Jon Evans - Swarm

We had figured Sophie’s Axon neural networks had filtered to the drug cartels via Jesse and Anya’s Grassfire group. Now Dmitri was talking like I had sold it to them, and been richly rewarded.

The one way this all made sense was if they were both wrong; if Sophie had sold the drug gangs her technology herself, and funneled the money into a bank account she had opened for me.

She wouldn’t have been able to do anything with the proceeds, but then, she had never cared about money. What that bank account gave her was deniability. Everyone would think I had betrayed my girlfriend by selling the fruits of her genius behind her back.

It was unbelievable. But if true, it explained everything. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to tell me. Her tortured-soul, heavy-burden, trying-to-protect-you routine – all a lie. Our whole life together a betrayal.

But why? Why would Sophie have given her life’s work to a drug cartel? Or was it a drug cartel? I still didn’t even know where I was. All I knew was that I knew nothing.

I supposed that was at least a start. Better to begin at zero than a negative number.

“I’m still not sure I quite understand you,” I said carefully, “but since you say you already know everything, you won’t mind telling me what exactly that everything is.”

Dmitri looked annoyed. “James, had I any doubts, this man,” he nodded to the tattooed thug, “would take such pleasure in making you tell me anything I wanted.”

I managed to keep calm and stay quiet.

He sighed. “Fine. You made contact through your hacker friends. I attended some impressive demonstrations. They -“

“Which hacker friends?” I interrupted.

“Shadow and Octal.”

The names meant nothing to me. “Go on.”

“We came to an agreement. Money changed hands. You have been sending us the Axon source codes happily ever after, until we learned to our dismay that you were working with the DEA. Really, James, is there no honour among thieves?” He seemed genuinely darkly amused. “Although, to be fair, it might interest you to know that we seriously discussed abducting you and Dr. Warren last year. In the end we decided, why kidnap the goose when FedEx brings its golden eggs? But we should have seized the moment. And you. Backstabbing, like comedy, is all in the timing.”

“You found out the DEA were taking us to Colombia,” I said slowly. “So you decided to try to kill us there.”

“Nothing personal. Strictly business. We had the swarm designs, we decided it was time to consolidate our gains.”

“Kostopoulos was investigating you, and found out too much, so you killed him.”

Dmitri blinked, taken aback. “Who?”

“Michael Kostopoulos. The DEA agent you killed.”

The Russian man shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

The denial sounded genuine, and he had no apparent reason to lie, but who else could have assassinated Kostopoulos? I stared at Dmitri perplexed for a moment, then decided to table that issue. I had enough to worry and wonder about already. Such as: “If you were trying to kill us in Colombia, why not in Haiti?”

His expression flickered, and then he smiled sourly. “It was discussed. But the jewel in your crown, your swarm software, it didn’t fucking work, did it? So we decided to recruit your expertise. We were hoping for Dr. Warren. But you are better than nothing. You had better be better than nothing.” He leaned forward, intent, his voice low and oddly conspiratorial. “Because, James, if you cannot make the swarm software work, it will be difficult for me to defend to Mr. Ortega the business case for keeping you alive.”

I swallowed hard and wondered who Mr. Ortega was.

“But if you can solve that little problem,” Dmitri continued, leaning back again, “you could be very useful. It is difficult for us to recruit good engineers. We have all the best toys, all the money you could want, this is paradise for hackers, but people seem to have the impression that there are certain disadvantages to working for our organization. Lucky for you. It makes you too valuable to turn over to our faithful worshippers of Santisima Muerte.”

It all made a kind of awful sense. Sophie had sent them the newest version of her technology, the swarm software; but they hadn’t gotten the bug fix she had installed on Convoy’s UAVs. That was what they wanted from me, that and my ongoing expertise. In exchange, they wouldn’t torture me to death.

I wanted to know more about Mr. Ortega, but I didn’t want to admit my ignorance. If they discovered that I was not in fact the criminal mastermind they thought, they might decide I wasn’t worth keeping. So I took a shot in the dark: “How does Don Mario feel about all this?”

Dmitri looked at me narrowly. “What do you care?”

“Just curious.”

“Don Mario is not a subtle thinker. He pays Mr. Ortega very well for the services he provides, and is very happy with them.”

My mind raced. So Lisa’s speculation in Clark’s office had been halfway right. Don Mario, the dread Colombian drug lord, was indeed involved in this, but Ortega didn’t work for him directly.

I tried to temporize. “I can’t help you with the swarms.”

Dmitri’s face darkened, and he looked towards the loitering thug.

I quickly rationalized: “I’d need our lab’s latest test and development software. Without that there’s nothing I can do.”

“Your lab’s latest test and development software.” The Russian’s uneven teeth suddenly seemed predatory. “Such as that on a certain laptop recovered from the Ark Royale, for instance?”

I swallowed, defeated. “Yeah.”

“Good. Then you will do it.”

A hero might have said no, but I was no hero. I didn’t want to be taken to a torture chamber and carved up with a chainsaw. I didn’t want to die.

There was, however, something that I wanted almost more than life. I wanted to know how and why Sophie could have done this to me.

“All right,” I said quietly. “I’ll do it.”

Dmitri’s smile grew cheerful. “Don’t look so gloomy. It’s not so bad here. It has its advantages. This may sound mad now, but this time next year, you might even be glad this happened.”

I had my doubts.

The compound where they kept me had once been a military academy, although its true purpose, according to Dmitri, had been to break the wills of fucked-up rich kids. That explained the fifteen-foot walls topped by rusting razor wire. They and the silence beyond made me feel like I was in some kind of postapocalyptic survivalist sanctuary. The surrounding landscape was endless and barren, rugged hills covered by cacti. In the distance a plume of volcanic smoke rose from the highest of a range of snow-capped mountains. The only signs of civilization anywhere were the sagging soccer goalposts just outside the walls and the thin ribbon of road stretching from the gate across that infinite wasteland. It felt like the end of the world.

The main building was U-shaped and three stories high. A collection of dusty SUVs sat in its cobblestoned courtyard. There had been some kind of statue there once, but only the plinth remained. The interior was as dreary as a derelict high school. Pipes and wires ran along tarnished walls, past cracked windows. Most of its rooms were empty.

About thirty people lived in the complex, rooming in what had once been student dorms. The communal bathrooms had seatless toilets and showers with no privacy. At least the hot water worked. The windows were barred, and my door was locked from outside at night. Most of my fellow residents were guards. When not patrolling the fence with lean and vicious-looking dogs, they played endless games of soccer outside. I didn’t interact with them, or anyone but Dmitri: he was the only other resident who spoke English.