The Daedalus Code (4 page)

Cynthia made a sighing sound, brushed passed him. “Fine. Now is the time for you to do
me
a favor.” She moved to a filing cabinet, took from the top drawer an old-fashioned manila folder.

“Here,” she said, handing it to him.

“What is this?”

“Look, you’ve got eyes on ya.”

Moving to a small desk, he opened the file, spread the contents on the wooden surface. They looked like essays or reports on software. Within the text were sections of code and diagrams of network topologies. At the top of each piece of paper was Ariadne’s name, alongside her dorm room and student number.

“It’s research,” he said. “How’s this useful?”

“Mikos left it with me.” She sat back down. “As insurance.”

“You know the author of this work has gone missing, right? Along with a bunch of other kids?”

Cynthia nodded, grimacing.

“And you know Mikos was the last to be seen with Ariadne…at the club he and I worked at?”

Again, she nodded. Again she didn’t expand on it. Her withholding the information made him grow hot with frustration. What kind of trouble was Mikos in that required him to leave such an item behind? He thought about it, traced the order of incidents.

“He knew her before their meeting,” he said, thinking out loud, “and he had her research, which means…what does that mean?” Then it came to him in a flash. “That’s it. He’s in on it with Metion.”

He gathered up the documents and placed them back inside the file, handing it back to the old woman. “But why you? Why trust you with this? Why come all the way out here with it?”

“Because…he’s my son. The damned thing got ‘im too. Got its hooks right into ‘im, but it was too late for ‘im to do anything other than what he was told. So he gave me the file.”

“What does it all mean?”

“Ariadne is a special girl. Mikos believed that within these documents lay the way out. You take them with you now. I believe they’ll save many lives. But I want you to promise me something. You don’t ever mention my involvement with this, and you find him. Bring him back!”

She forced the file onto him as if it were a holy relic.

“Do you know where he is?” Mouse asked again.

She ignored the question, tapped on the file he held close to his chest. “That should get you going in the right direction. Start with her research, it’ll lead you to where you need to go. Now get out of here.”

C
hapter Five

Incoming message. Mouse. Phaedra logged out of the Agency’s intranet and kicked Aegeus, who was snoozing in an armchair opposite her in her modest apartment. Takeout boxes competed with dirty washing on the floor and the midday sun streaked through a gap in the tatty curtains, slicing a light beam between her and her partner.

There was more than just a slither of sun between them these days. But it wasn’t always that way. At one time he was a great agent. Motivated, capable. It was because of him that Phaedra joined the Agency, followed in the family’s legacy. And now, just a few years in, she was doing all she could to keep him on the payroll—and breathing.

“Hey, Mouse’s found something. Wake the fuck up,” she said.

“What the? Who…” Aegeus blinked and pulled himself up in the chair. “Damn, my head’s pounding like a gigolo.”

“Tell someone who cares,” Phaedra said. “You’re on the job, now shut up and listen to what Mouse’s got to say.”

Phaedra sent the PR feed across their wireless stream to the OLED wall at the far end of her apartment’s living room. Mouse’s face appeared, loomed large like some kind of mythical being. He had a glint in his eye and a curious,
Mona Lisa
-esque smile on his lips.

Aegeus sighed. “Pretentious prick,” he said under his breath.

“What was that?” Mouse said, leaning forward from the seat in the FT as if that’d help him hear better.

“Nothing. Just ignore him,” Phaedra said. “What did you find out?”

“Well, things were…interesting to say the least, but to cut a long story short, I need access to Ariadne’s dorm room. Can you square that with the uni?”

“We can try. There’s no chance of a search warrant, so it’ll come down to her parents. I’ve already tried with the university as a matter of course, but they wouldn’t even give me her dorm number. Some bullshit about privacy and compromises. Didn’t seem to give a shit that a bunch of their brightest students were missing. I’d have to go to her parents with something though, a lead. Do you have that?”

