Chapter Four

Rick sat in the passenger seat and tried his best not to show just how much he was freaking out. “What the fuck have I done!” Yeah, he was super chill. “In the last six hours I’ve gone AWOL, escaped from NSA custody, and now I’m crossing state lines. So, if you’re not FBI somebody with those letters on their jacket is most definitely going to be tearing my life apart from the time I tripped Patrick Mulcahey in the first grade because he was a nose picker, to raiding my Pornhub subscription for kink videos and building a profile that I’m clearly the most dangerous threat to national security.”

“Feel better?”

“No! No, I don’t fucking feel better about bombing my entire life apart. And who the fuck uses an anagram of their real name to pose as a fake FBI agent?”

“I told you, your career is safe. Literally every single system that is being searched by anyone with too many letters after their name or emblems on their chest shows you were securely transferred into FBI custody.”

“Yeah, and the real FBI? How about them?”

“Do you have any idea how many FBI agents there are?”

“No.”

“Neither do they. It was almost comical how easy it was to create a complete agent profile and embed it into their personnel database. As far as they know there is a Special Agent Cheápo with an exceptional but not too exceptional career working for the bureau out of the Richmond field office.”

“So we’re going to Richmond?”

“No.”

Rick was on the verge of opening the passenger door and making a jump for it. He gripped the handle so hard the plastic creaked.

“I realize you don’t know me, but I swear to you this was the only way. I tried to warn you that something was going down, but you were intent on ignoring the signs.”

“What do you mean warn me? I’ve never seen or spoken to you in my entire life until that stairwell.”

“Never seen me is true enough, but we spoke on the phone for two minutes and twenty-two seconds. I’m sure you were trying to trace my location, but even if Private Kela had understood your flailing hand gestures and gotten access to the tracing software, you never would have found me. I made sure of it.”

Who the fuck is this psycho?

“That was you?”

Keiji said nothing, but looked away from the road long enough to meet Rick’s gaze. It was only seconds, but Rick’s level of panic subsided half a step. He couldn’t pinpoint why just yet, but one tumbler slid into place.

He thought back to the extremely brief conversation. “You better start talking fast. Exactly what do you know about Oracle, what is W7784, and how long have you been spying on me?”

“Just give me an hour and I promise I’ll start answering your questions.”

“What does Blackraptor have to do with anything? They’re in weapons development. How did you know I was gesturing to Kela when we talked on the phone? Only a handful of people have that unlisted phone number you called. How did you find it?”

Keiji glanced at him out of the corner of his eye with a little smirk.

“My ex-boyfriends don’t even have that number.”

“How is Nic, by the way? I know the two of you parted on good terms, but it’s got to sting a little that he’s all cozy in domestic bliss a year later.”

“Do I need to be worried about ending up in a pit putting lotion on my skin whenever we get where we’re going?”

Keiji barked out a laugh. “Nice reference. No, I’m not some Buffalo Bill psycho. I admire you for not putting yourself out there on the idiot web, but it’s nearly impossible not to have a digital trail these days. For some you have to dig a bit more, but it’s always there.”

“You said you were a software engineer, but you talk like a hacker.”

“Who says I can’t be both? You started as a geospatial engineer and are now in cyber operations. And don’t play the innocent card. I know you’ve got some skills of your own.”

“I do not know what you’re talking about,” Rick said, trying to keep his face as neutral as possible.

“Mm-hmm.”

They crossed the Potomac and instead of continuing west on the 495, Keiji turned south on U.S. 1. Fort Belvoir wasn’t far from their location. Was Keiji taking him to the First IO Command? Maybe he was working with a support team or analysts that Rick needed to coordinate with to eradicate the hacker who infiltrated Oracle. But why all the Mission Impossible shit, why not just go through official channels? And Rick still didn’t understand what the fuck Carpenter had been alluding to with his accusations.

