Shadow Tyrants

THIRTY-ONE

After ending the call with Overholt, Juan left the hidden section of the Oregon and headed up to the fake mess hall. It was decorated like the rest of the external parts of the ship, with flickering fluorescent lights, peeling paint, chipped linoleum tables, and battered metal chairs.

From what Juan could tell when he entered, the prisoners didn’t seem to mind. Many of them were talking to his crew, at ease now that they were free of Jhootha Island. Some of them were even laughing. All of them had changed out of their jumpsuits and into shirts and pants provided to them.

Julia Huxley greeted him at the door as she was walking out. Normally, the Oregon’s chief medical officer would be wearing scrubs when she was in the ship’s hospital-grade trauma center, but here she was dressed in a pressed shirt and pants, her hair tied back in a ponytail. Though she was trained by the Navy, she didn’t carry herself like an officer or a surgeon. She wouldn’t have seemed out of place caring for families in a small-town clinic, down to the black medical bag she was holding.

“How are they?” Juan asked.

Julia surveyed the room with her dark, sympathetic eyes, and then turned back to Juan.

“Surprisingly healthy, given what they’ve been through,” she said. “Physically, that is. I’d advise good therapists for all of them once they get home. Being freed from eighteen months in captivity is going to take a long time to process. None of them thought they’d ever leave.”

“They almost didn’t.”

“They’re very grateful to you for rescuing them.” Julia’s face morphed into a scolding expression. “Especially the woman who shot you. When were you going to tell me about that?”

“You had more important things to take care of.”

“Lyla said it was right about here that she got you,” Julia said, reaching out toward Juan’s chest. He deftly sidestepped the informal exam.

“It’s all right. Just a bruise.”

“Why don’t you let your doctor make that determination? I’ll expect to see you in the medical bay for X-rays after you’re done here.”

“Yes, Doctor,” he said as Julia left, knowing that she would hound him if he didn’t. She’d been the one who saved his life when his leg was severed and had kept a close eye on him ever since.

Juan found Lyla at a table with Kevin Nixon, who was holding a sketch pad. He was making quick strokes with a pencil, only stopping to ask questions and scratch his thick beard. Kevin had worked in Hollywood for many years as a makeup artist and props master, winning several major awards for his work. After his sister was killed during the attacks on 9/11, he’d left the industry and was offering to bring his skills to the CIA when Juan got wind of his abilities and asked him to join the Corporation. Kevin’s job on board the Oregon wasn’t the most active, and he constantly battled to keep his substantial waistline in check. A donut that was only half eaten sat on the table in front of him, so at least he was trying to make progress in his diet.

Juan walked up behind him and saw that he was nearly done sketching the face of a woman in her thirties. She was attractive, with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes.

“Who is that?” Juan asked.

“Lyla was just describing the woman she saw when they first landed on the island,” Kevin said.

“You mean, the woman who killed all those passengers?” Lyla said. “The woman who was responsible for holding us hostage all this time? I’ll never forget her face.”

“I’m sorry,” Kevin said. “I know it’s been hard for you to relive this.”

“I just hope you can find her and make her pay for what she’s done.”

“With your help, I’m sure she’ll be brought to justice.” Kevin got up and looked at Juan. “I’m done here if you want to take my seat. This should be a good enough likeness to work with.”

“Thanks,” Juan said. “And I’ve got another job for you after I see Hux.”

“Color me intrigued,” Kevin said, then looked at Lyla and pointed to a pencil and sheet of paper next to her plate. “I’ll leave those with you in case you want to add anything.” He started to walk away, then turned back and grabbed the other half of the donut to take with him. The battle continues, Juan thought.

He sat next to Lyla.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“All right, I guess.” She looked down at her empty plate. “The food here is amazing. I never would have guessed it with…” She nodded her head at the awful surroundings.

“We spend our money where we think it’s put to the best use.”

“I appreciate the hospitality, but I’m going nuts waiting to talk to my parents. They must have thought I died long ago. It’s going to be a big shock learning that their little girl is still alive.”

“I’m sure they’ll be thrilled. You’ll be able to talk to them as soon as you are on board the Indian Coast Guard cutter.”

“To think we were in India this whole time.” She looked at Juan with tears welling up in her eyes. “Thanks again for everything you did.”

Juan shrugged. “All in a day’s work.”

