THIRTY - Thorn

THIRTY

Thorn

My mind still on Alana and the wisp of honey remaining on my tongue, I sit in the back offices of Harvard Lewis Sons, Inc. There's no Harvard Lewis and there are no sons, but it's a good enough front, and with a sign like that on the street, nobody ever comes in. There's no hint as to the type of business this might be in the lower end of Silicon Valley, and if someone looks inside the wide windows, all they see is a quiet reception area with an often-vacant reception desk. The real action is behind the wide wall, and it's a sparkling and mercilessly clean series of trauma rooms, as well as an examination room or two.

I lounge on a black leather chair, my head back as I try and fail to warm my feet. Doc has them in stupid boot warmers, and if I had my gun, I'd shoot him.

"Stop thinking about shooting me," he mutters, reading a tablet across the room.

I glare at him. He's not fazed. I guess when you hit around eighty years old and have operated on everything from wounded soldiers to the neighbor's cow, not much upsets you.

He flicks through the tablet. "I have your X-rays here, and they don't tell me everything I need." He turns it around so I can almost see. "As you can tell, the organs that have begun freezing appear slightly brighter because their density has increased. The edges of your kidneys look like shit."

I scrub both hands down my face. His words taste like over-salted popcorn and I guess that makes sense because Doc is as salty as they get.

"In addition," he says, "the margins of your liver, kidneys, and even your heart are more distinct on these X-rays."

I just look at him because I have no idea what he's talking about.

He sighs. "Normal soft tissues like organs have slightly blurred or feathered margins on X-rays, but if you're freezing from the inside out, everything gets sharper."

I guess that makes sense. "Anything else?"

"It looks like your rib cage is widening. That would make sense if your organs are starting to freeze."

"I'm glad it makes sense to you," I say.

He just stares at me. Despite his age, he still has a thick head of wiry whitish-gray hair and the bushiest eyebrows I've ever seen. His eyes are a faded blue and his body is in surprisingly good shape. "I'd like to perform a thermography on you, but I have to go borrow a machine or two."

"Tell the boys what you need and I'll make sure you get it," I say.

"Good. I also want an ultrasound and an MRI machine."

I look around. "We don't have room for an MRI machine."

"You're right," he says brightly. "If I arrange it, will you go to the hospital and get an MRI?"

No equipment the current medical establishment has is going to help me. "No," I say shortly.

"Why not? I want to see the pictures," he complains. He's wearing his usual white overcoat over gray slacks, a green shirt, and a perfectly knotted silk tie. Since he's our main doctor, he doesn't have regular hours, but somehow always shows up looking like the perfect country physician.

"What does an MRI matter?" I ask. "It doesn't change anything. We know what's happening."

One of those caterpillar-like eyebrows rises. "We have no idea what's happening. Yeah, we know you're freezing, but this is unprecedented, Thorn."

"I'm aware of that, but seeing my organs crystalize in real time just because you're interested isn't worth my going to the hospital. The last thing I need is for anybody to find out about this. Besides, are you still licensed to practice medicine?"

He's been our back office trauma surgeon for as long as I can remember. If anybody in my organization gets shot and doesn't need immediate hospitalization, we bring him to Doc. He's the best.

"Of course, I'm still licensed. Otherwise, how would I sign prescriptions for everybody?"

"Good point," I say.

My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I pull it out, seeing a 911 from Justice. I dial. "What's going on?"

"We're under attack," he says tersely, the sound of alarms beeping over the line.

I remove the feet warmers and reach to put on my socks and shoes. "What kind of attack? Do you have security?"

"Cyber," he mutters. "Need your help." He hangs up.

I stand, grab my coat from the rack, and head out of the office. "Go ahead and have the boys pick up the thermography thing and an ultrasound," I say as I stride toward the back door. "But no MRI."

"Come on, Thorn." Doc shuffles after me. "We could fit one in the basement."

I look over my shoulder as I open the door. "Could we really fit an MRI machine in the basement?"

"Absolutely," he says.

I sigh. "All right, go ahead. Figure it out with Justice and you can have it."

He hops. "Oh, you've made me so happy."

