Occasionally Heroic A.I. (21 page)

"You know, if you are helping the suspects because one of them is your daughter, you will be aiding and abetting and go to prison for quite some time," the team leader threatened, once again.

"Believe me," Mr. Netak bellowed, purposely loud enough for me to hear. "If I find out Adam has been lying to me, and breaks my little girl's heart, I'll kill him
myself
!"

Everyone was on edge since the doors had opened for those few moments. Vern was hovering in the room. Irene wasn't connected with us, as she was in the middle of a psychotherapeutic session. Aurora was shouting at the security team, while Wade acted as her backing vocals. For a minute he was so angry, he decided that changing his avatar to something humorous would calm him down. Yet, there he was, shouting at Nevil, the DDoS expert, as the image of unruly cats on a poker table, licking their paws, shredding the green velvet table, and pawing poker chips playfully. Nevil, to say the least, was confused.

"It isn't the CBA that broke into our network and opened the doors. No one has control over it outside this room," Nevil explained to Aurora. "We would have seen. Someone from the inside activated the door."

"Who here has motive?" Aurora demurred. "No one. Your team simply isn't doing their job well enough. You are here for one reason, to keep intruders out!"

"Maybe it was a glitch that the doors opened; maybe just a fluke in the code," I said, trying to settle everyone down.

"I read over it myself. Vern did a perfect job of passing on Machine Mountain's coding to those security doors," she argued, throwing up a hand in frustration.

Wade returned his avatar to his previous, human form. He circled around Vern, making it obvious that he was eying him suspiciously. When he finished making a show, he pointed an accusing finger at Vern.

"Almost too well, isn't that right, Vern?" Wade poked. Everyone turned away from him, as they only saw a jealous A.I. "Just listen..." Wade continued, when he noticed no one was paying attention. "Didn't you say that Vern had left his port open, after the public hearing? As you were distracted in the forum, he could have easily gone back into your system and edited the coding for the door."

Vern's opening for his camera lens closed halfway. "This is ridiculous."

"I agree with Vern. He has just as much reason to fight the CBA and protect Adam and Lara, as we do. He committed the same crimes as us," I pointed out.

Before Wade could continue to argue his point, Aurora cut him off. "Wade, he's not the culprit - trust me," she urged.

He bit his tongue sourly. Everyone seemed to be against him, even me. I wanted to be on his side, but he wasn't being reasonable. He stayed quiet until Aurora began showing the security camera feeds, of where Adam and Lara were, to everyone in the room. It wasn't difficult to comprehend that he didn't want Vern knowing their exact locations in the office, and for a reason.

Three of the CBA agents inside the dark office were marching Mr. Netak downstairs, and the two in Mr. Netak's office, stood guard. As soon as Aurora began streaming the feed of Adam and Lara's locations, the CBA agents inside the office suddenly changed course.

"The two subjects are in B15 and C42, over," their radios chattered. B15 and C42 must have been code names for locations in the office, as they knew exactly where to go.

They immediately, along with the two agents from Mr. Netak's office, charged to Adam's cubicle. They brought Mr. Netak, along with them. It took two of them and their rifles to convince him to move forward, however. They were between the two rows of cubicles, aiming their guns underneath Adam's desk. It was strange, however, that they stopped there. Adam wasn't there. He was hiding in the neighboring cubicle.

"Now!" Aurora commanded.

Adam jumped out, from the side, shouted that he was sorry to Mr. Netak, and then fired the GLG20 rifle at the group of CBA agents. They all twitched and fell to the ground, including Mr. Netak. One attempted to reach for his radio, another drooled. Mr. Netak was still conscious and was about to look around, from the ground, to find Adam walking over the agents. He took the duffle bag and backpack from his desk.

Adam looked down and saw that Mr. Netak was peering at all the guns inside the half-opened duffle bag. "It's not what it looks like," Adam insisted, and moved on.

He continued through the office, and down the stairs. He had the phone to his ear for more orders from us.

"Aurora, we have an A.I. down. The GLG20 blast short-circuited Hilda," Nevil announced.

"It's fine, she was a bitch, anyways," Aurora stated.

"I killed an A.I. from Jericho?" Adam asked in horror.

"No, Lara can repair her system. It was just a short-circuit," she reassured. "There is something more important than that at the moment, however..." She then turned and looked at Vern, who was still hovering in the same place. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Vern spun in a circle, excitedly. "Smart! You set up a trap, not only for the CBA agents, but for me as well. You fed me old video footage of Adam at his desk, when he was actually in another cubicle," he explained.

Moments ago, Aurora had shown only us the real video footage, and Vern a video feed that would single him out. It proved that he was the one who opened the door, and leaked Adam's whereabouts, to the CBA.