“As it happens, I’ve got a bunch of material by Ariadne—research stuff. I’ve not had time to go through it all yet, but Mikos thought it was important enough to leave in a safe place.”

“Did you steal it?” Aegeus said, rubbing his face and stretching his arms upwards.

“Would it matter?” Mouse said. “I can see you’re hard at work. Perhaps you’d prefer to get out there and find your own leads?”

“We’re making progress,” Aegeus said after stifling a yawn.

“Boys, stop it,” Phaedra said. “What happened? Did you find Mikos?”

“Um, not quite. I got a lead though. I’m hoping to find out more, something that would lead me to their whereabouts.”

“So you think Mikos is still alive?”

“At this stage I believe he is. Which also makes me think Ariadne is too. Not sure about the others, though. I’ll keep you updated. The main thing for now is I need to get into her dorm room. I have the address, but if we can get permission, that’d be better than having to break in.”

Phaedra thought for a few moments. “What if we can’t get permission?”

“Then we have no option than to do things…off the books, as it were.”

“Okay,” Phaedra said. “Needs must, I suppose. I’ll tell her parents we’ve found some documents that could lead to her whereabouts and hopefully they’ll comply. Give me a bit of time and I’ll get back to you.”

“Fine,” Mouse said. “That’ll give me time to get back into the city.”

Aegeus raised his eyebrows at Phaedra. She, like her partner, knew that anything that required going outside the city often meant bad news. It appeared she made the right decision in recruiting Mouse to the investigation. She was tempted to check on the FT’s GPS tracking, but then thought better of it. If the Agency saw her log files of tracking it, they’d assume it was stolen, and right now she couldn’t afford to have any heat on their only solid lead.

Phaedra cut off the stream. Mouse’s image on the wall faded.

“You seemed to have a rapport with the father, Aggy. Wanna tap him up, see if you can convince him to give us right of search for her dorm?”

He shrugged. “I suppose.”

“Suppose? What’s your problem? That guy there”—she pointed to the now-blank wall—“is going out on a limb for us. He’s showing more passion and ingenuity than you are. You just don’t care about any of this, do you? Not the case, the kids, nothing.”

He stood from the armchair, poured himself a shot of scotch from Phaedra’s drinks dispenser—a single tall tube in the corner of the room with a series of taps around its circumference and a gesture-based menu upon its surface.

He slugged back the triple measure with a loud gulp. “Why should I care when my supposed partner was thinking of retiring and dumping me to the curb?” He reached the glass to the dispenser for another measure but stopped when Phaedra stood and walked to him.

“If it weren’t for me, you’d be fucking dead by now.” She jabbed a finger towards his face. “And you really want to cut loose? There’s the door, why don’t you go and get another fix. See how long you last on your own.”

Aegeus slammed the glass onto the flat surface of the dispenser, pushed passed his partner. He approached the door and stopped with his hand gripping the handle. A few seconds ticked by. He turned back to face her. “Have you thought about why I drink? Why I spend most of my time off my face?”

“Sure. The whole Agency has wondered.”

“I’m not talking about the Agency. I’m talking about you. You think you’re so perfect. Ever since our parents died, you took everything on yourself, including the moral high ground. You never stopped to think about how I felt, how I coped, or didn’t cope.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it,” Phaedra said, crossing her arms in front of her chest, looking away from Aegeus’s tense face. She knew there wasn’t a great deal of conviction in her voice.

“You keep telling yourself that. Ignore the guilt, pretend you don’t still blame me.” Aegeus moved away from the door, stood close to his partner, his sister. “I see it in your eyes every time I do something you disapprove of. That look that says ‘
he’s the one that killed them with his reckless behavior.’”

Phaedra stepped forward, reached out to him. He stepped away.

“Don’t tell me I’m wrong,” he said. “Give me that much credit.”

He was right of course. She couldn’t help it. She did blame him for their parents’ deaths. He had an opportunity to save them, but while he was high on some new cognitive exciter, she was chasing down the bomber, waiting for crucial information, that
he
was supposed to have sent her.