"Yeah, that was my goal today," I mutter as I head through the rain to my car. What is wrong with me? I've never let anybody in my organization speak to me like that. Almost joke with me.

Is Alana mellowing me? It's unthinkable, and it will stop, if so.

Against all the rules in my organization, I've driven myself today with no backup because I didn't want to deal with anybody. Plus, I enjoy driving. Whenever one of my men is in the car, they act like they need to take the lead and make sure I don't get shot. I'm a better driver than any of them.

I zip through the city in my Audi A8 L Security that I have tricked out with integrated safety features. This thing is resistant to bullets, explosions, and other types of attacks. I need to find another one and make even more modifications to it for Alana.

I'm slightly irritated she hasn't decided to return to my home, and soon will take her independent nature in hand. Harshly if necessary. My mind remains on her as I travel through Silicon Valley and drive into the underground parking garage of Malice Media. One of my men instantly opens my door and then I'm covered until I reach the elevator, although there's no way anybody could have gotten inside this garage.

I leave them and travel down the many stories into the earth, where the door opens and I walk into the server room to see Kaz and Justice at their respective terminals typing furiously. I shrug out of my jacket and drop it as I stalk to my computer and boot it up. "Status," I bark.

"Multiple attacks," Justice says grimly, squinting at his monitor. "I'm on the first wave, which was an influx of contradictory data aimed specifically at the quantum memory of the garnet."

I pause. "That's a decent attack. What's your plan?"

"I'm introducing a slight delay into the processing of every garnet core."

Kaz looks over his shoulder. "That should disrupt the attacker's data influx. If we can do that, we can slowly shut it down."

"What are you doing, Kaz?" I ask.

He keeps typing and looks back at his monitor. "Second wave of attack focuses specifically on our users in an attempt to release personal data."

"Shit," I mutter.

He pounds the enter key. "Yeah, I'm on this one. I'm creating what I call quantum bubbles to force the requests into along with any loosened data. Once we get it all in one place and stop the attack, I can burst the bubble and our users will be fine."

That sounds excellent. "Good." I boot up my computer and rapidly dive deep into the system. "I'm assuming there's a third wave?"

"Yes," Justice says. "It's . . ."

"I've got it," I say, immediately seeing the fractured data. It looks like somebody is attempting to inject malicious scripts into our servers aimed specifically at the resonance and molecular structure of the garnets.

Simultaneously, I see a distributed denial of service attack aimed to slow Malice Media's response times so users can't access their accounts. I start to type, hunting the malicious code through the servers, anticipation lighting my blood. Oh, I'm hell in a fight, but put me in front of my computer, and I'm a god.

I find the traffic patterns and instantly deploy network filters that will segregate genuine user requests from these attacks. Quickly finding the bubble sector Kaz has set up, I send the fake bots right into the bubbles. Fighting in real time, I write an AI algorithm that uses advanced heuristics to do so.

"Excellent," Kaz says. "I see what you're doing."

"Keep it up," I answer, typing faster than he is.

Then I turn toward the DDoS attack and spread out an even use of traffic over every single one of our attached garnets and servers. If I can relieve the pressure in any one area, it'll render the DDoS ineffective.

"I've started system patching," Justice says, typing rapidly.

I track him in real time while also looking for additional threats. This enemy came at us right now because they know we're weak. "All right, I'm sending the malware back to its source." I've shut down both of my attacks and it looks like Kaz and Justice are battling as well. "Let's find out who this is, even though I already have a pretty good idea."

"Check the honeypots," Kaz grunts.

"I am."

We have many honeypots set up throughout our system to track attackers, but I already know without looking that this campaign is too complex to have been sucked into any of those.

Justice grunts. "Shit."

"What?" I ask, looking over my shoulder.

He shakes his head. "Several more breaches. They're overwhelming the server. Our garnets can't keep up."

"Our diseased garnets can't keep up," I mutter, fury igniting my blood. Fine. They want to play? I turn and type in a rapid set of commands.

Kaz spins in his chair, his eyes wild. "Wait a minute."

"Nope. It's the only way," I answer, immediately activating a system-wide protocol that collapses all of the quantum states in our garnets to their base. The entire system stops.

