The other man waved a dismissive hand. “All part of the process. You can’t craft the perfect defense if you’re not also able to execute the perfect offense. You have to be able to keep out the best in the world, after all.”
“Well on your way to doing just that, I’d wager. Out of curiosity, what are you hoping to do here?”
“Whatever I want!” he crowed. “She was just a pet project at first, of course. I wanted something that would allow me to work with the speed of a team without the unreliability of other people slowing me down and fucking it all up. Now? She’s better than the combined forces of every elite programmer out there. Well,” he conceded. “Almost.”
Syler sighed. “And I suppose that’s where I come in?”
Jon grinned. “Yup.”
“Ignoring the decidedly unpleasant everything leading to me being here right now, what’s my motivation exactly?”
“Well,” he drawled, “you really have two options. Three, if you’re as clever as you’ve proven to be so far. Option one,” he ticked a finger up, “the world could suffer a loss of talent with me executing you. I’d rather not, even though it really is the fastest way to get rid of the only person who can best my girl. It’s been ages since I met someone who wasn’t a boring idiot.”
Syler snorted, unable to help himself. Fucking egomaniacs on power trips. “I’ll pass on that one, thanks.”
“Glad we’re in agreement. Option two then. You go have a lovely tutoring session or fifty with my girl and I. Let’s teach her a few new tricks and see how long it takes her to outpace you. It took her the better part of two years to beat me, but I’ve arguably done most of the heavy lifting for you already so I hope you won’t think poorly of us for taking so long.”
“Yeah, I’m not arrogant enough to think that’ll take long. So what happens to me when I’m no longer useful?”
“Oh, minds like ours are always useful. Pyronais a very good girl, but she’s young still. Impressionable.” God, it really was nauseating to listen to someone personify their software, AI or not. “So I think it’d be good to have a partner to co-parent if you will. Bounce ideas off of each other. Train her up. Expand.”
“Is this the join or die speech?” Syler deadpanned. “Because I’ve absolutely gotten it before. It’s literally how I wound up with my current job.”
Across from him, Jon chuckled. “I saw that in your personnel file. Hacked into the CIA’s covert affairs division, did you? Ballsy.”
“That’s what I said about your encryption protocols.”
“See,” he threw his arms wide, grinning. “We’re already getting along so well! Come on now, it’ll be perfect. I promise.”
Syler leaned back in his seat, sighing. He raked a hand through his hair, letting his head flop back against the headrest. If the distinctive lack of explosions was anything to go off of, his agent was being abysmally slow in retrieving him. Useless bastard. “I don’t suppose you offer health insurance,” he drawled idly.
“We could work something out,” Jon replied, amused.
“Mm, well, in that case, let’s go have a look. I’m not sold, to be clear, but I may as well see her while I’m busy deciding how much I like breathing.”
“That’s the spirit,” the other man hopped up, eager to show off his pride and joy, gesturing for Syler to follow. The guards took up positions on either side of him like the obedient little lackeys they were. “Let me show you to the server bank. I guarantee you, the CIA has nothing on this.”
Thirty-Three
“Park here,” Emily instructed. Arthur ignored her, pulling off of the street further down and tucking the vehicle into an alcove. “Oh my god, are you always this difficult?”
“The less ground I have to cover, the better. And the street is entirely too vulnerable.”
“‘Why yes, yes I am,’” she murmured, sotto voce. She tapped the ear wig on as he’d shown her on the way. “I’ll need a minute to get set up.”
He was already out of the car, door snicking shut quietly. “Quick as you can, blondie.” He drew his Sig, proceeding towards the rear entrance of the warehouse. A glance at his watch told him it’d been only an hour since Syler had been taken, but that was still sixty minutes too long. It was well into evening, early January sky dark and promising rain. He came to the door and found a guard posted in a shadowed alcove. Quieting his steps, he slipped up behind the man, silencing him with a sleeper hold before he could sound an alarm.
Stepping around the body, he moved to the locked rear door, opening automatically in time to the magnetic unscrambler in the watch. Not electronic meant not fried by an EMP bomb and thank fuck for that. Emily’s voice came on over the line. “I’m poised to hack the system, but they’ll know we’re here as soon as I do.”
“Good.” Arthur grinned. “I’ll take all the attention I can get. Now find me Syler.”
He slammed the door open, rushing at the first three guards with a blaze of gunfire.
---
“Huh,” Syler commented as they entered the main server bank hub in the front wing of the warehouse. “So that’s what the hell you were up to with all of those orders.”
“Isn’t she lovely?” he crooned. The nauseating personification of the AI he called Pyrona was rapidly becoming downright creepy. “They grow up so fast. She needed a space of her own.”
The hub was less a room and more the vast majority of the building. What must have been an open floor plan at one point was a sprawling maze of server racks, cameras, and monitors, all canopied by a ceiling of fiber optic cables in every color available on the market. Custom fabricated bank racks, a state-of-the-art security system, and one hell of a central command post in
