Page 22 of Black Bay Defender
Jacob glanced back at the cars in the parking lot. The security that patrolled the grounds during the day was on-site but they didn’t have authorization to enter the building and there was no sign of Doctor Blackmore’s car. Pulling out his phone, he checked the time. Two minutes to eight. “Let’s give the Doc a few more minutes.”
With no other choice, they shot the shit as they waited. At quarter past, Jacob called the doctor and left a message on his voicemail.
“Maybe he overslept?”
“Maybe.”
When an hour passed with no sign of Doctor Blackmore, Jacob wasn’t sure what to do or who else to contact. This project was top-secret and the list of people who knew about it, from what he understood, was tiny. He assumed, as project leader, Doctor Blackmore had contacts higher up, but techs weren’t privy to that information. They had Blackmore’s contact details. That was it.
The two of them were basically a redundancy. ORION, the AI handled everything, reducing them to glorified gophers and two sets of hands when needed despite their qualifications.
“I just don’t understand why our credentials aren’t working,” Matt complained. “Why lock us out?”
Good question. But one that Jacob didn’t have an answer to.
“Should we talk to security? Maybe they have someone else they can call to get this straightened out.”
Jacob nodded. “It’s worth a shot.”
The Senator was just packing up, eager to get home to his wife and his waiting dinner when General Rivera marched into his office in full dress uniform and shut the door behind him. “We have a problem.”
Ah, hell. “A five-minute problem or an I-need-to-text-my-wife problem?”
Rivera jerked his chin toward the cell sitting on top of the Senator’s desk. “Text your wife.”
Great. She was going to be pissed – again. With a grimace, he picked up the phone and shot off a text before tossing it back down. Slumping back in his chair, he asked, “What’s the situation?”
“Resurrection.”
Again? They already had a dead bio-robotics engineer, a missing and presumed dead geneticist, and a rogue soldier who had broken programming. “What is it this time?”
“No one can access the building and Doctor Blackmore and Deputy Director Ridley are both missing.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered, shaking his head. This thing was turning out to be one giant headache. When the project had been put to him, he hadn’t agreed with the means but had been swayed by the potential outcome. Technologically advanced soldiers who would not deter from an order under any circumstances looked good on paper. At this rate though, they’d never get to that outcome, especially if they couldn’t get the memory technology to work properly. Commander Grady Carter had proved it didn’t hold up, so until that issue was dealt with, they couldn’t move forward. And they’d never be able to move forward if their scientists kept disappearing.
Wait…“What do you mean no one can access the building?”
“The techs were locked out this morning. Calls were made. When it finally came across my desk, I took a bird over there myself to see what the fuck was going on. I have the highest level of clearance and no joy.”
“Why would someone do that?Whocould have done it?”
“Not a who, a what. ORION is the only thing capable of deleting Resurrection’s access codes.”
Fucking AI. See, this was the problem. It’s all fun and games until you give things like that too much power, put too much faith in the system, and it decides to fuck you over with it. Grimacing, he shook his head. “What are our options?”
“I think we should blow the whole fucking thing sky high.”
The Senator gawked at the man. Was he serious? “We’re talking billions of dollars here. That’s not an option.” The shareholders, and the other government officials, all had a stake in this project. “Can we blow the door? Get your people inside?”
“An aggressive breach will set off the AI’s defense systems. We have no way to shut it down.”
Nightmare. Absolute nightmare. The Senator closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as the first signs of a headache set in. “Can we hire a hacker? I don’t know, maybe upload a virus?” Technology wasn’t his forte, but it seemed like a viable plan. Hollywood made movies about that shit all the time.
“Even if a hacker could manage to access ORION remotely, a virus introduced into the system would spread to all the soldiers through the Sync. Pretty much the same outcome as blowing them up.”
Well, shit. “What other options do we have then? We can’t just do nothing.”
“Commander Grady Carter. If he can reconnect with the Sync the AI might let him walk right in.”