He tried to think back to the meeting in Col. Riggs’s office. He’d been so rocked back on his heels that he hadn’t been able to follow the linear path of all the different conversations going on at once. King had been investigating a medical drone, Carpenter mentioned a terror cell, and Riggs kept digging at him to ask what the corrupted code in Oracle did from a logistics standpoint. And what the fuck was W7784? How were all three separate systems interconnected?

“We’re here,” Keiji announced.

Rick looked out the window and realized that they were in Mount Vernon.

“Look, I’m all for exploring some hidden tunnels built by Freemasons, but I think we have bigger concerns to deal with right now?”

“Bigger than kidnapping the president of the United States?”

Rick couldn’t help it; he cracked a little smile. Few appreciated his random movie reference habit. It was always worse in high-stress situations. Masterson was one of the few in his life who could keep up, but maybe Keiji had the gift too.

“Seriously, I think I’ve been a good boy, but it’s time to fill me in on what the fuck is going on.”

“The last one I agree with, but whether you’re a good boy is still very much unexplored.”

Rick swallowed, and he drew in Keiji’s scent a layer deeper than the surface. “Think so, huh?”

Why did his sex voice suddenly pop out? Keiji was fucking hot, there was no doubt about it, and Rick was the first to admit that one of the best ways to burn off adrenaline was to fight or fuck, but even he wasn’t enough of a manwhore to let his dick make any decisions when his literal life was on the line. Keiji pulled into a lot and parked the car. He turned to meet Rick’s gaze. Rick felt the heaviness of Keiji’s stare travel down the length of his body. Wrinkled ACUs and undoubtedly the smell of his body wash long gone. But somehow he got the impression that Keiji didn’t find him lacking. In fact, if the heat in Keiji’s eyes and the way he gripped the steering wheel were any sign, if they had been under any other conditions, the two of them may enjoy a life-altering fuck rather than the fight Rick suspected may be on the horizon.

“Let’s go,” Keiji said.

Rick struck like a coiled cobra and grabbed Keiji’s shirt. He pulled him in till their faces were a fraction of an inch apart. Keiji countered by gripping Rick’s triceps and before he drew another breath Rick’s solar plexus reverberated with the force of Keiji’s strike.

Rick’s fingers went numb, and he fell back against the passenger door. Words skipped around in his brain like a pinball. Lesson learned: Don’t go on the offensive with the hacking software engineer. He will fuck your shit up.

Rick blinked, breaking his stare with Keiji to look out the window. He’d parked them in front of a two-story office building. Nondescript glass gleamed in the sunshine, reflecting the colored leaves of the surrounding area.

“I promise you, the way to discover the answers you seek are inside that building. I want to help. That’s why I sought you out. I think you’re the person to stop what’s coming, but only if we work together.”

“What is coming? Stop with the cryptic allusions and just lay it out for me.”

“If we don’t stop it? The death of thousands if not millions of people.”

This was one of those moments where he could pick one path or another. Could he take the chance that Keiji was telling the truth and somehow stop this supposed threat? Terror threat. Carpenter’s accusations. Was any of this related? Did he have the skills and balls to stop it? Did his conscience allow him not to try?

“Let’s go.”

Keiji stepped out of the car and let Rick into the office space he’d rented months ago to work from. He’d buried the lease under so many shell companies that even he got dizzy tracing the links.

The moment they stepped into the room, Rick stopped and whistled. Keiji supposed the sight of the walls covered in everything from photos of high-ranking military officials to computer code to schematics of multiple hardware systems looked a bit conspiracy nuttish. There was an organization to the chaos if you looked carefully. When Keiji had first put the pieces together, he thought that there wasn’t any way the puzzle would fit together the way he thought. He kept pulling on threads and moving pieces around hoping that he was wrong, but no matter how he manipulated the components the final product kept turning out the same.