She got it too late.

The bomb went off.

“No,” she said. “You’re not wrong. I hated you for what you did.” She looked away, unable to cope with his expression. “But now’s a chance. For both of us.”

“A chance for what? Redemption? I don’t think so. We’re powerless, unable to do our jobs properly, so we have to hire scumbags like him.”

“Ah, so that’s it. You think he’s like
him,
don’t you? The bomber?”

“They’re all the same. Breaking laws when it suits them, thinking no one gets hurt. But if it weren’t for people like Mouse, innocent civilians would be safe. He may think he’s just trading in information, but that’s the kind of thing that gets people killed.”

“What are you talking about?” Phaedra asked, sensing there was something else going on in his head.

“The bomber,” he said. “How do you think he got past security? How do you think he found where our parents were? And why do you think he did what he did?”

Phaedra knew the case down to every last detail. She’d read over the notes daily for six months after the incident. She couldn’t think of what he was getting at. But something bit away at her insides, the angry, hungry truth chewing its way to the surface after five years.

“You don’t know, do you? You think you’re smart. Well, let me tell you. Our parents were no saints. Sure, they wore the mask of respectability as well as anyone, but it was still a mask. Truth is, little sis, they were selling secrets to the Russians. After the war finished, didn’t you wonder where all that money was coming from? It certainly didn’t come from working for the Agency.”

At first Phaedra laughed, thinking it was some kind of ridiculous joke. Their parents were legends in the Agency. As well respected as anyone. Long, distinguished careers. But Aegeus’s expression didn’t waver.

“Why wasn’t any of this in the reports?”

“I wiped the evidence. I couldn’t face working in the Agency known as the son of traitors. Hundreds of people died because of them. Giving away our military secrets, exposing our men and women. They were sitting ducks! No, I couldn’t live with that. Could you?”

The truth hit her like a lasgun blast to the chest. Her entire world split apart. She collapsed onto the sofa, placed her head in her hands. It all made sense now: why Aegeus spent most of his spare time out of his mind. Having to live with both the guilt and the truth.

A full ten minutes passed. Neither of them spoke.

Phaedra looked up, watched Aegeus take another shot of scotch.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Yeah? So am I.”

She understood why he was reluctant to trust Mouse, and even be involved in the case. But they were still agents, and they still needed to do what they could, given their limited powers and resources. “I get it,” she said. “I really do. But we can’t turn our backs. Not now. If what you’re saying is true”—and before he could reply she held up her hand—“I’m not suggesting you’re lying, I’m just saying, if that’s true, we can’t just let this case go. We have to try.”

“I know,” Aegeus said. “But I want you to realize we’re not in control here. We’re just along for the ride, and the fact of the matter is those kids are probably dead anyway and there ain’t nothing we can do about that. Mouse will probably get killed, too. And anyone else involved. Information is this new world’s lifeblood. And those who try and claim it for themselves are targets. Just look at Metion’s wealth lately—all because of their new technology. And what does it do? It steals and stores data. Only a fool would try to stop that.”

“So let us be fools,” Phaedra said. “I’d rather be a fool that fails trying than a smart-ass who never tries and withers away to nothing.”

Aegeus shrugged. “Each to his own.”

“So you’ll do it still? Try and get the parents’ cooperation?”

“I said I would. I just don’t want you expecting anything. Of me, or Mouse, or anything.”

“Fine,” Phaedra said. “Make the call.”

C
hapter Six

A full thirty minutes ticked by before he heard back from Phaedra. And when the message came through to his PR, he was surprised that it in fact wasn’t her, but her gruff, miserable partner.

“Must be bad news if it’s coming from you, right?” Mouse said.

Aegeus’s face popped up in the HUD display. “So you’re a freakin’ psychic now, huh?”

“Put the nice lady back on. You’re not really much of a people person.”

The agent’s face remained impartial, the insult falling off him like it was nothing.

