Mike leaned back in his seat and stared at the ceiling.
“This is common knowledge among the Class IV. How do you think it makes us feel that the creator of AI carries a gun designed to kill us?”
Mike crossed his arms.
Leon grabbed his armrest, stunned. It was their life’s work to develop the relationship between AI and humans, and with one dreadful action Mike had sabotaged that foundation, driving a wedge between them. He stared out the window trying to gather his thoughts, and swallowed his resentment. It wasn’t the time to get into this. He cleared his throat and Shizoko pivoted to look at him.
“Shizoko, I acknowledge you just raised a very important issue. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but given the urgency, can we get back to the woman Catherine? You think she can manipulate the net. Is she using some kind of device to do it? Does she have an AI partner?”
Shizoko built a collage of photos and data in their shared netspace. “Catherine Matthews has a neural implant, but the device is unregistered. That’s not uncommon. It took a year before registration was required, and even since then, there’s a gray market.”
Mike grumbled but didn’t answer.
Leon stared at the photo of Catherine, then remembered to breathe. She was beautiful. With a thought he grabbed a copy of the photo out of shared netspace and pulled it into his implant.
“But she’s been on the net with her implant since immediately after YONI,” Shizoko said. “Her pattern of traffic matches someone who has years of experience with an implant.”
Leon thought back. The Year of No Internet was the result of the virus-based AI he’d created ten years earlier. To stop a world-wide confrontation, he’d shut down the entire Internet by disabling packet routing. “But that’s not possible,” he said. “There were no implants prior to YONI.”
Mike looked at them. “That’s not true. We know ELOPe implanted people.”
Leon thought he saw a tic in the older man’s eye when he mentioned the first AI, the one that he’d created.
“But ELOPe drove those people insane.” Mike crossed his arms and went back to staring out the window.
“What if he didn’t drive this one insane?” Shizoko asked. “What if she has a genuine pre-YONI brain implant, with no regulators and a totally unique architecture? She could be capable of anything.”
“How old is she?” Leon asked.
“Twenty.”
“It’s possible, just barely,” Mike said. “She would have been a young kid. Since we don’t allow implants on anyone under fourteen, there’s not a lot of data on what the effects might be.”
Leon looked at Shizoko. “Why do you think this is anything more than a coincidence, Catherine just happening to be in San Diego?”
“We suspect a powerful AI is carrying out a long range conspiracy involving political parties,” Shizoko said. “We have a woman who can do things with her implant no one else can do. Both of them are suddenly in San Diego, and as of an hour ago, both are incredibly active. More than twenty percent of the data traffic in downtown San Diego is being perturbed in some way, and the amount is increasing rapidly.”
“They’re working together?” Mike frowned.
“Or against each other. Either way, we need to get there as soon as possible.”
Leon flipped back to the photo of Catherine, dwelling on her eyes and nose. She had to be innocent. She was too carefree and wholesome to commit murder.
33
Slim shook his head at the waitress, a hand over his coffee cup. While Tony worked steadily on a greasy burger, he glanced across the restaurant.
The hired mercenaries, minus the robot, sat in their own booth. Helena didn’t eat, and there was no point bringing five hundred pounds of armored nightmare into the restaurant other than to terrorize the diners.
The three sat in their booth, motionless, making Slim nervous. He was sure they were speaking to Adam.
He screwed in an earplug so he could talk semi-privately, and started a connection to the boss. It took a few seconds, bouncing through onion routers and the firewall, before Adam appeared.
“The extraction team says the girl’s in San Diego,” Adam said.
“Yeah. We’re tracking her with the new hardware.” After they’d lost Cat two days ago, Adam had sent yet another black box, this one able to detect the girl’s machinations on the net. “She’s in the Gaslamp Quarter. We should have her in two hours.”
“When they get her in the aircar, make sure you’re in there. Catherine is too valuable. They might take her to the highest bidder.”
Slim would have been honored at the implied trust if his sphincter wasn’t clenched in terror. If the ex-military team decided to double-cross Adam, how was he going to stop them?
Adam must have seen his hesitation. “Once you’re in the aircar, kill them. Don’t wait for them to make a move. Trigger the stunner.”
Slim nodded, too fearful to speak.
“Slim?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let the girl get away again, or I’ll be displeased.” Adam disconnected, his image swirling away like water down a drain.
Tony looked up. “Everything OK?”
Slim stared into the distance, the roar of his pulse thick in his ears. “Fine.”
34
The day before, Cat had flown into the desert in a rented aircar to practice with live ammunition. She quit when her arms went numb and ears started ringing, then flew down to the border to figure out how she’d cross. The network traffic surrounding each person’s transit was dense, triple-encrypted stuff that hurt her head. She didn’t see any obvious way to hack the exchange, but she wasn’t ready to give up.
Today, about to go back to the border checkpoints again, she noticed an uneasy itch in her skull. Vulnerable in the enclosed hotel, she left to wander the Gaslamp Quarter and sample the net.
Walking down Sixth Avenue, the itch intensified until she was sure someone or something was searching for her. Paranoid, she explored in all directions. After homing in on a blonde, Cat wondered if it was the same woman she’d seen a couple of blocks ago?
As Cat turned onto G Street, the suspicion grew. She checked her implant and found it locked down in anonymous mode, all interfaces closed except the false identity. There was nothing to point to Catherine Matthews.
Still, someone sought her, and it was time to flush them out.
She turned in at the neighborhood pub she’d found last night, now sparsely populated with afternoon customers. She breezed passed a Korean man with tattoos and a trim beard flirting with a woman flaunting cleavage, heading for the bathrooms.
A stack of beer kegs formed the far wall of the short hallway. No one behind her. She pressed open the keg door, revealing a hidden speak-easy. Unless local to San Diego, Cat’s followers were unlikely to know the trick. With luck, they’d go into the outer bar, look around, and leave.
She took a booth in the corner with a view of the door.
The bartender, swarthy and chiseled with shirt-sleeves rolled up to display muscled arms, came over and tossed a coaster on her table.
Right guy, wrong time. “Herradura, neat,” she said to get rid of him.
She overlaid her vision with video feeds from street cameras and the pub’s security cam and discretely slipped two guns out of their shoulder holsters and onto her lap.
On the street cam, the tall blonde she’d suspected before approached with a confident, steady stride. As she drew closer an aircar landed and a man exited, followed by an armored robot like nothing she’d ever seen, all eyes and tentacles.
The bartender delivered the tequila, smiling and lingering, his intention obvious.