Ron lowered his head and rubbed his eyes.
She could tell the researcher was exhausted and scared. She didn’t blame him. Fear was a constant companion in all their lives. Part of her just wanted to give up and spend the last few days with her family.
But so long as they still lived and she had a chance of saving them, she could not give up.
“Sammy, is there any hope you can follow their communication signals again?” Kate asked.
“They’ve re-encrypted everything.”
“How long would it take for you to decode?”
“Days, maybe a week. Maybe longer, even with the software we’ve got.”
“We don’t have a week. We’ve got three days.”
“I know, but…” Sammy slapped the desk.
“It’s okay.” Kate put a hand on the young woman. “Just breath. We can figure something out if we work together.”
Leslie cried out again, drawing stares from several soldiers.
“Should I disconnect her?” Ron asked.
“Not yet,” Kate said. “I need to know more about this new encryption before we head back to Galveston. What’s the issue?”
Sammy took in a deep breath, exhaled, and stepped back to the computer.
“They’re using what I can best describe as a kind of rolling code. Or something similar. Every time I think I’m remotely close to figuring out how they’re encrypting their signals, everything changes,” she explained. “Suddenly the frequencies and data they were sending are all altered, so I can’t track down what anything means anymore.”
“You’re saying it’s impossible to figure out what they’re saying?” Kate asked.
“Impossible? No, it can be hacked. But not in three days.”
Kate considered it. Understanding the Variant communication signals once again might give them some leverage. If they were lucky, maybe Sammy could figure it out earlier than she estimated. They might be able to get a read on how many beasts were headed their way.
But she did not want to rely on luck. Not with the future of the Allied States at risk.
“You’re positive you can’t solve it in three days?” Kate asked.
“Positive as a proton.” Sammy said, cracking a quick grin. “Okay, probably not as funny given the circumstances. Basically, we’re screwed.”
“I don’t know about that,” Kate said, starting to pace behind the computer station. “There must be something else we can do.”
“I’m telling you, there’s not a damn thing I can do to decrypt these messages any faster. It’s like creating a vaccine for a virus in a week instead of a year.”
“I understand…” Kate said. She stepped away to think.
Sammy was right that they wouldn’t be decoding messages anytime soon, and the New Gods had seemingly weaponized the organic network against the Allied States. But that did not mean there weren’t other options to use the network against them.
Perhaps there was something they could do to disrupt the upcoming attack—and better yet, prevent the New Gods from ever using the webbing again.
“Sammy, Ron, pull Leslie out of there,” Kate said. “I’ve got an idea.”
A few moments later Leslie was detached from the microarray connections and webbing. She rubbed the back of her neck where the webbing had been removed, wincing.
“You okay?” Kate asked.
“Yes, I think so,” Leslie replied.
“Good. Everyone, gather around.” Kate waited for her team before starting in on her idea. “Unless anyone has an idea, I think trying to intercept messages from the webbing network is a waste of time. Ringgold wants us back in Galveston.”
“So everything we’ve done… it’s been for nothing?” Leslie asked.
“No,” Kate said. “We stopped plenty of attacks when we first figured this out. We bought time for outposts that were able to evacuate, and most importantly, we found intel that helped us identify our enemy.”
“True,” Sammy said. “And with all our work behind-the-scenes, I was able to run some image analysis programs. I can say with an eighty percent certainty that Prophet Azrael in the video was Charles Morgan. Everything he said matches exactly what Ron guessed.”
“Eighty percent certainty isn’t good enough,” Kate said. “But if we’re assuming we know who this guy is, thanks to that video, we have a better sense of our enemy. It seems like a man who might think he was wronged by our government, by our science. And who feels like he is truly delivering the future of mankind to us in the form of the Chimeras.”
“Basically, a huge fucking asshole,” Sammy said.
“I won’t argue with you about that,” Kate said. “But we know he’s intelligent. He understands a variety of technologies and isn’t afraid to use them to his own benefit.”
“He’s an evil, arrogant bastard,” Leslie said.
“Perhaps we can harness his arrogance,” Kate said. “Science is only good with the proper checks and balances. I always found that my best results came when I was working with people smarter than me, unafraid to tell me when I was wrong or when we should consider different experiments.”
“This guy is working with a bunch of monsters,” Ron said. “I wonder how many brains they’ve got behind their operations.”
“I have a feeling he doesn’t like when people tell him he’s wrong,” Kate said. “But he’s not surrounded by idiots. We can’t forget about the masterminds and the Chimeras, plus everyone connected to the network and those that helped build it.”
“I wish we could just burn it all down,” Sammy said.
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do.” Kate looked at the webbing around the tunnel. “We don’t need the army. That throne, that entire room, was covered in organic webs. I would be willing to bet that even the webbing around Houston shares enough connections for those webs to transmit signals directly into that throne of his, whether it’s in Los Alamos or somewhere entirely different.”
“But we can’t listen to anything coming from that throne room, though,” Ron said.
“I don’t plan on listening to it anymore. I want to destroy it. Like killing a weed by