“Got a high opinion of your skills, haven’t you? Well, little Mouse, you better scurry off to Ariadne’s dorm.”

“You got us access? That should makes things—”

“No.” Aegeus smiled. “You’re gonna need to do it on your own. I spoke to the father, and he said, and I’ll quote, ‘Not in a million years will I let you scumbags sully my little girl’s privacy.’ So, looks like it’s down to you and your abilities.”

The smug expression on the agent’s face made Mouse want to reach out and punch him. But instead he took a deep breath. He knew the chances were slim and had prepared himself to have to break in. But he couldn’t help but be disappointed at the lack of results from the agents. Still, nothing new there really. Everyone knew the Agency was limp and powerless these days. Preferring to stay within laws and not fight on the front lines meant they couldn’t play the game anymore. They were only there for keeping up appearances.

“Why don’t you load up a Thai hooker experience for a couple of hours while I do your job for you? I’ll update you later,” Mouse said.

Aegeus cut the connection before replying.

Mouse sighed, shrugged it off, concentrated on his next course of action.

He plotted the coordinates into the navigation computer to Ariadne’s university. New Crete Tech Institute was firmly in the
rich-beyond-reason
category of the tenth level. Only the really gifted kids of wealthy families attended. Normally, a scumbag like Mouse would never get beyond the ninth, but he had recently secured the ID credentials of an influential tech CEO. He hadn’t tried it that high up in the chain before, but now would be an ideal time to test out his ID spoofing skills.

A buzz of excitement tingled at the edges of his brain as he switched his hot PR interface’s public ID over to “Dimitrios Alexander” or “Dimi” to his pals.

Make or break,
he thought as he negotiated the FT up between the two rocky outcrops and headed back towards the main city.

The sun shone down on him from its zenith. Mouse made sure he took in the beauty of man-made city ahead of him. It had built quickly over the last twenty years, until the tiny island of Crete had more square footage of space within its towers than most larger countries with their flat, sprawling hovels.

Being the new information center of the world, the power shifted so suddenly most other countries weren’t prepared, leaving millions out of work, destitute.

Not that all of New Crete was a bastion of wealth and fairness. Quite the opposite.

Despite the power balance, he marveled at those great, hulking towers as the sleek FT negotiated the multilayered traffic and rose up through the various levels.

The journey back into the city gave him the opportunity to read Ariadne’s file.

Most of it was just results from various coding experiments—charts and graphs depicting a particular code pattern’s efficiency and CPU requirements when under stress.

He wondered then why it was so important. If it were some kind of insurance policy, he’d have expected some kind of revelation, rather than test results to hypothetical programs he didn’t have the details for. The reports themselves never went into great detail of exactly what these programs were designed for, beyond being some kind of artificial intelligence algorithm. But given Cynthia’s reaction, he trusted her that it was somehow important.

For now he just snapped pictures of each printed page so he had a digital version in his PR he might recall if he ever needed to. He committed as much of it to memory as possible and focused on his next task: getting into Ariadne’s dorm room.

He was approaching the tenth-level checkpoint, and that familiar quicksilver feeling of being on the wrong side of the law flowed through his nerves. The security magnets clamped the FT in place. The checkpoint itself was a narrow entrance between two towers. A scanner probed both the FT and Mouse’s public ID…
come on, let me through
… It took longer than he suspected. His foot tapped against the footrest, his fingers drummed out a nervous beat on the control wheel. His throat was dry.

What if the stolen ID were already in the system…?

Another minute passed, stretching his nerves…and then the scanner bleeped and the gates opened.

He closed his eyes, said a silent prayer to no one in particular and basked in the relief as he passed through the security gate.

Have a Good Day in the Tenth the sign above the gates spelled in bright red OLED letters.

Mouse saluted as he sailed through. “Let’s hope so.”

As the FT continued its ascent to the university’s level, Mouse sent Phaedra a brief video update. He recorded his entrance to the tenth level, and added, “I’ll be at the girl’s uni apartment in three minutes. Will let you know what I find.”

