As the machine slid past them, Tom seized its rounded head and swung himself onto the base. He felt it sway as Vik and Wyatt eased themselves on as well. He twisted around the neck to expose the back panel, and Wyatt quickly stripped it away to expose the control chip.
Just as the pinpoint camera of the Praetorian lit up, a lethal red light of an alarm igniting in its depths, Vik yanked out its control chip and set about jamming the new one in its place. Tom watched, heart in his throat, wishing his fingers had been nimble enough to do it. But it worked. The Praetorian’s system blinked out, reset.
They waited. Tom could sense Wyatt and Vik’s tension behind the optical camouflage. He could hear them breathing rapidly.
And then the Praetorian powered back on again, utterly still for a long moment as it processed Wyatt’s SE Janus coding. The machine resumed sliding down the corridor with them on top of it. Tom shoved his mouth into the crook of his arm to muffle the insane urge to laugh, even though he knew any sound from him might trigger alarms. He felt Vik shift his weight, arm brushing his, and Wyatt’s hand pressed up against his. Her fingers gripped his and tightened until his hand throbbed.
It helped him that she was nervous, too. It helped a lot.
Relax, Tom thought to her. We’ll be in and out.
The Praetorian was taking them on Wyatt’s preprogrammed course to the nearest neural access port. Tom would hook into the system, and the search program installed in his processor would begin hunting for the data pattern that matched the audio signal blaring through the earbuds into Yuri’s ears in the Pentagonal Spire, and therefore straight into Obsidian Corp.’s database. As soon as they had its location, Wyatt had one algorithm to order their Praetorian to return them back to where they’d come from, and another to send the Praetorian straight back to that transmitter. It would emit an electrical discharge to fry the transmitter along with the supercomputer it was attached to.
By the time the transmitter was destroyed and the alarms began, they’d already be on the Interstice, heading home to Arlington, Virginia.
Simple.
The journey through Obsidian Corp. to the nearest neural access port felt interminable. They shifted positions clumsily, each with a foot on the base of the Praetorian, the other hanging into the air, all three of them clinging to the long, curved neck. The biggest test was the moment the Praetorian passed the first inert guard machines, all in sleep mode. Tom held his breath as they slid past those pinprick camera eyes, his heart in his throat, legs trembling.
But they passed them, unseen, shielded by their optical camouflage, hallway after hallway, machine after machine. The gauntlet of Praetorians remained still. Tom felt like he might puke. He was so grateful he wasn’t doing this alone.
They passed a window gazing upon the black night over the icy landscape of Antarctica. And then the Praetorian stopped. They were at a neural access port. A tremendous flood of relief poured through Tom. He maneuvered awkwardly, slipping his fingers under the tunic portion of his optical camouflage, working a neural wire out of his pocket. He jammed it into the access port. It was time to let the search program installed in his head locate the audio pattern from the transmitter in Obsidian Corp.’s systems. He hesitated.
Are you guys sure you can keep me upright while I’m hooked in? I’d rather not fall and get electrocuted, Tom thought to them.
I’ve got you, Vik thought.
Are you sure? Tom thought dubiously.
Is Vik sure? Wyatt also thought dubiously.
Vik’s pride was pricked. Hey, I am strong like an ox or a Yuri.
Don’t worry, I’ll help hold you up, Tom, Wyatt thought.
Tom waited until Vik had anchored an arm around him, squashing him up against the neck of the Praetorian, then he hooked the other end of the neural wire into the back of his neck. The search program in his head triggered and began rapidly scanning through Obsidian Corp.’s database. Tom had a search plan of his own in mind. He jolted out of himself into the vast tangle of information sparking through Obsidian Corp.’s systems, knowing he might be able to locate the transmitter before the program did. The sooner they could leave, the better.
But Obsidian Corp. wasn’t like the Pentagonal Spire. Tom had no familiarity with the network of pipelines. He kept finding himself linking to external flows of information, feeds from the offices of congressmen straight into Vengerov’s databases . . . feeds from inside homes, buildings, from smart appliances, from intelligent streetlights. . . . He found himself in Obsidian Corp.’s external defense systems, and then he shot through a pipeline into the NSA’s Fusion Center in Utah, where the surveillance footage of every person in America was being stored. Then he snapped back into his own processor, and the search results blinked in his vision center, showing him a warehouse, empty but for machines and a supercomputer—and Yuri’s transmitter.
But something strange happened. A wind of stellar power seemed to seize him, dragging him down another pipeline. It was like disappearing down a vortex or a black hole for an instant, because the pipeline drew him irresistibly into another subsystem. For a fleeting moment, Tom’s consciousness was in the datastream, the zeroes and ones dancing in his brain, and his mind met another mind. It was that same disconcerting sensation he’d experienced finding the third neural processor interfacing with Heather’s ship.
The other neural processor seared his consciousness, and through someone else’s eyes, Tom gazed at a reflection swimming across the polished blackness of a nearby screen.
Joseph Vengerov seemed to be staring right back at him, and for a chilling moment as their minds were linked, something curious and dark and stinging with possibilities stirred on all sides of him.
“If it isn’t the ghost in the machine.” Vengerov spoke right to his own shadowy reflection. “Is that you, Yaolan?”
Tom felt a spike of panic and reeled back out of Vengerov’s mind and into himself so abruptly, he almost lurched over. But Wyatt and Vik were practically bear-hugging him to the Praetorian, squashing his cheek against the metal pole, and their thoughts began bombarding him.
Did you get the location? Vik thought.
Where’s the transmitter? Wyatt thought.
Tom straightened, bathed in sweat, anxiety a living animal clawing in his chest.
We need to get out of here, he thought to them, cold with dread. We need to go now. I think Vengerov knows we’re here.
And then the first alarm split the air.
Something triggered in their Praetorian. Its metal neck began to retract into its body. Tom heard Wyatt gasp as the metal slid between their fingers, less and less of it there to grip. Then Tom heard her pounding frantically at her forearm keyboard, and her command sent it springing back to its full height.
Even that action proved dangerous. The deviation from programmed behavior must have registered in the system, must’ve blared their location to every machine in the building, because another Praetorian swung around from the next room, heading straight for them. Tom realized what was about to happen, and reached out to wrench Vik and Wyatt to a crouch as the new Praetorian spliced a laser through the air where they’d been. Their Praetorian fought back, spliced its own laser through the air, razing the other machine into smoking pieces.
Wyatt! Knock out the floors! Tom thought to her.
Then she jammed her neural wire into the access port, jabbed the other end into her neck, and unleashed her virus into Obsidian Corp.’s wireless systems to knock out the electric floors and disable their surveillance system. It was their emergency program—in case this disastrous scenario happened.