“Which is what, exactly? No, never mind. I don’t want to know, and you probably couldn’t tell me anyway. How are you feeling? I’m surprised you were able to walk after I shot you, let alone get us all to safety.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Are they really all dead?” Lyla said with a mixture of hope and dread.

“The guards? Yes. You’re free of them.”

“And what about the people they worked for? Are we safe from them?”

“We’re going to find out who did this to you. But we need your help.”

“Anything.”

“I know you’ve already talked to my crew, but I’d like to hear it from you. What can you tell me about the project you were working on?”

Lyla took a breath. “It’s groundbreaking. Revolutionary, even. My expertise is in cutting-edge pattern recognition software. If they had recruited me to work on it, I might have done it until I realized the scope of their ambition. But then, if they’d hired me, they wouldn’t have been able to hack into my company’s database using my codes. I never learned its real name. We had to call it Project C.”

“What was the project’s goal?”

“To develop a true, thinking artificial intelligence. One that would be able to write its own software code. They were trying to achieve the technological singularity.”

Juan had heard the term before but wasn’t familiar with its particulars. “The singularity?”

“It’s the point when an artificial intelligence becomes so sophisticated that it can start improving itself without human intervention. After that, its self-improvement will increase at an exponential rate. It’s the Holy Grail of AI.”

“But it comes with big risks as well, doesn’t it?”

“Of course. It could become a runaway reaction that gets out of control. It’s almost impossible to predict how the AI would behave in that situation. It might lead to huge advancements for the human race.”

“Or it might lead to the Terminator,” Juan said.

“That’s what some people think.”

“We’ve encountered something like that before.”

He was thinking of a previous classified mission in which a powerful quantum computer that was used to crack any code on the planet had become self-aware. The Corporation had to shut it down, but Juan remembered a strange phone call he received after the end of that mission that indicated a portion of that computer’s code remained somewhere on the internet. It might have even served as a basis for Project C.

Lyla was both puzzled and intrigued. “What do you mean, you encountered something like that?”

“I can’t say, unfortunately. Could Project C be used for breaking encryption?”

“Maybe, but it’s far more than that. Once Project C is complete and the AI has reached the singularity, code breaking is just a small application. The AI could actually rewrite any computer code it can access.”

Juan’s mind was reeling with the implications. “You mean, it could hack into computers all by itself?”

“Hacking is just the first step. Project C is designed to rewrite the code so seamlessly that the people monitoring it may not even know it. Think how hard it is for us to detect viruses now, ones that were written by humans. An AI could develop its own language. Even if we knew the malicious code was there, we might have no idea what it said. Every computer on earth could be taken out of our control and given over to someone else.”

“Or something else.”

Lyla nodded. “If it wasn’t designed with the right fail-safes in mind, that’s very possible. The world could be held hostage by the whim of a computer that doesn’t care at all about the human race. Or the AI could be controlled by someone who has the rest of us on strings like puppets, ready to do whatever they command. That someone would instantly become the most powerful person on earth, and there would be nothing we could do about it.”

“Where is this computer?” Juan asked.

“I wish I could tell you. Our access was extremely restricted when we were working on the computers. It was a closed network, so I couldn’t access the internet.”

“What was the network?”

“It was called Vajra.”

Mallik’s satellite system. That confirmed he was somehow involved in all this. But little of this was making sense to Juan yet.

“There were two other things that you should know,” Lyla said.

“What’s that?”

“First, twenty-three of the passengers were taken off the island shortly after we got there. The rest of us got to talking and realized that they were all hardware people, while we were all software.”

“Do you know where they were taken?”

She hesitated, then said, “No. About eight months ago, we had to redo a ton of work all of a sudden. During that time, I came across latitude and longitude coordinates when we were checking data on some computer modeling. One of the data cells next to the coordinates had the word sunken. I think it was referring to a ship that sank.”

“Do you remember the coordinates?”

She nodded and started writing on the paper Kevin had left for her. “I memorized them because they were so unusual.”

“You said there were two things.”

She nodded. “Three times during my stay on Jhootha Island, I saw a strange symbol on paperwork that was emailed to us. I’ve never seen it before. I can’t draw at all, so Kevin sketched it out from my recollection. I have no idea what it means.”

Lyla turned over the sheet of paper. On it was a circle with nine spokes.

In the center of the circle was a swastika.