The Unseen (20 page)

“But two sets of eyes would negate that,” Kari said. “It’s improbable that multiple sets of eyes would be blind in the same exact spot at the same exact time.”

“Have you ever met someone with four eyes?” She wasn’t sure if Joseth meant to be condescending or if he was just trying to defend his point. Either way, his response bothered her.

“No. You may be unfamiliar with this term, but people have friends. That means people can watch one another’s backs. You should try it sometime.”

“I hack organizations with thousands of people trying to guard their assets on a daily basis. In fact, why don’t you choose one for me right now? A big company, one that has plenty of people watching its back.”

“Vision,” Kari said. It was the largest, most powerful technology company on the planet. It had grown to such an astounding size that the government had tried to break it up on several occasions and had lost. What had once been an entire valley of innovation had become a technological giant that no one could challenge. It had never suffered a data breach in Kari’s lifetime. It was one of the jewels that many hackers chased, but none had ever publically claimed success.

Joseth’s eyes rolled back in his head as he went online. She stared across the small table at him with contempt.
I wonder if I would have followed him if he had approached me online about the idea of forming a better government. It’s a disruptive idea, an audacious one that I might have supported if there had been a peaceful plan to carry it out. But now that I know him and know how he wants to accomplish his goals, I can never help him.

“Why don’t you visit Vision’s site,” Joseth said. He blinked a few times and looked over at her.
There’s no way.
Kari pulled up the home the page of the world’s most powerful corporation and gasped. The site was black except for a giant white banner that filled her view.

“In the land of the seeing, the blind is king, Freelancer.”

“Don’t read into the whole king thing; it’s just a play on the words of one of my favorite quotes.”

“How?” Kari was speechless. She had never seen anyone touch Vision before, and Oedipus had done it in seconds.

“Truthfully, I hacked Vision months ago. I’ve just been waiting for the right time to let their people know about it. Vision is just one of the many that I haven’t gone public with. In fact, I have a large number of sites that are going to volunteer to spread my message soon enough.”

“You used to hack people who deserved it—pedophiles corrupt politicians, extremist groups. I remember one time you exposed an entire ring of animal poachers. Oedipus was famous for being a hacker for the people. You inspired so many of us. Now look at you, doing all of this for personal gain and glory.”

“I am still doing all of this for the people. I’m going to remove the biggest scourge of them all, the one that is keeping the people oppressed and allowing all of that other stuff to happen underneath their noses. I’m going to stop them once and for all, and there is nothing they will be able to do about it.”

“So you’re trying to say you are invulnerable?”
Might as well help him get back on track. Maybe I won’t have to listen to him forever if I help move this conversation along.

“Yes,” Joseth said. He was obviously encouraged by her participation in the conversation. “That is exactly what I was trying to say. The outer perimeter of the property is guarded by hundreds of cheetahs carrying billions of nanobots. The trees are filled to the brim with drones, and all of the access points are lined with enough firepower to leave a crater a hundred feet deep. I keep military-class drones in the high atmosphere above here at all times. All of this is probably helping you recognize how futile and endearingly amateur your petty attempts at escape have been, but that’s not even what makes this place just so untouchable. Do you know what is?”

“No.” Kari couldn’t help but feel embarrassed.
And I thought I almost made it out of here! He’s right to call them futile; I’d need an army to fight my way out of here. Maybe two.
Joseth must have read the look of fear on her face because he grinned smugly.

“The real reason Valhalla is impenetrable, and therefore inescapable, is that the two legislative powers have a vested interest in our continued success.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, they have paid for this place from the ground up. This food, these waiters, this beautiful gazebo—all of this has been personally financed by the warring parties. The money flows in from both sides while they waste it away fighting each other endlessly, financing their own eventual demise. They’ve granted us a no-fly zone, so even commercial drones without my express permission have to fly out of the way.” Joseth laughed, not in a way that the villains did in movies, but like a normal guy laughed at a good joke. It was unsettling.

