Swan was a slight man in a suit. A suit in a suit, Richards would say, thought Otto. He bobbed his head and stood. It took Otto a moment to realise the guy was a number, dressed up in some fancy near-human sheath. He did not blink — they never remembered to — and that gave him away. He had an info wand in his hand, old tech, but self-contained, safe from k52. The lights dimmed and holographic data filled the centre of the table. Reports, files, video and a large representation of what Otto took to be the Realm House, loaf-shaped top to deepest subterranean bottom, the enormous server farm in the Nevada desert that sustained the remaining thirty-one of the original thirty-six Reality Realms, along with, now, k52's rogue project. Otto had only seen the topside of the facility in the Real; looked like the tip of the iceberg if the map was anything to go by.
'k52 has disabled the entirety of the Realm House's security net,' said Swan. Vital nodes blinked red within the complex. 'And has complete control over the virtual worlds generated within. Our men have formed a perimeter 750 metres back from the outer fences, just VIA this close in, no National Guard until the outer perimeter. Their systems, as we saw, were easily overwhelmed,' said Swan. He waved his wand. Video footage played, machines turned on men, weapons malfunctions, informational blackouts. 'He skipped through the Guard's heaviest encryption like it was a field of daisies. Now we're on the scene, everyone out there now is pure analogue, radio voice communication, human hands on mechanical triggers, all interfaced staff have been pulled back. k52 can't do much about that.' Swan pressed his lips tight. 'But he could do a whole lot more. He has one of the most powerful collections of hardware anywhere on the planet at his disposal, and here's the puzzle: he's not actually doing anything with it.'
'He going for digital uplift or something?' growled Milton. He was a big bear of a man, ruddy-faced and red- bearded. Otto knew nothing of him beyond what he'd gleaned from the man's introduction. His mentaug adjutant, walled off from the Grid like all the devices on the heavy lifter, was unable to furnish him with more.
'It's the favourite theory, but not the only one,' said Swan. 'We think his deification of Zhang Qifang may have been designed to lead us to believe that is what he is attempting, but we're not so sure. We can't get direct data from the Realm House currently, but system echoes suggest the remaining thirty-one Reality Realms are running normally.'
'But the spare capacity…' led Sobieski.
'There is a lot of that, and activity within is off the chart. Whatever's running in there is far more sophisticated than anything we've seen yet.'
'More forcing of the technology curve, like the cydroids,' said the Texan.
'k52 calculated the technology syne, so he is best placed to push things faster than they might otherwise go. There's no telling what he's up to in there. But it's big, and he's not alone. Two other level Fives are missing, sixteen of the more individualistic Fours, and a Class Six from Singapore. We've some evidence to suggest, albeit inconclusively, that they're in there with him.' More data came and went, much of it beyond Otto. Valdaire watched it keenly. 'The curious thing is what he hasn't done. He's pinned the EuPol Five like a butterfly, frozen up a good part of the EU's digital superstructure in the process. With a thought he could toss the entire continent back into the dark ages, and then come after us, but he hasn't.'
'Why?' demanded the Boer.
'Ah, that we don't know,' said Swan.
'And that's what we need to find out,' said Sobieski. 'Klein's team is to find this man.' A forty-centimetre holo of a skinny youth sprang up in the centre of the table, associated files scrolling over the glass in front of each of the room's occupants. 'Giacomo Vellini, though his handle is — was — Waldo. Ms Valdaire, I believe you are the expert?'
Veronique's mouth worked a moment as all eyes turned to her. She quickly rallied. 'Yes. Vellini. He pioneered the only truly successful entrance mechanism to the Reality Realms once they'd been closed off. He came and went for years without being detected.'
'But he was,' countered a stout VIA man. 'We caught him in 2119.'
'Yes,' agreed Valdaire, 'but only because he got careless, and cocky. He started to taunt the V… the authorities. Leave messages here and there. Even his username, 'Waldo', suggests a man who wished to be found. But he was, is, the finest hacker of his generation. If anyone can get us into the Realm House's virtual space without k52 noticing, it will be him.'
'Where is he?' asked the Texan.
'No one knows,' said Henson. 'He did his time, and upped and left USNA after he was defrosted and released from Brandsville. We thought he might have gone back home to Europe, but he vanished off the system, and no one's seen him since.'
'Aren't these people supposed to be under surveillance?' said the Texan sourly. 'You VIA boys don't do your work well.'
'He was,' said Swan. 'These people are the sharpest criminal minds on the planet, Milton, the best at what they do. If the likes of Waldo don't want finding, he won't be found.'
'A wild-goose chase then,' said Milton.
'Wait a minute,' said the Boer. 'You're going to find this Waldo, a man you say can't be found, and get him to walk you into the realms to ask k52 what he wants?'
'We are,' said Sobieski. 'Otto and Chures will find him.'
'Klein is injured,' protested Chures.
'It will wait,' said Otto.
'You have people of your own?' asked Sobieski.
'One. Ky-tech like me. The best shot of his day. Here's his personnel file. There's a further bonus. Kaplinski, get him, and we'll get to k52's support network. This isn't purely a numbers job.'
Chures' eyes narrowed as Klein ran footage taken from the Morden Subcity survnet system. There were men in grey, men like the ones who'd almost killed him the day before he and Klein had met at Valdaire's pirate hideaway in the Rockies.
'These men targeted and destroyed the second Qifang cydroid,' he said, referring to the recent and convoluted murder of the famed AI rights activist. He'd uncovered k52's plot, and had attempted to warn Otto's partner Richards directly. Why him was a mystery to Otto. 'Most of them are unknown,' said Otto. 'But this man-' The footage zoomed in so far the image began to break up. A large black man, shaven-headed, from his bulk and oddly formed muscles cybernetically altered. 'Kwasi Sakaday Jones, Nigerian. He's a known associate of Kaplinski, ex-Union of West Africa cyborg…'
'Another of yours?' said Sobieski.
'No,' said Otto. 'But I've had run-ins with him before. Intel that Richards and I received recently has him working for or with someone I now know to be Kaplinski.'
'And Kaplinski? He was one of yours.'
'He was one of mine. Under my command, he went renegade. It's all on the file.'
'What can you tell us about him?' asked the Boer.
'It's all on the file,' said Otto levelly.
'And our contingency plans, gentlemen?' Milton sat back. 'What are they?'
Sobieski frowned. 'While Klein's team is searching for Vellini, we'll have three teams going into the Realm House itself, see if they can evade security and cut the wider Grid access to the Realms.'
'I'll be leading that attempt,' said Henson. 'The teams are ready to go when we get the green light.'
'You are going to physically isolate the Realms? That will be dangerous,' said Valdaire.
'We have full disclosure of the Realm House's security systems. We can do it,' said Henson.
'I meant to the Realms,' said Valdaire.
'It is a risk,' said Sobieski. 'But I think we can all agree that the loss of the remaining Realms is preferable to losing control of the whole planet to k52.'
'What,' said Valdaire, 'preferable because they are not real? The UN says otherwise.'
Sobieski looked exasperated, keen to move on. 'If we are successful in isolating them, it should set the EuPol Five loose, and we'll have the time to leisurely devise a scrubber to wipe k52 off the map. There is the risk of potential damage to the Realms, but…' Sobieski spread his hands. 'It's better that than nuking them.'
'I'm curious to know what he wants, and why he is doing this,' said Swan.
The Texan snorted.
'Our role at the VIA is to understand why the machines do what they do — not even the Director knows that,
