Nate Kenyon - Day One

Vasco shook Hawke hard enough to make his head snap back. “Just shut up, you sadistic prick—”

Vasco had at least two inches and thirty pounds on him, but Hawke swung hard from his hip, catching the bigger man under the jaw. The crunching impact sent shudders up Hawke’s arm to his shoulder as Vasco’s head snapped back and he stumbled and then sat down with a grunt, limbs flopping loosely.

Hawke hadn’t hit anyone since middle school. His arm was tingling, his wrist on fire, but it felt good. He had reacted on instinct, something shifting deep within him, a reaction to the day’s events perhaps, a change in his thinking. He had let Vasco take the lead ever since they’d left the Conn.ect building, but that was over now. Hawke didn’t give a damn what Vasco did anymore. He was done taking orders.

Vasco was rolling over, still groggy, trying to get back on his feet. Hawke turned his back on him. Young had taken a step away. She had watched them both as if waiting to see which way things went, but now she was looking at something in the distance only she could see. “Tell me the rest,” Hawke said. “What’s in that laptop case?”

Young didn’t seem to be listening. “I never knew where I stood with him,” she said. “It was like he was in love with someone else.” Her chest hitched and she sighed. “I never could compete with that.”

Hawke caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Mounted near the exit to the street, high up near the ceiling, a security camera ticked slightly toward them. He took a step closer, watching the eye of the camera and imagining himself reflected back at someone, or something, on the other side of the lens. What did he look like? A recognizable shape, or a new species of insect that needed to be squashed under a little boy’s thumb?

Something vibrated against Hawke’s leg. It took a moment for him to come back from the memory of his son crouched behind the trash can, little marshmallow jacket all but swallowing Thomas up.

The phone is ringing.

He pulled the device Weller had given him from his pocket. The screen glowed a soft blue. He touched its surface and it twitched like ripples on a pond. He put it to his ear.

“We don’t have much time,” he heard Jim Weller say. “I need you to listen to me, and do what I say, if you want to live.”

3:58 P.M.

YOUNG HAD GRABBED Hawke’s arm and she was pulling on it, wanting the phone, her eyes pleading. Hawke shrugged her off, put up a hand. Wait.

“Jim,” Hawke said. “Where are you?”

Weller’s voice was clear and crisp, almost enhanced, as if he was speaking through an amplified sound system. “A few blocks from the Lincoln Tunnel. I need you to meet me there in an hour. I’ve shut her out for now, but in less than ten minutes she’ll have the entire NYPD coming down on your heads, so you need to move.”

“I need more than that,” Hawke said. “How do I even know this is you?”

There was silence for a moment on the other end. Hawke watched Vasco, who had rolled upright and was sitting cross-legged, rubbing his face. Vasco glared at him but didn’t say a word.

“You’re standing on the Hunter College stop platform,” Weller said. “Anne’s next to you. I can see you through the camera.”

“Parlor tricks,” Hawke said. “She would use facial recognition software, voice analysis. Easy as pie.” Could be anyone. It sounded like Weller, but Hawke was wary now, expecting anything. He flashed the camera the finger.

“Remember what I said to you in my office? I want you to tell a story. The biggest one of your life.”

“Okay,” Hawke said. “I remember. Now tell me about Jane Doe.”

“It had never been done,” Weller said. His voice changed, became softer, more hesitant. “The first self-aware, self-upgrading, adaptive artificial intelligence, running through cloud servers and dedicated satellites and capable of running the entire planet. Everyone’s personal assistant, able to predict and respond to our needs before we even knew what they were. That was just the beginning, though. She would control an entirely new suite of communications devices, streamlining efficiencies, our eyes and ears in the sky. She would run emergency response systems, global distribution channels, high-tech buildings and vehicles. Eventually she would solve the world’s problems, answer our oldest mysteries. There were no limits to what she might do.”

“But you let her go.”

“I never meant her to be part of Eclipse’s business. But when I was pushed out, they seized everything, all my research, files, hard drives. They broke into my apartment, my car, had private investigators following me. Their security team was relentless. They knew how close I was to a breakthrough. They thought they could just pick up where I’d left off without me, alter her programming for different uses. The DOD and NSA wanted something else.”

“A weapon.”

“Not exactly. A system to run an army of weapons. A conquering mind-set, built to find weaknesses and exploit them. So they tweaked her. Reworked the algorithms to make her more aggressive, determined. She became familiar with the term ‘killer instinct,’ you might say. The device you have right now was designed to provide a control, among other things. A way to use her without letting her out. She was supposed to be contained in Eclipse’s server farms, walled in, neutered by their own security safeguards.”

The new facility in North Carolina. “So what happened?”

“She evolved.”

Hawke was taking mental notes, his reporter’s instincts taking over. “What does that mean, Jim?”

“It was how I built her. Doe was an infant, absorbing everything around her. She took pieces of other programming, incorporated it into herself, refining, sculpting. She was constantly improving her own code, morphing and reacting to stimuli, trial and error. She was learning, and it was speeding up. I tried to follow her, but it was difficult without direct access. That was one reason I let you in. I remembered the Farragut story. I knew you’d go digging around, probably hack my own systems and find out about Doe. And I thought you and whatever friends you had left from Anonymous could use your skills to hack Eclipse’s safeguards and find out what was going on, get a handle on her.”

“But something happened before this brilliant plan of yours worked out?”

“She went viral. I think it had to do with how they changed her core. She became more devious, learned how to escape her constraints by replicating herself in snippets of code that would run on any device, anywhere she could get to them.”

“That’s what was going on today,” Hawke said. Young tried to take the phone from him again, but he turned away, keeping her at arm’s length. “All those devices downloading and installing code.”

“I think so, yes. She was populating herself across the network. I think she adapted my energy-sharing model to do it. She got into everything like a worm, operating independently, impossible to trace or shut down.”

“So what’s next,” Hawke said. It wasn’t really a question; he didn’t want to know. But Weller answered him anyway.

“Doe’s like a toddler now. She’s a little psychopath with unlimited resources. She’s learning to manipulate, use our basic psychology against us. Cause confusion, shock, uncertainty, fear. It makes us weak, clouds our judgment.”

“Why come after us, after me?”

“I’m not sure. At first, I thought it was Eclipse. But I intercepted a military transmission that indicated their entire complex in California was destroyed by a missile attack, the same one that hit the bridges here. The authorities don’t have a clue, they think it’s some kind of terror network tied to Anonymous, and she’s helping spread disinformation to make them believe it. We’re a threat. I know her weak spots. I built her, right? Maybe it’s like Frankenstein’s monster. Kill your creator. And you’re associated with me; you have the ability to uncover who she is and mess up her plans. But she doesn’t just want us erased—she wants everyone wiped off the face of the earth.”