“Even if you don’t agree with my purposes, you have to admit the irony is . . . is . . .” Joseth took a bite of a fine cheese wrapped in prosciutto while searching for the proper word. “Delicious.”

“It’s certainly something,” Kari said.

“I’m the third largest buyer of raw materials in North America. All of it at a discount rate, paid for by my enemies. I could fight a war with the army I already have. The problem is that I don’t think I could win, not yet.”

“But my drones would make it all possible?”

“Yes,” Joseth said. “I believe so. And to think I nearly had them the other day. This all might have been over already.”
That’s right! I almost gave him access to the drones to stop Rosewood.

“You think you could end the fighting that quickly? I thought you said I would be stuck here for at least a year.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before you, forgive the play on words, opened my eyes.” Kari stared across the small table at him blankly. She wanted to pick up the glass of champagne and throw it in his face and to flip the table to the ground.
But she just sat there, listening to every word Joseth said.
She felt guilty for allowing him to confuse her emotions, as her exact feelings for him at the moment were painstakingly clear.

“I always thought I would need to overwhelm the armies of my enemies from the outside, but you’ve shown me a better way. Turn the armies against themselves.”

“You’ll. Never. Get. My. Drones.”

“We’ll see about that,” Joseth said. “But let’s not let that disagreement ruin such a fine evening. Come on, you really should try one of these. They’re delightful.”

It is a beautiful plan; I’ll give that to him. Even if he doesn’t get my drones he just waits while they get weaker, and he gets stronger. I’m going to have to move fast, but even if I do I can’t beat him alone. I’m going to need help. A lot more help.
Kari took one of the prosciutto appetizers from the platter in front of her and ate it. Joseth was right; it tasted amazing.

“You should think about joining the pro-gaming circuit,” Motorcad said, holding the last of his programmable cards tight to his chest.

“Does that mean you’re finally going to give up?” SeptemberMist said. Kari had rarely seen her happier than she was right now. It was rare that anyone could beat Motorcad, and SeptemberMist was reveling in her imminent victory. This time, it was her decision what game they would play, and she had chosen a popular card game called CIO that required people to bid, bluff, and bet their way to victory. Kari had lost all of her money and resources early in the game, which didn’t upset her all.

There was too much left to do and too little time for her to do it. But the most important part of the day had already been accomplished. Earlier, when SeptemberMist had run to the bathroom, Kari had slipped Motorcad a small chip that she had printed with all of the instructions he would need. The entire plan hinged on him.
I’m going to have to trust him to get his job done.
Trusting people was becoming even harder for Kari, given how many times she had been let down before.

“Fine,” Motorcad said with an indignant mumble. “You win.” All hackers hated to lose, but Motorcad despised it more than anyone she had ever met. Even if it was a game that SeptemberMist had chosen specifically because it played to her strengths, he looked pained as he set his final cards down and resigned.

“Could you say that again?”

“No.”

“Please, I just want to hear you say that phrase one more time. I could hardly hear it because you mumbled so quietly.”

“Leave me alone,” Motorcad said.

“Don’t be a sore loser,” Kari said.

“Yeah, don’t be a sore loser, loser.”

Motorcad growled and SeptemberMist flashed him a wide, innocent smile.

“I lost!” Motorcad yelled at the top of his lungs. “I, Motorcad, the greatest winner of all time, formally do declare that I have been defeated.” He took a deep breath and stopped screaming. “Happy?”

“Immensely so,” SeptemberMist said.

“Good, because I’m going to go take a long cold shower and wash this disgusting feeling of losing off,” Motorcad said.

“Let me know if you need a shoulder to cry on,” Kari said.

“Thank you,” Motorcad said. “Glad to know I have at least one friend who cares about the emotional distress I’m going through at the moment.” He stormed away, and SeptemberMist, grinning, watched him go.