"Fuck," Kaz says, lifting his hands.

Justice looks over at me. "You think this'll work?"

"I have no idea." I type in a command to reboot and nothing happens. I pause and will the universe to do as I want. The entire system comes back online. As one, we all go for our keyboards, typing rapidly.

"Oh my God, it worked," Justice says.

I look through the entire system, but all malware has been pushed out. It's a fail-safe I inserted when I created the system. I had hoped never to use it.

"We won't be able to track the attack back to its origination point now," Justice says, looking over his shoulder again at me.

"I'm aware." I stand and key in my code by the door before walking into the chillier room, looking at the flickering lights on the servers and the large garnet in the middle of the hub. I walk toward it. It's full, red and sharp-edged . . . and I feel no connection. I reach out and touch it. The crystal hums beneath my hand, but it's almost as if the diseased garnet is a barrier between me and this one. I wonder if I should smash the other to bits, or if that would end in my death as well. We may get to the point where I won't have any choice but to try.

"Your best option is to somehow heal the diseased garnet and yourself," Justice says from behind me.

I turn to look at him standing in the doorway. "Come here."

He walks closer. My younger brother, the one person in the world I vowed to protect until I met Alana, and now I have the two of them. I jerk my head toward the garnet.

He reaches out and plants his hand over it. Nothing happens. "I'm not connecting with it either," he says. "Its glow isn't any stronger for me than for you."

That's because I'm still here. If death takes me, according to the history of our family, he and the garnet will connect. It's a good thing.

"What did the doctor say?" he asks.

"Doc?" I roll my eyes. "He wants an MRI machine."

"Where's he going to put that?"

I chuckle, finally relaxing for the first time all day. "He thinks he can put it in the basement."

Justice stills. "I'm not having an MRI done down in that creepy basement. We'd probably catch leprosy down there."

"I don't care. Might as well make Doc happy. He does keep us alive," I mutter.

"Well, that's true," Justice says. "Who do you think created this attack?"

We have so many enemies, it's hard to say. "The Rendales know we're weak." I'd read that in Sylveria's eyes the night before, but she might just have good sources. Which doesn't tell me who's behind the attacks.

He nods. "I've been listening in on the devices you planted in their home the other night."

I'm surprised they didn't conduct a search-and-scan the second I left. "And?"

"Nothing. They haven't admitted to anything. There's some minor squabbling between the sisters on who's going to marry you." His lips draw back as if he just ate glue.

"I'm not marrying either of them."

"You didn't tell them that, did you?"

Of course not. "Not while we're at war. I'm wondering if Sylveria Rendale is the one who infected our servers with the computer virus that is killing our garnet."

"And you."

"And me. She hinted that if I married one of her daughters, there'll be a cure."

He releases the garnet. "Then she's the one."

"Maybe," I say. "She could be bluffing."

He sighs. "You're not going to like this."

"I rarely do," I say wearily, letting myself relax for the briefest second since only my brother is present.

"I think you need to go to the Silicon Shadows and Secrets Ball tomorrow night."

My mouth drops open. That is the last thing on the entire earth I expected Justice to say. "Have you lost your mind? I don't attend functions. I don't even go out in public if I can help it."

He crosses his arms. "I know, but this attack, it hurt us and we were already struggling."

"So?"

He takes a step back, as if thinking I'm going to charge him. "We need to post a social media hologram event that people can join in and experience. One they dream about but can't afford."

"With me?" Has Justice been hit in the head lately?

"Yes, with you. You're an enigma, a mystery. Every time Alana emotes on Aquarius Social about you, she gains twice the user interaction that she would attract otherwise. We need to harness that same power."

I glare at the half-charged garnet. "Why don't you do it?" I ask.

"Because I'm not Thorn Beathach. I'm the brother nobody knows exists. I'll do my part, but if you want to bring our service fully online, we need user interactions, and we need energy. And with the garnet dying . . ."

"We're losing energy too fast," I murmur. "Well, at least I have a date. Since I'm going, put plans in place to take her tomorrow night at the ball."

I'm done waiting.