Daniel Suarez - Daemon

“Please forgive me, Detective, but that sounds far-fetched.”

“Yes. That’s the whole point. It was designed to be far-fetched.”

“Designed by Sobol?”

“Yes.”

“So, you’re asking everyone to believe you, instead of the facts. We’re to believe that Sobol went to Herculean lengths to frame you—spending not just millions but tens of millions of dollars in the effort?”

“I’m not asking anyone to believe anything. To be honest, even I wouldn’t believe me.”

“So you don’t blame anyone?”

Sebeck stared hard at her. “Oh, I blame some people. But their time will come.”

“That sounds like a threat. Do you believe the American public will be sympathetic toward threats?”

“I’m not here to talk to the American public.”

“Then who are you here to talk to?”

“The Daemon.”

“The Daemon ?” Anderson was taken aback. “The Daemon doesn’t exist, Sergeant.”

“You and I both know that isn’t true.”

Anderson shrugged blissfully. “No, I don’t know that.”

“You’re real proud of yourself, aren’t you, Anji? Famous and rich—isn’t that what the Daemon promised you? And all you had to do was sell your soul—if you ever had one.”

“I didn’t come here to be insulted, ex- Detective. Why don’t you tell us your side of the Daemon hoax instead? Help us understand your point of view.”

“Keep them entertained, Anji. Keep them busy and distracted. That’s your purpose, isn’t it? I see that now. Be careful, because I’m starting to understand Sobol. Maybe even better than you. I’ve had plenty of time to think in here. Why did Sobol warn me?”

“Sobol warned you? How did he warn you?”

“At his funeral he said he would destroy me. Those were his exact words. And that’s exactly what he did. He destroyed everything that once defined me. It doesn’t make sense that he would warn me—unless he had further plans for me.”

“So he’s your friend now? Does that idea comfort you?”

Sebeck looked her straight in the eye. “Fuck you.”

Anderson clenched her jaw angrily for a moment. Then a pleasant smile spread across her face. “We have a time delay, Detective. But please watch your language. This is a family show.”

“I understand what Sobol meant now.”

“Well, you’re running out of time to solve the case, Sergeant. If the Supreme Court refuses your appeal, you’re scheduled to die by lethal injection. You must be impressed by the unusually swift hand of justice.”

Sebeck contemplated it calmly. “It is unusual, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps it was the murder of those federal officers.”

“Why are you helping this thing? Do you think it will ever let you go? Do you think you will ever be free?”

Anderson ignored him. “You’re undergoing psychiatric treatment. Is that going well?”

“I’m through talking to you. I came here to send a message to the Daemon.”

“Well, you’d better hope it watches television, Detective.”

Sebeck looked directly into the camera. “At Sobol’s funeral, he phoned me. He said that I had to accept the Daemon. That in the months before my death I had to invoke it. And although it will make me sound more insane than ever, my message is this: I, Peter Sebeck, accept the Daemon. And I am ready to face the consequences.”

Sebeck turned to the prison guards and federal officials standing behind Anderson. “That message needs to get out. She’ll try to cut it from the interview—and when she does, you’ll know she’s afraid. You’ll know she’s in collusion with the Daemon. If you think I’m a nutcase, then that’s all the more reason to get my message out there. It proves your case against me. It condemns me.”

Anderson watched grimly from beyond the bulletproof partition. “Sergeant, there is no Daemon. But I’ll be happy to pass along the message.”

Sebeck pointed at her. “You and I will meet again.”

Anderson felt strangely exhilarated. Sebeck was sexy when he was pissed off—and god, did this guy have balls. He was going to die, but he was going down swinging. She motioned to stop rolling camera, then locked eyes with Sebeck. “I’ll convey the message. Have no doubt.”

She had a direct line, after all.

And word from the Daemon was that Sebeck must die.

In a dark storage room in a nondescript export company in the Huang Cun Industrial Zone of Dongguan City, China, a low-end server stood wedged between stacks of toner cartridges and counterfeit software packages. A long-forgotten CAT-5 cable ran from the back of the machine, snaking behind towering boxes containing yet more boxes, and terminated in a Fast-Ethernet jack just to the left of an overloaded electrical outlet—both lost to sight behind cases of Communist Party propaganda pamphlets, printed specifically for use as props in Western theme restaurants. The Ethernet jack ran in turn to the company network, which in turn led to the corporate Web server, which in turn led to the world.

The computer fan hummed as the machine used RSS to scan the contents of the same four hundred Web sites every minute. And at exactly seventeen minutes past midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, the machine stopped scanning.

The computer’s hard drive whined to life and started clicking feverishly—sending out packets to hundreds of IP addresses before committing digital suicide by erasing itself.

Another Daemon event had been triggered.

“What the hell is going on with these numbers, people?” Russell Vanowen, Jr., looked up from the P&Ls in his executive financial summary. He frowned down the burled walnut table running the length of his paneled corporate boardroom. The familiar faces of two dozen Leland board members and senior executives stared back. The faces were all the more familiar because he served on their boards, too. “I’ve got seven divisions running over budget, with only IT on target. What the hell is going on here? Why didn’t I receive any guidance on this?”

Harris Brieknewcz, the CFO, shook his head slowly. “Russ, let me stop you right there. These numbers are wrong.”

“Wrong? How are they wrong?”

“Wrong as in not right. Look…” He slid an open binder across the table. Other execs passed it on to Vanowen. “This is what we’re getting from our off-line systems.”

“What the hell, Harris—you mean spreadsheets ? You’re passing me spreadsheets? Why did I spend fifty million dollars on a real-time enterprise accounting system if we can just use spreadsheets?”

“The accounting system is wrong. Things are being assigned to the wrong cost centers.”

“Forget cost centers—we’re sixty million dollars over budget this month. It doesn’t matter how you move the shells around. You’ll still have the same number of shells.”

“Yes, but the numbers aren’t being assigned to the correct cost centers—”

“Well, then your people are screwing up the entries—”