Thirty seconds later, he received a reply.

“Don’t hang around,” Phaedra said, her face back-dropped by a classical painting and a glass of wine in her hand. “Good luck.”

“Thanks. Taking it easy, I see.”

“Well, with you on the case, I thought I’d put my feet up for a bit…but seriously, I’m researching whatever I can find out about these kids. Each one had won awards for the work on AIs and self-teaching coding paradigms. Anything you can find on that will be a great help.”

“I’ll keep my eyes open for anything useful.”

“Be careful,” Phaedra said.

Mouse smiled, then shut off his feed. The FT pulled into the New Crete Tech Institute’s visitor carport. It was dark inside. Strip lights illuminated the Steelcrete walls, and shadows devoured the gaps. Mouse exited the FT and approached the glass elevator. His PR overlaid the operating menu.

He checked Ariadne’s interaction matrix and ran a triangulation algorithm for all the people she’d spent time with in the week before her disappearance. His software crunched the data and a few milliseconds later, he got her location: floor 23, room 18. That confirmed the information on the printout Cynthia had given to him, which was now folded inside his jacket.

He selected 23 on the menu and waited for the elevator to reach its destination.

It stopped twice on the way, taking on three passengers: two blonde girls and a tall, dark-haired man. All three of them dressed in tightly tailored grey-wool suits.
Clones,
he thought. They looked right at him, and despite the ID he was projecting, they still turned up their noses. Not surprising when he was clearly dressed like the fourth-leveler he was.

In hindsight, he probably should have dressed for the occasion. But still, it wasn’t a crime to look out of place—yet. And he was only breaking and entering and stealing information. Not really that big a deal.

The elevator stopped, opened its glass doors with a silent whoosh. He exited into a sterile corridor that made him think of a medical bay: glossy white surfaces everywhere. Nothing tactile or warm, no carpets or lighting fixtures. Just the cold, hard tiles and wall materials No doubt impregnated with nanoprocessors.

He ran a scan through his entanglement field and was greeted with a set of warnings about information security, proper identification, blah blah blah. The security encryption was good, but he had codes. He found Ariadne’s quarters and hacked the entry protocols with a cracking tool that was widely available in the right corners of the DarkNet. Cost him a few million dollars, but was well worth it.

He entered the dorm. The place was an OCD sufferer’s idea of heaven. Just a single, undecorated steel chair in front of a glass-top desk. Immaculate: no fingerprints or smudges to be found. Her workstation screen hovered above the desk via a nanotube wall mount. Not a single cable to be seen. He liked the setup, could appreciate the design and cleanliness. Zero distractions.

The scent of lavender clung to the sterilized air. It was a little too sharp, too crisp—clearly artificial. Mouse scanned the room: no unexpected signals or listening devices.

He took a seat and activated the workstation.

A second later and the familiar logo of NeXt2 emblazoned on the display. Followed by their patented 3-D operating suite. Using familiar gestures, he quickly navigated through Ariadne’s file system. Even her research was meticulous and neat. All files perfectly labeled with an accurate and extensive nomenclature system and intralinked to contextual data. Mouse downloaded as much as he could just for the setup. He’d use that himself for managing all his ill-gotten information.

Eventually, he found the data relating to her dissertation, and the reason why a company snapped her up so quickly:
Practicalities and Moral Concerns Regarding the Development and Management of Self-Aware Artificial Intelligences.

As he skimmed through it, he got that sixth-sense warning feeling. Self-aware AIs? That was bad news. There were plenty of AIs already out there in the Net controlling the Web servers, but they worked within tight parameters and weren’t sentient. Hell, he didn’t even realize it was possible, but as he read through those notes, he discovered that a group of students, including Ariadne, had created such a being—for that’s what it was now, a being, not just code in supervised lab conditions.

It appeared to Mouse that there was an arms race between the various universities. Ariadne’s didn’t win. No guessing who was funding the winning university. The rest of her report confirmed it. Metion were bankrolling a project headed by Cretian National University.

