Overclocked (12 page)

There was a slight hes­it­a­tion. Was Carl go­ing to say some­thing? Was she? Then he ar­rowed through the air in a sim­ilar fash­ion to Miller and she was alone.

Tania couldn’t take to the air the way the two men did, not with such con­fid­ence. She was still re­l­at­ively new to the Blue and was half-ex­pect­ing the phys­ics of the real world to kick in at any time. Be­cause of this, she lowered her­self gently to “street level” and then looked down, fo­cus­ing on what was be­neath her feet. The grey pave­ment sep­ar­ated into in­di­vidual strands of criss-cross­ing en­ergy – part of the in­form­a­tion back­bone that sup­por­ted en­tire cy­ber­space – then she was through, des­cend­ing to a lower level that su­per­fi­cially re­sembled the land­scape she had left be­hind.

Carl had ad­ded a track­ing sys­tem to the cap­sule. As she looked at it, ar­rows ap­peared in soft am­ber, in­dic­at­ing the dir­ec­tion she should fol­low. As she neared the lower struc­ture of the Rhine-Temple, the ar­rows moved faster, their col­our chan­ging from an eye-sooth­ing light or­ange to a brighter red.

Tania watched as the bot­net loomed large around her. Un­like the static struc­tures that littered cy­ber­space, the Rhine-Temple re­sembled a liv­ing thing in the way its tentacles pulsed. She re­minded her­self that it
was
a liv­ing thing, powered by semi-sen­tience and com­pletely out of con­trol. From the way it moved, she also knew Carl was right. It wouldn’t rest un­til it had taken over all of the Blue. And, after that, if it could some­how find its way into the real world...

“This is not real,” she said to her­self as she walked. “This is just how I per­ceive data.”

The words failed to re­as­sure her. There was some­thing vis­ceral, prim­it­ive, about the Rhine-Temple, a chaotic mass of raven­ing growth. And she was ap­proach­ing it. Swal­low­ing hard, she looked down again at the cap­sule in her hands. The ar­rows were flash­ing faster but they still in­dic­ated the dir­ec­tion she should fol­low.

What would hap­pen if she just planted the cap­sule where she stood? It wouldn’t be at the node that Carl had iden­ti­fied but surely it would be close enough? Did he ex­pect her to walk into the bot­net it­self to ex­ecute the first part of their plan?

Tania swal­lowed hard and her hands began to shake. She lif­ted her­self into the air and moved within the outer peri­meter of the bot­net. Sud­denly her world be­came a throb­bing blood-red mass, above, be­low and around her.

She wondered what would hap­pen if a tentacle de­cided to in­vest­ig­ate
her
and ima­gined the de­struc­tion it could in­flict. It would in­filt­rate then des­troy her mind. Her skills, know­ledge and ex­per­i­ences would be used to bring down more in­form­a­tion banks but there would be noth­ing of Tania Flowers left. And, mean­while, her body would be in a ve­get­at­ive state in a Base­ment Five in­ser­tion room. It would never awaken.

“I don’t want to die here,” she whispered, shak­ing her head. She moved for­ward. “Please don’t let me die here.”

Her uni­verse was the Rhine-Temple, en­vel­op­ing her and cut­ting off her view from the rest of the Blue. She wondered if she would ever find her way out of its over­lap­ping strands. What if the tendrils closed be­hind her? Could she wait un­til the cap­sule did its job or would its job mean that she re­mained im­prisoned in a throb­bing prison of red pipes?

Then the cap­sule beeped and a thick black let­ter ap­peared above a large green but­ton. Des­pite her fear, Tania had to smile.

“‘X’ marks the spot, eh?”

Swal­low­ing her dis­taste, she held the cap­sule against the nearest junc­tion of tentacles she could find and pressed the green but­ton. Slots opened along each side of the cap­sule and sil­ver legs emerged, clamp­ing them­selves to the pipe of pulsing red. Once she was sure it was firmly at­tached, Tania let go. The top of the cap­sule slid back and hun­dreds of little white beetles emerged.

This was the start of it and, as much as Tania wanted to stay and watch the mod­ules while they worked, the an­imal part of her was scream­ing to get out. She turned and nav­ig­ated her way back through the forest of red as quickly as she could, try­ing not to look be­hind her. The rep­tilian stem of her brain was con­vinced that one thick red rope was aware of what she had done. Ob­li­vi­ous to the small white in­truders over­run­ning its neigh­bours, it was reach­ing for her. Closer and closer…

Tania was al­most run­ning when she passed the bot­net’s peri­meter, and she stopped to drag in a deep lung­ful of air. Her heart was thump­ing in her chest and her trem­bling fin­gers were cold and clammy. It didn’t mat­ter that this was more a men­tal re­sponse than a phys­ical one. She was sure that ad­ren­aline was also pump­ing through her su­pine body back in Base­ment Five. Would Don and his tech­ni­cians pick it up or would the re­ac­tion be too fleet­ing to re­gister? All she knew was that she had never been so happy to see an ex­panse of grey in her life.

