“If Mr. Fawkes had rigged the satellite to launch already,” he said, “meaning, if it was set to launch at a preset time, then the launch sequence would be, in effect, already active. If that were true and we destroyed the transmitter currently controlling it, then it would assume an enemy infiltration, and the launch sequence would be locked down; we wouldn’t be able to stop it. If the launch sequence was not active, then the satellite will be receptive to our control, as long as the proper security codes are presented. At this point, we are confident that the launch code is not currently active.”
“You’re sure?”
“We won’t know with one-hundred percent accuracy until the ’bot reasserts full control, but we’ve got hooks into most of its systems now. I’m sure.”
“Agent Wachalowski,” Osterhagen said. “Fawkes is no doubt gearing up The Eye to fire again.”
“I know.”
“Without that transmitter, he’ll lose control of both satellites, and his ground forces too.”
“I know,” I said, “but I’m telling you—Fawkes used contacts inside Heinlein Industries to develop a Huma variant off the grid. The transmission that halted the revivors earlier fundamentally changed the behavior of the nanotech. He repurposed it.”
“Repurposed it for what?”
“With the help of Heinlein’s engineers, he’s found a way to administer the Huma payload without an injection. They’re spreading it through saliva, through bites.” The Stillwell engineers were listening now. Even Osterhagen’s face changed.
“You think he’s trying to create more revivors?”
“No,” I said. “The dogs we recovered at the train yard had standard M10 revivor nodes, but the engineers worked on different components of Fawkes’s variant. At Black Rock, they were testing the ability to disseminate it through bite wounds. Another engineer designed it to self-replicate so it could be transmitted over and over, but I think the experiment in the Mother of Mercy’s basement was the key. We found evidence of nanotech in their brains, but no revivor nodes. When Van Offo tried to influence the prisoners down there, to calm them down, he couldn’t. Fawkes has been experimenting in secret for years now, trying to figure out what makes you guys tick, and I think he finally did it. He’s repurposed Huma not to make more revivors, but to switch off your influence. To trigger Zhang’s Syndrome in the general population and give them their memories back. That’s what this is about. He is trying to wipe you out, but not in the way you think.”
“How can you—” Osterhagen started, but I cut him off.
“I can’t prove it, but I’m telling you I’m right. It’s affected me as well. I know it’s true. At this rate it will spread beyond the city in hours and we have no idea what it will do. If you destroy that transmitter, you’ll never—”
On Cal’s recording I saw Chen nod, then turn and leave the room. The angle of the feed changed as Fawkes returned his attention to a console in front of him. Data streamed across the screen. His hands, almost skeletal now, moved quickly over the keypad. An image I recognized as a map of satellite positions hung at the top of the screen. He was inputting coordinates.
“What is it?” Osterhagen asked. I checked the time stamp on Cal’s recording.
“Sir, how long would it take The Eye to spool up for another shot?” I asked.
“We predict thirty minutes,” Vaggot said.
According to the time stamp on Cal’s footage, the satellite had to have already been aimed at the CMC Tower and was preparing to fire when it was recorded. That meant that on the recording he was entering in the data for a different target; his next target.
While I watched, a list appeared in Fawkes’s HUD, mapping over the recording. There were several more sets of coordinates there in a column. When I ran them through the GPS, I found the location of the target he’d just entered.
“General, I know what Fawkes’s next target is. He’s going to fire on the UTTC.”
“How—”
“I’m forwarding the data to you now, but get out of that building.”
“Sir,” Vaggot said. “In a worst-case scenario, you have maybe twenty minutes. We will not have control of the satellite by then.”
“The UTTC is under siege at the moment,” Osterhagen said. “We can push our way out but it will be a bloodbath, and it will take hours.”
“Can we destroy The Eye?” I asked.
“Fawkes has threatened to launch if we try.” He looked thoughtful for a minute.
“Sir, I have a contact inside Heinlein Industries,” I told him. “I may be able to take Fawkes out from the inside.”
“We can have a short-range missile in the air in five minutes,” one of the soldiers said, “and destroy that transmitter in seven.”
Osterhagen nodded. He didn’t say anything for several seconds.
“Sir, what do you want us to do?” the soldier asked.
“Ready the missiles,” Osterhagen said, “but don’t launch without my order.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No matter what, you do not fire those missiles without a direct order from me.”
Two men snapped a salute and rushed out of the room.
“Alto Do Mundo is next on the list after the UTTC,” Vaggot said, looking at Cal’s data. “Then a list of major utilities; water, power, and transportation.”
Osterhagen nodded again and met my eye.
“She believes in you,” he said.
“I know.”
“You’ve got five minutes,” he said, and his image winked out.
She didn’t answer right away, but she did answer.
I cycled through the list of override codes that Cal pulled from Fawkes’s memory, and queued up Faye’s, just in case.
I pushed down the packages that Calliope had given me over the circuit, and they began to install themselves. Her command spoke back to Fawkes went live, and I saw him try to take control. He tried to issue her override code, but it wasn’t accepted. After that, he began to run a trace on her physical location. It wouldn’t take them long to reach her.
Calliope’s shunt initialized and created the virtual command hub inside Faye’s system. Stealth connections began to open, riding on an unused portion of the command matrix. They made the five connections, and five remote feeds appeared on my JZI. I was inside Heinlein.
Two of the feeds came from the processing plant; through a set of doors, I could make out rows of bodies that hung from the ceiling. The other three waited outside in different parts of the campus, staring through the snow at the plant in the distance.
I sent the virus, and it replicated over each channel. It dropped into the primary node of each revivor and began to worm its way into their systems. In less than a minute, the mirror-spoke endpoints went active.
