Jeremy Robinson - Blackout

And then King felt the man’s fingers moving, creeping toward the stud on the hilt.

Mobile device detected. Do you wish to synch? Y/N

Graham Brown felt a moment of uncertainty.

He was only peripherally aware of the life and death struggle going on a few feet away. It didn’t really matter which man survived-King or his mysterious abductor-since both intended the same fate for him. He might not get another chance to do this.

He thought about Pradesh’s earlier exhortation and recalled his own counter-argument. The probability of success would be drastically diminished if he did this. All his carefully laid plans were contingent upon the quantum devices being utilized in a specific manner. A deviation would have unpredictable results.

But wasn’t that the true nature of gambling? Wasn’t that the very thing that had motivated him to embrace this plan in the first place? Bold risks, uncertain outcomes…a final grand game of chance that would put his unique abilities to the ultimate test.

King had been more right that he would ever know. Brown had indeed won the game, won every game. He had played so expertly that there was no longer any satisfaction at all in the victory.

Maybe it’s better this way, he thought, and tapped the “Y” on the screen.

Endgame HQ, Pinckney New Hampshire-2027 UTC/ 1527 Local

Lewis Aleman jiggled the empty can of Red Bull energy drink, shaking the last few drops of the beverage into his mouth, and tossed the aluminum container into a wastebasket where it rattled hollowly off several other discards.

“You should probably switch to water,” Deep Blue advised from his position at an adjoining workstation. “Any more of that stuff and you’ll give yourself an aneurism.”

“I’d rather switch to Sam Adams,” Aleman meant it only in jest. He wouldn’t dream of consuming alcohol in the middle of an operation, with an agent in the field. “Why hasn’t he checked in?”

“It could take a while for him to isolate Brown.” Deep Blue’s reply lacked confidence, and Aleman knew his superior wasn’t any more satisfied with the explanation than he was.

“He could be in trouble.”

“King’s a big boy.”

As if to punctuate the discussion, Aleman’s computer monitor blinked awake as did the large plasma screen on the wall. Aleman sat up straight. “His phone is active. He’s checking in.”

To his dismay however, the screen displayed the words:

Login failed. Please enter a valid access code (2 ^ attempts remaining).

“What the hell?” Something was wrong. He glanced at Deep Blue who looked equally concerned.

“King’s phone uses biometric security,” Deep Blue said, the question implicit.

Aleman nodded. The device, his own design, needed only a thumbprint scan-very useful for both preventing unauthorized use and rapid access in the field. There was no password or access code. Then, as lines of machine language began filling the screen, Aleman realized what he was seeing.

“That’s not King’s phone,” he gasped. “We’re being hacked.”

Override accepted.

Impossible. No one in the world could hack through the layers of firewall protection he had built to protect the Chess Team mainframe. Even with the power of a device like the supercomputer used by the NSA’s Echelon program, such an attack would have taken hours…days even.

Aleman was up and moving in a heartbeat, dashing across the room to a console that contained only a single, red button. Without even a moment’s hesitation, he slammed his palm down on the killswitch.

Lines of code continued to flash across the plasma screen. The hacker had anticipated this action and evidently disabled the killswitch remotely. That left only one option…if it wasn’t already too late. He pivoted and headed for the door.

“Aleman,” Deep Blue barked. “What in God’s name is happening?”

“Someone is in our system.”

“Shut it down!”

“I can’t. They’ve locked me out of the hardware.”

“Then pull the goddamn plug.”

“That’s what I’m going to do.” His profound respect for Chess Team’s leader compelled the tech expert to delay a moment longer. “But the only way to do that is to destroy the mainframe. A couple incendiary grenades should do the trick. But we’ll be completely cut off.”

Deep Blue’s eyes widened as the gravity of this revelation hit home. Chess Team’s effectiveness owed no small part to their access to information and instantaneous communication. The fire suppression system would probably prevent the destruction of the entire facility-probably-but immolating the computer mainframe would be a severe blow in the long term. In the short term, it would mean hanging King out to dry. But what choice was there?

“Do it.”

Paris-2027 UTC

Bandar Pradesh straightened in his chair as the message on the display monitor changed. The tenth and final quantum device had been activated and was synching. A progress bar indicated that the process was nearly complete. It was taking longer than the others had, but the difference would be measured only in seconds. The quantum network was, without question, the fastest and most powerful computer on the planet. With nine nodes already active, its stutter-logic artificial intelligence could almost instantly adapt to any security protocols. The time lag was almost certainly due to the volume of information the system was downloading from the parallel network, which evidently was larger than any of the others had been.

He sighed in relief. Brown’s reluctance to simply activate the tenth device hadn’t been merely an aggravation. It had threatened the success of Pradesh’s true agenda. He had been tempted to simply take the device and perform the final synchronization himself, but doing so might have tipped his hand at the most critical moment. In the end, he had decided to tolerate Brown’s dismissal, awaiting a better opportunity to act.

He’d heard some loud noises earlier-gunshots? — no doubt Brown dealing with a captive, but he’d thought better of leaving the safety of the control room. Now he was glad for his restraint.

The progress bar jumped to 100 %. The device was now synchronized and the network was active.

Adrenaline stirred in his veins and with trembling fingers, he tapped a command into the prompt:

›››Awakening. exe

King wrenched his head sideways and let the Spetsnaz drive the point of the blade down. The knife pierced through the air where his face had been an instant earlier and punched deep into the fiberglass deck. Almost simultaneously, the Russian’s finger depressed the release stud on the hilt.

The knife handle went cold in King’s grasp as the compressed carbon dioxide charge expanded inside the tube, but because the blade wasn’t going anywhere, the blast instead blew the hilt, along with the four hands gripping it, straight up like a piston into the Russian’s face.

Even as the Spetsnaz winced from the impact, King released his grip on the hilt and fumbled for the heavy object that had pounded him earlier-the Russian’s gun. His fingers found the cool metal frame and recognized it instantly-an Israeli-produced Uzi 9-millimeter machine pistol, outfitted with a noise suppressor. His hand curled around the grip, depressing the safety mechanism, and in a single decisive motion, he jabbed the extended barrel up into the Russian’s abdomen and pulled the trigger.

Hot brass cascaded from the ejection port, but there was hardly any noise or recoil as the magazine emptied into the Russian’s torso. King felt the man lurch as the rounds punched through him, but even before the bolt blew back on the last chamber, the Russian slumped atop him, dead or very nearly so.