He’d gotten physically sick when he’d realized how his job had played a part. The position at Blackraptor was supposed to make him a part of building smart weapons that had the power to protect the soldiers. He wasn’t some na?ve idealist who thought world peace was possible, nor was he a psycho who thought they had to burn it all to the ground and build anew. Humans were incapable of existing without war. Too many conflicting ideologies and politics and egos meant clashes were inevitable. But the reduction of casualties and lives destroyed by the effects of war was possible with the right weapons. Only now, a threat that nobody could have predicted was on the verge of changing the face of the planet.

Rick was studying the walls and Keiji would have given anything to look inside the man’s brain as he analyzed what Keiji had put on display. Which was damning if he followed the clues, but Keiji wasn’t an idiot. What was up on the walls was a teaser with false leads and dead ends if anyone found his little clubhouse and came snooping. No, the actual information was under layers of encrypted files on a laptop even the NSA would drool over.

Rick turned, and Keiji saw the questions and arguments already brewing in their blue depths. He’d never seen eyes so bright they practically glowed. He’d nearly gasped at their power the moment Rick had shoved him up against the wall in the stairwell of the NSA building. In that moment, he’d realized just how long it had been since he’d had a hard body pressed against him. A few brain cells had short-circuited before he recalled what was at stake and he shoved his libido back into submission.

“Interesting choice in wallpaper.”

“You don’t think it’s a little too avant-garde?”

“Nah, manifesto chic is all the rage now. Now where’s the real shit? You didn’t bring me here to critique your preschool art project.”

Keiji chuckled. “I thought it was at least moderately convincing. Enough to get some alphabet yahoos scratching their heads and asses for a few days trying to figure the patterns out. What gave it away?”

Rick stalked him from across the room. “Believe it or not, what gave you away is the fact that it’s too much.”

Keiji opened his mouth to argue but forgot what he was going to say as Rick came around the glass desk and stopped right in front of him. To Keiji’s back were the five monitors he worked with fanned out across the surface.

“If you’re going to lead a horse to slaughter, then you need to lay out the carrots bit by bit. Otherwise he’s going to gorge himself on the pile of treats then go back to ambivalent grazing. You’ve got so much information visible in a small space you started repeating patterns. Almost like computer code. You covered the wall in conditional statements but instead of JavaScript syntax you got pictures and sporadic sentences.”

“Damn, even I didn’t notice that.”

“Probably because you were too close. It was only when I stepped back and studied the bigger picture that it became clear. I doubt many would catch it. I have one very serious question though.”

“Okay.”

“Why did you get me involved? I see a lot of photos of both NCOs and higher ups from IO Command up on that wall.”

“I was drowning on my own, and when I came across your name tagged to Oracle, I thought ‘here’s a guy trying to answer the same question as me’. Since I know civilians—even ones who work for defense contractors—can’t approach the Army machine for help, I figured the only way I could get us to work together was to force the issue.”

“I don’t like it, but I respect the logic. Can we start with how you found me and exactly what your part in all of this is? Everything I’ve experienced and every movie I’ve ever watched indicates there is some kind of inside involvement. I’m guessing you know about that on some level.”

Keiji let out a breath and stepped into Rick’s space, forcing him to walk backwards several steps. He sat down in his chair.

“Umm, Keiji?”

He glanced back at Rick and smiled. His desk was bare except for the monitors. Anybody who came looking would assume the computer was a portable laptop that he’d taken with him. He curled his fingers over the end of the armrest on the chair and the screens flashed to life as a holographic keyboard appeared on the surface of the desk.

“Okay, that’s a fun party trick.”

Rick crawled under the desk. There was something juvenilely funny about a grown ass man in fatigues under a desk with a look of pure consternation on his face. Rick squinted up at him through the glass top.

“What kind of wizardry is at work here?”

“If you can climb out from between my knees, I’ll show you.”

Rick’s eyes flared and Keiji heard the unpremeditated innuendo as soon as it came out of his mouth. Of course now that it was out there his brain had decidedly less work-related ideas floating around in its neocortex.

Rick made his way out from underneath the desk, going forward into the open space of the room instead of toward Keiji. He came around and lifted an eyebrow.

