doors. It’s the end game now.”
The door shuddered from a heavy blow. Rideout and the NSA man concealed themselves behind the table, positioning their weapons forward. Heavy objects slammed repeatedly into the door, rattling the metal cabinets. The drumming was offset by the maniacal clacking of Lightfoote’s keys, the two percussions accompanied by the ever present hum of the server farm between them.
The thudding stopped. Dust continued to drift down from the ceiling. The sounds of muted shouts outside could be heard, along with muffled shuffling and scrapes. Several seconds of silence followed. Rideout and Simon aimed their weapons.
Then the door exploded.
60
The pouring rain clattered angrily on the metal roof, the storm winds shaking the thin walls of the warehouse. Daylight faded, dimmed further by the clouds, still just managing to illuminate the interior through the high windows. The air tasted of mildew and rot, chased by a metallic tang. A low rumble shook the long structure, momentarily interrupting conversation within. Two figures stood perched atop a large, moveable platform.
“I can’t reach anyone,” Cohen said, flipping her phone closed with a snap. “Looks like we’ve lost all cellular. We’re blind here.”
Savas nodded, examining the readout on a small control unit. “Not completely blind,” he muttered. “As long as the power holds.”
Cohen limped over to Savas and wrapped an arm over his shoulders. “Frank got the motion sensors up?”
“Yeah,” Savas said, turning toward her. There was another roll of thunder. “We’ll at least get some advance notice.”
“Crunch time, Johnny-boy.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “I’m starting to get a little tired of the world ending around us.”
He kissed her, cupping his hand behind her head. Her breath was warm in the frigid air of the unheated warehouse. A cloud escaped his mouth as he pulled away. “Don’t ever say I didn’t show you an exciting time, girl.”