Mouse always knew the CNU were shady. The DarkNet was full of viruses developed by the professors and postgrad students. They thought nothing of hacking hackers—often causing permanent brain damage when those poor bastards were caught hooked up to the max via the PREs. But this…this Daedalus Project was off the chart.

He called up Phaedra. The line buzzed for a few seconds before her face appeared on his PR screen. She looked like she’d had more than just one glass of wine, and after discovering the info about the AI, he wished he had some fine wine at hand.

“What’s up? Found anything?”

“I found the girl’s research information. It’s worse than I thought. They developed fully functioning, sentient AIs, and Metion were funding the CNU, who developed the Daedalus Project.”

“Shit.”

***

Mouse waited for further response from Phaedra, but she just lay there, thinking.

“Look, why don’t I carry on digging and report back later.”

“Okay,” she said, “but you need to find a way into Metion, find out what happened to Ariadne. She might still be alive—the others might be still alive. Perhaps they’re working for them? How do we know these kids going off the grid isn’t part of the plan? Make everyone think they’re dead when they’re working on their damned Daedalus Project.”

Mouse shrugged. “It’s possible, I suppose, but although they wiped her PR records, why leave her workstation open like this? Sure, it was encrypted, but it wasn’t difficult to crack.”

“Maybe you’re just being modest?”

He cracked a smile. “Do I look modest to you? Would I want your FT if I were modest?”

“Fair point. Keep me posted.”

“Sure thing.”

Mouse signed off, completed the download of information from Ariadne’s datastore and was thinking about getting down into the sublevels to find a way into Metion when something in one of the files caught his attention—a name.

It showed up on a number of the test-data documents—and there were mentions of it within the files Cynthia had given to him: Dr. Kalani.

Mouse ran the name through his search program, pulled up his record.

Dr. Kalani, thirty-nine years old. A professor overseeing Ariadne’s research. No convictions, stellar record in research and development of advanced information systems.

Decent guy
, Mouse thought. Even his interaction matrix and PR records were clean as a whistle: not a sign of a deviant sexbot or artificial highs anywhere. And the most useful thing was that he was actively online, alive and publicly available.

While Mouse exited the university and seated himself inside the FT, he called up Kalani via the PR.

A bearded Asian man stared at Mouse with a mixture of confusion and fear. “This is Dr. Kalani, may I help you?” he said.

“Oh, hi, Doc. You don’t know me—obviously—but I know that you worked closely with a girl called Ariadne.”

The man’s eyes drooped slightly and a shadow crossed his face, relaxing all the muscles and instantly taking away his friendly demeanor, replacing it with the heavy weight of grief. “I was her supervisor. What’s this about?”

“I’m working with the IDE Agency and following up on her disappearance. I’m assuming you know about that already?”

Kalani nodded, dropped his head to his chest. The strain was clear from the tight worry lines on his balding forehead. He looked up and choked out, “Any news on her yet?”

“We’re working on it, Doctor.”

Kalani took a deep breath and sat up straight. “May I see your ID credentials?”

Mouse quickly spoofed a fake Agency ID, sent the record across to the doctor. It was a hastily made file with none of the encryption Mouse would usually spend longer incorporating. But it’d have to do.

The older man quickly scanned it, seemed convinced. “I already spoke with your colleagues. Has there been any news?”

“We’ll get to that. But first, can you tell me again what you know about her disappearance?”

He shrugged. “Like I told the other agents: I don’t know anything! I reported her missing as soon as she didn’t turn up for her dissertation meeting. I was expecting her, as it was her last assessment before I gave my final grade.”

“Can you tell me more about what she was working on?”

“I’m assuming you’ve commandeered her research by now?”

“We’re currently getting familiar with it. But it’d be quicker if you could tell us what you know.”

Kalani fidgeted on his office chair, seemed to weigh how much information to relinquish. Mouse waited patiently, not wanting to take the conversation off into a different direction.