“I’ve always wanted to be able to do that.” Keiji stood and all the monitors went black. He saw the moment a part of the puzzle clicked in Rick’s brain.

“The chair?”

He smiled and gestured to the tulip-style seat. “Please”

Rick sat but nothing happened. “There’s something else.”

“Multiple actually. Wanna see?”

They switched places. “Calibrated pressure plate, set to respond to a weight within plus or minus five pounds of mine, activates a power supply.” He pointed to a nearly invisible switch embedded in the chair’s arm. “DNA sensor unlocks the sleep mode. And continuous biometric behavioral authentication tracks keystrokes for any aberrant patterns.”

“And the hardware?”

“A Purism Librem in a Faraday cage beneath the floor. I’m hardwired into the DOD network, compliments of a contracted actuary firm in the suite below me.”

“Marry me,” Rick whispered.

Keiji couldn’t help but laugh. “Five minutes ago you were growling and practically had me in a grappling hold, now you’re proposing marriage?”

“What can I say, I’m a slut for a man who knows his cybersecurity.”

“I see. Well before we head down the aisle, think we can make time to save the world?”

“I think you have a lot more faith in my abilities than they deserve.”

“I’d say pull up a seat and I’ll explain everything, but as you can see this space is not visitor friendly.”

“I can stand.”

“Okay, let me start at the beginning. I’m a software engineer for Blackraptor. Are you familiar with the company?”

“Next generation weapons developer.”

“That’s part of it. There are multiple divisions though. I mean we are not on some twenty-billion-dollar scale like General Dynamics, but we are an up-and-comer in computer systems and displays. We did some of the platform development for your Oracle, and most recently got DOD approval for full-scale production of Ascaris or W7784.”

“What exactly is that? If you know as much about me as you imply, you know I don’t have clearance high enough to know about anything still in development.”

“The Ascaris is a long-range smart device. It’s launched by humans, but once airborne it’s capable of analyzing the battlefield and deciding the best place to strike enemy targets based on observed personnel patterns on the ground.”

“Can your precious smart weapon understand humans don’t process like machines? Decisions are made in split seconds based on biological imperatives to live, support brothers in arms, and adapt battle plans in response to the same imperatives from the enemy. You know they made this movie at least a dozen times now and it always goes to shit before anything gets better.”

“You may be more right than you realize.”

“How so?”

“I mentioned the fire control panel on the phone, right? Well, it’s not quite that simple. Part of my job was to review the fire control coding. In the process, I noticed that there was an alteration to the most recent test sequence. But every time I tried to trace the alteration it seemed to disappear. Sound familiar?”

“Oracle.”

“Yep. Only this time we’re not talking about the company toilet paper supply going missing.”

“So, there is a smart weapon in development that can go rogue. Why not run it up the chain at Blackraptor and kill the deal?”

“I tried going to my supervisor. Then I tried going to his supervisor. But when I couldn’t present proof of the corrupted files, guess who got put on probation and taken off such a critical project? The company has already spent millions on research and development.”

“Proprietary patented Ramp;D that can reach far beyond an isolated application. If there is an artificial intelligence malware in play, for lack of a better term, then it’s not inconceivable that they could use it in just about any smart device.”

Keiji nodded. “It’s one thing if your smart house fucks with you by turning on and off the lights. It’s a whole other thing when compromised military mainframes launch weapons that can decimate the world.”

Rick closed his eyes and Keiji stopped himself before he reached out to hold the man’s hand. He’d had months to come to grips with the knowledge of the situation and how far-reaching the devastation could be. But there was no time left to twist in his chair and get lost in thought. He needed boots on the ground so to speak. Manpower with access that even his unique talents couldn’t provide. They had two major problems to solve: The first was to find out who was involved within the military because Keiji just couldn’t fathom a scenario where there wasn’t an inside protagonist on some level. The second was stopping the actual malware from worming its way further into the digital world.

Keiji blinked, and it was as if Rick snapped to attention mentally. His shoulders straightened and his features hardened. Looked like it was game on.