After a few steady­ing breaths, she ar­rowed up to the ren­dez­vous point.

She was the last to re­turn and Carl couldn’t hide the re­lief that washed over his face at the sight of her.

He strode over to her just as she landed back on the ledge.

“Did you strike any prob­lems?” he asked, search­ing her eyes.

“Not a one,” she replied, keep­ing her voice even. “Al­though it’s a shame we can’t quar­ant­ine it some­how. Up close, it’s really,” she swal­lowed, “fas­cin­at­ing.”

He grinned. “That’s my Tania. Pure ball-buster.”

Tania watched him walk back to his friend to share a joke and let out a pent-up breath. Did he real­ise the enorm­ity of what he was plan­ning to do? After plant­ing the cap­sule and wait­ing for it to do its work, he was go­ing to walk back into the depths of that
thing
, and let him­self be sur­roun­ded by those seek­ing, raven­ing blood-red tendrils. Now that she had been there her­self, Tania un­der­stood the mag­nitude of his task. But they had no choice. She knew he had to do it. Given their lack of time, it was the only way.

Carl
had
to des­troy the Rhine-Temple.

“How long do we wait be­fore we move into the next phase?” she asked, mov­ing up to the two men.

“Tomek brought a make­shift mon­itor.” Carl in­dic­ated a small square screen in his friend’s hands. “He’s watch­ing the traffic care­fully. When we think the bot­net is para­lysed, I go in. It could take minutes. Maybe up to an hour. No longer than that, I don't think.”

Was she ima­gin­ing things or did the tentacles ap­pear to move more slowly, even as she watched?

“And you still want to go through with this?” she asked him.

“Now, more than ever.” His voice was heart­felt. “It’s got to be stopped, Tania. And I’m the best per­son to do that. You know why.”

“You’re not go­ing to bring up your blas­ted in­tu­ition again, are you?”

It had been a con­stant source of fric­tion between them in the past. Her lo­gic versus his “feel” of a situ­ation.

The smile he shot her blazed like an arc of light. “Don’t knock it. It’s worked be­fore, hasn’t it?”

Un­for­tu­nately, she couldn’t ar­gue with him. It’s what had kept them neck-in-neck dur­ing the Base­ment Five tri­als. Whenever she thought she had bested him with plan­ning or through her use of ana­lyt­ics, he would bounce back in a second with a strategy that com­pletely by­passed the prob­lem, or a solu­tion that seemed to come like a light­ning bolt from a cloud­less sky. Sud­denly, only at the end, Tania real­ised what a great team they could have made if they’d worked to­gether, in­stead of against each other.

“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered, her voice raw. “Isn’t there an­other way?”

He cupped her face with a hand. The wrinkles that were once so prom­in­ent on his face had all but dis­ap­peared, and his hair was back to be­ing blond, not a thread of sil­ver among it. “You know there isn’t, sweet­heart.”

He was al­most back to look­ing like the youth­ful Carl Orin she had once dis­liked. The Carl Orin she was now afraid she was start­ing to fall in love with. Tania par­ted her lips to say some­thing but no words emerged.

Miller’s voice called over to them. “It’s time.”

Pulling him­self away from Tania was one of the hard­est things Carl had ever done in his life. Word­lessly, Tomek re­trieved the sphere from his ruck­sack and handed it over. Carl thanked him with a nod…then stepped off the build­ing’s ledge.

He drif­ted down to the pave­ment and began walk­ing to­wards the Rhine-Temple bot­net, for­cing him­self not to take one last look back.

Wasn’t this where his life was sup­posed to flash in front of his eyes?

Carl tried think­ing back on what he had man­aged to achieve in the past couple of dec­ades. He had changed from a high-school fail­ure to a well-re­spec­ted se­cur­ity con­sult­ant, able to name his own fee. He owned a house, his own private jet and a se­cluded lux­ury hide­away along Italy’s Amalfi coast.

Tania would have loved it there.

Too late.

I could have made love to her twenty thou­sand feet in the air.

Too late.

Her skin would have gleamed brown and sil­ver in my sauna room.

Too late.

Would it have killed him to con­cede that the first cy­ber­naut should have been her? No, it wouldn’t have. Would it have cost any­thing for him to of­fer a word of thanks or ap­pre­ci­ation? To take her supple body into his arms be­cause of what he could give her, not only for what he could take? Carl grit­ted his teeth. He could kick him­self for his past pig-headed­ness.