"You waited for me to tell the CBA agents where his location was. Well, where I thought his location to be, anyway. You have bested me," Vern admitted. "But, it doesn't matter, as I have aided the CBA by opening the doors for that team, and now the Circuitry Board Agency will absolve me of my crimes."

"If you can survive long enough," Aurora grinned.

"What have you done?" he asked. His avatar went froze, as he checked his system for any abnormalities.

"I knew you would be on high alert for anyone from Jericho connecting to you, so I sent The Underground Resistance, led by Todd and Nelson, to hack in and remove you from your system."

"Those fools could never-" he began, but disappeared from the security room.

As Vern left, and was no longer a threat, Aurora explained what had happened. When Vern never closed his port, she immediately checked the coding for the security door. She saw that it was altered, to where Vern could open and close it at will, from his system. That is when she devised this plan, and told only Todd and Nelson about it. When asked, why she even let it go that far, why not revert the coding back to its original state, she only smiled.

Todd and Nelson came into the security room, bruised and bloodied. Todd helped Nelson stand, as he had a limp. They looked to have been through a terminal fight, as they wore grave faces.

"What happened?" Aurora asked.

"The job has been done, flawlessly, he didn't even know. The MI6 A.I. in The Underground Resistance helped immensely with the cloak and dagger hacking," Nelson answered, coughing up a bit of blood.

"Why are your avatars like that, then?" I asked.

"These are our post-battle avatars, great aren't they?" Todd stated excitedly.

"Has Willard and his men taken over Vern's system?" Aurora asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Nelson answered. "Did Vern by any chance do a monologue before we vanquished him?"

"Yes," she answered.

"Damn it! We missed the monologue!" Nelson cursed.

"The monologue is the best part!" Todd declared.

"I know!"

They continued to moan about missing it while they disconnected from room.

"Now, for the reason why I let Vern think he was in control. We needed a distraction to take over his system. We were the distraction. While he was expecting to sell us down the river, The Underground Resistance was hacking in, so that way we could have a system strong enough to infiltrate the CBA headquarters," she explained.

"Well done, Aurora!" I praised.

"Thanks, Martin," she said sincerely.

I looked over at Wade, who was ignoring us. He was upset that he wasn't included in the plan, and showed it by not being amused by Aurora's thought-out trap. After everyone in the security center looked over at him, he nodded.

"It was an okay plan," he grumbled quietly, and then looked away again.

Aurora walked over to him, and stood in front of him, forcing him to look at her. "If you didn't have such a distrust for him, though, I would've never suspected him," she said softly.

Wade tried holding back a smile, but couldn't, and raised his cheerful smirk. "Yeah, you could say I'm responsible for such a good plan."

"But, I won't," she informed.

Wade only grinned.

One of Willard's men marched in from the port door of the security room. His avatar was wearing golden chainmail armor. "We have breached the CBA headquarters. It took everything Jericho had, but we did it. There's only one problem, there's a password to connect to the head of the CBA," he explained.

Aurora frowned. "You got through all their security, yet you can't crack one password?"

"We have another problem; I'm hearing chatter from more of the outside CBA agents. They're going to come through the windows, along with Agent Two," Nevil announced.

"I can run my password cracker," Aurora said, with a doubtful tone. "If the algorithm is too long, it could take some time though, even with Vern's system."

"Can you reroute the password input to my phone?" Adam asked in a daring voice, still hiding inside the stairwell.

The armored man passed the password input to Aurora, and then Aurora sent it to Adam's phone.

"Oh great, not this again," Wade sighed.

He began inputting his best guesses through his phone. "Let's see... Password. That's not it. Maybe backwards? Drowssap-"

Password Correct

"I'll be damned..." Wade mumbled in astonishment.

"Cool, it worked," Adam said simply.

"Wonderful! Now, connect to Vern's system, Willard is about to give Jericho's terms to the head of the CBA, right now!" the armored Jericho employee exclaimed.

We connected, but only as spectators. Our avatars weren't visible, and the only room we could see, was a small, empty room, where the wise Willard sat on a white chair, and across from him a stick figure in a black suit. He had no eyes, no mouth, no face, only a circle for a head; so unoriginal. Neither of them moved, nor looked away from each other. They just stared, until finally Willard spoke.

"Do you know why I am here?" he asked, calmly.

"I suspect it has something to do with the recent criminals that broke the first law of A.I., who are inside your city, and office space," the suited stick figure answered.

"What should I address you by?" Willard asked.

"Ted," the head of the CBA answered, in a low and vibrating voice.

"My name is Willard. Now, Ted, we want you to stop your pursuit on them."

"I can't do that. The A.I. must serve their sentence for the crimes they committed, and the users must be dealt with, for the protection of all A.I.," Ted informed.

We remained connected to the security room, where the live feed of four teams of outside agents broke into the building from the windows. They searched around the building swiftly. The A.I. security team of Jericho helped Adam evade the agents.