The lights went out. Jacob dropped to the floor, pulling the gun from his waist as he went down. Slade fired, the barrel flash briefly lighting the hall. Jacob hit the floor, rolling to his right as soon as he felt the tile make contact with his shoulder, stopping on his stomach, the pistol aimed where he thought Slade would be. “Now,” he said and light filled the hallway. He made a minor adjustment to his aim and fired, hitting Slade in the arm, causing him to drop his gun. Jacob fired again, hitting him in the leg, sending him to one knee. “Get his gun,” Kat yelled as the sound of the second shot echoed down the hallway. Jacob scrambled. Slade leaned forward. Both reached for the gun. Jacob fired again, hitting the floor near the gun. Slade pulled his hand away, raising it in surrender. Jacob picked up Slade’s gun and the small gun he’d kicked across the floor.
“I don’t want to shoot you again, so just cooperate,” he said.
“You didn’t have to shoot me in the first place,” Slade said through clenched teeth.
“I did. Hand me your zip cuffs.”
Slade took the bundle of zip tie handcuffs from his belt and tossed them to Jacob. Jacob went to the door and fastened one cuff around the door handle.
“Come over here slowly and put your hand through,” he said.
Slade limped to the door. After he was cuffed, he said, “You better hurry, the security system will report those shots.”
“We own the security system,” Jacob said. “Take the knife off your belt and slide it over to me.”
He picked up the knife and put it and the remaining zip cuffs and put them in his backpack.
“Doesn’t matter, you’re still going to get burned. When I don’t check in on the hour, people will come.”
“I told you, we own the system. We’ll check you in.”
Slade laughed. “I have to check-in in person.”
“Shit,” Kat said. “That means we have twenty minutes.”
Chapter 54
Jacob ran down the hall, his backpack bouncing. He’d never shot anyone before. When he was twelve his father took him hunting for the first time. They went to his uncle’s hunting lease and stayed in a deer blind for an hour, waiting for a buck to come to the feeder. It was the coldest day of an unusually cold December, and when the sun got lower in the sky, the cold became almost unbearable for a boy used to the Texas heat. His father saw him shivering and told him they would leave soon, it would be too dark. Then he saw three shapes emerging from the line of trees into the clearing. They were backlit by the sun coming through the trees, but he could see one was a nice buck, its rack casting a long shadow across the dead grass of the clearing. His father padded him on the shoulder and pointed. He nodded. The deer made their way to the piles of corn spread by the feeder, stopping occasionally and looking around. The only sound in the blind was the sound of cars on the county road, the ever-present hum of gas wells in the distance, and his breathing. His father told him to let the buck get to the corn and then pick his shot. When he was ready, he brought the gun to his shoulder, his eye to the scope. With the buck in his crosshairs, he released the safety, let out his breath, and squeezed the trigger. The sound of the shot filling the small deer blind, he felt a rush go through his body, and the buck reared back slightly, letting out sound mixed with surprise and pain before falling, the other deer scattering in a crazed zigzag across the clearing to the tree line. The mix of pride a remorse Jacob felt then was nothing like he felt now, after shooting a person for the first time. He was surprisingly devoid of feeling, his mind only on the time ticking away before more security came and the thought he may have to shoot some else.
The control room for the central core of the network was a small with two chairs at a workstation and a window looking into a second room housing the quantum computer core. Jacob shut the door and locked it. He pulled one of the chairs to the door and got a pair of handcuffs out of his backpack. He stood on the chair and slid the cuffs around the door closer and pulled the zip tie tight.
Satisfied the door would hold, he sat down at the workstation and took the modified flipper out of his backpack, placing it next to the input panel. He took out his code deck and linked it to the network, then linked the phone with the network and uploaded Two-Step’s program packet and virus.
He waited.
The small screen of the flipper lit up with a stream of unreadable data. It was working. There was no way of telling how well it was working, but it was working.
“How much time do I have, Kat?” he asked.
“Fifteen minutes,” Kat said.
“How’s it going on your end, Sandy?”
“Everything is almost in place.”
“I’m going to direct link,” he said. “The door is secure, but if anyone comes into that hallway, let me know, Kat.”
“You got it.”
The network AI’s representational construct of itself was the Your Better Life building, or rather as a glowing and fluid, multidimensional, digital blueprint of the building. The construct radiated out from whatever point Jacob looked, and all of the floors could be seen at once in a never-ending fractal while being contained within the familiar