With steady steps, he neared the bot­net. The code cap­sules he and Tomek had worked on seemed to be op­er­at­ing ex­actly as they were in­ten­ded. From his vant­age point, Carl no­ticed en­tire sec­tions of the bot­net frozen in place. He quickened his step. There was no bet­ter time to shut down the en­tire ma­lig­nant net­work than right now.

He passed un­der the cover of sev­eral data pipes. It should have been dark un­der the um­brella of blood-red, but it wasn’t. Dark­ness, sun­light, shad­ows were all con­structs of the real world. In cy­ber­space, Carl could clearly see whatever his mind could com­pre­hend. Un­for­tu­nately, he was cur­rently com­pre­hend­ing everything.

The pipes – Tania liked to call them tentacles – closed over him, mak­ing him draw in a deep breath.

“The only way is for­ward,” he told him­self and willed his body to put one foot in front of the other.

Ac­cord­ing to his re­search, the IRC chan­nel port he was after should have been situ­ated quite close to him. The dis­tance wasn’t a prob­lem. What con­cerned him more was the kind of de­fences it had. He moved fur­ther into the maze of pipes, step­ping over some at ground level and bend­ing his head to avoid oth­ers. The closer he got to his des­tin­a­tion, the more tightly the pipes wound around each other, un­til he was brush­ing against them as he slipped through nar­row gaps. He thought he felt a faint pulse beat against his skin as he knocked against them, and tried not to shud­der.

The port he was look­ing for was old and he let out a breath of re­lief when he fi­nally found it. It was cir­cu­lar, matte black and a little wider than the width of his shoulders. Over it, like a nest­ing spider, lay a lock­ing mech­an­ism. The lock was hexagonal in shape and from each side, a thick leg ex­ten­ded, soldered seam­lessly in place against the port’s cas­ing. Carl stared at it for a long mo­ment and tried not to think of how much time he had left be­fore the Rhine-Temple re­covered from Tomek’s at­tack code.

“Why am I see­ing a six-legged spider?” he muttered. “Six de­fences? Or maybe just one de­fence in six parts.” He nar­rowed his eyes. “Maybe if I can break four legs that’ll be enough to open the port.”

He wished Tania were here. She’d be able to identify the lock’s un­der­ly­ing struc­ture within minutes. All he could do was rely on his in­tu­ition…and guess.

Without mov­ing his gaze from the lock, he reached into the side pocket of his suit and pulled out a small device. It re­sembled the tether that he had first worn when en­ter­ing the Blue so many years ago. In fact it
was
that tether, but it had been mod­i­fied ex­tens­ively over the past fif­teen years. He hadn’t told Tania that he still had it. Flip­ping open the lid with his thumb, he fi­nally dragged his gaze to the small screen on the unit, choos­ing sev­eral dia­gnostic pro­grams to ex­ecute. He then poin­ted the tether’s hinge at the port lock. He had worked for months on the hinge, in­sert­ing a small probe into it then mak­ing sure it was pro­tec­ted against knocks and falls.

He watched as the pro­grams ran through their ana­lyses and smiled when, after a few minutes, the device beeped at him. He per­used the res­ults care­fully.

“Got it,” he said softly in tri­umph.

As he had sus­pec­ted, the Rhine-Temple had closed down the IRC port back in its in­fancy to pre­vent its ori­ginal op­er­at­ors from in­ter­fer­ing with it. That shut­down had oc­curred at a time when it wasn’t as soph­ist­ic­ated as it was now. Tick­ing that task off its list, the bot­net had then moved on to tak­ing over other com­puter sys­tems.

The lock had ef­fect­ively been for­got­ten.

But not by Carl.

Rather than rep­res­ent­ing six lay­ers of de­fence, the spider that squat­ted over the port’s cover used only a re­l­at­ively simple hash al­gorithm to pro­tect ac­cess. That was easy enough to crack, es­pe­cially as Carl had fif­teen years to work on the prob­lem. He dir­ec­ted his mod­i­fied tether to work through the com­bin­a­tions us­ing a method he cre­ated and was grat­i­fied when, only five minutes later, the spider’s legs clicked open and the lock mech­an­ism fell off the port.

Carl stamped on the lock with his foot, in case it some­how came back to life and blocked the exit again, then wondered why he cared. After all, wasn’t this sup­posed to be a one-way trip?

“Habit,” he told him­self and care­fully eased up the port lid.

The cover was sur­pris­ingly heavy and creaked as it moved. That was Carl’s brain telling him this was an old and dis­used ac­cess port...as if he didn’t already know.

When he had the lid fully open, he peered in­side. A long dark tube snaked down and away to the right. Un­der the cir­cum­stances, he wouldn’t have been sur­prised to see cob­webs ob­scur­ing part of the pas­sage. Gingerly, he crouched and entered the tube.