“Sorry to leave you alone, but I need to keep enjoying this moment.”

“No worries,” Kari said. She was actually happy to get some time alone. Her friends had been nearly constant companions since her so-called “accident.”

“Don’t go jumping on the back of any drones, OK?”

“I won’t.”

“Hey, Loser-Cad, wait up for me. I think we need to take a victory lap around Valhalla!” SeptemberMist shouted as she chased after Motorcad, who started running when he heard her.

Now that Kari was alone again, she reviewed the instructions she had just given Motorcad to complete. As soon as she had printed the chip that held them, she had felt a growing sense of anxiety
.
She was scared she’d get caught, scared it wouldn’t work, and scared it wouldn’t make sense to Motorcad.

Most of all, she was scared that someone innocent would get hurt in the process.
Things weren’t as scary when she was in complete control of everything, but so much of her plan counted on other people. She could do everything on her part perfectly and still have her plan fail miserably. It was already a long shot without involving so many people, but she had no choice.
Maybe I should start working on that backup plan.

Kari opened her development environment and pulled up a couple of projects she was working on. She’d need to complete all of them, but for now she picked the easiest one. She needed to write a little script that would monitor the statuses of the printers in the basement and notify her when they were all being used at the same time.

She connected the printers’ statuses as an input data source and quickly wrote the code to constantly check their availability. The whole task took her a couple of minutes, and she put the little program into use immediately. It felt good to check an item off the to-do list with so little effort.
If only all of the remaining tasks were this easy.

She moved on to the next item on the list, which was to finish up the Faraday modifications she had been working on for the past week. A Faraday cage was the only way to keep an electronic device safe from an EMP. Kari had been spending every waking minute working on modifying some cheetahs so that they were immune to any EMP-capable opponent.
If he thinks his EMP guns can neutralize everything I can throw at him, he’s going to be disappointed. It’s going to take more than one trick to beat me.

It was the most complicated project she had worked on since her hacking drones, but it was essential to finish it if her plan was going to have a chance to succeed. Even more important, she needed to write software that would hack all the printers in the basement and keep Joseth from reclaiming them before they could finish printing what she needed them to. That was going to be the most difficult problem, without a doubt.

“Do you follow the news?” Joseth said. Kari flinched, but kept herself from a full-out jump. She closed her development environment hastily, as if she were worried that Joseth could see what she was working on.

“Not as much as I should,” Kari said. “I mean life is mandatorily perfect here, so why would I worry about anything in the free world?”

“I don’t think today’s news is any joking matter,” Joseth said. “The battle of Hannibal, Missouri, is being called the new Gettysburg. The Middle States were just defeated in the largest pitched battle on American soil in hundreds of years. In stunning fashion, I might add. Billions of dollars in materials burned up along with tens of thousands of lives.”

“That’s horrible,” Kari said. She reached out over the Net to verify what he was saying. What she found was heartbreaking. Images of mile after mile of pure devastation filled the news. There were even options to virtually walk through the battlefield, but Kari didn’t think she was emotionally up to that. “Oh my goodness . . .”

“It was a crushing defeat for the Middle States,” Joseth said. “It could be the tipping point in the war.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Kari said, knowing he wasn’t here just to give her an update about the news.

“I’m telling you this because your rent is due.”

“I didn’t have to pay rent at my last prison.”

Joseth closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose.

“General Tanner and General Susan R. Rich are next,” Joseth said. “They orchestrated that victory for the Coastal States, and their competence has become a problem.”

“Now you’re murdering people if they want peace or if they are too good at their job?”

“My parameters haven’t changed. I’ve always targeted people who are a threat to the continued reign of terror the current leadership has over the country. Politicians, businesspeople, activists, priests—anyone who helped to keep the people subdued were removed, whether they wanted peace or war. I’m afraid your analysis of my so-called assassinations was limited. But that is beside the point. What matters is that your refusal to help me means that this war must continue for the time being.”